By Rukazu
Hey everyone, this is Rukazu, aka Lucas reporting on Anime
Expo 2013!
First off, I want to tell everyone that while I did not
actually get my press badge this year, I’m still putting up a review because I
want to say my share on the expo.
Day 0
Not much took place, other than getting off work and picking
up my badge. Since I didn’t get press, I
had to wait in line like everyone else.
However, the line, though quite long, moved pretty fast and the actual
badge pick up process was very efficient.
All you had to do was to scan the bar code yourself, and the staff would
print out the badge, it took literally less than ten seconds. Staff was the same as usual, couldn’t tell if
they were ruder or less picky than the years before, but I didn’t really care
either way.
Day 1
In retrospect, July 4th was arguably speaking the
best day of the con, next to July 7th. Yes it felt a little odd to have July 4th
be the first day of the convention and by the time I got there, the con was jam
packed already! Just to make things interesting, I put on my Riddler’s Cosplay
that day just to see what people’s reaction would be. We got
swept up into a huge crowd when Dealer’s Hall opened up and as usual tried to
look around the Dealer’s Hall and Artist Alley to see if there was anything
good.
The reason why this day was probably the second best day,
was because I managed to take pictures with Danny Choo, Kyle Hebert, Yaya Han, and
Harley Morenstein (host of Epic Mealtime) all in one day. This was most likely due to being in the
right place at the right time. For
example, I stopped by Yaya Han’s booth, who I’ve known about and seen her
cosplays, and wanted the chance to talk to her.
Of course I wanted to buy a few prints and got them signed and even a
picture taken with her, but putting all that aside, it was cool just to talk to
her and ask her why she does cosplay as a profession and not just a hobby. In fact, they all seem pretty cool and
generally seemed to be enjoying themselves like the rest of us.
Although I wasn’t able to make it to the AMV contest which
was the big event of the day, the majority of the blog was able to get together
for dinner at Fat Burger, where we met Harley Morenstein, and we all got to
watch Ryan and Matt do the Fat Burger challenge. And yes, they were both able to complete the
challenge and get their pictures on the restaurant wall. Putting aside dinner, this was also the first
time where I got to introduce the Southern California division to Matt. Afterward dinner my sister and I had to head
back home because she had to finish her cosplay for the next day. Overall, it was a pretty eventful first day
and overall enjoyable to go to the biggest anime con of the year.
Day 2
Today was an okay day, I had 3 gatherings I had to do,
Key/Angel Beats, Sailor Moon, and Shin Megami Tensei/Persona. The nice thing about my 3 costumes was that
the bottom part of the costume was exactly the same. Simple black slacks and dress shoes, so at
least changing in and out was not a big deal.
However, because I didn’t plan much of the con, ith all the costume
changes, and because I had to hold a lot of stuff, I wasn’t able to do
much. Plus I was walking around all day
in dress shoes and that’s not really the most comfortable either.
What made today really cool was not a panel or event, but
hanging out with a friend of mine, gaming and getting dinner with him. He went to the same college as I did, but
graduated a year after me and since then, I hadn’t been able to get into
contact with him. After dinner, we went
to the JAST panel, which was my first panel of this year’s AX. It was pretty interesting as they were
announcing the games (H) that they were going to be releasing soon and
previewing the games they are going to be getting soon as well. Overall the day was okay, not really super
fun, but not bad either.
Day 3
From past trends at cons, Saturdays are always the biggest
days at cons. However, I didn’t get the
chance to see much of that as I was hanging out with my Touhou friends and
cosplayers the whole time. Basically I
got dressed in my Shikieiki cosplay and walked around and rounded up most of
the Touhou cosplayers. Before long we
got a huge group gathered in the game hall and as the gathering approached, we
basically decided to do a giant Touhou train all around the con, and I was
leading it! It was pretty awesome to see
the train continually get longer and longer as we kept adding more and more
people and got a bunch of stares and looks from the rest of the attendees. The gathering itself was pretty fun, and
pretty big. Afterwards we were all
invited to a pizza dinner (similar to what we did at Fanime). We got a pretty big group of about 20 people
and we all headed up to the JW Marriot to get pizza.
Although the Masquerade was taking place at that time, this
was pretty late in the day, I found it more comfortable after a whole day of
walking around and taking pictures, to just sit back, relax and chill out with
fellow Touhou Fans. Afterwards, we all
headed back after a few hours and I met up with Ray since we couldn’t get into
a panel we wanted and just chilled a bit more.
Day 4
Since this was the last day of convention and I didn’t get
the chance to buy much, it was pretty much “run around Dealer’s Hall and Artist
Alley and buy stuff day.” This was the
first con where I blew over 500 dollars on because either I never find what I
want or I don’t have the money. But then
again, the Dealer’s Hall at Anime Expo and Artist Alley was really good and
there was stuff I wanted to buy! After
finishing up there, I put my stuff back in the car and went around taking pictures
before going over to the Funimation Panel.
There was a lot of stuff revealed like an “All in one package for
Dragonball Z” new dubs and new releases.
After that panel though, my sister and I had to head out as she had an
errand to do and we had dinner with our parents.
Now that everything is over, I like to do a comparison of AX
to Fanime, since those two are the biggest cons I have gone to so far, but also
to look at the pros and cons of each one.
Both have great cosplays, Dealer’s Halls and such, however, I cannot
stress enough the core differences between the two are. First and foremost, Fanime is a convention,
but Anime Expo is an expo. Meaning, a
con is simply a bunch of people getting together and having fun, but Expo is
driven because of the industry. Automatically
the overall feeling of the con is going to be different regardless. The staff at Fanime was definitely more
helpful and chill than the AX staff, but the lines were pretty bad for registration
at Fanime.
The registration was definitely really good, and I liked how
they expanded into the West Hall this year and had a huge gaming room and even
a Cosplay scene set up for pictures and such.
That was very impressive and many people really enjoyed it and used it
throughout the con. I wasn’t able to get
into a lot of the events as they were all sold out because of an odd ticketing
policy. From what I’ve heard from other
cons goers, the feelings are rather mixed.
On one hand I’ve heard that some staff was pretty good this year, like
when peace bonding weapons, they did ask where you want the ribbon to go and
they were okay with it. Others
unfortunately were not very good as they can seem rude and not treat the
attendees like people or customers.
It’s very difficult to say whether or not I enjoyed this con
more than I enjoyed Fanime, but if I really had to pick one, it will be
Fanime. AX this year was certainly not
bad, but not really impressive either. I
was still able to get a lot of stuff done at both cons and each case I choose
to hang out more with my friends and socialize rather than get caught up in the
events and such. To be honest, that’s
the part about cons I enjoy the most; the little things, the little
shenanigans, the jokes and the people.
The cons are just a method and place for all that to happen. I also got a lot of feedback from other con
goers to see what their impression was like and it was pretty mixed. Again, I heard a few complaints of the staff,
nothing too serious, but others seem to not really care and feel the same when I
mention that the con was neither really good nor bad. I will mention that my biggest gripe with the
con is that they took out the Feedback panel and never reinstated it. I feel that it would be better to air out grievances
there than on an internet forum. I feel
that AX would be able to do better if they heard and listened more to the
attendees. While some ideas I know have
been implemented, others obviously have not been addressed. Overall, I still go back if only because I
enjoy the people and cosplays.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.