Con Report: Anime Expo 2016
Day 0
Michael and I buddied up for our plane trips this year again! Unfortunately, Daniel had class and was arriving later that night! :[ Our flight was at 9AM, and TSA went by fairly quickly, surprisingly.
When we checked in, we had a weird problem with AX travel info transferring my room from a double double to a king. For some reason all my booking info was changed?! But the employee setting up our room was SUPER nice and helpful, and everything got corrected. We even got bumped up to a higher floor with a view of the pool! And it was next to the elevators! So cool. The room was also HUGE compared to what we were used to. Lots of room for rolling around haha.
Daniel’s flight ended up being delayed by 1 hour ;__; after I was able to let him into the hotel room we all passed out.
Day 1
Got ready for my Day 1 shift!
After our shift, I was super hungry so I got lunch with Daniel and Constants at the café near the exhibit hall. We didn’t have much time to make it to our next shift (in a separate location), so we went into the express line.
For some reason there were multiple hold ups in the express line and we didn’t get a chance to eat our food until we got to the right hall. ;__;
We got to the panel room but there was no place to sit, so we scarfed down our food on the table in the back of the panel. Unfortunately, the panel immediately got let out while we were eating!!! So embarrassing…
During the panel we passed out raffle tickets for prizes! It was hard to cover so much ground but we were determined, and did our best. By the time we finished I was ridiculously sweaty and my asthma was acting up — but we did it!!!!!! The panel went great and people really liked our costumes ;__; so nice…
My work day ended, so I met up with Daniel to hang around the exhibit hall with him and his friend Dazzy. We got to browse a lot of the exhibits before my boots started killing my feet @__@ so we went back to the hotel to change out.
Our name was still a long ways away from getting called, and by this time my friend Irene had joined us. So we went to Maruya to put our names down. The wait time there was advertised as 10 minutes, but to our dismay it ended up being closer to 20 minutes..
Daniel went back to Daikokuya to check on our place, but apparently our name was called 13 minutes ago and (obviously) was skipped since we weren’t there. SO SAD AHHH. Irene had to go, but we finally got seated at Maruya and ordered the ramen there. It was so good!
We talked for awhile, but had to cut it short because I was having some stomach problems. Then we all tried uber pool for the first time, and got synced up with the same driver!! It was really convenient. Got ready for bed, and slept very well.
Day 2
Today was a very big day!! I woke up early again to make it to the Weekly Shonen Jump panel. I had some difficulty getting directions to the panel location, but I managed to find a very good, possibly secret shortcut. I waited for Henry and Constants outside the doors, and people-watched in the meantime.
Once we finished handing out the drinks, we ran over to the back stage where we met Kazue Kato (!!!!). I tried not to stare too much/was super starstruck/couldn’t speak Japanese so I didn’t know what to do except sit quietly ahhh!!! Kato-sensei was very impressed with our cosplays and asked about various parts (Wayne’s Kuro plush especially, my fake nail fangs, and constants’ phials).
The panel began, and we escorted Kato-sensei on stage and stayed to the side standing. It was a very big test of stamina and endurance as I’m very fidgety and have trouble standing LOL but I did my best!!! Constants was as still as a statue (so very Yukio….). Kato-sensei answered a lot of questions while doing a live sketch, which was so cool to watch! After Q&A, they did a trivia. Prizes were handed out at the end of the panel for the trivia winners, to which I felt a bit flustered handing them out in front of so many people lol!!! A few attendees came up to us for photos and talked to us about BEx, as well as our cosplays, which was really fun (but also makes me nervous every time haha!)
After the panel was over, we were instructed to follow our Aniplex contact, who was described as “the guy in the black shirt with a Mac laptop.” At that exact moment, Constants and I looked over to see two guys in black t-shirts carrying Mac laptops. Oh boy. We weren’t sure who our contact was, so we followed one of the guys, and assumed we were heading to autographs through a backway. We were all heading to the autograph session anyways, right?
The path was super long and strange, and we were confused but figured that we were just heading through an alternate route. Kato-sensei even had a sun parasol (so cool!!!). We got outside, super sweaty and gross again.. then we arrived to a loading dock area with black cars???? So we turned around to the translator for Kato-sensei and asked if we were going to the autograph session. She corrected us saying that they were going to LUNCH and we were SOOOOO EMBARRASSED and made our shameful way to the autographs hall….
We stopped by the Viz booth and bought some merch ^^
I met up with Daniel and Irene for dinner!
Day 3
Day 4
Daniel had to leave for his flight, so I waited for Michael at the hotel before we headed to a friend’s house for the next nights.
Thank you for posting! I attended Anime Expo 2016 and hoped to see you, but didn't! Oh well. 10/10 on your cosplay!!
Thank you so much!! TT TT and oh no! I'll be at Anime Expo again this year — maybe we'll run into each other!!