Conventions / Miscellaneous

I’ve lost count how many years I’ve been to Anime-Expo, but I think this is the first year that I didn’t attend any panels! Instead through, I replaced that time with walking through the vast aisles of the artist alley and attempting to cosplay for the very first time. Yes you read that right, cosplaying for the first time.

For the most part, this year’s convention was one of the more memorable ones for me. Besides doubling the size of my normal group from three to six, I spent most of my time hanging with the AX-newbies and watching them gawk at all the cool stuff in the main hall. Which you’d think be kind of boring but instead ended up being a lot of fun. Because after spending a few years completely ignoring the merchandise and focusing on the Live Panels because I’m a signature whore, it was nice to see all the cool stuff I could blow my money on.

That said, I was surprised with how little stuff that vendors had for sale! And by little stuff, I literally mean “little” stuff. Instead of seeing huge tables filled with little trinkets that you could fill your table up with, it felt like that all the booths were focusing on those GIGANTIC and EXPENSIVE figures. Like, it wouldn’t matter if you were in aisle 300 or 1200, there was always someone selling figures. Don’t get me wrong, sure it’s great if you were hunting for a specific one but for people like me I was really sad there wasn’t as much variety for the little things.

But what really left a mark on me was definitely cosplaying for the first time. Dressed up in my heavy black coat and black sword in hand, I was walking around the convention center dressed up as everyone’s favorite character from Sword Art Online — Kirito! After getting over the jitters that someone might hate on my outfit, I was pleasantly surprised with how fun it ended up being. Between feeling flattered every time someone asked to take a photo with me and dying from how freaking hot it got wearing a heavy pleather jacket inside a building, I couldn’t get over how cool it was to actually be walking around as an anime character!

While it’d be impossible to sum up everything I did during the convention, let me list a few of things that don’t deserve a full paragraph but were memorable to me:

  • Took a Photo with Danny Choo! And then he took a photo with my group on his camera!
  • Got handmade cookies from Kairi! (Also met up with Xumbra and PockyG)
  • Owned the Taiko Drum game after someone tried to trash talk me.
  • Got the other Kiritos to follow my poses during the photo shoot.
  • Ate Curry House more times than I wanted too.
  • Lost the manga I bought from Kinokuniya ):
  • Recently bought a 3DS, got over 250 people on Street Pass!
  • Saw the cutest little kid cosplays — GOOD PARENTING!
  • Caught up with Mason aka Tachiwani — the amazing artist who draws the awesome pictures that will forever end all my AX posts.
  • Celebrated my Birthday with said friends on the Monday right after AX.

    • tl;dr – Go to Anime-Expo next year! It’ll totally be worth your money I promise 😀

    P.S. Can you guess which character I am in that last picture? :3

    78 Comments

    2. Hope you enjoyed the cookies senpai~ Glad to see you enjoyed yourself so much. :3

      I shall def be going to AX2014, planning to cosplay next time too, and I’ll be going all four days! (yay) We should hang out then.

      Kairi
      Reply

      2. I’m trying to remember which day that picture was and from the looks of it, was it Day 1? Looks like the premiere line for Dealer’s Hall. Because if it is, then we were definitely tired running on 4 or so hours of sleep, not to mention the heat from the weather and uniform. That’s actually why we were standing in the shade on not in the line.

        But yea, It was our first year cosplaying too and I have to agree, it really was something. Especially the Shingeki no Kyojin Panel and the Gathering, there was literally a company of SnK cosplayers storming the stage at the end of the panel when Danny Choo called us all up.

        Shoronpo
        Reply

    4. A brief glance of the thumbnails (together with a rather recent interest in anime)lets me recognize only a few of the more popular/recent anime (or Japanese related) references.
      I spot Shingeki, Pokemon, Cardcaptor Sakura(?), Mario, Link, Chunyibyou, Hataraku Maou Sama (aww nobody cosplayed Emi?), Cloud frm FF7, Kakashi, Fullmetal Alchemist, Hatsune Miku, Asuna & NervGear (didn’t spot a single Kirito though).
      I’m assuming the cow & tanks are referencing Gin no Saji & Girls Und Panzer respectively.

      On a side note, what’s a Creeper doing at the Expo? I hope there weren’t any explosions =D

      Techim
      Reply

        1. Ah, camera shy eh? Understood =)
          Second round glancing has me recognizing Viewtiful Joe, One Piece, Metal Gear, Steins;Gate.
          Though I’m a bit lost at these three:
          https://randomc.net/image/Miscellaneous/AX2013/AX2013%20-%20Large%20072.jpg
          https://randomc.net/image/Miscellaneous/AX2013/AX2013%20-%20Large%20059.jpg
          https://randomc.net/image/Miscellaneous/AX2013/AX2013%20-%20Large%20021.jpg
          Which anime/game/manga/LN/VN is being referenced in those 3?

          Techim
          Reply

      1. We got plenty of “Hey look, moar titan food”,”Don’t Die”,and “They’re Dead” ‘s and actually, we weren’t going as any specific characters too, so essentially, yeah, we’re the guys from episode 5 or 8 or 12, in the background, getting eaten by titans.

        Shoronpo
        Reply

    13. There were some serious back-end issues this year… back-stabbing, lying, stealing, etc. etc. Politics were off the charts: Volunteers were working 14-hr shifts; coordinators were not eating and had to take money from their own pockets; people were getting fired after doing multiple all-nighters… the Masquerade process was more complicated than it needed to be… attendance was down 40%…

      petitorenji
      Reply

      1. Is that why there was no compilation video of all 4 days during the closing ceremony, the prices of the premiere going up to $175 for next year, and premiere passes being sold out already before the con was over?

        Yorden
        Reply

    18. Most of the cosplayers in your pics seem to be of Asian origin. Why is that? I see several options 🙂

      1. Takaii likes Asian people (Asian girls in particular) and takes pics of them more often 😛
      2. Asians look better when cosplaying so they cosplay more than the rest / get photographed more than the rest 😛
      3. Many people travelled from Asia to attend this convention.
      4. Asian-American people like anime and attend these conventions more than the rest of the Americans.

      So which one(s) is it? 🙂

      Domo-kun
      Reply

      1. Lol, yeah, I thought the same thing as well =03. As far as I can tell, generally cosplayers are spread out rather evenly amongst ethnic groups, though the quality of said cosplayers are always all over the place (>.>)….

        frubam
        Reply

    22. It looks and sounds like you had a lot of fun!! So jealous!! hahaha but have you seen the video floating around with that Titan cosplayer.. it was hilarious, he seemed to be everywhere during the convention doing all sorts of crazy dances, I couldn’t stop laughing.

      Jani
      Reply

    25. Sounds like you had tons of fun Takaii. I’d love to go there and I will one day (hopefully…) but I have tons of other events I want to go to as well. Evo to name the most wanted one atm (Fighting game guys know what I’m talking about).

      Side note: holy crap is Evo amazing this year. First day was yesterday and that was hype as hell. Don’t know if anybody else is an FGC fan so I’ll refrain from fangasming further.

      Kuntzy
      Reply

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