All my loot from Anime Expo this year was purchased from the MangaGamer booths.

The AX convention bag came with the program guide, a starter deck for Magic: the Gathering, and various advertisement cards.

Random Goodies

A purchase of $10 or more at MangaGamer netted you a free bag, $30 or more got you a t-shirt, and $50 or more got you a mousepad.

Wall Scrolls

I couldn’t resist the high quality wall scrolls that were made in Japan and then priced very reasonably for the convention.

Sketches

The bulk of my spending money went towards getting sketches. Many well-known artists were there such as Kayura Yuka (Da Capo II), Fumio (Tomoyo After ~It’s a Wonderful Life~), and Watanabe Akio (Bakemonogatari).

I’m still bummed out that I wasn’t able to get sketches from Fumio and Watanabe Akio since their orders filled up almost instantly. It seems like other exhibitors commissioned sketches before the hall was even open to the public.

At least I’ll be joining the ranks of the exhibitors next year. *shrug*

Autographs

By Day 3, I was tired of getting autographs and skipped out on Yui Horie/Eri Kitamura and May’n/Megumi Nakajima when I saw the lines. Oh well.

Music CDs

It was awesome that MangaGamer brought Minami Kuribayashi to perform at their booth. She was Haruka Suzumiya in Kimi ga Nozomu Eien and also sang the openings for anime such as Chrono Crusade and Katanagatari. Hearing “Tsubasa wa Pleasure Line” live was a real treat.

I purchased their CDs and got them autographed afterward. ^^

It was an amazing AX this year, let’s hope next year is even better!

Saturday felt like it was really packed with people. I guess all the 1-day pass holders chose Saturday to attend?

Upon seeing some of the lines for certain panels/autograph sessions, I turned around and walked away.

MELL Panel & Autograph Session

The announcer messed up and told us photographs were okay at first.

Mell was very enthusiastic during her panel and had a great personality. She answered questions thoroughly and often used hand gestures to assist in her replies. It was entertaining when she reenacted taking swigs of energy drink to stay alert and then using water to force it down.

We ran to her autograph session afterward and were the first couple people in line.

Danny Choo L.A. Meet-up

I didn’t stay for that long, but the place was really packed. It would have been nice if the location of the meet-up was larger, but I don’t think they expected the event to be that popular.

I was there at the beginning and sat in the very front until they told us to leave that area since there was a line for autographs/photos with Danny Choo.

The Now and Future of Bishoujo Games

This was MangaGamer’s panel and they brought in a ton of guests. At first, they were having trouble finding a competent translator and kept adding more translators up on stage until things worked out.

Tororo Dancho, Bamboo, and Katakura Shinji made a lot of amusing comments during the panel. When asked to explain what bishoujo games were, Tororo Dancho simply said, “MOE!”.

Near the end, they had a raffle for quite a number of prizes and held a mini-concert afterward. It was a fun late-night panel that went way over the allocated time, but it was worth it.

Misaka Car

We happened to park next to this epic car.

On Day 4, I just wandered around the Exhibit Hall for a bit and then left to go home early. No photos, but next up is the loot post!

Since I wasn’t really interested in the morning panels, I wandered around the Exhibit Hall right when it opened.

Exhibit Hall

I mostly stayed around the MangaGamer booths the entire time since they were the only ones offering sketches from various well-known character designers. Besides sketches, they were selling a large assortment of wall scrolls, posters, CDs, dakimakura covers, and more at very tempting prices. They brought legit products straight from Japan that no other booths had, which is why they were my favorite exhibitor there.

Plus, they held live concerts at their booth with performances by Aina Kase, Minami Kuribayashi, ur@n, and rino (CooRie).

Kitamura Panel

Eri Kitamura’s panel was very entertaining. Even though they had the producer of Toradora! there, most of the questions were requests for her to do the voice of Yui from Angel Beats! She seemed like a fun and easygoing person, which made the panel awesome.

It was cool actually hearing her say Yui’s line of “Sensei, toilet!” in person.

Megumi Nakajima/May’n Concert

Photography was not allowed at the concerts for us regular attendees, which explains the lack of photos.

The NOKIA Theatre was packed and it was nice to experience the Macross Frontier duo’s singing live. They brought a secret guest who turned out to be Yoko Kanno. She played the piano and accompanied them in singing at times. It’s a pity she didn’t host a panel.

Horie Panel

This was the most disappointing panel. They told us no photography at all, which was after I snapped one quick shot of the room.

To start off the panel, they showed the first episode of Toradora!, which I thought was a waste of time. Then Horie arrived late and only took around 10 minutes of questions before leaving. The panels/events at AX seemed to all suffer from delays and the autograph session system was very poorly planned.

MELL Concert

Same as before, no photography allowed. I walked into the concert knowing a few of MELL’s songs, and I came out afterward as a fan.

Even though the hall wasn’t fully packed, the audience seemed more energetic and into the music than the previous concert. When they started playing “Virgin’s High”, the crowd went crazy. It was a blast, and my arms and throat were tired from waving glowsticks and cheering.

Onwards to Day 3 tomorrow!

This year’s Anime Expo easily surpassed the one I attended last year.

There were so many guests of honor this year that I couldn’t attend all the panels and autograph sessions I had planned on due to conflicting times.

Here are my photos from Day 1 of the events I went to.

Opening Ceremony

Kawamoto Panel & Autograph Session

May’n Panel

They said photographs weren’t allowed until the end of the panel unless you were a press member. I didn’t stick around for that long since the panel went over the allotted time and I had to get going.

Asakawa Panel & Autograph Session

If you went to her panel, I was the one that asked what her favorite line as Rider in Fate/stay night was.

Exhibit Hall

I took a photo with Danny Choo when I saw him in the Exhibit Hall. Yeah, I don’t really smile in photos.

Otherwise, I just stuck around the MangaGamer booths but didn’t take any pictures on Day 1. Even though I wasn’t planning on spending that much money at AX this year, MangaGamer changed my mind.

Laser Spectacular

That’s all for Day 1!

Since classes are done with, I’m tackling my backlog of unprocessed images taken at various places.

These photos are from around 2 weeks back when my brother and I went to Japantown in San Francisco. It also happened to be the last day of the Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival 2010.

We mostly just saw the parade and then chilled at the Kinokuniya Center since the festival was an unexpected surprise for us. The streets were packed with people and it was a hassle getting from store to store. Our intent was simply to visit Japantown, but the festival was a fun experience nevertheless.

I went to Star Wars: In Concert this Sunday and brought my camera to take a few pictures.

Outside the actual seating area, they had Star Wars costumes/props displayed.

Here were most of them (it hard to take good photos since kids kept getting in the way):

The actual “concert hall” before the performance, which is normally used for hockey games – the San Jose Sharks.

Surprisingly, all the seats weren’t filled up.

Now for pictures of the actual performance.

The voice of C-3PO was there in person to do the narrations.

Lots of fun gimmicks were used: lasers, fire, and smoke.

Encore anyone?

It was a great experience for my first concert.

However, like my dad stated, it would have been better to get closer seats on the ground floor in order to listen to the actual instruments. We were way up in the 2nd level and probably hearing the speakers most of the time since this wasn’t an actual concert hall. =/

Time to listen to The Imperial March.

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