I decided to go to Anime Expo this year as well, with 2 of my friends this time, instead of just one (specifically my goats kjason and conservemomenta). If you know from my previous blog, you would have known that I was kinda pissed that I didn't get to see everything last year, so I got myself full 4 day pass this year, just so I can see everything.
Contrary to how I wrote my blog last year, I'm actually going to do a brief summary of each day, talk a little about what happened, and then do a more indepth talk. For this anime expo, I mostly had the following as part of my bucket list
yea thats about it
First day was pretty chill. Mostly just went to the artist alley and explored the convention a bit. Conservemomenta wasn't actually here today, so it was just me and kjason going around.
The first thing that I did was go to the Blue Archive Dev Panel, which was pretty cool. I won't really go into details here because I wrote a whole detailed section on it, so you can go to that page to look at it (when I finish writing it).
Turns out Creamy Boys was actually doing a collab with Wuthering Waves here at Anime Expo, which is kinda funny considering that they show up to UCLA like every week. The funny Camellya mascot/cosplayer was also there, so you know I had to get a picture.
The food was actually pretty good (as it was my first time getting creamy boys), but damn do they upcharge it a lot. (i think it was a swipe at UCLA for literally the same flavor, so about 8 bucks, so we are definitely getting the disneyland tax)
The next thing that I did was just walk around the artist alley, because the one thing that I was really unhappy about last year was that I missed out on like 70% of the artist alley, and I had to speedrun on the last day running through all the stands to try and find Project Moon merch. Other than that nothing really happened today, just a lot of walking.
And as is tradition, heres the photo dump of the day with all the cosplayers.
From left to right we have: one punch man from one punch man (wow who could have guessed), kangel from needy streamer overload, and hiroi from bocchi the rock
A guy with a straw hat with like 4 fumos, hatsuner and teto from mesmerizer, and reimu from touhou project
mita from miside, basil from omori, and sayori from ddlc
🦅 🦅 🦅 🦅 WTF IS A KILOMETER 🗣 🗣 🔥 🔥
For Thursday, the plan was to check out the stalls that anime expo had, so stuff like Good Smile Company, Mihoyo, Crunchyroll, etc.
(unfortunately blue archive did not have a stand this year, which kinda sucked)
The first stand of note was the Gundam Stand, which I think was to promote the new card game that they were making. They had a full sized gundam on display which was really cool:
And as tradition, we had to go to the Omocat stand, which had the same merch as always and also the new merch that came out. They also had the actual Omori manga for sale as well, which was pretty cool.
One notable thing was that they were selling Saba merch (yes the gawr gura saba), which is like generational turnaround time because its only been like 5 days since her debut. (speed of light vs. r34 artists when a new character comes out)
to be fair omocat probably got some insider info on the saba design, but its still hilarious (and also there were a lot of saba merch at the artist alley as well, which is also crazy).
I literally saw someone walking around in the same omocat saba merch that day, which means that in the 5 days since saba debuted, there has already been content and merch being created around her
So the next thing that was pretty cool was the Umamusume stand, which just had the global launch. I actually very recently discovered Umamusume, because I was heavily invested in Horse Race Tests (Cyan my goat), and by extension I learned what Umamusume is.
Technically im not like a huge fan of the game, or the overall ip for that matter, but I do think the game is really cool and am thinking of playing it at some point.
I also happened to get a picture with this really swole Miku:
There was this one stand with a manga distribution company, and they had on display some of the mangas that they had on this giant wall. If you don't really look at the actual mangas it's like whatever, but then you take a closer look and you will see the most diabolical 3 mangas on display of all time.
If you know you know
Technically The Summer that Hikaru Died is not the worst thing of all time, but its still got body horror and its a yaoi... sooooooo 
There was also a stand for Aniplex that was celebrating their 20th anniversary, and they had a bunch of artists draw celebration prints, and some of these series are pretty cool, and some are more questionable
Here's some pictures of the cars that people had on display outside:
I got this picture with a Mundo cosplayer, courtesy of Alois:
push push push
I don't remember which company this was for, but they had on display a art wall that people could draw on, mostly for Miku, and it was actually pretty cool to see what people drew, as well as all the inside jokes and different art styles.
I even added my own little drawing of Liar Dancer to the wall (which personally I think is one of the best Teto songs of all time)
Ok so just a warning, I'm gonna get a little political here, so if you don't like or want to read that you can just skip this part.
Basically if you look at the top left of the picture, you can see like a really big drawing of a guy in black with the words "Free Gaza" next to it, which by itself is like whatever, because I don't want to get into the whole political aspect of the message and everything (this is mainly just a little blog site where I get to gush about animes and mangas so I don't wanna get into it). My main problem is the guy who drew it decided to draw over the rest of the artwork that were under it (some of which were very high effort).
First of all, this is not the place for you to do your political messaging, its a fricking wall for people to share their passion about vocaloids. Ain't no one here wants to see you butting in with your political messages, regardless of if they are good or bad (once again, the message does not matter here, because I really dont care).
Like sure ok, do whatever you want with your political activism, but let's have at least a little public decency to not draw over other people's work. It's not like they did anything to you, and now you're just being a giant bum.
But yea, idk, something about it just left a really sour taste in my mouth.
Well, now that that's out of the way, we can go back to our scheduled programming, which is just idkac walking around for more pictures with cosplayers.
Here's a picture of me with chef from South Park:
Here's a picture of me with Spring Trap, which I think was part of a promotional thing that was happening with Dead By Daylight.
So remember how one of my goals this Anime Expo was to find/meet Gigguk? Well turns out he's doing a panel with Trash Taste for Honkai Star Rail (which I think is actually a yearly thing that they do at AX now). So obviously I decided to line up outside the stadium where the panel was going to be about 2 hours before it even started.
By the time that the panel was about to start, the line was already stretching out for (probably) a whole mile, so I was really glad that I stood in line early (although my legs were not very happy, as I had to stand the entire time while waiting)
Unfortunately the whole panel was kinda just a fake QNA, and there really wasn't any meet and greet setup, so it wasn't as hype as I thought it would be. But still, heres the photo dump for what I took for the panel
One cool thing that happened at the panel was that they actually had the cast members of HSR do live dubbings of some of the scenes from the game, so I got a couple videos of that.
The voice acting was actually pretty cool, I think i would have liked it more if I actually played the game
For dinner, I saw that there was a pretty highly reviewed soul food restaurant nearby, so I decided to stop there for food, and heres the pictures of what I got:
Their fried chicken was actually pretty good
Oh yea btw, the next part is also going to be a bit 18+, so if you don't wanna read that you can just skip this next section.
So after this, I went to the late night Fakku panel where they were holding a QNA session with Asanagi-sensei (if you know you know) (also apparently he's the most popular artist in japan from his genre which i was kinda surprised by). This panel was actually really really fun, as the panel was not a fake QNA like the HSR one, but instead was an actual QNA where people from the audience lined up to ask questions to Asanagi-sensei (I also happened to know a good chunk of the content that he makes, so that made it a lot funnier as well, since I got a bunch of the "inside joke" questions that people asked)
I did however manage to get a picture of the panel before it started, as well as a picture of myself at the panel, so here's that:
Also, apparently this panel was like the first time that Asanagi has ever done a QNA, or (maybe?) showed his face in person, so obviously (and unfortunately) recording and photo imagery were not allowed in the panel. He was also drawing the front page of the next doujinshi that he was going to sell at the Summer Comiket on screen as like a form of subway surfers, so he probably didn't want that to be leaked as well. This also means that I do not have any pictures of the panel because I am a good boy and a law abiding citizen. Instead, I wrote some some notes of the funniest parts of the QNA:
to be fair i think hes done like really short works for blue archive already, so maybe he means like a full doujinshi
I also yelled "WTF IS A KILOMETER" in the middle of the chant
And thats about it for the Asanagi panel. Honestly it was actually a pretty fun experience and I had a lot of fun just participating and being in the panel. It definitely helped that the panel was not a fake pre-setup QNA and there were actual audience participation, but overall very fun and enjoyable and I got to kinda nerd out on something that I am quite "educated" in, which was pretty cool.
Now here's the daily cosplayer dump:
Sunny cosplay by a certain someone
Hollow Knight, TETO, and Dante
Sigma Shadow, Megumin, and Suisei and Bocchi
MEDIC, Pinochio from Lies of P and Shinoa Hiragi from Seraph of the End, and Ishmael from Limbus Company
Jecka and Nicole from Class of 09, Don Quixote from Limbus Company, and Ryo and Bocchi from Bocchi the Rock
Kick Buttowski, Dokibird, and a random anime cosplayer
Not actually sure what the first one is from but it looks funny
The other ones are Chef from South Park and Well Cheers from Lob Corp
Roland from Library of Ruina, Gwen from League of Legends, and TETO
Spike (not actually spike but i think its funnier to call him spike), Hanako-kun from Toilet bound Hanako-kun and a j*b application
So apparently cosplay gatherings were a thing, because I had 0 idea last year (and I probably missed out on a blue archive cosplay gathering as a result). So this year I made sure that I wouldn't miss out, and the first one that I went to was the Project Moon cosplay gathering (which was actually surprisingly quite big)
Hong Lu, group photo 1 and 2
Yi Sangs, Fausts and Heathcliffs
The claw, Default IDs and Dante, W Corp Don
Dons, Ryoshus and Meursaults
Sigma, Heathcliffs and Catherine, and the one single Ishmael
Another Ishmael, Sinclairs, and Yi Sang
Gregors, Well Cheers and the Red Graze, and All IDs
Rolands and Angelas, Rolands and the Red fraud, and Cleaner
The Middle, Chicken, and Yi Sang
Sancho, Roland and Angela, and Binah
After that, I had some down time to just walk around, so I got some more cool pictures. Probably one of the coolest pictures that I got today was this one with 2 Charlie cosplayers:
This cosplay situation is insane
Here's also a picture of a miku motorbike, which I thought was pretty cool:
Heres a picture of me with idkac Soraka:
So after this, I decided to go get some lunch, and I went to the same soul food restaurant that I went to yesterday night, and I got the same thing again. Except this time sanspapyrus was with me and he got some food as well (i think he got a burger). He also got a kool-aid pickle on the side (yes apparently that's a thing), which tasted about as good as you can expect:
After this, I went to the next cosplay gathering, which was the one that I was looking the most forward to, which was the BLUE ARCHIVE COSPLAY GATHERING, which you can see the photo dump of in the blue archive section
After that, I went and got some more pictures with some cosplayers and went to the artist alley to finish looking through all the stalls, and I happened upon this artist who apparently drew the Los Ratones poster that Caedrel uses as his background. She was mostly selling normal art, but it was still kinda cool seeing a real Los Ratones fan in the wild
generational find btw
Annnnnnd that's about it for today, literally just went to the artist alley and just looked through everything, and that was it.
Here's the photo dump of the day with all the cosplayers
Hatsune Miku from Rabbit Hole, Heartsteal Ezreal from League of Legends, Choco and Vanille from Nekopara
Briar from League of Legends, Teto Nation, and a Monster Truck
Sagiri from Eromanga Sensei, Mundos from League of Legends, and Furina from Genshin Impact
The Castle from Howl's Moving Castle, Ame Chan and KawaiiAngel from NSO
If you know you know, Ellen Joe from ZZZ, and Angel from Chainsaw Man
Ubel from Frierin
I happened to find the same fumo hat guy from 2 days ago, and this time his collection actually got much bigger, so I got a picture of the new and improved fumo tower:
Conservemomenta and I also wanted to check out the 18+ section (well, mostly just me), so we went inside and did a little perusing. Unfortunately most of the stands inside were all just normal 18+ stuff (which obviously I'm not going to take pictures of, and even if I did have pictures I wouldn't post them here), but one stand that did stand out was the Tenga stand, which had COLLECTOR'S EDITION USA TENGAS, which I thought looked really funny. They also had a Tenga board that you can take a picture in, so obviously I had to take one.
idkacius in the tenga
Afterwards, I went back to the artist alley to finish looking through all the stalls, which I am actually quite glad that I was able to finish going through (that's another point off the bucket list). After that, I just took more pictures with cosplayers. There was this specific picture that I want to show off, which was when my goat sanspapyrus finally got recognized in his cosplay and he was able to get a pretty sick picture with a Basil cosplayer, which was pretty cool:
sanspapyrus and basil
Anyway's here's the final cosplayer dump for the day:
KawaiiAngel from NSO and Kris from Deltarune, Technoblade (the goat), and KDA All Out Akali from League of Legends
Frierin from Frierin, Jecka from Class of 09, and Ayin and Angela from Library of Ruina/Lob Corp
Ashe from Overwatch, Link from The Legend of Zelda, and Tanya from Youjo Senki
Sniper and Scout from Team Fortress 2, Reaper from Overwatch, and Rei from Evangelion
Doom Guy from Doom, Nazuna from Yofukashi no Uta and Gawr Gura
Overall, this Anime Expo was a really fun time and a blast overall. I got a good chunk of what I wanted to do off my bucket list and got to do some stuff that I never knew I wanted. I will say that I think I spent too much money for this time and I definitely need to conserve my spending for next year. It is a shame that some of my other friends couldn't come, but there's always next year.
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