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Off the Beaten Path

7/04/06

Okay, I have no excuses, I suck. My columns have not been on time or even finished in a few weeks. That all has to end this week, my esteemed editor has yet to tell me anything, however I believe soon enough he will become irate, probably when the poker tables are kicking his ass. With this in mind, I will strive to have a weekly column, available each and every Monday. Wish me luck.

This week's column is about the Anime Expo, if you want a full re-cap complete with all of the pertinent info about your favorite Manga or Anime, read Chanmary's column. I also have pictures, lots of pictures. Onto the Expo, and as always…enjoy.

Event- Anime Expo

The Basics-

Anime Expo 06', my first reaction "Where did all these f23king lines come from?" We arrived mid morning, were herded into a parking nightmare, which took 40 minutes just to get into the parking area, then we were herded into the Pre-Registration line. If your confused about this line, it's the line where those of us with the foresight to purchase our tickets online and beat the mad rush at the door had to go to check in, and receive our badge holders. We where in this line for 2 hours, the line to buy tickets and enter was faster. Go figure. I will be writing a complaint letter to the Anime Expo organizers every day until next year's event, yes, 365 complaint letters, hopefully they get the idea and make some much needed changes.

We finally entered after 3 plus hours of waiting, the convention was great, filled with all of the big players in Anime and Manga, many of the hottest titles where on display as well as many new titles they plan on pushing this year. The Konami booth had the new Metal Gear Solid, which looks AWESOME, and I'm not much of a video game player. Of course there were many, many, many vendors available for your buying consumption, I have to say, most were WAY overpriced, a few were very reasonable, and if you took the time to look, some good deals were there to be had, I myself purchased a VF-1S Roy Focker Special model for $15.00, quite a find. Many hard to find items and some truly incredible promotional materials were on display everywhere. I had a hard time not spending all of my money on Trigun, Death Note, Initial D models, Robotech stuff, not to mention the Gundam models.

Next door at the Hilton, they had 4 viewing rooms available, showing different anime all day, the highlight was the AMV show (Anime Music Video) showcasing the talents of a number of people. If you're not familiar with it, it's where people take different anime's and add music to them as if they were a music video on MTV. Some are great, some aren't. You have to see this to really benefit from the whole experience. All throughout the day they had panels and discussions with the various artists, writers and heads of companies; I'm told some of these were very good but they sounded boring to me and my sister, so we opted to eat instead.

Lastly, how could I forget the Cosplayers (refer to the pictures section) who were all over the place, in full costumes portraying your every wish in the Anime/Manga world. I myself fell in love several times throughout the day. Ohh the good times. We finished up our excursion and preceded to trek home, the line leave was only 15 minutes, much better than the one to get there.

The Verdict-

All in all a good convention, the Cosplayers in attendance put on one hell of a show, going all out with their costumes, the only complaint being the lines, the lines and the f23king lines. I say go next year, arrive early and be ready to wait in line.

See some of Anthony's pictures at the Anime Expo Gallery