{"id":274,"date":"2011-07-07T11:00:57","date_gmt":"2011-07-07T18:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/misakithursday.wordpress.com\/?p=274"},"modified":"2018-12-20T00:22:05","modified_gmt":"2018-12-20T07:22:05","slug":"ax2011apa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/flomu.net\/blog\/2011\/07\/ax2011apa\/","title":{"rendered":"Anime Expo 2011: A Picture Adventure"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is me. I tried to frown, but it didn't work.<\/p><\/div>\n

First, let me apologize to the people at AX who had to see my ugly mug.  Second, I’d like to apologize in advance for not taking enough pictures.  The third mistake is that I shouldn’t have ever been born.  The fourth is that I just made a lame SZS reference and nobody will get it.<\/p>\n

Also the pictures are huge.  But I’ve already shrunk them by 50%.  Imagine how big they were before.<\/p>\n

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DAY ONE<\/strong><\/h1>\n

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After a day of standing in the pre-registration line for two hours in the hot SoCal summer sun and browsing the entire exhibit hall and buying cheap manga and getting really tired and a lot of stuff happening, I ended up at the Danny Choo panel.  I don’t like Danny Choo, my friends don’t like Danny Choo, and Danny Choo doesn’t like Danny Choo.  So in short, I don’t know how I ended up there.<\/p>\n

Danny Choo talked about life and how to build a resume and blah blah blah<\/p>\n

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It got really boring and my feet hurt so I didn’t want to go walk around to find something interesting.  So I started taking pictures of my shoe.<\/p>\n

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This is an action shot.<\/p>\n

So after a while, I got tired of taking foot\/shoe pictures and decided that my feet wouldn’t get any more interesting.  Of course, they were still far more intriguing than Danny Choo’s life lessons panel, but I still got bored.  I wandered around until I found a room showing Ghost Stories dubbed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Later I went to the Maon Kurosaki mini-concert because my friend wanted to go.  Why else would I still be hanging around in the convention center at 11 PM?  What a stupid idea.  I don’t even like Maon Kurosaki.  I should have ditched him and gone to the Nirgilis concert instead, but I was dumb and decided to go along with what he wanted to do because I’m a total dumb dumb.<\/p>\n

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Afterwards, I met female<\/strong> (!!!) Pyro and Medic.  Dunno why they were still around at midnight, but it was nice seeing TF2 cosplayers (maybe free to play got peoples’ attention).  I also saw a heavy, a female scout, a couple of medics, lots of spies, etc. but no Soldiers or Demomen.  Bah.<\/p>\n

Speaking of cosplayers I didn’t see, here’s what you all should have cosplayed as:<\/p>\n

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Maybe I could\/should have expected this, but there were NO Mikoto Misaka cosplayers. NONE! AT ALL! I know Railgun\/Index isn’t exactly geared towards women, but for a convention with tens of thousands of people, you’d expect to see at least a couple Mikoto cosplayers. What’s worse is that there weren’t any Eureka cosplayers either! I saw an Anemone\/Dominic couple, but no green-ish haired goddesses graced my eyes.<\/p>\n

You people!  I blame you people!  Go dress up as Mikoto!<\/p>\n

I’m thinking of crossplaying Mikoto next year because this current state of affairs has left me in despair.<\/p>\n

DAY TWO<\/strong><\/h1>\n

I wanted to see the Production I.G. panel from 9 – 10 am, then I wanted to hurry over to catch the second half of “A Survey of Anime Opening & Ending Themes” (Alex Leavitt<\/a>‘s panel).  After that, I was planning to hang around at the Exhibit Hall until lunch, and then I would go to the “Anime Club How-To” panel to see how my college aniclub could improve.  By that time (3:30 pm), I would go around with my friends until the aniblogger meetup<\/a> at 6:30.<\/p>\n

I got to the convention center at noon.<\/p>\n

Apparently, there had been a huge deal about a bomb threat and people were talking in hushed whispers about the legendary anibomber who wanted to ruin anime expo for us all.  There was a suspicious package in the dining area, so the LAPD bomb squad was rushed in and people were shooed (evacuated) out of South Hall.  After a while, the suspicious package was no longer suspicious and the anibomber threat subsided.<\/p>\n

I was still at the hotel, though.<\/p>\n

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But at least I saw this tank.  I prefer Neotanks, though.<\/p>\n

So instead of following my brilliant plans, I ended up wandering around the exhibit hall until 3:00 pm, when I decided to go see the Gonzo panel.  I didn’t bother to look at the little green chunk in the schedule titled “LASTEXILE: Fam, the Silver Wing World Premiere,” so I had no idea what the panel was going to be about (Nyanpire, maybe?).<\/p>\n

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It turns out that there was going to be a world premiere showing of a new season of Last Exile right before the Gonzo panel.  But luckily for me, anibomber threat happened and I managed to stumble into the Last Exile screening, which started half an hour late.<\/p>\n

The people hosting the panel\/screening were really anal about cameras, saying that if somebody was caught recording the episode, he\/she would be banned from Anime Expo… forever!  Plus the screening would stop and nobody would get to see the show until it aired in October.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the episode was pretty cool stuff.  Fam and other girl take on two battalions of battleships and manage to survive and rescue two princesses!  I haven’t watched Last Exile before, but from what I could tell from this screening,<\/p>\n

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And at least two people thought the same thing!  Usually, nobody retweets what I say unless they’re stupid or crazy or extremely handsome.  Two retweets is statistically significantly different from the norm of 0 retweets, so I assume Fam was really freakin’ good.  Look forward to it in Fall 2011!<\/p>\n

So after my awesome cool Gonzo adventure, I met up with some guys from the internet and went to the Bandai panel, which was almost completely comprised of two guys saying “look at this preview.”  Stephanie Sheh went on stage and looked stupid, too.<\/p>\n

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I don't remember seeing the guy third from the left. He must be Kanata or something.<\/p><\/div>\n

After that, the event that everybody was waiting for happened.  I was hanging around in West Hall, waiting for the aniblogger meetup\/dinner when I saw a group of mismatched people standing awkwardly in a circle.  There were Asians, Whites, and Shinmaru<\/a> all standing in one place.  I knew I had found my group.<\/p>\n

After waiting a while, a huge mob of anibloggers appeared (I assume they met separately and talked trash about us lower anibloggers).  Eventually (an hour later), we set out for dinner!  And by dinner, I mean expensive food truck grub.  But at least I got to take a picture of anibloggers taking pictures of canon_chan<\/a> cosplaying\/crossplaying.<\/p>\n

Also zzeroparticle<\/a> was standing next to me and I didn’t know who he was but he knew me.  Go figure.  Also there was a gigantic white guy.  I don’t know who he is, so please come forward if you’re reading this, gigantic white guy.<\/p>\n

On another note, the Kanata guy in the picture above is apparently ToastCrust<\/a>.  I thought ToastCrust was the aforementioned gigantic white guy.<\/p>\n

I didn’t spend much time awkwardly socializing with the anibloggers because I had to go… to the HATSUNE MIKU CONCERT!  After all the anibloggers who were going to the Miku concert had left!  Maybe I should have gone with them.<\/p>\n

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I’ve only listened to one Miku song a single time: World is Mine.  I found it annoying and more annoying, so I don’t listen to Vocaloid songs now.  They’re dumb.<\/p>\n

Now if you think that was a buildup to say “this concert changed my mind,” you’re wrong.<\/p>\n

The concert went something like this…<\/p>\n

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Once we got in, the first thing my vocaloid fan friend said was: “wow, that screen is tiny.”  And it was.  It was 100%, real, genuine life-size.  Except in the Nokia Theater, life-size means pint-sized for everybody not sitting in the first three rows.<\/p>\n

Somebody died and Dannychoo was in charge for emceeing the event and blah blah at least he didn’t tell us how to build a resume.  Once he finally got off the stage, Miku started singing but there was no Miku on stage.<\/p>\n

Right after the first song, Miku appeared and “World is Mine” came on and<\/p>\n

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KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA<\/h1>\n

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA<\/h1>\n

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA<\/h1>\n

please somebody make it stop<\/p>\n

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA<\/h1>\n

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA<\/h1>\n

I couldn’t hear for the rest of the night.<\/p>\n

Most of Miku songs left me confused.  I’m a guy who doesn’t listen to or like Vocaloid songs because they sound strange and pierce my eardrums.  So imagine being in my shoes, listening to Miku sing songs about pop or poop or whatever…<\/p>\n

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Needless to say, this concert didn’t convince me to become a hardcore Miku fan.  Sure, I think she’s cute and I think it’s an amazing phenomenon… but her songs are screechy and are about bowel movements rather than melodic ones.<\/p>\n

On the concert itself, though: The atmosphere was crazy.  You always hear people talk about “electrifying atmospheres” at concerts, but the only electric atmosphere I ever believed in was the electric field around Mikoto Misaka.  But this Miku concert was insane!  People were waving their glowsticks out of time and jumping up and down and screaming like monsters (see picture #2 for accurate representation of fans).<\/p>\n

I felt like crying at times because I was so happy to experience this electrifying atmosphere and because of the pain from my broken, bloody eardrums.  I think that if this were a HALCALI concert or even a Nirgilis one (gah, should’ve went to that one…!!!), I would have broken down in tears.  It felt great to be at such a huge concert for a virtual idol who doesn’t exist and sings higher and faster than human ears were designed to handle.<\/p>\n

I guess this means man has finally overcome his evolutionary barrier.<\/p>\n

DAY THREE<\/strong><\/h1>\n
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I don't know if zzeroparticle wants his name shown.  Maybe I should black out his face too.<\/p><\/div>\n

I got up at 9:00 am and managed to get my lazy friends out of the hotel by 10:00 am, and we got to zzeroparticle’s panel<\/a> just as it was starting.  Because I cannot find Shinmaru’s shoddy recording<\/a> on Youtube and zzeroparticle hasn’t posted about it yet, I’ll just put some comments on the panel here.<\/p>\n

After the panel, my [non-aniblogging] friends told me that it sounded like a lecture and that much of what zzeroparticle said was quite obvious.  I found it a little different than that.<\/p>\n

Pros<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n