GeekGirlCon Blog

My First Anime Expo

Written by former GeekGirlCon Manager of Editorial Services Adrienne Roehrich

I spent the 4th of July weekend at my first Anime Expo (AX) in LA. It was my first convention outside of the Seattle area, where I live. AX is the largest anime convention in the U.S.A., after its 2014 record attendance of over 80,000 people. I went with my daughter, who turns 16 in less than 3 weeks.

When we bought our passes less than a month before the convention, tickets were $80 for the 4 days. Tickets on sale now for 2016 are $50 for the 4 days. Will we go again? 

Flights from Seattle to LA can be done on a budget, but it requires plans. Unfortunately, I found out only a few weeks in advance that I was going, so we didn’t get the cheapest tickets, but they were still pretty reasonable. We were also able to reduce costs by staying with relatives in LA.

My daughter is a big anime fan and asked to attend Anime Expo last year, but it didn’t work out then. This year, we flew down on Thursday, Day 1 of AX, driving straight there from the airport. We expected to spend at least an hour in line for the pre-registration badge pick-up, but we walked right through. We both had cosplays planned that we had to put on after we arrived. She had her now infamous Painwheel/Carol from Lab Zero’s Skullgirls. She cosplayed that character both Thursday and Sunday, getting a special tweet about it on Sunday.

Skullgirls tweets about my daughter’s cosplay on Sunday.

I cosplayed a Squid Kid aka Inkling from Nintendo’s Splatoon Thursday and Friday. She joined me on Friday with her own Splatoon kid. Splatoon was released on May 28, and had a lot of love from attendees.

Our Thursday goal was to get a commission from Alex Ahad, Painwheel’s artist, and attend a panel by Lab Zero about Skullgirls with an announcement. A couple of my daughter’s friends were also attending, so we met up with them for awhile.

I don’t know what Thursday’s attendance was, but it was very hard to see any of the artist alley artists. We didn’t arrive in time for the commission, but I did buy a piece of art and a postcard set from Alex. The postcard set I distributed between my daughter, my son, and me. I kept the Xena and a Splatoon card.

Xena and Splatoon postcards by Alex Ahad sold at Anime Expo.

Because AX is so large, waiting in line to get into panels or to get to do things is part of the experience. There was a huge line to get into the exhibition hall the two days we went before it opened. To go to the Skullgirls panel, I queued up 2 hours before the panel started. Unfortunately, the line wranglers lost our line and we didn’t go into the panel until 30 minutes after the panel was to start.

We got some good seats for the panel. The room was very large, everyone who was in line got a seat, and there was space for more people. Lab Zero did not start the panel until after all the audience arrived, which was nice of them. The highlight of that panel was that after, my daughter got to meet Danielle McRae, the voice actor of Painwheel. You may notice a theme here.

Given that we were up at 3:30 that morning and the panel let out close to 9, we opted to go “home” at that point.

Friday morning, we lined up bright and early to get a commission, and managed to get one of the few offered by Alex on Friday. We walked the hall floor for a couple hours at that point, and didn’t even see everything. In fact, I didn’t see the really nifty Capcom booth in the shape of a Monster Hunter shack until Saturday. Monster Hunter is one of my son’s favorite games, so I took notice once I got to that end of the hall.

Capcom’s booth, where you can sit at the shack like the Monster Hunter game.

To give you an idea of the size of the exhibition hall, there were over 2400 vendors and about 420 artists in artist alley. Every time we went to the karaoke room, it was a 2-hour wait to sing. Friday was sold out and was too many people for me. There was nowhere that wasn’t crowded.

Friday, we left a little early because we had arrived so early and so I could visit with an old college friend. Leaving early caused my daughter to miss a meet-up. There were a lot of meet-ups and photo sessions scheduled during AX, and if you had an interest, you could probably find a meet-up for it.

Saturday the 4th, we went in a little late because we intended to stay later. My daughter cosplayed Love Live’s Hanayo to go with her friend’s Nico. I went as a casual Firestar. We did some shopping and some hanging around. I met Ejen Chuang, who recently published Cosplay in America V. 2. I didn’t know his work before, but I loved the book! My daughter and I enjoyed looking through it on the flight home. Unfortunately, the event we wanted to attend on Saturday evening was ticketed. Due to an issue with AX ticketing source, we waited around for a long time and we didn’t get in. That was disappointing. Hopefully, AX will learn from their “lost line” and ticketing fiascoes and make improvements.

Hanayo (left) and Nico (right) cosplay at Bushiroad’s Love Live booth.

Sunday made up for Saturday’s disappointment. I opted out of cosplay for day 4, but my daughter went as Carol/Painwheel again. That’s the day she got the official Skullgirls tweet. She wanted to attend a signing by the voice actors of Skullgirls, which was a wristband event, so we aimed to arrive at expo hall opening. We got our wristbands and did the last-day-of-expo-sales shopping. We queued in line about 45 minutes early for the signing.

I have spoken with several of the Lab Zero crew and am very impressed. I wholeheartedly support them and their projects. And they involve other good people. The line for the signing went very well with Earl, a Designer for Lab Zero, in charge.

Another highlight of the weekend happened during the signing. Because my daughter was getting something signed for a friend of hers in Japan, I went through ahead of her to get signatures for her. The birthday comment was not random. We went to AX 2015 for her birthday gift, contributed to by several people. I mentioned we were there for her birthday so that the actors might sign “happy birthday” if they chose. One actor suggested the whole group sing The Birthday Song to her. The line joined in and cheered. (And we only held up the line by about 20 seconds, I have video.)

For me, AX 2015 was enjoyable and I would go again. For my daughter, it provided two of the best days of her life so far and will be a birthday present she remembers for a long time. Of course, she has already asked to go again next year.

Eric Mack
“Rock On!”