Anime Expo - Day 2

It started off with us arriving at the con around 10:30 am or so and...well, I have no idea what Telly and G did at that point. We split up and I got in line to get into the exhibit hall. Which was...about a half mile long. The difference is that this line was constantly moving so it went pretty quickly.

The hall itself is amazing. I've watched it get bigger and bigger each year, and this year's is the biggest by far. Bandai and Copic are right up front, with Geneon and ADV not too far behind them. Geneon is pimping it's Ultimate Hellsing, ADV has some anime set in Russia with a French title that they're promoting heavily, and Bandai is it's own normal jugernaut. Funimation has a large booth, but strangely it's pretty much off to the side and out of the way - very strange for such a large company.

The exhibit hall is absolutely packed with people...so much so that it's not convenient at all to browse people's wares. I push through the masses though, going isle by isle (there's about 20 isles) and systematically check it out. Sort of. I had to stop for an occasional picture or backtrack to check out a few new items. There are basically four types of booths there - large producers, anime/manga sales, gundam/toy sales, and culture sales (clothes, weapons, music, etc). The quantity of booth babes at this convention is significantly reduced over previous years, as is the quality. Eh. Oh well.

Sgt. Frog is being sold all over the place, as is Mario stuff. Other big sellers are Final Fantasy, Deathnote, Naruto, and Bleach. DragonBall Z isn't nearly as well merchandised this year as in past years (thankfully). .hack//Roots is pretty well cosplayed this day and .hack//G.U. looks pretty damn cool. Player Killers FTW!!!

It took me about three hours to work through only three quarters of the exhibit hall before I got a call from Telly saying we were all meeting up for grub at the California Pizza Kitchen. There were fifteen of us, including Draxie, Chong, Hom, Tessa, RK, Vodon, Amy, G, Ganon, Myself, and some other folks that we really didn't know but were friends of Vodon. And Telly paid for us all!!!! /slur /slur /omg /slur /slur

I went back to finish the exhibit hall and bought all four of the Final Fantasy Master Weapon works statues that just came out this week; Telly and the rest of the crew did...I have no idea. After I was done in the hall and it closed we met up to watch a Ramen eating contest, proceeded to grub at Rock Bottom, had some drinks, headed back to the convention hall to discuss more Deathnote philosophy and theory (damn those shinigami!!!), and then headed back to the room.

Before we got to the room, though, we tried to catch a free shuttle back to our hotel. We couldn't because it was too full and was the last shuttle of the evening, but the last guy on the bus had the door shut on his arm and the driver just took off like that, arm stuck outside, waving away. It looked like he was giving turn signals with his hand. About ten seconds later she finally realized what happend and let him get his arm inside.

We laughed. A LOT!

K, that's all for now. On to day 3!!!