Cosplayers Arrested at Anime Boston 2008

After the Anime Boston 2008 convention, a con attendee posted on the official Anime Boston message boards, asking for information about an incident that occurred at the convention. The poster was told that some people were held by security and accused of being terrorists. Now, this was just a rumor, but the rumor did originate from true events. What did happen was that someone did get arrested for carrying around a realistic weapon in the mall.

According to reports from other con attendees, an attendee cosplaying as Vash from Trigun was walking around the Prudential Center mall with a realistic gun, and a shopper saw the gun and called the police, believing the gun to be real. When the police approached the cosplayer, he ran.

Now, the details regarding this event are vague. Was it one person or two? Some say it was two cosplayers, not one, but most people say it was one person. The character has only been confirmed as Vash in one report; it could have been another anime character, like Spike from Cowboy Bebop. Some reports claim that the cosplayer actually drew his gun on the cops, as if to intimidate them, one person even said the cosplayer was arrested for assaulting an officer.

Of course, it is hard to get a lot of information from con attendees since most people at the convention were either inside the Hynes at the time, and most of the people inside the Hynes were stuck in the registration line. Anime Boston staff is hesitant to reveal the details; then again they're very busy dealing with other issues regarding convention management.

However, while news of the incident was not officially announced at the convention, there was an announcement in the Dealers Room on Saturday of the convention telling con attendees to keep their prop weapons out of sight for "safety reasons." The thread posted on the Anime Boston forums asking about the "terrorism" incident was locked, because the convention staff and coordinators did not know about that incident, which probably didn't happen, but was just a result of con attendees playing telephone about the prop weapon incident.

It's pretty safe to say that the cosplayer was in fact arrested, and also banned from the convention.

Don't let this happen to you! If you attend an Anime convention such as Anime Boston, or really any type of convention that involves cosplaying, be smart about your props - specifically your prop weapons, especially the realistic replicas. Use common sense, normal people aren't going to see the prop and know it's a prop. With all the crime and terrorism going on these days, many people are going to assume the worst and call the police. You can take it out and flaunt it all you want in the safety of the convention, but when you're out in public among normal people who don't even know why there are people in weird costumes wandering around, put the prop weapon away.