Anime Expo 2015 Report

#AX2015 is over, I found the best cosplayer #yourwaifuistrash pic.twitter.com/erWmiuyx23

— Muse (@subduedfangirl) July 2, 2015

As of this writing, I am half-unpacked, still half-asleep, have just taken one of every Vitamin-C-flavored-cold-prevention medicine that we have in our cabinet to keep con-flu at bay, and can’t feel my feet. I can’t wait for it to be next year so that I can do it all again.


This was my fourth year attending Anime Expo and my second year cosplaying at this con, but this weekend was filled with a lot of firsts for me as well. It was the first time that I had stayed all four days (I usually skip out on Sunday), the first time I had cosplayed all four days and went to meetups (more on that later), and the first time that I met Justin from OASG in person!

 
But the most surprising thing was when I got to the convention center around eight on Day Zero. After the…interesting experience with the lines last year, Anime Expo had put up a pledge on their website to address the many complaints they had received, but since they had made similar promises in past years I took a “I’ll believe it when I see it” approach. So when I literally just walked into the convention center and got my badge with no line at all, I wondered if I was hallucinating.


In fact, while LineCon was still LineCon, I felt like the lines themselves were handled much better this year. Everything may have been packed, but there was more consistent movement and communication between the volunteer staff and the attendees than what I’ve observed from previous years. Certain rules also felt like they were being treated more on a case-by-case basis instead of as absolutes as well. For instance, when I went to line up for the Good Smile Company panel, Viz’s panel had already started. I hadn’t planned on going to their panel, and I was used to the AX policy where people would not be let in after a panel started. However, when I asked about the line for GSC, they told me I could just go in and wait. Thanks to this, I was there for the majority of the Viz panel, including when they dropped the LoGH license announcement—although if I’m completely honest with myself, I care more about the K anime announcements. I can hardly wait for that second season!

 
Good Smile Company ran a great panel as well, discussing step-by-step how they take character designs and turn them into scale figures and Nendoroids. I was also very pleased that they used Mikasa and Levi from Attack on Titan as the reference examples! It was fascinating to me and pretty easy to follow. My only complaint is with the Q&A session at the end of the panel, where they allowed questioners to ask as many as two or three follow-up questions before moving on to the next person. I feel like the panelists didn’t want to be rude (and some of the questions were very interesting!) but by the time we got to the guy who thought that GSC doesn’t make enough Fate/stay night figures, only my desire to see if I’d won the giveaway kept me from leaving. However, I’m still glad that I attended the panel due to some interesting tidbits that were dropped (the Kogitsunemaru scale will have “interesting underwear”? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN).


The only other major event I went to was the Little Witch Academia: Enchanted Parade screening, which I was a backer of. I will not give out spoilers here—although I want to do a review once I get my DVD copy—but I will say that I felt like it kept the same feeling as the first short while expanding on the world and the characters. There was a better sense of what it means to be a witch in the Little Witch Academia universe and a broader look at the relationships in the series while still showing off Trigger’s signature over-the-top flair and sense of humor. Anything more specific will ruin the movie, so I do encourage watching it for yourself—legally. I’ll be surprised if this doesn’t end up on Crunchyroll at some point after the backer rewards are sent out.

It was a great movie to watch with a crowd though, since it felt like everyone there really got into it. There were a lot of laughs, and a lot of cheering for the finale. The room was packed full—this was one of the main event halls—and from where I was sitting around the middle it looked like it was at capacity. There were also staffers roaming around to make sure that no one was recording. A guy sitting next to me had been playing his 3DS before the movie started and had left it closed on his lap. However, about twenty minutes in, the 3DS began to run out of power and started flashing red, and staff immediately came over to ask him what it was. The problem was resolved quickly, but that event was the strictest I’d seen the staff on potential piracy.

 
I’d also checked out the booth in the Entertainment Hall that was there specifically for the movie. There were a ton of key frames and character designs out for display. The pop up design was also very impressive!


On the other side was the Nendoroid 500 exhibit, featuring all Nendoroids currently released. This was a surreal experience for me, since I could pinpoint the exact time when I started collecting figures while looking at the display. The setup also included exclusive Nendoroids as well, such as the Cheerful Japan versions that raised money for charity after the 2011 tsunami and ones only sold at Family Mart in Japan, so it was very impressive! I have a gallery of the whole display available on my Google+ page as well as my Facebook page, and I hope you enjoy looking at the pictures!


For me, this year’s Anime Expo was more about fandom and cosplay than anything else, so I ended up spending a majority of my time either in the Exhibit Hall, Artist’s Alley, or in the Entertainment Hall by the cosplay backdrop sets. The Exhibit Hall was as crowded as ever, and I unfortunately missed out on some freebies that I wanted to get, but I did get the exclusive Mako Nendoroid from the GSC booth! (Protip: anyone reselling that Mako over fifty dollars is scamming you.)

As I mentioned earlier, I spent the majority of the con in cosplay. Day One and Day Four I was Touka Kirishima from Tokyo Ghoul, Day Two I was Petra Ral from Attack on Titan, and Day Three I was Isabel Magnolia from the Attack on Titan: No Regrets spinoff. Each of those days I took advantage of the free photoshots being put on by the Cospix booth, and I got some really nice pictures! I got prints of my favorites, and now I’m waiting on Cospix to update their website with photographer information so that I can put them on the internet. This was the first time that I had professional photos taken of my cosplay, which was exciting and terrifying and an overall great experience.


Photo from Facebook
I also went to the Attack on Titan cosplay meetup on Saturday and the Tokyo Ghoul meetup on Sunday. Last year, I’m pretty sure I was the only Isabel cosplayer at Anime Expo (I cosplayed as her the same day the manga came out in English), but this year there were two other Isabels at the meetup, as well as a No Regrets Levi! No Farlans though, which was a shame. The group ran pretty young (for context, anyone under eighteen is “young” to me), but the meetup was hilarious and I had a lot of fun.


The Tokyo Ghoul meetup was something else entirely, but also a lot of fun! There were some problems at the start, since the meetup place was overrun by cheerleaders and we ended up having to move twice, but a huge amount of people came! The attendance on the Facebook page counts over four hundred people, and the crowd reflected that. It felt amazing to get up in front of the group and have my picture taken alongside so many other great cosplayers, and I love the pictures that I’ve gotten back so far.

   
I’ve always been impressed by the cosplay at Anime Expo. There was a lot of Steven Universe this year, although I didn’t get the chance to ask for a lot of pictures since the majority of them I saw inside the cosplay repair booth fixing their weapons, which isn’t a great time to ask for photos. I also saw several Attack on Titan cosplayers every day, although it was far less than what I’ve seen in the last two years (which will probably change once the anime comes back next year for the second season). I also noticed a lot of Fire Emblem and Touken Ranbu as well as a ton of Tokyo Ghoul all throughout the con, not just on Sunday. However, I was most impressed with the Porco Rosso cosplayer who had a light-up cigarette. He said that security kept coming over to ask him to put it out despite it not being real! I've got hall pictures and some from the Tokyo Ghoul meet on both my Facebook and Google+ if you want to see more!

 
As I’m getting more and more into cosplay, it was really inspiring for me to see and hear how other cosplayers create their outfits, as well as compare my own progress through photos. Even though I’m exhausted, I want to start on my next costume right now! (My wallet says no though.) So while I didn’t go to a lot of panels or focus on convention exclusives, just being able to hang out with other friends while in costume made this year’s Anime Expo a lot of fun for me.

Last year vs. this year! I can't wait to see what next year will look like!

If you want to hear an alternative perspective on Anime Expo or if you’re just curious about what I sound like the last night of a con on very little sleep, check out the podcast that Justin and I recorded late on Day Three! It includes discussion on what we bought, reactions on some of the bigger announcements at the con, predictions for the last day that did not come true, and my own personal comparison about how the con was run this year compared to my experiences last year! If you’d rather not listen on YouTube, you can find other links through OASG here.

Here’s to this year, and may next year be even better!

Images were taken by me unless otherwise credited.