Editor Mari's Special Edition Blog Post - Anime Expo 2022

Wowee lookie here Mari is finally writing a blog post. You’ll finally get a chance to read it after you acknowledge that I’ve finally gotten 100% in the open-world half of LEGO® Star Wars™: Skywalker Saga.

All done? Ok sick.

So today I’m gonna write about my experience going through all 4 days of Anime Expo during the days of July 1-4 2022 which just ended yesterday as of the time I’m starting this. (Jesse isn’t in yet and we’re supposed to film board game shit soon).

Acquiring the tickets for such a congested event were surprisingly easy since I’m “press” and this blog post definitely 100% for sure counts as coverage.

Alejandro shut up I’m trying to type, my dude.

It’s definitely more coverage than 2019 in which I covered none of it. I snagged the tickets all the way back in April, back before we hired all these new people to make the office feel more like an office. With more staff means we’ll probably actually take holidays off like normal people. Which is why Jesse took July 4 as a pretty chill, no-news, day.

Day 0 was the real start of the journey. If you come to the LA Convention Center on June 30th, a day before the event starts, you can pick up your badge and covid wrist band. My girlfriend decided to bring her pets (and herself) and come over to my place in Long Beach to stay over for the whole event.

She brought her cat “Yui” and her 4 rats whose names I can never remember. (My roommates fell in love with them and are now going to start feeding the 3 stray kittens in our back area).

Fuck I hate writing. This whole thing feels like it must suck to read. Anyway,

Day 0 was pretty uneventful. The LA Convention Center that night was deceptive in how open and free it was. It wasn’t until the next day, with the crowds and barriers and security, that we would see how much of a fortress it would actually become.

Day 1 was hell. We woke up at an ungodly 7am, slept, then came back to life at 8am. After an hour of getting ready we left and it took us about 35 minutes to get to the convention center. Another 15 minutes were lost to the parking gods as was $25 to the attendees.

We lined up with the regular attendees for a good long while. Both of us were bathing in the sun, even with the giant umbrella I bought because I’m so goddamn smart. At some point, I realized I had a press badge and my super genius brain together with my brave and powerful heart, led us forth past the sea of Otaku and into a nearby side entrance where only the privileged few could enter. My many hours of Hitman steeled my resolve and exhumed enough confidence to allow my +1 through.

Did you know the LA Convention Center has air conditioning? You’d have trouble answering that if you were inside the first or second day. The vast swarm of people huddled together and constantly moving generated enough heat to negate any cooling the building might have had.

The first day had only one panel I was interested in; “Mega64 Panel: Final Season Part 64” which was scheduled for 1:30PM. It was in the JW Marriot which was within walking distance from the con. We arrived at the panel room early. The inside of the hotel was cool because barely anyone was here. It was wild to remember what being cold felt like.

This panel was also one of the rare few where the room was not cleared beforehand. So we could just sit and chill before the panel started which is what we did.

This was when my precious virginity for idol anime popped. There was a screening before Mega64’s panel. It was for a new anime coming called “SHINE POST”. It was cute and really well animated. I’d watch it if I actually was interested in it and didn’t already have a billion other things to watch under my belt.

MEGA64 was cool to see. It was a funny panel full of behind the scenes videos from their newest DBZ video and they all had that level of irony as they spoke that you can’t help but love or be incredibly confused by. I swear there were times where I wasn’t even sure if something Rocco said was a joke or not.

After that was fucking nothing. The exhibit hall where the vendors could be found was so congested it was like molasses in human form. I can’t even imagine what the artist alley must have looked like. I don’t even think we bought anything at that point. I think we walked in, hated it, then bounced the fuck out of there before we drowned from lack of oxygen, which legitimately was an issue that I’m surprised wasn’t enough to shut the convention down:

https://twitter.com/lenasabrewing/status/1543698461756952576?t=QP_C9fG4Ya6nLY03BXn8Uw&s=19

 https://twitter.com/thepieface/status/1543746941359628289?t=StFjb3icieIZzGX2zOSocQ&s=19

There were things at night that I would have loved to go to, but alas, we were too tired and had 3 more days to go to push ourselves too far too soon.

Day 2 was more of the same, except get this, more people. This was Saturday after all. The Saturday of the first AX-filled 4th of July weekend in a post-lockdown world. All we had to look forward to today was the “Studio KAI” panel. It’s about the animation studio leading the charge on the first “Kamen Rider” anime. I should probably explain what Kamen Rider is, but I choose not to because this thing is already too long and I’m getting high school PTSD with every period. That thing wasn’t happening until 4:30pm. I don’t know what the fuck we did to pass the time. Eat, meet friends, buy gundams, hang out, walk a foot for 1 hour.

It’s all a blur to be honest. When the heat, the people, and the walking combine forces, all the annoyances and mini bits of stress add up to a force to be reckoned with.

Once it hit Day 3, we understood the limits of waiting in lines and walking. That was also the day we decided to check out artist alley. You step in and look up at the massive concrete room and pillars and you just know that this was a converted parking garage. The perfect place to shove independent artists and voice acting guests of honor.

The real highlight of the day was dinner. Me and my friends walked a couple blocks to a fancy yakitori place where we saw members of famous big money twitch people. Hasan, Ludwig, Mizkif, Emiru and two other fucks who I didn’t know, but automatically assumed madam oney and were famous so I still freaked out a little just to be sure. Especially since our table was right next to theirs.

“Should we buy them drinks?”

“Look at that bottle they ordered!”

“They look the exact same!”

We sounded so stupid that night. Food was good though.

Day 4. Ah, finally; death.

Short ass day, minimal people, all my friends out of state left. This was the ideal AX experience. Fuck these big cons. Gimme more small cons. We bought shit and bounced outta there. AX had nothing no more. This thing is squeezed dry. We probably wouldn’t have even come if I didn’t already promise to drop off a friend. (She has a fat cat named “Zelda” and I wanted to show her to my girlfriend).

Overall, this year’s AX was a bloated mess of an Otaku's corpse full of health hazards. I would never have come if it was free for me to go and I definitely will not be going if it moves to San Diego next year (2019 was full of rumors concerning this, but I heard no lick of this as of late).

Now, I end this blog post. I’m too scared to see how many pages I wrote, but I know it’s more than enough. I can’t wait to send this patreon link to next year's press pass fill-out form and they can’t access it because they ain’t no Patreon.