Greetings and Salutations!
Just last week, I had the luxury of being able to travel to Los Angeles, California, for Anime Expo 2014, and needless to say, it was quite fantastic! At the beginning of our trip, there was a bit of a hiccup in terms of where we were going to stay at with our hotel situation, but it was quickly resolved, and we were finally able to start up our vacation!
From the beginning, there were about 11 of us travelling together, driving from Tempe to Los Angeles. There weren't many sights to see along the way, but once we hit the city, that's when everything started to come together. We arrived on Day 0 of the convention, which allowed us to explore the area a bit, and get some bearing on where the Convention Center actually was, and just to think, it was right behind our hotel the whole time! We expected a long walk however it was literally two blocks away, which took us maybe 5-10 minutes out the door to reach, so we have that going for us!
The convention center itself is huge. It spanned across the west and north buildings, leading into the many panel rooms and the exhibition hall (which I was all about), and we waited in line of Day 1 to receive our badges, and luckily it only took like an hour and a half.
My Anime Expo Badge!
Day 1 was essentially moving around the Exhibition Hall and seeing everything the area had to offer, and seeing all the cool cosplays that people would be coming up with while there. There's a lot to behold in the things people dress up as, ranging from Anime Characters, popular Video Game Icons, or maybe something just in Pop Culture itself. I really just stayed in the Exhibition Hall all day, spending a lot of my time in Artist Alley to see all of the amazing artists and works, which was really awesome.
Days 2 & 3 were big for us as a group, because we had planned to do a group cosplay, which was definitely a big hit! We were even featured on Buzzfeed for (apologies about the name, and it is SFW (Safe for Work) I promise!!!),
The 21 Most Important Shirtless Men At Anime Expo
We are #3 on the list, with our group cosplay behind the anime Kill La Kill which is definitely pretty cool to say the least. We were going with the "Nudist Beach" variant (although we are actually not nude, it's just an organization within the show!!!), and we were constantly being stopped to be taken pictures of. It was pretty awesome to get so much attention! It would result in almost 20 minute long photo shoots at a time, and since there were Kill La Kill panels in the span of Anime Expo, along with the main voice actors and creators, almost everyone recognized us on the spot.
Me with a Prinny from the Video Game: Disgaea
Anime Expo also included more things than just anime as well too, as Riot Games, creators of League of Legends, also made an appearance, of which, day 1 me and my friend John met the #1 team of the League Championship Series "Dignitas" and also I met Śký, who is a streamer on Twitch and Youtube Sensation who was doing some interviews and such with Riot!
Me and John met Team Dignitas Outside!!1!1 Totally blew their cover!
Totally taken with a potato, but it's Sky!
Overall, it was a time to be able to sit back and relax, and by that I mean walk around until my feet kill me and take pictures of lots of people and different events! But it's definitely something I want to do again. The experience was amazing, and the convention brought a lot of really cool people together, enforcing the idea of how amazing the community is, and we all get to share in our art.
I would post more shots of the different arts and cosplayers I took at the convention center, but even my Facebook album for Anime Expo is at 96 pictures, and my friends are all collaborating into another album at like 145 pictures. So it's a little much for a blog post. But if you really want to see the different pictures I took, I made my AX2014 album public and you can view it here. There were so many great people, and events like this happen yearly, so maybe I'll see you guys at AX2015!
Until next time,
Nicholas "TAE"
