ANIME EXPO 2008

ONCE AGAIN BULLET-POINT FORMAT OVERVIEW OF ANIME EXPO, ONLY THIS TIME WITH MORE DETAIL!!!!

-Epic Pre-Con Registration Adventure: Seeing how the years before waiting in line for registration has been seen almost as an event for AX in itself, it was critical that I had get the badges asap without waiting in line too long. Originally I had thought it was going to be easy but then I realized that the registration times on the day before AX (3-8PM) severely conflicted with my summer class times (4-7). It was a difficult decision but I decided to make a run for the con at the very last hour in hopes that the line wouldn't be too long by the time I get there and miss the chance for registration (my class and parent's house is like, a 30 minute drive without traffic to LACC). Luckily, there was no traffic.
However, it seemed that all of that was not necessary since registration was ridiculously organized this year and I got my badge (and my sister's) in less than 2 minutes. It was so surprising that even the volunteer organizers were confused. ("Sir, you can't just go the computers you have to wait in li--*checks, sees there's no line* eer, go ahead.") I was so dumbfounded that I felt it would be a waste to have come over here and only spend 5 minutes at the con then go back, so I decided to explore a bit and figure out where everything was.
Finding the Nokia theater took 3 times as long as getting registered.

-Parking: 12 dollars per entry, no re-entry. It almost seemed like I was paying for a hotel stay (with roommates of course) with just the damn parking cost alone. Probably, with all 4 days + reentry due to lunch + pre-registration, parking costed me about 84$.
...where has all my money for anime gone...
Well, at least they accepted ATM card. :V

-Thursday, Shokotan Panel: I woke up a bit late due to jet lag (11 AM) and had to turn in something to my school, then I went to the convention. Checked out console gaming room, didn't find anything that interested me, met up with high school friend, wandered around like idiots with nothing to do (because we really had nothing to do) until the Shokotan panel, which proved to be really interesting and funny.
Overall lesson: Shokotan is a fetishist.
The panel ran overtime, and since I had a class to catch at 4 PM I was a bit panicking by the time I ran out of the panel. Traffic, as expected, was terrible at the time and I ended up into class 30 minutes late. Oh well, being tardy was worth seeing Shokotan doing her famous Bruce Lee impressions. :V
I was thinking of coming back to the convention center but stupid 12 dollar parking + my sister was tired and wanted to go straight to my apartment convinced me the panel "Anime in China" was not worth it.

-Friday Morning- Mostly spent in line for tickets we could have gotten easily even if we didn't stay in line. I let my sister go browse the Artist Alley while I stayed in line watching people spam like 4chan on DS Picochat. Lines. The only time when DS Picochat is actually useful. Or used at all. After we got tickets we went to the exibit hall and bought random 5 dollar manga that we can read when we went to the concert

-Jyunkai/Yoko Ishida Concert- They had cool music videos before the concert started! So many recent anime music that I recognized! I thought that was cool. Anyway the concert was good and significantly LONGER than the other concerts at AX, which I thought was neat. The one thing I was disappionted in is that AX didn't let the idols use the entire stage (the stage curtains were closed all the time) however the music and presence of the idol was more than satisfactory. Yoko Ishida mostly did a 10 minute combined version of her previous concert, along with some random Para Para dancing songs of popular anime theme songs. Jyunkai sung the Fate/Stay Night ED of course and a bunch of other songs (mostly from Ah! My Goddess). Overall Jyunkai's voice is very melodic and "rich", so her music always seems deeply moving. I also think her sense of fashion is really good, even though she herself is pretty nice but not awesome, so to speak.
My sister also really liked Jyunkai. She is now a Jyunkai-fan. :V

-Afternoon crap: Ate Orochan Ramen for lunch because everything else was closed. Went to the exhibit hall afterwards. Tried to look for nekomimi headbands but we reasoned that all of them were way too expensive and ended up not buying any. So my sister's costume wasn't quite complete but its ok. I think.

-SWR: At one booth in the exhibit hall one of the vendors was playing against a CPU in SWR, so I asked him if I could play. He at first stated that he'd let me play but he wouldn't play me himself since he thinks he sucks, but then another girl came up (dressed up as Alice! :O) and said she wanted to play! So we started! And the first thing we found out is we have no idea what the controls were! I was already not used to using a controller so that in a way was already a handicap, but we spent two fail battles and a good amount of time in config trying to make our controls work. After getting the controls right, I used Alice to beat her Reimu. Alice-chan was beaten by Alice...There's something ironic about that :V Anyway, other people wanted to play so I let another guy play and etc etc etc exhibit hall closes and we were kicked out. But not before getting Alice (and Marisa) cosplay picture on my sister's small crappy cell phone (YES WE FORGOT A CAMERA ORZ).

-Evening?: We didn't have much to do until the Circus panel I had to attend so we decided to goto the manga cafe and read a couple manga. After reading a couple manga and freezing to death we decided to go outside and defrost. At that point some random (professional? he looks professional) photographer was like "OMG that's an awesome pose let me take a picture of you" to my sister. Then we ate lunchables and watched fireworks partially covered by a tent-parking lot and a few palm trees. Happy 4th of July everyone.

-Circus Panel: I didn't win anything. :( Oh, and Da Capo coming out in English for 80 bucks. wtf 80 bucks. :( But even more sadly I think I'll actually buy it this time. :( Yes I am a sad Da Capo Fan. :(

-Saturday Morning: Yes we waited in line for tickets again BUT BEFORE THAT WE WENT TO THE JYUNKAI PANEL. And watch people ask questions like "What do you look for in a boyfriend." Because every time someone asks that at a panel. EVERY TIME. Oh, and we wanted to look for Jyunkai CDs since we didn't get one after the Jyunkai concert (had to go eat, it was already 3 PM) but we could never find one at AX. Geneon somehow sponsored the concert but (afaik) they've been long dead and didn't have a booth so there was no music selling. Which is sad, I used to buy KOTOKO from the Geneon booth. D:
We never found another Jyunkai CD in all of AX and even at the local Kinokuya (sp?) bookstore in little tokyo.

-Shokotan Concert: One of the most wild and Japan-ish concerts in all of the history of AX. (Although KOTOKO still pwns because of the cell phone waving everyone eventually did during her concert) She sang a lot of songs both me and my sister knew, and even one that my sister knew (somehow she had it on her ipod) that I didn't. She likes to cosplay a lot and even did the haruhi dance, which for a while I thought was interesting since I thought that would be covered by some copyright stuff for another professional idol to do that, but then again she's good friends with Hirano Aya so probably not bad. Shokotan's fanbase is extremely scary. Also, I am convinced that the one idol singer in Gintama is based off of Shokotan and her extreme fanbase.
Sanddollarman wtf. :V

-More Afternoon Crap: After participating in the Great Exodus of Jaywalkers we went to eat curry. Then we went to the japanese bookstore right next door to check things out even though they have their own booth at the exhibit hall. And my sister couldnt' find a Jyunkai CD. So we went back and looked at pretty pictures at artist alley, then bought more stuff in the exhibit hall. Then we watched spoof videos of FF6 with FMA/Zetsubou Sensei/Ouran High School intros and autoplay mario thing with a bunch of songs which I watched before but my sister didn't so she thought it was cute. This was all at the SWR booth. :V

-More Evening?: Went to the karaoke room for 2 seconds before I left because I couldn't stand the music (they WEREN'T KARAOKING THEY WERE DOING ROCK BAND OR SOMETHING). Went to get a coat, then ate seaweed, lunchables, and really disgusting smoothie at the Yoko Ishida Panel. Then I left my sister next to the Manga Cafe for a while so I can goto an 18+ panel. Stupid restrictions -_-...

-JAST Panel: IwonanHgameinaraffle. :V

- Sunday: I came, I bought a gift for a normal art major friend that does not live in the US, then bought some random broccoli (manga) before watching the miniconcert at their booth. They sing good music and they sing for Da Capo, so it was fun. Then I came home and typed up this blog entry. Now I have to do my essay and crap.

-Team Duo- AX 2008's theme in my mind was the AX of twos. As in, from what I can see a lot of people hung out in parties of 2, me included (with my sister). Tony's girlfriend had come over from Alaska so that was the first major duo that I saw standing out (Tony spent all his time with her, of course). And then I felt that Joe and Yan spent a lot of time hanging out with each other imho... Alice seemed to be with Valerie a lot... Gary also had one of his friends to hang out with. Two is a lucky number? It's certainly convenient. Being alone is quite lonely and can make AX not fun, while having 3 or more people may start making people that are not used to socials rather uncomfortable.

-Was my sister cosplaying? Kind of. She was trying to base her dress off this random picture I found a long time ago (it's somewhere in one of my facebook album, the picture of a catgirl with purple hair kissing someone. Except that my sister didn't have the catears/tail, didn't have the purple hair and definately isn't kissing anyone.) Except her outfit and makeup made her kind of look gothic and she was kind of flustered by that, but I said it was ok since it was at AX and half the female population look gothic anyway, whether they actually are or just cosplaying.
Not that anyone would be interested in knowing, but I had a somewhat matching outfit with a black polo shirt that my sister/mom bought and said looked nice on me. :V and I wore slacks (as usual) with a Kagami hanging out of my pocket. Which, I thought, looked cool. What! I did!

...:V

Pictures to come when my sister takes them off her cell phone.