will this take me a month to write (edit 8/3: survey says yes)
At this point, going to AX has basically become a yearly tradition for me, so of course I had to go to AX again this year. Similar to last year, I went with my good friends kjason and conservemomenta, as well as 2 additions who I will be refering to as a.r. and 2.6 hog rider.
yes that is what i will be refering to you as you don't get to complain
I think for this year, I am not really planning on having any real in depth retrospectives about anything, so it will probably be pretty similar to my first blog on AX: day description -> image dump -> conclusion.
So without further ado, lets get this show on the road
So for some context that will be crutial in the future, for this year I actually didn't get to AX via plane. Instead, I carpooled with some of my other friends (none of whom shows up in any of my pictures so I decided not to include them in the blog) as well as 2.6 hog rider and drove down to AX.
hog riderrrr
The first thing that I was when we got close to the expo location was actually this giant banner for MarriagexToxin, which, if you didnt know, is currently one of my favorite mangas. I low key got jumpscared by the banner because usually these things are reserved for the biggest anime of the season for that year, and I did not think marriagetoxin was popular enough to have that much real estate (so to speak). Regardless, its cool to see a manga (or i guess anime now) I like get so much recognition, and maybe more people would get into it.
also in case you didnt know, i wrote about this manga in one of my previous blogs, which you definitely should check out if you didnt, since it gives you a pretty good summary of what the manga is like
Anyways, after we found parking (after like an hour because LA hates public parking) we split up and I met up with kjason and a.r..
A certain someone (cough cough conservemomenta) forgot their pass and for some reason did not want to wait in line to get a pass so he just decided to not come to AX for a day (even though that was the whole point of the trip, but allg ig).
First thing that we did was get a group picture in front of this Persona statue, half because one of our friends plays Persona and half because we wanted a group picture
On the left is kjason and right is a.r.
After this, as always, the first thing that I did was just walk around the artist alley looking for merch. Since I moved back with my parents this year after graduating from uni, I (unfortunately) could no longer buy anything that I wanted to display in my room (otherwise I may get questionable stares from my parents). As such, I was mostly looking for stuff like stickers and shirts. In terms of specific titles I was trying to get merch from, it was mostly the same stuff as last year like blue archive, lor, konosuba, league, etc. (i was also hoping for stuff from gayge, 100, relife, heart tune, or one room, but thats mostly just wishful thinking). Though I have been getting into Deadlock recently so I was also hoping for merch of that
rubbing my belly
One thing that I did have to do today was one of my friends wanted me to take pictures of (note that I said of and not with a cosplayer that he really likes (takomayuyi)), so I had to go to the Neverness to Everness booth to get a picture.
I had no idea what she looked like so I had to discord video call him at 5:30 a.m. vietnam local time so he can check for me
I also got them to sign the picture, but its kinda bad quality since I only had markup on my phone
After taking the pictures, I just walked around the venue and checked out all the other booths that were set up. Turns out, there was a IBuyPower stand at Anime Expo (which was completely unexpected), and they had free pc open for you to play counter strike on. Personally, I don't think this was that great of a financial investment since 90% of the people at AX would probably plays Valorant or would never play CS in the first place, but at least the stand is cool.
GOLD GOLD GOLD
For lunch, a.r., kjason and I decided to get food from the soul food restuarant that we went to last year, since it was the closest place from where we left. Since a.r. is a huge enjoyer of soul food, he was especially stoke to try some of the best that LA has to offer.
Other than the errands, not else really happened today. a.r. and I did plan on going to a panel where they were going to screen both Overgeared and Saga of Tanya the Evil 2, but the line into the building where all the panels are held was too long, so we passed on it.
Btw slight rant, but I had 0 idea that Overgeared was going to get an adaptation. I used to actually really like the manhwa, but I unfortunately had to drop the series because of the absolutely abhorrent drop in quality in the later chapters. So I low key thought the studio had 0 faith in the series any more. I guess this is definitely a welcomed surpise, since I think Overgeared is genuinely a pretty damn good series (better than Solo Leveling) and Grid (the goat) is funny af.
The other panel that a.r. and I were planning on going to was the 18+ "Con Crush: I was transported to AX26 and Now I Must Find My Soulmate (or Friend) in Three Minutes or Less" ironically, just to see what its gonna be like
Yes that is the real title
I was kind of hoping for there to be a 60/40 or even 70/30 mix, but when we walked over to the line it was just a sausage party (which honestly was to be expected). So we decided to just skip it. Turns out it was a good idea because I saw a bunch of posts on twitter afterwards where people were complaining about the organization/logistics of the event and the fact that it was all guys (shocker). So I am kinda glad that we skipped out.
Regardless, heres the photodump for the day:
from left to right: a.r. with tanya, Lord Farquad (lore accurate height), Bomb devil
rotten girl miku, ame-chan from needy streamer overload, matryoshka miku (i actually saw multiple people cosplaying her which was surprising, the song's good but its so old (i guess its a real ball knower cosplay))
lamb from cult of the lamb, kinger (KINGER) and jax from tadc, sett from league
green wizard from shadow wizard money gang, aria and sunna from zzz, and luna snow from marvel
mei from overwatch, spirit blossom ahri from league, awesome-o from south park (who had an absolutely on point cartman impression)
klee from genshin, kitty cat katarina from league, asuna and kisaki from blue archive
guts from berserk, astolfo, sylphy from mushoku tensei
kaiba from yugioh
So for day 2, mostly just the same as before. Try and find merch, go to cosplay getherings, and go to panels. I spent the majority of the morning going walking around the artist alley again, and the first panel that I went to was the You and I are polar opposites Season 2 premier with 2.6 hog rider. The panel was pretty good, and I was genuinely surprised by the number of attendees present at the panel (the gender split was also something among the lines of 60/40, which I was also surprised by). I have actually never watched the anime before, since I had already read the manga to completion, but I was happy that the adaptation was faithful to the source material, and the animation quality was quite nice. Overall, I am just happy that a manga I liked was getting the recognition that it deserves.
In fact, I am now inspired to watch the anime, which would also give me a bit of a refresher on what happened in the manga
Afterwards, as a part of what is basically another yearly tradition at this point, I went to the Blue Archive stand to see the dj set with the goat Mitsukyo (which, of course, was amazing as always). Afterwards, I stayed around for the cosplay showcase (which is basically officially partnered cosplayers who ba paid to do cosplays for) to get pictures because a certain someone (*cough cough* carbine) wanted pictures of the asuna cosplayer. So yea, heres the pictures to all of that
I will say the cosplays were very nice, but because its official you can't really walk up to get pictures with them individually, unless you find them on break/walking around and ask, which is what i did. I did take a bunch of pictures of the cosplayers, but i am a bit lazy and i don't wanna post them all here, so if you are really curious you can go check the github for the images
The blue archive stand and the goat
the picture that i snagged
The next big thing that I attended today was the blue archive cosplay gathering. Surprisingly, the amount of people in attendance were about the same as last year. Given that the game had a steam release and has gained in popularity, I honestly expected there to be a bigger turnout. Though I guess the only people who would come to this kind of thing is the hardcore dedicated fans anyways.
Otherwise, not a lot of pictures here. One notable thing is that the executive project director of ba Kim Yong-ha and the rest of the ba development team showed up during the meetup for pictures. Keep in mind that these guys are korean developers with high executive positions, and they just decided to randomly show up to a (mostly) unofficial cosplay meetup for the game. BA might not do a lot of things perfectly, but the one thing that I highly respect the dev team for is the amount of passion and dedication they have for the game. Despite being such a big game, the dev team still takes time out of their day to do this kinda stuff. In fact, as far as I am aware, blue archive is the only game that has their developers and directors just show up randomly to events. Kim Yong-ha especially works double overtime with these collaberations and events, and I am pretty sure he shows up to most of them whether its in korea or overseas.
You sure as hell aint gonna see anyone from hoyoverse doing this kind of stuff
But anyways, heres the pictures for the meetup:
The cosplayers, and 2 pics with the dev team
Afterwards, I went to the project moon cosplay gathering to also get some pictures. Unfortunately, I came a bit late so I missed most of the LOR pictures, and it was mostly limbus cosplayers there, so that many pictures for this one as well.
Group picture and rolands
After this, I went to the blue archive official panel with the devs, which was pretty cool, but since it was mostly just upcoming release stuff, i didnt bother with pictures. After this panel, as a part of our yearly tradition, I went with my goat 2.6 hog rider to the highly anticipated FAKKU QNA featuring MEME50. Of course, similar to the panel last year with Asanagi, the panel was a full qna with live drawing, with the major difference being that you are allowed to take pictures this time. Given the pictures' questionable origins, I decided to not link them directly in this blog, but you can certainly find them on the github.
Of course, just like last year, i gotta include the notable qna sections
But anyways, here's the photodump of the day:
Jane doe, THE LASH, Gwen
Black cat, Saori, The Peak
Aqua, Dynamo rubbing his belly, billy/drifter/gun pocket/the doorman
Jett and Viper, Hikari and Nozomi from blue archive, kisaki from blue archive
lux, another picture of me with nozomi and hikari, niche microcelebrity dark magician girl (kirahri)
anima squad aurora, heavy from tf2, little don from limbus
ekko from league, jeanne alter from fgo
retry now miku, ui
The 3 main things outside of artist alley was the vocaloid, deadlock, and a second BA meetup, as well as a panel for the goat manga Marriagetoxin. I actually wanted to go to the vocaloid meetup for once since kjason was actually gonna show up to it in cosplay. So of course I gotta show up to support my boy.
A really well made miku doom guy, and 2 pictures of kjason (the second on the left)
Overall, the cosplay meetup was pretty whatever, most of the cosplayers were just generic miku cosplays (which i personally didn't care for). In terms of cosplays based on songs, the majority were flavor foley and birdbrain cosplayers, which I couldnt really be asked to get pictures with
Personally, I wasn't really the biggest fan of flavor foley (like the songs are fine, but the popular ones I don't really care for), and while I like birdbrain, I don't think it's JamieP's best song, maybe more like a top 3/4 (machine love >= rot for clout > dance delightful >= birdbrain). Also let me just say static is the most bait song of all time
I did, however, get a picture with ego renegade boy len, cuz that song's actually pretty good
I also happened to get this picture with the goat igaku miku written by the goat Sasuke Haraguchi (and I am pretty sure this is the only sasuke song cosplayer i found in the entire expo, which is crazy considering hitomania and igaku are actually pretty popular in the states)
While walking around outside eating creamy boys (yes thats the real name of the food truck) with kjason and conservemomenta, I happened to find a (what I can only assume to be) Trump-chan interviewing Homelander for a tiktok. I couldn't walk close enough to figure out what they were saying, but I did get a picture
After this, I attended the deadlock meetup, since I've been absolutely grinding the game recently (I am currently a picklericklow archon 3 player). Nothing really of note here since its mostly just people in cosplays for the game, so I'll just dump the images
Group pictures
More group pictures, baxtor society
2 pictures of "bebop" and lash, pockets and mina
A mcginnis who showed up late, viscous doing the cube, and a picture with viscous, doorman, and grey talon
yoshis, giant rem with the drifter who made it, pocket mina
mirage, lebron ulting, graves
holliday and another mina, vindicta, group picture of them trying to fight for urn
LIFTING, venator, seven
mohammad and kareem, shadow wizard money man, billy and another mina
After this, I speedwalked my way to the other ba cosplay gathering so I could snatch a picture with Chizu as cheerleader neru. She also cosplayed as Hikari the day before, which I also got pictures of. I also happened to spot kjason at the arknights gathering which was happening at the same time.
Now I am not the type of guy to really focus on cosplayers and specifically go to certain events just to get pictures with said cosplayers, unlike certain others. But Chizu is probably the only cosplayer that I actually recognize and know by name, and she was cosplaying probably my favorite character in BA, so i had to get a picture
After AX, kjason, a.r., 2.6 hog rider and I went to a kbbq place for food, which was quite enjoyable. I unfortunately forgot to get pictures of that. Outside of that, nothing really notable took place, so here's the photo dump of the day:
4 shadow wizard money gang members, HERO miku, and the only set of cs cosplayers that I found this entire con (could you believe that there was 0 artists selling cs merch? i couldnt, like i found more deadlock merch than i did cs merch which i think is crazy)
log bait warden, furina
Track Mari
Damn there's like 0 pictures from today
Since we were getting driven back by some of our other friends, we unfortunately had to leave early today because of some of their commitments. As such, all I did today run my bum around the artist alley and try and go through every single stall before I had to leave. Fortunately, I was able to do so, but I basically got no pictures today and did nothing else
A-train, triple T (yes thats the only 2 pictures I took today)
So remember how I mentioned at the start of the blog that the fact that I was driving down was going to be important? Well here's the context for that. Since the drive to LA was going to take ~6-7 hours, we collectively decided to make a dedicated road trip playlist on spotify that we can listen to while on the road. And as you know, I am a big music enjoyer (idkac.com), so of course I went demon mode on the playlist and I ended up adding like ~360/700 of the songs in the playlist, even though we had 6 people contributing to it. As such, the songs that were added by people who were not named idkac and 2.6 hog rider were colloquially named "golden scars" (as they basically added 10 to 20 songs each out of the 700). Funnily enough, we were actually lucky to pull some of these songs on our trip, and it was very funny to have the speaker randomly start blasting Kanye music after a stream of jpop/vocaloid songs.
In addition, to spice up the playlist a little, I also decided to add a few golden scars of my own to the playlist in the form of Thick of It by KSI and Mongolian Throat Singing. Unfortunately we were not able to hit Thick of It, but we were blessed with the good fortunes of 10 minutes of Mongolian Throat Singing, which I did happen to catch on video:
Other than that, it was a pretty uneventful day 4. Overall, the trip was quite enjoyable as always, and having more company definitely made it more fun. I also cut down on spending this time since I went wayyyy too crazy last year due to impulse purchases, so I am quite happy with that as well. Whether I show up to 2027 we will have to see, as the management of the con for this year left a lot to be desired. If you were keeping up with the news of ax for this year, you would have known that this year was definitely way more mismanaged than previously, with much less staffing and much more overcrowdness. They also shrunk the artist alley by half this year, which I was not a fan of as many of the artists that I have seen in the previous 2 cons were not here this year, many of whom had merch that I would have loved to buy (specifically 2 artists who sold LOR merch). Honestly, whether I show up next year will heavily depend on what seasonal animes/games will be released that summer, which would compell me to show up to attend their panels (unfortunately 100 wasn't doing a panel for this year, which really sucked). But anyways. I appreciate you for staying all the way till the end, and while I would love to say see you in the next blog, I will probably go back into hibernation for a year until I find another gem that is worth writing about.
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