アニメ Republic

Well I have managed to avoid posting anything for over two months now, so I figured it was about time I updated the site. With that in mind it is a good time to do a quick round up of the major summer cons for this year.

The first of which was Anime Expo back in July. When I was not helping out at the Anime Los Angeles table in the dealers room or hanging at the evening Anime Los Angeles party suite I was either waiting in line for something (though the only really long line time wise for me was the AMV contest) or trying to avoid buying something. I did manage to dodge the bullet and escaped the dealer’s hall with only a couple of small purchases.

Anime Los Angeles had a pretty big presence at AX this year. My only regret is not staying up at one of the hotels thus having to bail out early each night. There was the familiar white ‘ALA’ tent over the table in the dealer’s hall where we sold badge ribbons to help cover the cost of the ribbons given away for free at ALA. Chaz also put on a really sweet room party each night in which people were invited to hang out and have dinner. This was real hot cooked food, not your ‘chips-in-a-bowl’ type of thing. We had a little adventure on Saturday night (I think) when Chaz asked myself and Steve to go on a supply run. Not knowing the area very well did not help as we darted around downtown LA in Chaz’s Scion (aka: the Saltine). While we didn’t get exactly what we were looking for, at least we didn’t hit anyone.

I think if we have the same situation next year in regards to Anime Los Angeles’s presence at the con, I will try and get a room up there for the main nights of the con. That way I can hang out longer and maybe have a whole conversation with Rich (who was admittedly working the con, so timing is something of an issue). Otherwise it was actually a pretty good con for me. The LA convention center is certainly growing on me as a new home for AX. And you know they are booked there through at least 2012 even though they like to make this big “announcement” at the end of each year.  Yeah, like they are signing contracts for the LA convention center for the following year that same weekend! Right.

A couple weeks later we went down to San Diego for Comic Con. Too many people, WAY too many people. We drove down and back each day as hotel rooms, while available, were $350/night and up. Sure, they are nice hotels, but I’m not spending that amount for a con hotel 1 ½ hours from our front door. Did I mention there were too many people? Yeah, well I only managed the dealer’s hall one day. Though I did actually get some cool (and oddly cheap; legit, I checked) Ikki Tousen figures from the UART table so that was cool.

Not sure what our plans will be for next year. We keep saying this is our last year, this is really our last year, this time we really mean it, etc. It will be a challenge though if there is no big draw (this year it was the big LOST panel mainly, though the True Blood panel was cool too). We’ll have to see what happens next year.

Last weekend was the Anime Los Angeles picnic at Yorba Regional Park which pulled in close to 100 people by the end of the day. The weather was great and so was all the food people brought. I got to talk with a couple people who offered to help out in this year’s anime video room as well so that was cool.

We now steam forward into the fall/winter season. I may head up to PMX depending on time and what kind of presence ALA will have there. Definitely will be at LosCon in November as we are hoping to do a ‘LOST’ themed room party and it looks like I will be helping in some fashion with either or both the anime video programming and anime panels for that con.  Then we power on ahead to January for ALA 6!

More as I get creative.

Enjoy!!