With a great concert, good food, and lots of events and interesting cosplay, the remainder of AX proved to be an exceptionally fun time, if a bit tiring. Unfortunately, my main Compact Flash card malfunctioned midway through day 2 of the con, so I lost most of the pictures from that day, including photos of the enormous bowl of chashu ramen I grabbed for lunch down in Little Tokyo. ;_;

Fortunately, I do still have lots of photos to share with you guys. I had hoped to do day-by-day coverage of the con, but between the frenetic nature of the events down there combined with the commute into LA and back again every day, it’s taken me until now to get properly rested up again. Yeah, I’m definitely getting too old for this kind of stuff. ^^;

Nevertheless, AX was a ton of fun; I got to meet Shokotan and David Hayter, as well as consume dangerously large quantities of Japanese cuisine. Oh yeah, and I bought the newest Taiko no Tatsujin (a.k.a. Taiko Drum Master) game for DS.

Anyway, so without further ado…random cosplay shots and other pics from the con:

Shinigami Chop!

Dr. Stein

Tsubaki wielding…Tsubaki??

I’m always glad to see cosplay from newer or under-represented series, if only because the cosplay percentages at the average anime con work out to something on the order of:

50% Generic Bleach Captains or Akatsuki members
10% Ichigos in various stages of transformation
8% Narutos and Sakuras
6% Assorted other Naruto cast
6% Luffy
5% Final Fantasy characters
3% Link
2% Fat goth loli girls

10% EVERYTHING ELSE EVER

Thus, I generally ignore all the usual suspects and try to search out people with genuinely unique or creative costumes. And while those folks can be few and far between, thankfully I was not disapppointed, as there were some really awesome costumes this year. Case in point:

TETSUUOOOOO!! KANEEEDAAAA!

Cat accessories and loincloth not included.

This is easily the best Al costume I have ever seen, bar none. Even more impressive was the fact that he could move around and strike all sorts of poses in that thing without pieces of it falling off.

The obligatory line-up of Code Geass ladies. Minus points for no Cheese-kun, though.

Konpachi

Yes, you read that right. Konpachi. What can I say? This man is a genius.

DESU.

Saber can give me sword lessons any day of the week.

Hey, finally a Gurren Lagann cosplayer!

And quite an impressive costume is was. She told me that the gun is hand made from PVC pipe, wood blocks, and pieces from airsoft guns, and that it took her and a friend almost two months to assemble. Quite a piece indeed. If you look closely, you’ll even see that…uh…hey guys? We’re still talking about the gun here, right? Right?? …guys?

And after that, of course we can’t forget the obligatory “Pierce the heavens with your drill” Kamina pose of manliness and huge sunglasses.

ZETSUBOU SHITA!!

Finally, an Itoshiki-sensei appears! There was another one at the con who actually had a rope tied into an actual noose around his neck; talk about dedication to costume accuracy. Sounds a little scary though, if you ask me, walking around an anime con wearing a noose. All it takes is one glomp gone wrong… o_0

Again, I don’t normally photograph Inuyashu cosplayers and the like, but these guys had very well made costumes and seemed to really be enjoying themselves. Besides, any women who can actually carry around Sango’s boomerang all day like that automatically gets my respect.

Speaking of oversized weapons…Zabuza would like you to bring the opponents to his sword. It is, in fact, fully charged.

Not to be outdone, this guy had what I believe was the largest prop weapon at the convention. Even if security would’ve allowed him to bring it into the exhibit hall, I don’t think he could’ve gotten that thing through the door anyway.

Japanese people always have the best cosplay when it comes to traditional outfits, of course. Note the little kitsune mask the guy has on the side of his head.

I just love shooting with backlighting for those little shoji umbrellas, I’m not gonna lie.

Now some other assorted non-anime costumes. Here’s Dark Link and…a Tier 6 feral druid?? Oh my. <.<

One wonders why she’s wielding what looks an awful lot like Braxxis’ Staff of Slumber, though, if she’s full Tier 6…

Now this one I bet took some serious work to put together…as well as to put on! And yes, it is an actual legitimate blonde haired girl inside that suit.

Other non-anime themed cosplay ranged from some that were aborably cute…

…to others that were random and wacky…

…a few that were just silly…

…and a couple that were just downright disturbing. o_0

The location of the convention, the Los Angles Convention Center right in the heart of downtown Los Angeles. As alway, the weather was warm and beautiful.

The L.A. Sparks fans had absolutely no idea what to make of all the congoers, running around with their crazy outfits and dancing the Carmelldansen and whatnot. I saw some pretty funny reactions, I must say. Sadly, I wasn’t able to capture any of them on camera.

Fisheye lenses are fun, by the way. ^^

In keeping with summer traditions, there was a tree set up for Tanabata. As you can see, there are quite a few wishes hung on the tree, including some rather interesting and unusual ones.

“I wish the cake wasn’t a lie!”

“I wish for an actual wish!”

“I wish for more boink!”

There was even one that said “I wish more people could appreciate English dubs.” I was sorely tempted to hang my own card up next to it that said, “I wish English dubs didn’t suck so much!”

The dealers’ hall was suitably huge with lots of random anime and video game themed products available, as always. The only thing I ended up buying was a couple of imported DS games – the aforementioned Taiko no Tatsujin 2 game, and a kanji drill game to help me brush up on my penmanship.

Well, hope you weren’t too terribly bored by all the random cosplay photos. I tend to get a little carried away since there are so many hot chicks interesting photo ops. ^^;

Speaking of which…I was able to take a photo together with Shokotan. I wonder if I should post it up on the site too? Of course, I doubt very much you guys want to see my ugly mug.

In any case, Epic Win now returns you (hopefully!) to your regularly scheduled sarcastic anime blogging program. Until next time!

~0rion

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Anime Expo 2008’s Guest of Honor roster can’t touch last year’s amazing guests, but it seems they managed to get together a great guest roster nevertheless.

(click the photos for larger versions)

From the left: Toshihiko Seki, Masahiro Ando, Masamitsu Hidaka, Hiromi Kato, Takada Akemi, Dewa and Manami of Jyukai, Nakagawa Shoko (Shokotan), and finally David Hayter, a.k.a. Solid Snake. I think he got as much of a crowd reaction as all of the other guests combined, especially when he did his Snake voice. =P

I had the opportunity to attend the focus panels for both Toshihiko Seki and Shokotan, and both were highly entertaining, but very down-to-earth individuals. Shokotan in particular, for all her e-fame and top singles and whatnot, was just like another congoer running around taking cosplay photos with people and just generally enjoying herself. It was really a nice change of pace from most of the guests who tend to stay aloof behind their wall of agents, and who don’t interact with their fans at all outside of sanctioned events.

In addition to all that, she was more than happy to demonstrate her crazy kung fu skill for us, as well as doing an impromptu Sorairo Days rendition in order to teach us all the proper motions. Note the Kamina pose, hand upraised. ^^

And yes, she is cosplaying as Rurouni Kenshin. Lots of fun and a very nice change of pace from the more usual celebs like CLAMP two years ago, who were hardly seen the entire show except for select glimpses by a few lucky fans.

Omae no doriru de ten wo tsuke!!

Photography was, as always, prohibited in the AMV Contest so no images from that, but let me just say…man, they REALLY raised the bar this year with the quality of the AMVs that were shown. Almost all the entries were not only well done technically, but were also thematically or humorously creative.

I haven’t had time to look and see whether any of the creators have made their videos available on the ‘net yet, but two in particular to keep an eye out for are a Gurren Lagann AMV starring Kamina singing the “Be A Man” song from Mulan, and a second AMV from Haruhi using the song “Girlfriend” by Avril Lavigne…but sung by Itsuki. Good Lord I nearly laughed up a lung at that one. To all the creators whose videos were shown, cheers! This year’s was definitely the best AMV show I have ever seen.

Now I must be off to catch more of the ridiculous animu action, so I’ll have to leave it at that for the time being. I’ve got tons of great cosplay shots I want to showcase later (including some cool uncommon ones like Itoshiki Nozomu from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, and a great Shinigami-sama outfit from Soul Eater), as well as broader coverage from the con, but time’s a wastin’ so I must be off.

Again sorry for the sparse details, but the con calls. More coverage coming soon assuming I don’t get run over by by the thundering herds of yaoi paddle wielding crazed fangirls.

~0rion

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