Anime Expo 2008

Woohoo, I'm finally getting into the whole Blog thing, and decided to start on a high note. Anime Expo 2008 was last weekend, and it was a blast. I was a bit worried about the location--I'd been to the LA convention center a couple of times before, and while I knew it was huge, which AX needed, it was also in...let's say not the best of neighborhoods. Things have improved there a lot! There's still some bad-looking areas not far, but most of the off-site stuff I was interested in (such as food!) was to the north, and that was pretty much standard downtown business district, and didn't feel bad at all. There was even a convenience store there that sold Pocky--a necessity for any anime convention attendee.

I have to say that this was the smoothest-run AX I've been to in a while. Certainly went better than last year's Long Beach debacle. They've finally figured out how to do prereg badge pickup right, for one thing. Even though there was a car wreck on the highway on Wednesday and my friend and I missed the pre-con badge pickup by like 5 minutes, and had to get our badges in the morning, it was still only a matter of a few minutes, not hours. Even the AMV contest ran smoothly--no stolen DVDs or unresolvable technical issues.

The only downside to the location was transportation. Traffic was mercifully light, especially for LA, but it still was a long way from Orange County, where I live, relative to Anaheim. But that's just my own perspective. If you're coming from Japan, or even just from out of state, there's not that much difference between LA and Anaheim. But I'm a self-centered bastard, so I'll allow myself to gripe about that :)

As far as con content, there were some good panels and workshops this year. I learned some very cool Photoshop tricks, for one thing. Also, the Paranormal Japan panel was very good, despite the technical difficulties. If you were also there, and you're curious, I'm the cat who talked about foxes.

I confess that at first I was disheartened by the exhibit hall. Not that it wasn't huge and stuffed to the gills with anime and manga stuff. It was, and I bought way too much, as I usually do at AX. But it was mostly retailers, and a lot of them were selling toys and anime collectibles, which I'm less interested in than I am actual anime and manga. I missed the huge ADV booth, which was a fixture of AX in my experience. With Geneon gone, and ADV boothless, I felt concerned about the companies that provide my drug of choice (anime).

However, when I attended the panels I started to feel better. ADV had a real reason for not having a booth, and they're working to get their issues resolved and get back to selling anime--hopefully they'll be back in full force next year and I'll be able to buy some anime at that big booth again. The anime market is changing, and some of those changes I don't like (I don't watch television, and I don't download video files over my slow internet connection, so broadcast anime and iTunes anime aren't that useful to me). However, some changes I do like. It sounds like Funimation is going to do more full-season box-sets rather than individual DVDs, which makes it easier for me to buy a whole series. I tend to get impatient and buy the individual DVDs, and sometimes I have trouble completing my collection. I think the only whole-series packs I have are Escaflowne (my all-time favorite series, which I didn't buy individual DVDs of because I already had it on VHS) and Noein, which I just bought last weekend.

Anyhow, I had a great time, and most of my fears turned out to be unfounded. And I got tons of anime and manga, so I'm happy.