Blog - /Personal

I just got back from Anime Expo 2008. Great experience.

I took the metro rail line from Universal City Station to Central Station on 7th Street, and then to Pico Blvd. From there it was a short walk to the conference. As I got off at Pico at 9am, I noticed quite a few cosplayers, and walked with them to the conference site. Taking the metro line brought to mind the Genshiken manga and anime series, and how the characters would always take the rail line to Comiket.

The cosplayers were amazing, as expected. Some highlights were a group of Sonic characters, a guy giving Mario a "tough-guy" image, many many cute Asian-American girls (most with male escorts), a guy with an exclamation point over his head, a girl dressed as Midna from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a few characters from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney yelling "Objection!", several girls with Tetris block costumes, Chouji from Naruto, Sakura from Naruto, a Transformer character, and some girls with parasols.

The line for picking up badges was very short, thanks to pre-registering online. I just had to print the email confirmation at home, bring it in, and scan the bar code. Definitely an improvement over the system at ACEN.

To start off, I went to the viewing rooms and took in some anime. I had been wanting to see The Third for a while, so I made sure to catch a few episodes. I liked the opening song. The anime had some humorous moments, which were appreciated by the crowd. The plot wasn't quite for me, though: a 14-year old tomboy beating up on mecha using PSP, with a bishounen love interest. After that, I watched a late-season episode of Wolf's Rain. I still don't quite understand the plot of that series. The episode had some sort of epic showdown involving a paradise.

I had some sort of a Thai salad for lunch on-site. The dining area was a bit crowded, and I ended up sitting across from a Korean-American manga-ka (manga author) named Jinsoo Terry. She was there to exhibit her new series Palbot: Come to America. She told me where her booth was, but alas, I was looking in the wrong place for it, and ended up missing it. Nonetheless, it was nice just to meet her.

I wore my "Eye"-R-C Chart T-shirt to the con, and that proved an excellent choice. I received at least 4 compliments on it, and two of those were not even while at the conference site. I had bought that shirt last year at ACEN 2007, so I made another T-shirt purchase this year. This one had a front which reads "Robert A. Heinlein for President: More Life Than Any Other Candidate ... and Better Ideas."

After lunch, I went to the exhibit hall and checked out every single vendor (including the artist alley), which took at least an hour. I ended up buying a Trigun poster, the aforementioned Heinlein shirt, and an artist drawing of several heroines from the Naruto anime series — I must admit a fondness for Hinata from that series :^) . I also noticed a towel with Kyoko Otonashi from Maison Ikkoku for sale, as well as some body pillows with the character Haruhi from The Melancholy of Suzimiya Haruhi. Tempting, but I have my limits.

I noticed that they claimed to have a "manga cafe" near the viewing rooms, so I thought I would see what that was like. Basically, it was just a room with several tables, a couple vending machines with drinks, and a lot of manga available for reading on shelves. We were required to leave our badges and belongings at the front desk, presumably to discourage theft. I spent a good hour and a half there, making it through volume one of the Nausicaä manga, and about half of the first volume of To Terra.

By 3:30pm, I was a bit tired, and no interesting anime series were being shown in the viewing rooms, so I decided to call it a day. This was the first time I had done a solo trip to an anime convention, and it proved to be an enjoyable time.