Anime Expo 2011 coverage and photos

I had a fantastic four days at AX ’11, making it the fifth Anime Expo I’ve been to and the third in which I’ve stayed all four days. My coverage and cosplay photos of the con can be found after the jump…

Day 1 – Fri. July 1st

Getting started: I arrived at the Los Angeles Convention Center around 8am on Day 1. After checking into my hotel and meeting up with my friend f0calizer, I waited about an hour and a half to get my badge. I had wanted to get my badge early on Day 0, but after hearing that the lines for Day 0 were much worse, I’m glad I didn’t XD

Exhibit Hall (preliminary shopping): After meeting up with friends Ultimatemegax and Skorpigeist, I spent about an hour in the Exhibit Hall after it opened around 12pm (at which time, we nearly got crushed in the sudden mad rush of human traffic that occurred as soon as the Hall opened!) I was planning to do my full perusal of all the dealers’ booths on Day 2, so I spent this preliminary visit sizing up the merchandise and buying a few things that instantly caught my fancy.

The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (dub premiere): Along with Ultimatemegax and Skorpigeist, I was the first person in line for the dubbed premiere of the Haruhi movie. We arrived about two hours before the movie was scheduled, with a decent sized line forming after us just a little while later. We got good seats in the third row, though unfortunately the lack of actual theater seating in Concourse Hall makes your viewing experience decrease drastically if a tall person sits in front of you (luckily that’s not too much of a problem with a dub screening). A goof up on the staff’s part was that they didn’t quite finish testing the movie before they let people in, and a bit of Kyon’s spoiler-filled final monologue was playing on screen as people were taking their seats XD But it was just for a few seconds and I don’t think most people realized they were being spoiled. Before the movie started, three of the dub voice actors (Crispan Freeman, Stephanie Shen, and Wendee Lee) talked about their experiences dubbing the movie and answered some questions from the audience.

Left to right: Crispin Freeman (Kyon), Stephanie Sheh (Mikuru), Wendee Lee (Haruhi)

Overall, I’d say the dub of the movie was excellent. The translations were accurate while still making the dialogue flow naturally in English. My only complaint is that Michelle Ruff (voice of Yuki) didn’t do much to change her “serious” Yuki voice to “moe” Yuki voice the way Minori Chihara does. But she didn’t have a lot of dialogue anyway, and the rest of the actors (especially Crispin Freeman’s excellent but exhausting performance as Kyon) did a great job.

Nihongo de Okay!: I hurried off after the movie to meet up with Neo-Shonen Fujoshi and go to this unofficial event called Nihongo de Okay!, a meetup of Japanese-speaking anime fans and those interested in learning Japanese. The meetup was from 6:30pm until 8:30pm, but both of us were occupied with other events until 7:45pm. By the time we got there, most people were already in a group talking, so it was kind of hard to butt in. But we found a couple of people to talk to and stayed for about a half hour or so. I haven’t had an opportunity to speak Japanese since my trip to Japan two years ago, so it was nice using it again however brief XD

Day 2 – Sat. July 2nd

Me with the Alphonse statue at Funimation’s booth

Exhibit Hall and Artist Alley (full perusal): After getting an early breakfast at the nearby Starbucks, I got in line to be one of the first people in the Exhibit Hall, which opened at 10am. By the time I got in line around 9:15am, the line was already outside! Thankfully I was able to get in not too long after 10am. From there, I did my full perusal of the Exhibit Hall and Artist Alley, going row by row and visiting every single booth. Naturally I bought a bunch of stuff…

Plushie of Chibiterasu and adorable plush strap of Chi =^.^=

Lovely Haruhi figure from The Sigh episodes and Lucky Star complete DVD set for just $35

Showing my Chopper love with a T-shirt and towel!

Haruhi keychain and straps of Maria and Niche

Beautiful Madoka Magica art piece from Artist Alley

And an equally beautiful AnoHana piece~

Bandai panel: When I had my fill of shopping, I dropped my loot off at my hotel and joined Ultimatemegax and Skorpigeist in the Bandai panel line, which ended up starting about a half hour late due to technical issues. I was reminded how close to the Gundam franchise Bandai is, as the majority of their announcements were for Gundam releases and little attention was given to their many other series I like (Haruhi, K-ON, Code Geass, Kannagi, Lucky Star). It’s understandable though, as they have their long-lasting partnership with Sunrise, which is always churning out new Gundam material while my aforementioned favorites aren’t. The highlight of their panel for me was announcing a September 20th release date for their DVD/BD release of the Haruhi movie =D

Blogger meetup: Fellow blogger Shinmaru had organized a meetup for anime bloggers and Twitter users interested in meeting each other. We met at the convention center before walking to a parking lot of food trucks a couple of blocks away. We hung out there for a while and talked about things like our time at the convention thus far and whether or not Madoka Magica is a great series or not (yes, that actually got into a pretty heated discussion. Since I’m no good at arguing, I mostly just listened =P) It was a bigger turnout than last year, with bloggers zzeroparticle, Canon2D, Mike, Mystlord, Kylaran, and others showing up.

I stayed a bit later at the blogger meetup than most since I was one of the few who didn’t have to rush off to the Miku concert. I know the Miku concert was the most anticipated event of the whole convention, but since I’m not a Vocaloid fan I just didn’t have the motivation to buy a ticket and dedicate a bunch of hours for it. I heard it was an amazing concert though and I’m so glad for all the fans who went =D

Miku cars in the convention center

Some video footage of the Miku concert courtesy of AnimeDiet

Nighttime dance at South Hall: After the blogger meetup broke up, I didn’t have much to do since most of my friends were at the Miku concert or elsewhere. I thought I’d look in the Console Gaming room to see if anyone wanted to play Pokemon with me. But there was a surprising lack of DS users in the room, and they were clearing everyone away from the Wii with Smash Bros. Brawl because they were getting ready for a tournament. So I couldn’t even play the one console game in the room I was familiar with XP So I left the gaming room and just hung out outside South Hall. Luckily I wasn’t bored for much longer as a group of energetic attendees brought a boombox to the large open area outside South Hall and managed to get a great free-for-all dance party started that lasted over two hours.

Random con goers have a rocking evening

I’m someone who doesn’t like dancing and hates late night noise and partying. But for some reason I greatly enjoyed this dance event. Maybe it’s because I know all the people involved are fellow anime fans who are having a great time simply being fans and not needing to consume alcohol in order to have a good time. There was a great feeling of togetherness going down at this dance that I greatly enjoyed.

Day 3 – Sun. July 3rd

A Survey of Music by Yuki Kajiura: After a quick breakfast with f0calizer at the local Denny’s, I went to another blogger meetup taking place at zzeroparticle’s panel about Yuki Kajiura’s music. He did a fantastic job giving an overview of her music style and discussing how it conveys the emotions and meaning behind each series it’s from. I believe his panel made me a slightly bigger fan of her music than I already was ;) Also got to see omo for a bit.

Exhibit Hall (final visit): For a couple of hours after the meetup, I returned to the Exhibit Hall one last time and bought some final goodies =)

Max’s Karaoke: Later that afternoon I met up again with f0calizer, Neo-Shonen Fujoshi, Ultimatemegax, and Skorpigeist, and the five of us had a two-hour karaoke session at Max’s Karaoke in Little Tokyo. Max’s is one of the few karaoke studios in SoCal that I know of that has an incredible collection of Japanese and anime songs (as well as English songs), both old and new.

The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (sub): Our group had to go separate ways after karaoke, so I hung out at the convention center for a while taking more cosplay photos. There were already a few people in line for the sub showing of the Haruhi movie when I arrived an hour and forty-five minutes early. I was later joined by Neo-Shonen Fujoshi and we managed to secure front row seats! It’s a good thing we did since the movie was again shown in Concourse Hall, which makes subtitle viewing a pain the more people there are sitting in front of you. The quality of whatever film reel they used wasn’t all that good as the picture didn’t fill as much of the screen as it should have, the focus had to keep being adjusted, and a few seconds of film got skipped or lost audio. Luckily having a front row seat made it better but I felt sorry for those in the back. With this showing I have now seen Disappearance of Haruhi during all of its four screenings in California – twice in San Francisco and LA last year, and now twice at AX ’11 =D

Day 4 – Mon. July 4th

Northrop Davis and WeMakeManga: After packing my things and getting (a surprisingly cheap and good) breakfast at my hotel, I met up with screenwriter Northrop Davis. He had taught a manga extension course that I attended at my university a few years ago and he’s an avid supporter of getting anime and manga acknowledged by American institutions. Lately he’s been supporting a group of young artists at WeMakeManga.com. They’ve done good work so do give them a look =)

Last hour of AX ’11: I spent my last hour of AX ’11 taking a very refreshing swim in my hotel’s pool before checking out at 12pm and loading my stuff into my mom’s car. I then bid a fond farewell to the cosplayer-run streets of downtown LA.

Cosplay Photos

I was really impressed with the cosplay at this year’s AX. So many exquisite costumes and lots of non-anime ones as well, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Here are my favorites of the ones I took:

Lelouch/Zero from Code Geass
Cookie Monster!
Spyro the dragon (from the video games)
Blaziken (a pokemon)
Mayuri from Steins;Gate
Natsuki’s OZ avatar from Summer Wars
The World God Only Knows group
Cowboy Bebop group
Chiyo in her penguin outfit from Azumanga Daioh
Full-body Houndoom costume and Team Magma member
Eruka from Soul Eater
Amaterasu from Okami
Yoko and Nia from Gurren Lagann
Arakawa Under the Bridge cosplayers
Yu-Gi-Oh! cosplayers
Zelda (from the video games)
Kyouko from Madoka Magica
Black Rock Shooter
Utena cosplayers
Saber from Fate/Stay
Optimus Prime
Canon2D gets into character with his Menma outfit XD
Make a contract with businessman Kyubey!
Bakura from Yu-Gi-Oh!
Cosplayers from the Disney movie Tangled
The spring and autumn forms of the pokemon Sawsbuck
Nessa from Fractale
Nami and Usopp from One Piece
Megazord from the original Power Rangers
Code Geass group
Ganondorf
Poison Ivy

F0calizer took great photos of the Madoka, Haruhi, Ouran, and Fruits Basket cosplay gatherings. You can find them here on his deviantArt =)

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To conclude, Anime Expo had a great 20th anniversary con this year ^_^ I didn’t attend any of the major events, but from what I heard everything went smoothly and was well organized. Besides the hectic wait on Day 0, lines for other events were decent and nothing started terribly late. Lots of amazing cosplayers, good staff, fun events, and a great feeling of intimacy among fellow attendees. It was a wonderful con overall and I look forward to another one at AX ’12! =D