After a pretty successful yet very tiring day 1, we still needed to try for autographs for Shindo L on day 2 and remind the staff of the promise for Trash Taste boiz and or get fresh tickets as insurance so we still had to go pretty early again.

In AX2018 I had never once been on the shuttle due to it’s perceived waste of time waiting for it and the fact that the hotel location was ‘relatively’ close to walking distance. But, after just using the shuttle once, I am thinking to myself “oh my god, how did I even live before this?” Yes, while most hotels are pretty close to walking distance, the amount of physical stamina you save by using the shuttle is a no brainier for lazy people such as ourselves, energy that could be much better spent at the con itself, either waiting in line or walking about. Revolutionary.

(Photo taken from Day 3 because I have no other outside shuttle photos for this story, note that the shuttle I took today was a lot smaller, for like disability/accessibility because I guess I am retarded.)

However, how I got to using the AX shuttle for the first time was brought upon by hardship and some mild psychological trauma… let us begin my morning tale of struggle… The morning started good. We had woken up at like 6am, ready to go early and line up for autographs.

On our way walking to the convention center, at about a third of the way there, I had made a terrible discovery: I had forgotten my keys at the hotel. Shit. Yes, while they don’t serve any function at all during our trip, it’s something that I always carry regardless as it has my house keys, car keys and etc. I decided to walk back to the hotel and get them, shit.

I told my sister to go on ahead and line up for the autographs again, we still had time as it was only like 6:30-7am-ish and they give out autograph tickets at 8am. When I got back to the hotel, I couldn’t find my keys where I thought they would be. FUCK.

I began to panic a bit and began looking everywhere, the beds, trash can, crawling on the ground, began opening up all of our luggage to see if I dropped and packed them in by mistake. After about 5-10 minutes I began to think “oh my god, if I lose my keys on this trip, this would be the worst trip ever…” and would nullify any gains or successes/fun that we had at AX. Maybe I left them at the okonomiyaki place? Maybe I dropped them in the uber? Or maybe I just lost them in some random place that I couldn’t even remember. Fuck.

I decided to sit down on my bed and send an update message to my sister about the situation. Just a few seconds after I sent her my ominous message, I felt something on my butt. I got up and I didn’t’ see anything. I ruffled the sheets again, and low and behold my fucking keys were there, on my bed, covered in like 2 thin layers of the shit mattress bedding. You little bitch. Fuck man, these bed sheets too fucking loose.

Having almost put myself into a mini-heart attack, I sighed with big relief and began re-packing all the shit I had taken out from our luggage. Once everything was good I wasn’t sure what method I was going to take to get back to the convention. My initial thought was that I should take a uber since at that point i’ve never used the shuttle before. I put in my request and then waited outside our hotel for it. Outside in the benches there were a few peeps waiting for the shuttle. I waited for like 5 minutes before asking them if this was the right place for the shuttle to come and the hotel guard said no, this was not the proper place for the shuttle, it was on the other main entrance side of the building. Wut.

I had no idea what the hell was going on but in that moment the AX shuttle turned the corner. Fuck. I went back into the uber app and cancelled the request, it cost me like $6 dollars to cancel what would otherwise be a $10 ride because the driver was only a few minutes away. Shit. Either way, some weird shit happened and I got on the AX shuttle to go back.

Looking out the window, with nice AC in the bus. “The world is moving, and so am I”. It feels so good to be mobile and not walking like a peasant.

This guy knows what’s up, using that extra seat for their bag. Or was this a women or other? I can’t tell with masks anymore sometimes.

After a relatively short ride, I am dropped off in the bus shuttle terminal which I had no idea even existed near the convention space, it was right beside the crypto.com arena, very close to the road/area where you get your Covid19 wristbands. Dayum.

Nice peeps walking along the road with us. I have no idea what this cosplay is but whenever I see white with that teal I think either FGO Okita or Hololive Iroha, probably wrong for both guesses.

After that little ordeal, I just want to wait in line again for autographs and chill. However, this is a very nice picture, frame this shit. At least I know that the shuttle works and it’s far better than walking it everyday.

While I was finding my way back to the autograph line I saw this mechanical wonder. Wow man, that’s some dedication to be going to a convention with a walker. I thought to myself, ‘damn, this could have been me if I didn’t find my keys”. Bless.*

Annd here we are, I found my sister in line, not too far off from where we originally started yesterday when we lined up for autograph tickets and told her about the wonders of the AX hotel shuttle.

I told her of my struggle and decided to commemorate my fail ordeal with a picture of these little bastards. The florida key-chain was originally my dads and we got it probably over 20 years ago, still looks good, sturdy as hell and thicc.

Anyways, now that that was over with, I can continue looking at the people in the line and this nice verizon digital billboard.

Immediately behind us the line grows, as well as that women with the pink transparent bag filled with charms and other merch.

Once again, we are not too bad from the autograph tents based on the front street balloon mascots. When we got closer we had another interesting conversation with a tall Asian dude who ended up behind us who was also here for the Trash Taste Boiz, specifically Sydnap, aka the Queen of Degeneracy/Gigguk’s wife. He was an interesting guy, probably around my age if not a bit older; a kind of person you’ll not normally think they like anime culture and stuff but then again you can never tell when in comes to a person’s interests. He actually talked quite a bit to my sister and some of the other people lining up for the Boiz cause they were here for the same thing; while I myself, was here for retribution for Shindo L.

Aww yea, I have a chance. After the bullshit of yesterday, where they created a separate line for ‘guests of honor’ today for some reason they decided to cut that shit out and the autograph line remained a single file line, regardless who you were lining up for. As a result of that I suppose and luck, I was able to snag a standby ticket for Shindo L, the kind of autograph ticket where you technically have a chance of getting an autograph if the guest wants to continue. It wasn’t a guaranteed ticket but at least I had something and some hope that Shindo L himself wasn’t an asshole and would actually do more autographs than what was required of him by AX. I was #13 in the standby order which actually matters for standby tickets so I felt my chances were pretty good. Good shit.

My sister got more than what she wanted, not only did the staff that made the promise to her was there again at the autograph booth, he remembered her and re-confirmed his promise. Despite this, he gave her another ticket today marked for today as an additional assurances, meaning technically she could get ANOTHER additional autograph from The Anime Man and Gigguk + Wife. Good shit.

After a successful morning filled with suspense and drama due to me forgetting my keys, we headed to line up to the main exhibit hall like everyone else.

Waiting in line, the line was also alot longer than on Friday, considering this was Saturday now and was a bit more hotter than the day before, nothing like the heat in 2018 however. I see this older white women with a questionable looking getup. It’s not exactly an ahego shirt, but it’s full color with images of the same busty women and mustached man in some form of explicit poses/faces + some boobs. For some reason this older women in this getup was more distracting and disturbing to me than any youth wearing an ahego shirt ever was.

Up close of some itasha bag, the wonderful clear bags that mainly girls wear to display their likes and husbando merch. This particular one I have no idea about tho.

Looking behind me, you get to see a wide range of people and ages lining up to get inside.

The main line was one giant kinda mass of moving people in one direction where whoever was in front or behind you could change. Notice the older women with the full color print getup is nowhere to be seen.

When you are waiting in line for the sun for what seems like an hour or so, it gets you thinking. Have I really seen as much as I can at AX? This was day 2 and my sister had technically spent effectively half the day yesterday attending panels and or lining up for them. She decided to give me her ticket to see the Kimetsu no Yaiba, Demon Slayers third anniversary panel because she wanted to explore more. Cool, looks like I had a panel I needed to go to now because this was a limited capacity event, one that I had failed to obtain initially because I wasn’t able to camp in the middle of the day. Noice, I had a new task/goal that I needed to accomplish in addition to getting more merch and Shindol autographs.

Once we got inside my sister and myself separated again to do our own shit as usual so my immediate goal for me this morning was to pick up some Azur Lane merch at the Yostar booth.

When I visited yesterday one of the booth people said that they were no longer taking new people for merch, after standing around for a few minutes I quickly understood that was a lie. Yes, technically they cut off the line off…until the queue is cleared, in which they then allow people to fill the allowed lineup again within areas on the ground marked with blue tape.

In theory this would be a good system as it allowed for a certain number of people to be immediately waiting in line to buy merch, but the problem arises in the way they handled people who were not in the blue queue. They did not allow any line to form outside of the blue line because apparently it was a fire hazard to line up near the wall, which unfortunately had all the fire exits to the building. The location of the Yostar booth was also less than ideal as it was near the corner and proved to be a major bottleneck for traffic flow as it was also extra crowded because it was right besides the equally if not more busy Genshin Impact booth, both China mobile games. Putting these guys besides each other was a terrible idea.

So instead of having a line created for the real line, the booth organizers kept on saying shit like ‘you are not in a line, please disperse, come back later, you are creating a fire hazard by waiting in this area’ which is the very opposite of what people did in fact. Because there was no real pre-line for merch or system, people just kinda idled and camped the area until the blue line merch queue fully cleared, perpetuating the very problem they were trying to solve.

The worse part however was what happened once the queue was fully cleared, the organizers all of a sudden after spewing bullshit about coming back later, just turned a full 180 in their messaging and go all like ‘ok, if your here for merch, please move into the blue line queue’. If you are familiar with what a zerg rush looks like, that’s more or less an accurate description of what you would see here until the blue line queue fills up in literally 5-6 seconds later. Crazy stupid bullshit and dangerous at that. Because of their pure zerg rush lack of system, it didn’t matter if you were waiting for 2 hours or 2 minutes in the ‘unofficial’ waiting area cause it was first come first serve.

I was fortunate enough to be paying attention and standing up to be able to react to when the queue was cleared and they allowed people to re-populate the merch line. Some people were sitting down and too slow to react and missed their chance, forcing them to make the shitty decision whether to try and wait for the next wave or give up/try again later today with the risk of their desired merch being sold out. Not cool man.

When you rush the blue lines, there is no real social distancing or space limits, it’s pretty much as long as one of your foot is on the blue tape, you are in line for merch. As you can suspect, this line was very dense with people. I didn’t psychically move from this spot for about a good 20 minutes.

Once the line kind of began to actually move and there was more space to stretch I took this photo. A lot of the people near the walls were waiting idling for the next wave, even though your not supposed to.

This is the front of the merch checkout and you had to tell the booth people what you wanted to buy. The checkout was pretty slow because apparently some of their merch was not in the system and had to be manually added into the payment order every time someone orders it, causing further time waste and repetition.

Looking back at the blue line peeps, only about 3-4 rows deep. Pathetic size. They could have made it a lot bigger but of course that probably conflicts with the fire hazard problems. What a shitshow.

Right now I’m in the last row before the checkout and they have a section for Arkknight cutouts and official cosplay people. Cool, but in a way they also added further to the congestion and traffic problems in the area. Cool art tho.

This Arkknights art is really quite good, I might have given it a try if I wasn’t already so occupied with Azurlane and FGO. A few minutes after this photo I was at the front to finally put in my order for the merch. Man, even then it was something of a slow process as like I mentioned earlier, alot of their items were not yet added into the checkout system yet, pain. Some of the items I wanted were also already sold out so yea, another thing that they were not good at communicating with, they should update their display of sold out goods sooner.

At last I was done with getting some Azur Lane Merch. Shit man. This had taken me, no shit basically the entire morning, it was almost 12pm by the time I left the main exhibit hall and I had no time to rest as the the Demon Slayers panel was at 1:00pm and I had to make my way there earlier to get in line for a decent spot for seats. Shit.

Lots of movement, people and cosplay but I couldn’t really stop and rest or take photos. I had to get in line and find the panel location, which was apparently in a place called ‘main events’.

To get to main events you have to go to the higher level and use the connecting overpass section to the other exhibit area, it was very crowded for a variety of reasons, people trying to get to the same event as I was, food, go to entertainment hall, etc.

It looks like luffy is taking a shit on this guys head.

After going with the flow I found myself in the right place, lining up outside to get into the demon slayers panel. Yay. The person in front of me had one of those clear bags again with charms. I’m not sure the cosplay character tho but at this point I’m just going to assume Genshin Impact.

Lots of people lining up to this thing, in the distance they had lots of food trucks and shit. Shake Ramen huh? Seems pretty interesting, didn’t have the chance to try though.

In this area right out the line up for main events hall AX had an official Beer Garden section where people could order food, beer and other drinks to chill. It was pretty cool thing to see although I’m not sure if it’s the most wise of choice of locations.

This one guy looking at his phone in front of the beer garden is just to base to not take a photo of. Add some nice blue sky and some mask-less randoms and you have a picture worth a thousand words.

Cause of how busy and congested it was it’s actually kind of hard to tell that I was in line for anything. Proof of existence I suppose.

After waiting for what seemed like alot longer than it should I was inside of the ‘main events’ hall. Pretty nice big and swanky with 4 giant screen projections.

A little view from my left in the dark.

A little right view from me with alot of cosplayers, especially Tanjiro and Rengoku as expected.

The lights dimmed a bit more and you can see everything a bit better, at least the screens. They said you can’t record or take photos during the session for obvious reasons so yea, unfortunately there will be no pictures of the actual panel taking place. Too bad.

The Demon Slayers panel itself was pretty entertaining as they had the japanese voice actor for Tanjiro, Natsuki Hanae physically in the house as a guest of honor. For the next hour or so they replayed key moments from all three arcs of the show and had Natsuki Hanae and one of the producers provide commentary on voicing this scene or tidbits about behind the scene production/how they work. There was also prerecorded videos of the rest of the cast and their thoughts on working on the series and their most memorable moments which was nice.

At the end they showed a trailer for the next season/story arc and that wrapped up the panel nicely. Seeing Demon Slayers on the big screens just reminded me how well produced and amazing the animation of this show really is, probably the best in all of anime currently for the past few years. The producer also commented that the entire studio and staff work extra hard on the show, treating every episode with movie level quality and effort, which explains a bit of why the show’s quality and production is so high. Cool shit.

After the lights turned on everyone made their was out of the main events and back into the afternoon sun and heat. Prior to the panel and leading up to it while I was waiting my sister was messaging me that she had brought to much shit and couldn’t continue walking about anymore, that she had to go back to the hotel to drop off her loot. She had visited only a handful of stores and one store that she brought from ended up giving her alot of additional free shit, but it was very bulky so yea, nice that she got free shit but now, she was immobile. On the way back she also wanted to go back to 85 Degrees bakery to get more buns but apparently they were closed for the rest of the long weekend so shit that was a waste of time and energy.

This day was just proving to be more filled with challenges and fails/problems than what we had originally thought. Sheittt.

I could be wrong but I am pretty sure that this is Choe/Kuro from FGO/Prisma Illya. Pretty nice cosplay, even though I can’t really tell since I am behind and in the process of moving.

These folks had brought an umbrella to the con, nice idea. Nice cosplay, even though I am unsure of what they actually are.

Making my way back into the main hall and trying to meet up again with my sister, she had just gotten back from the hotel and her long walk/fail side trip to the closed bakery. This banner is pretty nice looking and is apparently a manga from yen press.

Navigating the con with such large cosplay props can be quite a hassle and challenge. Outside of this large hammer I also saw a cosplay of the main character from soul eater, that girl with the large scythe holding her weapon vertically. It was quite a sight but unfortunately I forgot to take a photo, too busy mang.

Ah yes, looking from above down below, you can really get a sense of how busy it really was in the pre-hall area.

Being a Saturday, it’s prime time for cosplay and weekend visitors who just derp about, adding further to the congestion. I wouldn’t have it any other way honestly.

After a brief rest in the lower section of the Kentia Hall, I was reunited with my sister and we decided to check out Artist Alley, at least start looking at stuff since we had largely neglected it on the first day. Within the first row there was already some great artists that I brought some prints from. The image is documentation of one said artists I had brought from.

The artist mentioned before drew this FF7 Remake art, almost watercolor in style, very artistic and stylish. Damn, so good, how could I not buy?*

On day 2 it was definitely evident that the artist alley was more busy than day 1, especially since it was the afternoon by now.

Oh shit I remember this place, it was a place where people could kind of chill and have food/washrooms with tables. Lots of cosplayers were also trying to fix their shit as well.

Outside of the Travis Touchdown cosplay, to his left is a Hololive Korone cosplay, not bad. There is actually quite a few hololive cosplayers that I have seen throughout today but because of missions and crowds, have largely been unable to take photos of them properly which is just what happens at AX i guess. Priorities > cosplay photos, at least for me.

Pictured in the distance is what I like to call ‘the corner’ where back in 2018 I sat on the ground to rest but not directly to close to the door because if I remember correctly, there was water on the ground.

This mass of people is just the first row of Artist Alley, I believe the rows start at A to L, meaning there is about 12 more of these filled with artists and people browsing.

Oh shit, it’s our boy from Toronto, what we have called in previous years and conventions as ‘initial d’ man. Yep, he’s doing well alright that’s for sure*

Oh shit more initial d artworks, concept art at that. When I checked the booth for the ‘initial d man’ there was some other guy manning that table. But when I looked at the owner here, it was the ‘initial d man’ that I recognize manning this one. I actually said hi to him and said that I remember him from previous conventions in Toronto like AN and Kimikon, he actually said that he’s kind of in a group/collab group now with a few other artists that are friends and draw kinda related works. I was not sure if he himself created the works that he was responsible for selling but either way I brought one of the large prints, $50; shit was pretty expensive and in USD but it’s worth. Fuck.*

I have…seen many of these artists and artworks before in AN and at Fanexpo in Toronto in years past. Outside of initial d man and a few others, in particular this ‘Money’ Mob Psycho print, is familiar. Just goes to show that Toronto has lots of good artists that end up doing the convention circuit I guess.*

Midway through our brief browse of only the first 2 rows of AX artists alley, it was time for my sister to line up for her promised Trash Taste autograph session with the boiz. I looked around for another half an hour or so and brought a few more prints that are not photo documented here but yea, money was spent already. I do a better job of documenting artist alley in day 3 and 4 I think but for today’s samples of artist work is pretty slim unfortunately.*

Not long after wandering around myself I realize that my sister is holding my Shindol autograph ticket so I decide to wait around the autograph section for her to be done with the Trash Taste autograph boiz so I can recollect my ticket.

Unlike the mass of people packing the rows in artists alley, the autograph area is alot more open and sparse with traffic. The guy in orange on the bottom left is probably gonna die, no mask and a nasty hunch plus walking looking at phone? Formula for death.

Selfie to see how your boi is doing, or rather, to check if I am dying like yesterday night yet. Seems ok I guess. Very greasy tho forehead. Just before entering the autograph area for guest of honor.

Because in the delay of not having my ticket with me on hand, once my sister was done I got my ticket from her and entered the autograph section asking the con worker where should I go. He escorted me to the line for Shindo L, for the standby line. Both lines for priority and standby were already established but because I was for standby, they placed me directly in my proper order/spot #13.

The image is me standing in line for standby, on the opposite site of me is the priority line. The guy in focus looks like he was going to get a shikishi board signed, same for the guy in front of him. While this is a common sight, I think the vast majority of those in line, both priority and standby had copies of Shindo L’s degenerate/meme masterpiece, Metamorphosis; to get signed, myself included.

However, while the image seems to mean everything was in order, there is mini story behind this book at least for me. In the frantic panic in the morning to find my keys in the hotel room I ended up packing my copy of Metamorphosis back in my luggage, fuck. I originally wanted him to sign this book since the very beginning, in fact, I did not buy this book yesterday at Fakku as you might expect. I actually brought this shit online from the Beguiling as soon as I found out that Shindo L was going to be a guest at AX. Yes, that’s right, I had this book with me even before coming to LA, I had brought it in Toronto, had it transported with me across the continent for it to be signed by a God.

When I realized this shortly after obtaining the actual tickets this morning for Shindo L, I had kind of given up on that plan of having him sign this book that made such a long journey to get here. I had with me a number of shikishi boards with me and after so much struggle this morning just to get here and the keys thing, I was happy to get anything signed. But luckily, my sister had failed in mobility and went back to the hotel to drop off her shit, I told her to find the book and have it returned and hence, that’s exactly what happened.

In some failure can be found some success.

Still in it’s plastic cling wrap, it now successfully waits it’s mark of confirmation from it’s creator. Yas.

Waiting in line to get an autograph from Shindo L is an interesting experience. You would think that the vast majority of the autograph people would be dudes but surprisingly a good chunk of women were also in line too for both lines. In front of me #12 was a white girl cosplaying as Marin from dress up doll with her boyfriend as the dollmaker boy from that show. He did not know what the hell his girlfriend was lining up for, nor the contents/story of Metamorphosis, the book she was going to have signed. The surrounding peeps that overheard this exchange had a collective ‘oh boy’ kind of reaction; even myself said to him, to get the full effect/impact you have to read from start to finish, can’t skip shit lol.

Behind me. #14 was actually an Asian women by herself and it certainly didn’t seem like she was here on behalf of anybody else as she knew quite well the story and plot of Metamorphosis already it seemed. Just ahead of the the Marin girl was #11, who was a fairly large Asian dude that was evidently a big hololive Yukihana Lamy fan as indicated by his full graphic color print shirt of her; he had also brought a copy of Metamorphosis with him to sign, except the original Japanese version. Wow. I asked him where did he get it and he said he had actually brought it years ago when he visited japan. Cool, still in shrink wrap too.

I casually asked the Lamy fan if he thinks we have a chance of getting autographs, considering we were not priority tickets after all and he confidently responded to me saying that yes, we probably will; he had done his research online and on discord and apparently on Friday Shindo L was a cool guy and signed for everyone that had autograph tickets for him, regardless of type. To my internal relief things were looking good; Shindo L, was not a bitch, he was a cool guy, at least he appreciated the people coming out to see him. I am glad.

It didn’t take very long for him to get through the priority tickets and begin the standby ones. Yas and as seen heere, I was fully successful in my mission of getting Shindo L to sign my copy of Metamorphosis. I walked up to him, presented him my book, told him he was a God and he thanked me. Gave my phone to one of the con helpers and took this gangster commemoration photo. It should be noted that while Shindo L is a Japanese ero-manga author currently based in Tokyo, he was originally born and raised in New York for a good part of this young adult life before later moving back to Japan, lest to say; his English proficiency level is native. What a God.

Success. Autograph get. Closer look at them nice pen lines and inner dusk jacket portrait art.

I appreciate that we weren’t forced to have the autograph addressed to our name, which would make it take alot longer for him to write. The AX 2022 date is good to for records and history.

The book leveled up. It met it’s creator. It’s like glowing now. Godly.

After having today’s mission be a complete success despite the unforeseen hardships and hurdles, the day was more or less basically done. I think the time now was about 4:30pm or near 5pm so we decided to head up upstairs to the main exhibit hall to explore again.

Back inside the main hall they had big screens in the central pathway with trailers of anime, one piece and other shit. This particular time they were showing promotional video and artwork for the new RWBY anime, the dream project of western fake 3d anime turned into real anime finally came true. Huke of black rock shooter/stein’s gate/hololive kiara fame is also in charge for the new character designs, so they look pretty good.

The new RWBY anime looks nice, Ruby being voiced by Saori Hayami is great, I like her hype voice. She also voices Shimakaze in Azurlane so I can’t but help remind me of her when I hear her as Ruby.

I’m not familiar in what other works Yoko Hikasa has done but I’m sure I’ve heard her in other roles before. Weiss looks nice too.

Oh shit, the big gundam suit guy I saw on day 1 decided to give it a go again today this time ready for photos! I can’t say for sure what gundam this was but my guess it’s that it’s from the UC timeline since the design is more grounded? Upon looking at the numbers and code, this is apparently Gundam BH04 aka Gundam Thunderbolt, a relatively recent OVA that come out a couple of years ago from UC Amuro’s world. Cool, needs more weapons.

I believe this is Yang from RWBY with some insanity women shoes on the left. Wut are with those shoes?

A little awkward but I suppose this is still allowed? Pet photos and accessories I suppose?

Some itasha car with designs to match the mecha in this anime in the background, seems oldschool style so I am not sure. I believe this is a Toyota Supra?

Nearing the end of the day with the crowds going down I can actually see the carpet again. Noice.

I made my way further into the main exhibit hall and into the smaller booths and they had this OfflineTV x McDonalds collab booth. I don’t really watch these guys but I know a few of the main ones. The anime rendition of them is pretty good, not that I can remembr what their faces are except for maybe Pokimane.

Despite how kinda weird this feels to be having a collab with mcdonalds it strangely works lol. The merch and shirts were actually half decent.

Not to far away I see a fairly large booth selling a variety of dakimakura and textile goods.

While the booth itself seems kind of disorganized and messy with all the boxes below, I suppose that’s a non issue with nice covers on display like this.

They had quite a big selection of prints to choose from and were obviously targeting RWBY, Arkknights and Genshin Impact, since they have a big presence this AX.

Hmmm…interestingly enough I think alot of their prints and artworks are not authorized/did not get permission from. In the photo here I recognize that these are works by AkiZero, a fairly well known illustrator that also does pro works for other mobile games and such. I doubt that they got her permission to print these or from the IP themselves, namely genshin.

All of the art is very good from this store and is quite eye catching, but now that I realize upon commenting on these photos weeks later, I feel a bit sad because I’m sure most of these merch are just straight up bootleg unauthorized items, with no consent or permission from the original artists themselves. They raking in money off stolen artworks.

The saddest thing about this is that AkiZero herself was at AX selling prints in artists alley in person. I wonder how it would feel if you decided to take a stroll into the main industry exhibit hall and you see some stores selling some shit with your art on it. You would probably be furious and sad but you can’t do anything about it…

Moving on to other things, I actually discovered that there was a booth for Hyperdimensioal Neptune that I had no idea about. Cool.

Upon closer inspection, this booth was for FrontierWorks, which from my understanding have only the publishing rights to the Hyperdimensional Neptune Anime OVAs, not the games, as that would be CompileHeart/IdeaFactory. Hmm, interesting I suppose.

Swinging back to that pillow textile booth, they also have the newest big thing in anime goods, soft blankets. They are indeed pretty soft. Once again, that nice AkiZero genshin artwork is featured prominently here, unauthorized.

Limited Run games also had a booth here. I don’t believe I have ever brought anything from them but their entire business model is to make physical versions of video games that are usually only released digitally and or make new retro classic reprints of old ass console games. It’s the same premise as why vinyl and cassettes are all the rage, people want to collect stuff.

Even though it’s the end of the second day, this FrontierWorks booth seems strangely sparse despite the heavy Neptune banners and walls.

Being FrontierWorks, I guess that explains why their merch selection was only limited to art and assets related to the OVAS and none of the games. Being not CompileHeart/IdeaFactory, it just hits differently I suppose, just not the same. It also doesn’t help that their full graphic shirts were selling at $100 each, which is pretty absurd in my opinion, not really surprised with those prices that nothing here was sold out. Even I didn’t buy anything from them. Sadge.

Gay vampires huh? I suppose that one women cardboard cutout stand is out of place.

I believe this booth was dedicated to Starrail, a kind of spin off rpg game based on Honkai Impact, the first successful game made by the creators of Genshin Impact. I had no idea what was going on and it seemed a bit strange to me that they had two completely separate booths for different games despite being the same company. Truly china mobile games presence is strong at AX.

It was unclear to me whether you could buy merch from this place or it was just a display/stage for announcements events. Probably lean on the ladder.

Kodansha both really trying to just showcase their IP and had some tokyo revengers clothes on display. Cool but a waste of space.

Decided to pay a visit back to the Yostar Azurlane booth and see if the line was still there and what’s up. Noice Belfast and Taihou official cosplayers. I guess each day they change costumes and or have different cosplayers as different characters/boats so to keep things fresh and interesting. At least they chose the appropriate matching colored masks for their cosplay.

Oh noice, Z23, or Nimi cutout board, my ‘starter pokemon’ boat in her oath/wedding dress skin. Noice. Hmm, come to think of it, I think they change the cutout each day, maybe the auction it off or sell to the highest bidder, that would make sense I think.

A here is the booth for Vshojo, another vtuber company that is based in LA that is trying it’s best to get itself out there, primarily English only that stream alot on Twitch. They are solidly #3 or #4 in terms of the market popularity in general for Vtubers with Cover/Hololive being by far the most popular and successful company in the industry right now. Vshojo also has alot of connections with the Trash Taste Boys so I guess it makes sense that their presence at AX would be notable, they had large panels and other industry collabs with giants like GSC to release nendoroids and other figure goods of their talents like Nyanners, Ironmouse etc.

I didn’t know it at the time but on this day, or perhaps it was the day before, Kson, the former Hololive Vtuber known as Kiryu Coco formally was announced to join Vshojo and hence opening a new Japan branch of Vshojo in Japan. I guess they added Kson’s cardboard cutout as soon as they announced it. Kson was also physically here in person at AX as well to announce her joining Vshojo and was walking around the area, although at this time I don’t think she was here. Too bad.

Nearing 6pm the main hall was closing up so we decided to make our way to the shuttle bus by going through the secondary building that housed the Entertainment hall and the Petree/Main Events entrances. At this point in time, we still didn’t go into the Entertainment Hall, maybe tomorrow.*

Heading outside near one of the exits is this nice collabration of Miku with Pocari Sweat. They actually had shirts and collab stuff to buy outside of the actual drinks but they said that they were closed already so too bad. I might have brought a shirt from them cause it’s cool.

Truly Beyond Refreshment.

Nice cutout of pocari sweat blue miku. I like how the guys in the back are just trying to load up and pack shit up for the days, literally just liquid.

Walking out of the immediate convention space towards the shuttle bus waiting area. Man, these mexican hotdog guys really are everywhere.

Hell yea boi, living the life of luxury. Shuttle all da way after a long day of hardship and potential ruin which was thankfully adverted.

Living the life, at the back of the bus.

Proof of existence, with my sister showing off her new AX hat. Some random honestly behind us in shades probably doing the same with no mask. Pathetic.

Bait but still good cat ears headphones, keep on going. Your matching pink hair does it wonders as well. I can only assume this is Vshojo’s Nyanners cosplay. I think.

Oh noe. Oh shit. The shuttle bus stops at a variety of hotels along the way, some people get off some people get on. At the end of the day you would think most people would get off. Nope, not these furries. There was about like 3 or 4 of them in total. Ok sure, whatever floats your boat I guess.

Back in the hotel we were very tired. So tired in fact that we didn’t even really want to venture outside to eat dinner. So we had a revelation. Why don’t we do Uber Eats at the hotel. It’s something that never really occurred to us before but since we were using uber to go to little tokyo to eat food, might as well just have some food delivered to us directly instead. The photo is a corn snack that I brought yesterday that would help supplement whatever food that we were going to order from Uber Eats. In retrospect, snacking on some of these and a few other snacks we had before we ordered uber would prove to be not a very wise decision.

After some not very long deliberation, we decided to try out Shake Shack. Yes, I know that LA and California is the land known for In-and-Out but I have never tried Shake Shack so I figured, why not, it was nearby so the delivery was qoing to be fast since the closest In-and-Out was like 30 minutes away. With that in mind, we pressed the order button on the Uber Eats app and waited.

After a few minutes I got a notification saying that someone was going to pick up our Shake Shack order, a man known as Joseph. I looked at his profile and it said that he was on a bike, ok sure cool, I guess this is something that only LA can do since biking for Uber in Toronto would be ridiculous and unfeasible due to weather/distances. After a few more minutes I got the ping to go to the door and wait for Joseph. Cool.

When we went down we sat at the hotel entrance benches for a few minutes. I was looking for someone in a bike roll up. I opened up the app and saw his slow progression towards our hotel, he was definitely on a bike but for some reason as soon as he got near the hotel his progress stopped. Before I knew it I hear some guy behind us calling out “Shake Shack? Shake Shack for Matt?” I sat up and turned around, there was nobody there, I didn’t know who was saying this. I walked a bit more back and looked closer towards the ground; there was a man in one of those Paralympic wheelchairs meant for speed racing…

Our Uber Eats delivery guy; Joseph (not pictured), was disabled and couldn’t use his legs. Wow. I suppose one of the only jobs that he wanted to do was be a Uber delivery guy on a bike, a speed wheelchair bike using only his swole arms to power the bike. Damn. I said thank you and he said enjoy with a huge smile/grin and she sped off in the other direction. Wow.

I tipped that bitch more because damn. After seeing that effort for this one paper bag, how could you not tip that man more.

After an extremely memorable Uber Eats delivery experience, we went back up to our room and in wonder of the disabled deliver man, opened up our eats. We had ordered a ShackBurger, SmokeShack Burger, Cheese Fries and a cookies and cream shake. Nice packaging.

My sister’s order, the ShackBurger in all it’s glory, the base classic with lettuce, onion tomato and cheese with ShackSauce.

My order, the Smoke Shack Burger, a cheeseburger topped with applewood smoked bacon, chopped cherry peppers and ShackSauce.

And last but not least the cheese fries and the shake shared for good measure.

After an initial bite or two, I came to the conclusion that this was a very delicious burger. Really delicious in fact, shit it’s a pretty damn good burger. The patty is tender and thin but at the same time very crisy and has good caramelized edges and char, great smoke/charcoal flavor and great bun/toppings. Shit, I don’t wanna say it but this burger I think was better than the burger that I had from In-And-Out all those years ago.

Shit, New York got some Burger Game. Fuck. Although in terms of price, this Shake Shack burger is considerably more expensive than In-An-Out I think but I can’t confirm. The fries were simple but pretty good with the cheese and match well with the burgers, my sister shared the same sentiment, this burger and fries were pretty damn good. The milkshake I only had a sip but from what I can tell, there was definitely icecream in this shit and it was pretty thick so I guess that’s good.

Damn, that was a good burger.

However, despite it’s high cost and amazing method of delivery to us, we were still hungry. We hadn’t eaten anything for the entire day, no asian buns, no food for lunch so we could still eat more, or rather order more food.

Once again, after some mild consideration, we decided to order some Mexican food. Being in LA, with it’s high Mexican population, it was only natural that we try some place that had high rating and reviews. We settled on ordering from a placed called Mexicali Taco Co. that had both criteria met.

The delivery guy this time wasn’t as interesting as Joseph, he went by the name of Clayton and based on this history in the app profile, mainly did Uber rides and did food delivery as a backup. After a short wait he came in some white Hyundai. He didn’t get out of his car, I had to walk to his car on the curb and he handed me the food through the window. -1 tip, not disabled like Joseph.

Going back upstairs we opened up our orders and the nice packaging. Both came with tortilla chips, you know, leftover tortilla chips but deep fried. Cool.

Wow. We ordered two different orders, each order comes with 2 tacos each, this one is the Baja Style Fish Tacos. Looks very tasty and big. We were not expecting the portion size to be this big. We also ordered something called a Cachetada cause why not. Oh no, this looks like a full meal onto itself.

The second set of tacos we ordered was the Mexicali Macho Taco with the choice of meat, here I chose Pollo Asada. I can’t remeber what kind of meat this was or what it meant but I think it was chicken, I think. Once again, very big portion and fully loaded with double wrapped corn torilias, just like the Baja fish tacos.

After some mild distribution of types, my sister and myself each had 1 kind of taco each and man, they were pretty delcious and extremely filling at that too. The fish was crispy and the toppings were fresh and matched perfectly. The chicken was also equally delcious, simple and traditional but very flavourful, good shit as well.

Thinking back now, maybe it was a mistake to order more food because we were struggling to finish our tacos, let alone even try to eat the chips and the Cachetada that we didnt’ even open up you. Maybe it was also a mistake to eat some snacks before ordering shake shack, maybe we could have eaten everything including the chips if we didn’t do that.

Lest to say, my sister couldn’t finish all of her two tacos, leaving one of them half eaten. I finished my 2 tacos however but I was already at my limit, I didn’t eat any of the chips either but I had to deal with the Cachetada still. Shit.

It was all up to me.

I opened up the Cachetada and I felt sad all of a sudden. It looked and smelled wonderful. I had chosen for this little thing, Al Pastor meat, basially giant meat that rotates on a spit, like a gyro, a popular style of cooking taco meat in mexico. I didn’t know if I could finish this but I took a few bites and I realized this was the most tastest meat from this place today. Shit. I should have had the Al Pastor meat for the main Taco, it was filled with savory, smoky, chargoal grilled flavor goodness. I ate about half of the thing before I couldn’t take it anymore and had to tap out.

Damn. I am sad that I couldn’t finish this and my sister was fully incapaticied with no help from her, she was done long ago, unable to be agile/mobile for the next few minutes/hours.

As for myself, I rolled into my bed and had to take a rest to, before we knew it it was almost 12am and soon time go to bed. We had originally wanted to have early night but after this food delivery hotel adventure, basically ended up the same way had went to a restarunt anyways. Ahwell.

After what seemed like an extremely long day, we both had successfully completed all of our main missions for AX by day 2. I got my Azur Lane merch, I got Shindo L to autograph my copy of Metamorphosis, I saw the Demon Slayers panel; my sister got all of the Trash Taste Boys autograph + wife, she brought alot of big merch and got to explore the exhibit hall more. Good shit.

Day 2 truly was an eventful and scuffed day with many missteps, discoveries, potential fails but ultimately all worked out at the end of the day which is actually kinda miraculous really. From this point on in our convention journey, it’s pure bonus net gain for experiences, it also marks the decision by myself to fully commit to using my phone as the primary photo taking device and abandoning my G15 camera, which ultimately means that for day 3 and 4 posts, the amount of photos will be more than double in volume, even after editing and purging and will hence also be alot longer as they are the days where I document most of the artist alley in full and exhibit hall.

This is going to take a while, but I’ll get it done eventually.

The seeds of volition bring forth a challenger.

AX2022 Day 2 End.

To be continued…