Anime Expo 2011 Made My Legs Explode Part the First

The story of Anime Expo: A bunch of Asians and a random Mexican.

So, I got back from yet another great Anime Expo on Monday, but I have been so damn busy since then contributing to Behind the Nihon Review’s convention coverage that I haven’t had time to sit down and write any personal thoughts about the whole event! (Also, I’ve watched exactly two episodes of anime in the past week.) But now most of my contributions are in the can and waiting to be published, so it’s time for . . . more writing about Anime Expo! Hooray!

This was the year of a few of firsts for me: My first time attending all four days of the convention (been going for seven years prior, and I’d always attended for one or two days at most), my first time attending as press (thanks to The Nihon Review being a much bigger, more established site than this rinky dink operation), and my first time staying at a hotel for the convention (usually I’d just bum a ride from someone). The latter two especially made this convention experience vastly different than any other time I have gone to Anime Expo, which is a good thing. You need to switch things up every so often so that you don’t get burned out on things (which almost happened to me after a couple of years of going to AX).

So anyway, I’ll be going through the day-by-day skinny of the event, which means that this will be a horribly bloated nightmare of a post, but fuck it, I’ve waited too long to write to justify making separate posts for separate groups of days except I totally did it, anyway, because Jesus Christ this took forever to write.

Day 0

This day is important mainly to press folks (who go to the press junket to interview guests) and for attendees who are staying in hotels and want to get check-in and con registration done without wasting a big chunk of a day that actually matters. For The Nihon Review, this day was probably the most important to us, because we would actually get AX coverage that is exclusive to us through the unique interviews we conducted (as opposed to panels and stuff where everyone is seeing the same thing).

Kylaran would do most of the work — conducting an interview of his own and interpreting for two others — so he was pretty nervous while staying over at my place before the con, while I was mostly chilling and playing Red Dead Redemption since I was just the camera man. That’s what you get for having talents people can use! Seriously, though, he busted his ass working for these interviews, and apart from a couple of stumbles, they went pretty damn well. (And one stumble during the Nirgilis interview seemed to open everyone up, so hey.)

This is me getting bored during the Onyx Kobayashi interview (with Eternal’s arm making a cameo appearance). Not that the interview was boring; he actually gave thoughtful answers. He just wasn’t as visually engaging as Nirgilis because he mostly sat still the whole time, so I mostly fucked around looking for silly angles lol. But, yes, not much went on during Day 0 other than us hanging out with the crew from Anime Diet, whom I saw a lot more of this year being press and all. Won’t say too much about the interviews themselves since they’ll go up eventually.

But, here, have a pic from the Nirgilis interview, on the house:

Good times.

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