After a very busy and tiring first couple of days at AX, we had successfully completed are prime directives and goals; and with that said, we could finally leisurely shop/explore AX casually without any further expectations, everything from this point on be it seeing cool cosplay, merch, art or experiences is a pure bonus which is great. We didn’t get up as early as we did previously, considering we didn’t need to line up for autographs which is great and since this is the first day of where I commit to full phone photos, expect a lot more pictures and maybe less narrative descriptions, cause damn, there is a lot of photos, especially in artists alley but anyways let’s see how Day 3 at AX went.
Upon heading out on the third day of AX we noticed one of our hotel neighbors had also ordered some food. Whether this was breakfast or last night’s meal forgotten about we will never know.
Unlike yesterday, where I waited at the wrong place for the AX shuttle, we actually followed some peeps to the right place this morning. Seeing other people waiting for the shuttle was nice.
This ‘main’ entrance to the hotel is on the main road of figuroa street but it’s not actually where the lobby and main checkin/elevators are located. The fact that this is not the main lobby is kind of a point of where it threw us off where the AX shuttle pickup was really located.
Ah yes, the shuttle arrives. The correct big bus shuttle. Previously some small ass shuttle came to pick me up yesterday, I think it was meant for disability or accessibility people but whatever. I am feeling normal today I suppose.
I can’t remember the time but it was definitely not as early as we tried to go on day 1 and 2. I think it might have been like 8:30 or 9? Either way the shuttle was pretty packed with people already.
Yo is that a maid with a cake? Might be real. Or Not.
Upon landing at the shuttle area we begin to walk to the main entrance. They have lots of areas marked off as designated cosplay meet up places. I don’t know if people actually showed up to these since I was inside for the majority of the con but I guess they do.
Generally speaking day 3 is a chiller day obviously for most as the main rush for merch and autographs/events has subsided, although that is not to say that the volume of people have decreased much.
Waiting in line to get in, this guy has a pretty novel shirt, sushi lover indeed. Cool.
It’s great to see that even being the last full day of AX people still continue to cosplay. It helps that the weather hasn’t been too hot either.
Standing right beside us/behind us in line are these two who cosplayed as the blonde sisters from Dr. Stone. Pretty good shit and a fairly hipster choice at that. Noice.
We actually got inside of the main hall even before the main exhibit hall opened, something which hasn’t happened until today so we were able to linger and view the cosplayers around the immediate area. This is a pretty good Dark Magician Girl and Mechanic Girl from FF15, bro fantasy.
Shit serious? Tower of Simp Korean propaganda at my AX? I kinda can’t believe someone would cosplay as this but I suppose there are alot of Koreans around, so yea, but still. Sheeittt.
Arknights is really big indeed. So big in fact that I think they should have had a separate booth, not just sharing the same one at yostar with Azur lane.
That banana boy must be feeling hot.
The funniest part of this hololive banner now that I look at it is that’s actually for Weiss Schwartz, bushiroad. Damn, card game got money I guess.
It seems like yesterday where I was here and it was the FGO first anniversary event. It’s already at 5th anniversary now. Damn, fate truly is a franchise that can go on forever. This guy in front of me on the right can’t believe it either.
Proof of existence, living the convention life in covid times.
For once I didn’t have to immediately line up for something and decided to explore the booths further back in the main exhibt hall. My sister went off to do her own shit and I saw this nice display and plush thing. I still don’t know what this is but it’s OK, it looks cool.
Just like in other conventions there are a slew of artists booths in the main exhibit hall, probably because they couldn’t have a spot in artist alley or wanted a much bigger place to sell. This particular one has a nice cosplay girl helper/artist as well from Genshin impact I believe.
The art was really quite unique and well done. Very pretty booth to.
Shit, didn’t expect to buy art now but after seeing these gold foil hololive Gura and Ina art, I couldn’t resist. It was just so well produced, had to buy. Good shit. Apparently I was the last one for the Ina art, because as soon as I purchased a copy, they put up a sold out sticky note as seen above. Wow.
Another big sellers both with pillows and other fabric goods. Noice.
Interestingly enough there is alot less traffic compared to Friday and Saturday. You would never guess that this photo is within 30 or so minutes from the hall opening.
Swinging around the hololive booth reveals that alot more merch has been marked off as sold out. Curiously the buttons and the Ritsu sticker have sold out, a bit odd in my opinion but who knows.
A nearby booth had a big blow up balloon thing to some store or vtuber i think? I went in and I am still not entirely sure what merch or booth this was for.
The side of the booth I believe, notice how everything in their offerings of merch is still available. I guess they overestimated their popularity or people willing to buy their merch. This guy walking by on the other hand, seems pretty happy.
In a convention all about anime and merch, this seller seems a bit out of place but when you think about it, completely makes sense. They are selling portfolio books, and what can be described as poster and print sized plastic card sleeves, to hold your art and shit. Wow. Instead of card protectors, they are selling art print protectors. Wow. Good shit I actually ended up buying a couple later on.
Some obscure booth trying to promote some niche weird bullshit about a turtle man made with a ribs body or whatever. Yea it was weird, whatever.
Can’t remember this seller but they had nice anime waifus and cars together a formula that I like. Notice the red 86 and yellow RX7, they know what’s up. Nice racing miku art too.
Passing by the Volks booth, they had dollfie samples using Saber/Jeanne and Nier Automatas 2B and 9S dolls. Noice.
Once again another big artist booth or maybe bootleggers selling alot of different stuff and fabric art and prints. I don’t give a shit if they look me in the eye, I’m still going to take a photo. Remember, I’m in the main exhibit hall, not artist alley right now.
They had the official publisher of Kaiji and Akagi here, with a single lone man manning the booth. Pretty slow business it seems. Zawa Zawa.
They also had sellers like this which is a little odd in my opinion but sure, do whatever you want. More like a physical portfolio and resume than seller but sure, whatever gets your name out I suppose.
Very large booth of art and or artist works it always makes me wonder if they were all done by a single artist or a group but you never know.
I can’t remember the company but they had these nice expensive statues of one punch man and friends.
And morgan and darkstalkers friends.
Plus SNK girls. These are probably made out of resin are are very fragile, easy to break. These kinds of shit are usually $600 or $1k. Quite a bit more than PVC figures although that’s not saying much since all figures are getting more and more expensive these past couple of years.
I believe this was the name of the booth. They had more shit on the other side but I couldn’t be bothered, looked like saint seiya shit or something. First anime statue store in California huh. Good luck I suppose?
These shirts are pretty nice looking but honestly could be something you would see at some random Japanese tourist trap store.
I have no idea what this booth was all about other than being called Hello something. Cosplay stuff maybe?
XP pen is some tablet or software company selling drawing stuff. I guess trying to be budget wacom I suppose.
Large book/artbook seller with their books on display on the outside of their booth. They had a person outside just watching it to make sure no one would just steal them off the shelves.
A fairly large lad is calculating prices it seems for some manga and or art books. I wish him the best of luck with his side fannybag.
I remember Phantom Breaker, it’s a fighting game filled with visual novel characters and other more niche characters from more obscure franchises. Their most popular franchise being probably steins;gate of that I can remember. I actually brought an early ps3 version of the game when I went to Japan for the hell of it because it was on discount. I only played it once or twice I think.
Another seller making the money off the fact that they know people are buying posters/prints and paper. Gotta carry that shit somehow unless you have a art tube to roll that shit up and carry. Good idea.
This store knows what up. Put them Gacha for Genshin stuff.
Gamer Supps, they had free energy drinks branded to waifus and such. Or rather, they were collaborating with a company that made energy drinks.
The idea is that you are drinking from your waifu cups or merch or something like that. The concept is alright.
The mascot for the offlinetv x MacDonalds collab is actually pretty cute.
Wow, certainly good art and cute indeed. I wouldn’t mind seeing her as the new replacement for Ronald McDonald.
Close up of the Mickey D’s offlinetv shirts. Still not bad.
I have no idea what this was for but my guess is for an anime movie. The booth itself is very cool tho, although a waste of space if nobody has any real interest.
Senpai Squad clothing and apparel. Hm, the anime and car stuff crossover overlap appears strong this AX, not to say that in 2018 it wasn’t either.
Senpai Squad sells car decals, stickers, clothing stuff and other original anime x car related stuff for a certain kind of anime fan that likes cars.
These shirts are not bad, I somewhat regret a bit that I didn’t buy any shirts from them because some of their designs were not bad. I think I probably did ask but they were sold out of my size, too bad.
At this particular point in time my sister messaged me to come to the OmO cat booth cause they have hololive merch. I was like, OmO what?
My sister explained to me that Omo Cat was a well know indie illustrator/studio online where she has worked on a variety of anime merch collabs and most recently produced a game with her art and characters, Omori. The above banner illustrates the said merch for the game that OmO cat made.
On the right of it is the banner for official OmO Cat collab merch with Hololive. Wow, I had no idea. Actually I had heard some of the vtubers at hololive english mention OmO Cat a few times throughout the past year but I had no idea that it was to make merch/collab goods for them. Shit, this merch is better than the stuff they are selling at the official Hololive booth. Alot of goods were already sold out on the third day, which is not bad. Their booth is kind of hard to find and very easy to get passed by because of it’s low presence.
Lest to say I did line up with my sister and ended up purchasing a few items that were still available in my size. Gud shit.
Walking by we can see the Aniplex booth. It’s surprisingly sparse on the third day mainly because all the merch people want is probably already sold out or people already got their shit. It’s good to see that they had a real queue and system setup to buy merch unlike years before but after a few days it just looks bad/odd that so few people are lined up. I suppose that’s part of the folly of having a dedicated space/line in your booth.
After buying some goods at OmO Cat we decided to make our way out and spend a dedicated time to complete going through artists alley. I like this banner already confirming AX’s intent to return next year in 2023.
I didn’t need to take this picture of Azur Lane Enterprise banner but I like boats so I have to.
Alright, back in the artist alley and things are looking busy. Nice Tokyo Revengers jacket.
Oh, that’s a pretty nice fox girl cosplay of what was her name again? Senko-chan I think, healing fox girl anime. Alright.
Alright, let’s do this shit, starting at B2, we really didn’t cover much until today. Notice how crowded the aisles are now.
The times and meta of artists alley have somewhat evolved since I been to a convention, apparently enamel pins, printed pillow goods and fabric goods have exploded in popularly as well as the staple acrylic charms/key chains still maintaining strong.
Nice hololive art, kaguya art and genshin with a splash of classics like kill la kill and konosuba.
I mean, while their poster art is not that great, they certainly have their keychain and material goods on point. The name of their booth certainly helps in at least recognition and memorability.
Keychains everywhere. Almost every other booth has keychains of some sort with art packed to the brim to the point where to communicate with the seller/artist you have to kneel a bit to talk/see them.
Interesting mix of hololive, fate, offlinetv, pokemon and other nintendo classics with burgers and such. While I like creative themes and food pictures, the art itself it just not quite up to my standards. Props to the concepts however.
There’s something to be said when the art here has offlinetv and below some characters feasting on some shit. Should have made the offlinetv peeps eat some shit too for consistency.
A wide variety of styles and subject matters can be seen for all artists, most very good. All with charms and material goods too.
A few aisles down and it just gets more and more busy, especially for booths that have good merch and art. I feel that if there was anywhere that needed mandatory masking, it would be here in the artist alley.
Very cool and semi-realistic art style. Nice league Jinx I believe but not really my thing.
Almost everyone that has a big display has at least a couple of hololive art and genshin impact works.
Very colorful indeed, some artists were more quick on the popular trends and have SpyxFamily artwork already.
In a sea of artists that have tons of artwork for hololive, genshin impact, spy x family that are all very good, you have to be very selective of what you buy or else you’ll be buying everything.
Steins;gate, pokemon, hololive, arknights and keychains galore.
I ended up buying a print from the artist above, the hololive summer art, it was one of the first ones that I saw that had all of them in it and a nice anime style. Get that shit. The other art is pretty cool as well. Marin Kitagawa from My Dress up Darling is also another popular subject matter from artists, which is warranted I suppose, being best girl and all for this year’s anime.
Shit these are pretty nice keychains, especially the hololive ones with the colored chain connector.
I ended up buying the Gura, Ame and Ina ones. Noice. I had thought that the colored chain thing was unique but apparently as I continued to navigate the rest of the artist booths, almost everyone selling charms has these types now. I don’t regret the purchase in the slightest however.
Picture of the artist as she prepared my order and such. Gud shit.
While i respect the subject matter, it’s not for me. There is also a sizable amount of demon slayers art as well and your standard 2b art which at this point is a forever waifu like tifa, chunli, saber, rei or asuka.
Some booths like to compensate themselves for their lack of good artwork, like putting flowers and shit. This particular one seems to be a shared booth between friends, with one friend being quite fond of horse and animals. The name of the booth is something interesting to if you can fully read it. I can’t.
This booth looks especially sad since they don’t even have any artwork up and are fully committing to the keychain charm game. Either sold out or did it for minimal pieces. Kinda sad looking.
I vaguely remember seeing this booth in 2018, especially with the power rangers art at the bottom which is cool but it seems like this artist has fully committed himself to the DBZ super, Naruto, Yaiba portrait life. Nice, but I don’t really like portraits.
The material goods and fabric goods game is certainly the new meta in 2022, lots of artists had their art printed on pillows and shit, pretty good, although quite pricey. This artist made well doing full hololive pillows, she/he knows whats up. Art could be better however honestly.
Very nice Genshin art, azur lane art and many other Ips.
This booth also in addition to the displayed artworks had a bunch more laminated pieces on the table to show what else this artist has to offer.
Strangely enough this table is is labelled AkiZero…hmm, in retrospect, I am pretty sure this is not her art but someone elses, maybe she couldn’t make it and sold the table to someone else and or this was her friend selling. After looking into it, the art on this table is done by an artist called gijang. Hmm. Curious. Either way still brought a few prints from this table, still good shit.
Hololive art and pillows everywhere. Gotta hold, everyone has decent to good art, gotta be picky in this market.
While I appreciate the style, this really isn’t my thing.
Fuck more nice keychain charms. I had already brought some earlier but these ones were too good, I had to buy a few more, this time of Kronii, Ina, Irys as well as the Yuru Camp Shima Rin and Kaguya Chika. $65 for 5, how could I resist. They had a food theme, good shit.
Oh, I see a fellow azur lane/yostar merch patron as indicated by the nice bag they give out when you buy shit from them. This booth’s art was good but the keychains were better.
The traffic that this booth caused was a common scene through artist alley.
Oh, more nice hololive art, nice shiny print foil type too. I wanted to buy a few but I decided to hold back today, I had already spent alot on shit. (Readers note, I did end up buying art from this booth on the last day of AX cause he was doing a deal/sale, shit)
While these charms are indeed nice, they are a little to small for my tastes. I like big plastic pieces.
From a distance you can’t really tell some of these pieces are anime but they are, very painterly and conceputal based. Cool.
A more graphic design print card approach to selling one which I am not particularly fond of. When you have duplicates of the same art on your display with a different size, doesn’t look good man, looks like you don’t have enough art to display.
Very nice style indeed, I might have brought from this artist but I think he/she said that they were out of the print that I wanted. Ahwell.
Not my style for black and white portraits but at least Sengoku Shadow M.Rage has an interest in these goods.
A somewhat strange combination of pieces, especially with the Halloween Micheal Myers art, which to my surprize is sold out. lol holy shit. You never know who is going to buy your art, especially at a convention as large as AX.
Ah, I remember seeing this artist back in 2018, he was one of the few guys that had fighting game art and guilty gear art but alas, it appears that he has not been keeping up with the times as all the works seen here I remember seeing in 2018. The guilty gear art is still Xrd, he didn’t bother making new art for Strive. In 2018 I might have brought from this guy, but at the time he was sold out of most of his stock, so I didnt’. Today in 2022 I didn’t buy his art because he didn’t bother to make any new art since then. Too bad bro, come back next year with new stuff or just retire if your not going to make any new works.
Very nice art but I didn’t buy it. They didn’t have any of the IPs I was interested in. Too bad.
Quite a buttload of keychains, full of hololive, genshin and other shit I am not sure about. Funilly enough, it appears this artist is going to debut as a vtuber named Riru on July 15th. I guess that explains her strong interest and presence of hololive merch. Every artist dreams of being Ina one day.
Her pillows are actually not bad, quite big and for the price of $25 each, are fairly worth it compared to some of the costs of other pillow merch. I didn’t buy however. I checked out her vtuber channel on twitch upon writing this, not bad. https://m.twitch.tv/rirumato/home
More hololive artworks, and more Jp branch at that which is always cool since most art is Hololive EN, it’s good to see the OGs like Fubuki, Shion, Aqua, Coco, Hachama and even a Rushia (Rip) be represented.
Not all hololive art is created equal, just like this guy’s hair. Damn, not sure if it’s greying or just needs some conditioner cause it looks dry as hell.
Among a sea of mask wearing patrons a single lone karen white women welcomes covid. In the background i know that artist is from Toronto, pJun, I had brought from him previously years past and I would buy from him again here today with his 3 hololive council prints. I actually spoke to him and said if he would be at AN this year, and unfortunately he didn’t make the lottery corruption cut. Ah well, your in a better place here pJun, well done.
A very wide spread of artworks, but none that interests me.
Very nice and cool/cute art from this artist. Very unique but ultimately not my thing, too much Genshin shit and Spy x Family.
Hmm, this artist has a wide array of fighting game keychains to buy, even KOF15 which is one of the newest fighting games on the block outside of DNF Duel. The problem however I have is the style, all of them were drawn in a somewhat chubby/fat. Not really my aesthetic. My sister brought one of Sol tho because of course she did.
Showing his nice shiny head, the artist? sits in front of dumb guilty gear keychains and his full comic story.
Nice Melty Blood/Tsukihime art of the maids. This guy certainly is cultured and knows his games, at least fighting games. Has some decent non-joke art too but I suppose he’s betting on his chibi jokes for maximum impact.
I had seen some of this guys work online, posted in the guilty gear subreddit that are pretty jokes.
I ended up buying some keychains from him, they had descriptions on the back of each character and were quite amusing. I can’t remember if I brought them here and now when I took this photo or some time later. I’ll find out soon enough.
This traffic is getting kinda insane, you can hardly move through in some places cause of idle people buying and or waiting to buy shit.
It’s almost customary that if you are an artist, you have to draw Ina, it’s like paying homage to a god really. Nice pillows again.
Not entirely sure what was the appeal of this booth, probably keychains again but I was too far away I couldn’t tell.
This bunny girl Mai Sakurajima, turns her head and I just so happen to take another photo. Timing master maybe?
Quite elaborate art and full like fabric art posters although honestly it’s not quite my thing.
On the other hand, these hololive pillows are the bomb. I ended up buying a pillow from her, although I can’t remember if I brought it here and now or was it tommorow. Good shit.
Wow, these are pretty fantasic hololive plushies. Aparently they were on pre-order for production from the seller/artist/maker. Very well made and cute.
Upon closer inspection, this Abigail Starling also apparently moonlights as a vtuber as well. Damn, vtuber truly is the path many artists want to take, that Ina is truly an inspiration.
Apparently she’s a pro comic book artist/illustrator as well and I suppose sells all this merch for fun on the side as well. Not bad. https://www.twitch.tv/berrymontblanc
Yugioh, Street fighter and Marvel oh my.
This artist is a common sight, has some popular characters and such but nothing that makes them any better or stand out from the legion of other better artists that draw exactly the same thing, except for…
Shit like this, oh boy, pokemon pikachu nekoatsumi conceptual bullshit. People might actually buy it, they definitely will for the meme and creativity.
Wow, this booth guy fully committed to 100% hololive merch and art it seems. Looks pretty good.
Stickers, keychains and big poster wall scroll line prints, must be pretty popular as they had their own taped line on the ground for traffic control. Wow.
See that guy holding the sign? That’s the extended line to buy stuff from that hololive artist booth. wow, haven’t seen this kind of thing for a artist’s booth before.
After standing around all morning I think it was time for a rest so we decided to exit artist alley for a sit down rest and snack/drink/water refresh. Above is the nice art tube that I was carrying, now filled with rolled up nice paper and plastic. Good shit.
It was not documented in photos but calbee had a booth and were giving away these lentil snacks, taste pretty good actually.
Good shit, nice cosplay of Towa from hololive, I actually can’t tell for sure if this is a dude or women, I am inclined to say dude cause fuck yea, if no one is going to cosplay as my oshi, i’ll fucking do it.
After a fairly brief reprieve and some snacks, we go back inside artist alley. Very nice crazy color and detailed art, not really my thing at the moment now however.
I suppose because LAis the city of angels it’s somewhat cliche that even AX do this wings thing that you see around the city on walls at times.
Even though it’s called artist alley, that’s not necessarily fully accurate since it’s the Kentia Hall which also has a good chunk of smaller indie companies and businesses trying to get their name out as well. Pretty colorful plush things indeed.
For some reason this guy was selling like old school textile rug/cloth/carpet making stuff, I can’t exactly remember the method but yea, a bit out of place but sure.
Not bad works, reminds of spiky hair dude in AN many years ago. I think these are copic markers art but I can’t be sure.
This booth looks a bit odd but sure, selling hoodies and prints huh. I guess the idea is if you are selling clothes, you have to get a bigger booth due to inventory and stock stuff, whereas the normal artist alley rows are far more compact.
Gotta use that back booth space you know, optimal efficiency.
I am not entirely sure where I am walking but I believe it’s the boundary kinda grey area between the autograph area and the artist alley rows. This guy is smart, posting art behind their main display as well since people do walk around this area.
A closer look at ‘industry autographs’ which primarily consist of English dub voice actors.
I mean sure, if you watch dubbed english anime fine but seriously, would you really want to get an autograph of Howard Wang?
All throughout the convention I’ve seen a notable increase of family’s and little kids, even ones in strollers/carriages like this one. If anything I feel it’s probably the mother who primarily wants to be here, not seen here of course.
I was here yesterday, I waited kinda in Shindo L’s pre-autograph line. It’s such an open space just for pre-autograph waiting area but they don’t really want you sitting here, even though it’s prime space to do so. They have bitch security people periodically trying to get people to not sit but it doesn’t take long before more people come here and end up sitting again.
The time around 2:30 or 3pm-ish I think and both my sister and myself decided to make our way back upstairs to see some panels, she had a ticket for the FGO 5th anniversary panel while I wanted to check out the RWBY Ice Queendom anime panel that had alot of the creators actually there like Huke.
Back in the main hall is a pretty good FF7 cosplay of Cloud, Aerith and Zack, although the Zack is a bit lacking in height, it’s effort that counts man.
There was quite a big crowd in the middle of the day and alot of hype dance music and I was wondering what was going on. Apparently some group organized a cosplay dance/break-dance session right in the middle of the entrance area and they were bustin some moves.
What an absolute unit. Gandalf the grey and his slave Bilbao Baggins the inline puppet. What a sight this lad was.
Many people gathered for the cosplay dance session. People just kinda jumped in if they were feeling it or knew the dance to the songs which was cool.
Everyone was pulling out their phones and take footage of the sick dances moves, including myself and this fail mask wearing dude.
Honestly, there isn’t a whole lot of brown people that I saw throughout AX but here is one. Cool.
I believe there was about 5 or 6 dedicated dancers, I suppose the organizers of this little event who were really good at dancing and jumped in the middle if noone wanted to dance to ensure that the show didn’t die. I have no idea how long they went but my guess is maybe half and hour to an hour I guess. There was a Tanjiro that had really good moves and there was a Kingdom Hearts Sora with some camera taking video of the entire performance, which I am assuming to promote their crew or organization.
Pretty nice Castoria and Caster Gill, too bad about the masks tho. I can only assume these guys where heading to the FGO panel as well before getting caught up in the cosplay dance hype performance.
I’m not sure but is the Gill wearing some skin tone tight shirt or is that actually his bare chest out there? It’s too smooth I think so yea, it would have been cool if he really had abs and shit. The book and props for both of them area really good tho.
FGO Yang Guifei cosplay on the right and some other Chinese character I am not sure about on the left. Or maybe it’s not even a Chinese character and some women who just wants to wear traditional clothes. I dunno.
Because of the hype dance performance, the crowds gathered here indeed.
Making our way to the other areas with the big panels they had this water bottle refilling station that I only realized now. They tried their best to educate people how clean and pure this extra filtered water was but in the end it was not that great, still tapwater to me as I tasted it.
The crowds to the main events hall was quite packed, this assassin creed boy is not necessarily in the right convention space, although the yaiba poison purple butterfly women is fine.
Because of the way he walked and postured, this event staff guy could have been a fraud. Just felt like another attendee.
And here I am again, this is the line for the RWBY event. Looks like dante decided to give this panel a try to considering it didn’t require a ticket to get in.
The same beer garden as yesterday, sans man standing in front of the banner looking at his phone. Seems less people overall it seems.
It was pretty hot so I decided to take off my mask for a bit like a mad lad while waiting in line. Proof of existence. This is the face of a man who had a bit more sleep and wasn’t as tired as previous days.
The guy standing in line in front of me was a bit odd, he seemed like a guy in maybe his late 40’s maybe even early 50’s and he was on his own lining up to the RWBY panel. Part of me thinks he’s an old time fan of RWBY and another part of me says that he doesn’t give a shit about RWBY and just wants someplace cool and chill to sit for an hour or so with something to watch. Either way, you can find all kinds of different ages and people at AX.
Looking at the rest of the crowd, alot of the people here probably just want to sit and watch something big aswell. All these people are probably people like myself that failed to get an FGO panel ticket online. The RWBY and FGO panels take place in the exact same timeslot but in different locations at AX.
When I was waiting in line I saw a Mash cosplayer and her boyfriend walk out of the line in a rush. Shit I guess they were in the wrong line and didn’t know this was for RWBY. I hope they made it in time or at least had tickets.
Almost inside, at the door they give you a sticker and some scratch card which I am assuming is for a giveaway at the end of the panel.
Alright, inside now, right in the middle of the place for optimal viewing.
After a few minutes the screens changed to what this panel is all about, the RWBY episode 4 world premiere and panel.
Hmm…episode 4 huh. What about episode 1-3? I have no idea. After looking into this after the fact now as I am writing this, I still don’t know why they did this, maybe because episdoe 4 was more fun and had action and or diverged from the normal RWBY story significantly? I’m not a RWBY master in any sense but from my understanding this is a slight re-imagining of the RWBY story but I have no idea.
Despite such a large event space like the main events hall, the capacity was about half full if I can tell. Resting place I suppose.
I was seated right in front of where the light, video and audio technicians were situated. I took a snapshot of this dude and he was like don’t. Do you think I give a shit? Nope, snap snap bitch, do your job.
The RWBY panel started soon after and we were welcomed by a white women who served as both MC and translator for the Japanese staff and directors of the anime. There was no photos or video allowed as per usual so there’s not much in terms of visual that I can use here unfortunately. The staff itself was all Japanese with the exception of one of the founders of Rooster Teeth, some white guy that I can’t remember his name but was probably best friends with Monty, the main founder who died that carried it. When it came time to introduce Huke, famed illustrator and character designer of Black Rock Shooter, Steins;Gate, Kiara from hololive and other things i’m sure like this RWBY anime adaption, people were waiting in anticipation of what Huke papa would look like.
When the time came, he walked out on the stage looking like this:
And in many ways, to nobody’s surprise really.
Must be tough living the life of a famous artist at a convention where basically almost everyone knows your name. Outside of his Guilty Gear Faust cosplay, he was wearing a really puffy jacket as well to hide his body and actual clothes as well. Sure. He sounded…just like a normal Japanese dude I suppose so yea, regular dude.
After a few comments they showed episode 4 on the big screens. Looked pretty good, nice action, animation, nice voice actors and such, I’d watch it this season. Once it was over they spent about another half and hour or so talking about how this project came to be considering RWBY originally was fake 3d weeb imitation anime. Turns out, Monty and white founder were big fans of black rock shooter back in the day and specifically said that RWBY’s character designs were heavily inspired by Huke’s work which was cool. Conversely, Huke was a fan of RWBY cause of the interesting weapons and characters that the western boys created. From this weird cross-culture admiration, they began talking with producers and anime people as early as 2018 to start a real anime project. After 4 years they finally made a real anime out of RWBY, they did it, they made their fake anime into real anime. What was kind of jokes to me was the producers and directors were always emphasizing how cute the main girls are in RWBY and that they are the main reason you should watch the show, lol ok sure.
Overall the panel itself was alright but poorly conducted because the white women was both MC and translator. She did some weird shit where she would ask a question in Japanese to a guest, have them respond in Japanese then after they finished, would only then translate the question and answer at the same time which resulted in like 5 minutes segments where the audience had no idea what was going on because they didn’t even know the question that was originally asked. What the fuck white women, bad format. They needed more than 1 translator for this with like 6 Japanese guys on the stage.
A the end of the panel they asked us to scratch the card they gave us when we entered. If it had a RWBY logo, you lost, if it had a picture of Ruby Roses face, you won. There is only 1 prize, the prize is a signed copy of some collectors artbook by all of the guests present today. Pretty good prize I guess. I didn’t win. Some girl cosplaying as Ruby Rose i think got it, probably seeded corruption but at least the prize went to someone who actually likes RWBY.
After everyone left and made their way out once the lights turned on.
My sister was done with the FGO panel before me as the RWBY panel I think went over time by like 20 minutes or so. She was chilling about in the Entertainment Hall, a place where haven’t really explored yet until now. Star Guardian huh, I believe this is a Riot League of Legends derivative work.
One of the most jokes, or perhaps intentional things about the entertainment hall is that as soon as you go in the first thing that is there is a dedicated Aniplex stage where they host mini-events and other shows, stuff that in 2018 would have been done in the main Exhibit Hall. I suppose they have learned their lesson in that regards in terms of traffic flow and bottlenecks since then.
Because of this Aniplex stage, everyone in the immediate vicinity were FGO or fate fans as illustrated by these pretty good cosplays above of Gill, Saber, Nitocris and Ozymandias. Really good shit.
When not having an event or show, they just kept playing various Aniplex IP previews and trailers which is to be expected. Nice caster Gill jacket.
Wow, they even had Saber Alter’s motorcycle from Shinjuku Singularity that you can ride and take photos of.
Twisted Wonderland is another big mobile gacha game created/owned by Aniplex that is also a Disney property. The basic premise is various Disney villains re-imagined as bishonen boys in a school-like harry potter setting. Obviously targeted towards women and gays but it’s quite successful in Japan, and just like FGO, the English version is 2 years behind JP as the English server was only released at the beginning of this year.
I have no idea what was going on but you had these guys on some car/truck selling some shit or whatever.
Kinda busy for a Sunday, lots of people coming out of the FGO and RWBY panel for sure checking out the Entertainment hall.
Hmm, a Projekt Melody vtuber car from Vshojo collab I suppose. I am not sure what car this is however. Maybe a Lamborghini? It’s interesting to note the words that say “JAV Race Queen” ahhahah. From what I read Projekt Melody prior to her becoming a vtuber was a cam girl and might have done porn in her past, maybe she is still doing it, who knows. Whether this decal is paying homage to that fact is anyone’s guess.
Yo man, what the fuck is this shit lol. Hardcore real beyblade tournament. I can’t tell but is that a grown ass man beating down some little kid? It would be jokes if it was, even more so if he looses.
The time was ticking down on the day so we decided to leave the Entertainment Hall because it was still going to be open later in the day, whereas the main exhibt hall closes at 5pm. Nice banner for homeless reincarnation, baller god.
Back in the main entrance area with the cosplayers and we see this really good Guilty Gear Strive May cosplay. Shit is pretty good, she even made the anchor and shoes, even her hat is custom. Really good shit, must feel weird that all throughout AX you see quick store brought May cosplays from ArcSystemWorks then all of a sudden you see a real one that took so much work, must feel weird of the cosplayer for sure.
Back of Mashuu cosplay and some guy talking, just waiting for her to not be busy I suppose. No mask, sure guys.
When they were all available I ended up getting photos of all three of these good FGO cosplay peeps. Pretty good Mashuu, Gudako and Quetzalcoatl, which is pretty rare character to cosplay to be honest. Good shit.
Yea boi, first male guilty gear strive cosplay today, our lord king Ky Kiske. Not only that it appears he’s a brown or mexican guy, so extra rare bonus SSR. Too bad no sol tho.
Toys R Us is dead in America but geoffry the giraffe still lives, kinda.
I am not entirely sure what this cosplay is but I can only assume it is a Genshin Impact character, due to it’s Chinese style. Very well done.
Arcane: League of Legends animated series heroes make their presence. Pretty good shit. It’s interest how Riot over the past number of years has tried it’s best to expand it’s IP and media influence and not just limit itself to it’s MOBA game but into tv series, music videos and other spin off shit. That league fighting game might also end up being a game changer for the fighting game industry if they do it right.
Genshin Impact Mona I believe. Not bad, pretty good with the magic circle and hat. It’s interesting how even though I don’t play Genshin I’ve kinda come to identify some of the more popular female characters because i kinda have to you know.
Yo man, double Dante’s pretty cool but honestly the one on the left is better. The guy on the right is more suited to being Nero with a bitch face like that honestly lol.
Back inside the hall I only noticed this giant OG Gundam display in front of the bandai gundam base area. Cool shit.
I honestly didn’t know they had this much merch to offer and surprisingly a lot of it is actually sold out, probably because they also sell Love Live merch as well. Figures, love live is still alive I guess although in my opinion, it’s way to diluted now with so many groups and spin-off series.
There was some area that had Shikishi boards with autographs and drawings on them from famous artists, production teams and voice actors. Pretty nice shit.
Goku charging up his beam blast. It feels so weird to me that golden hair super saiyan is not the strongest shit anymore but that’s how it goes I suppose in dragon ball super.
Pretty baller Kong Ming in da house. I actually saw this dude dance a few hours earlier in the dance event thing. He did the thing, I saw it, good shit.
Interesting seller here of art, had a nice arrangement of fighting game characters from a variety of series. The idea is that you are supposed to buy multiple square prints and arrange them, as if a character select screen. Pretty interesting concept but the style was not my thing. Technically should have been in artist alley but I guess opted for a larger display in the main hall for money money. Brave.
Oh boy, this is the shop that caused the problem for my sister yesterday. This is the shop where she brought so much shit, they gave her extra stuff to carry and forced her to go back to the hotel to drop off loot. Ohmonah shop, you have interesting stuff indeed.
Interestingly they also had a collaboration with Nekopara, pretty cute/jokes really.
Hmm..quite a cool and nice creative selection of shirts and clothing items.
Sidebags, hats and other apparel ripe for the picking.
Anyways looking back more again at this store’s goods. Hmm..are these rugs or carpet shit? Weird merch meta I think.
This is in many ways the very definition of weeb clothing store.
I appreciate their graphic design and witty slogans/words on their shirts.
They even had the Nekopara girls right in front to display their collab shirts, just in case people didn’t recognize their super deformation. Noice. Ended up buying one, which one of course, you’ll only have to find out in the last post where I show all the merch I collected.
Standing just a few meters away I saw this really good hololive Gura cosplay, really good shit. Nice for once that she actually had her mask off and I was able to take a photo with her face. Gud shit.
Not too far from here we had a booth selling Katamari plush things. Pretty cool and extremely niche and hipster. For some reason my sister ended up buying a few from her cause it’s good I suppose. This kind of seller really should be in artist alley as the girl running this apparently hand makes all of them so yea, hard life in the convention I suppose.
This seller was quite interesting. Can’t make it to Japan and wanna do some lottery shit? Try your hand here and spin that wheel or spin for those balls and get a prize.
They had an interesting selection of prizes that you can get, mainly fancy paper and cardboard with art on it and or plastic sleeve shit. It’s also interesting how they had to adjust their prizes considerably over the course of the con it seems since 1 attempt for $25 dollars does seem kind of absurd.
Hmm…these Fate Shikishi boards look pretty tempting to me. All art by mooncell artist, Wadarco of various Nero saber fame, well all mooncell faces to be honest.
Fuck it, I only live once, I decided to give it a few spins to get some cardboard. I think in total we spun 4 times so that’s about $60 total. Fuck it’s expensive for cardboard but I have no regrets. Ended up with Blue and Green sets, so Tamamo, Elizabeth, Jeanne and Astolfo. Good shit no dupes, now I have something to sign if I ever go to an event with any of their voice actors for autographs.
Not to far from here I see this hololive Marine cosplay, pretty good job overall. Too bad with mask on however. I guess there was a group of hololive fans or cosplayers in the area because they all seem to be around here, maybe just a coincidence maybe.
Back at Waifu Cups or something again with their energy drinks and merch, I can actually see the mascots now. Noice.
I didn’t realize it before in previous days but it looks like Waifu Cups sponsored former JAV actress turned social media influencer/cosplay personality Kaho Shibuya to do autographs and promote their brand. Wow. She was here in AX 2018 before she retired, now she is here again post-retirement from doing porn. Wow.
And here she was, siting casually doing autographs and talking to the people lining up to buy her merch and Waifu Cups merch. I can only assume that she was here for most days of AX, but then again I had no idea, I don’t often go this far back in the main exhibt hall so I can’t confirm, but yea; kind of a underground meet and greet autograph operation going on here. I wanted to line up but the line manager said that they were no longer accepting new people today but that she would be here again tomorrow, the last day for autographs as well.
Oh boy, looks like we have another extra autograph side mission after all on the last day of AX! We’ll be back.
When you walk around in the back in the hall you see things that you didn’t see before, like these guys, Udon Entertainment. I had remembered them from back in the day doing comic book stuff for street fighter and other games but I looks like they expanded their reach to merch as well. This guy talking to us was from Australia I believe…or was it England..or was it New Zealand…I can’t remember for sure what he said but he had an accent and that’s all that matters really.
Oh boy, lookie here, Guilty Gear Strive character pins, kinda officially licensed by ASW too. Weird, why wasn’t this being sold at the official ASW booth? So strange, I don’t know how licensing works but you would think that all merch would be better served if this Udon booth was closer to the front with ASW instead of the back. Hmm…
They also had shirts with some of the characters on them as well, not exactly the most creative of designs but hey, for $25 dollars each, that’s generally alot more cheaper than the other shirts I’ve brought these past few days.
While I was able to resist the temptation, the shirt’s weren’t that great and so were the pins, my sister couldn’t and ended up buying a sol shirt and pin. The power of husbando is strong I suppose.
Looping back I always like to check out what cosplay is around at the Azur lane booth and today they had New Jersey in her bunny outfit. Pretty good but for some reason this photo was so shit and blurry. I have no idea, maybe I was still moving or something and wasn’t able to focus properly. Ahwell.
Woo, I think my theory that they auction off or lottery these cardboard standout is correct, today we have summer cheshire, looking nice.
I don’t remember this big banner being here yesterday. Did they just put this here today as new merch just arrived or something? Very strange, I’m not familiar with this IP either unless it’s a new game yostar just announced recently.
Ahh..alot of the Azurlane merch has sold out by the third day I suppose. Some stuff still available tho. I didn’t even notice but they also had a small section for Mahjong Soul at the bottom I didn’t notice before, hmm, noice.
The time was approximately 5pm and the main hall was closing so most people ended up going over to the Entertainment hall, as it would still be open until 10 or 11pm I believe still on Sunday. Upon arriving we just manage to catch midway the FGO quiz giveaway at the Aniplex stage.
Whether this person was an official Aniplex staff or not I will never know for sure since she was participating in the quiz as well.
From a distance we see what I think is Albert Kao on stage wracking his brain over what kind of obscure FGO game or lore story trivia that he can throw at the audience for prizes. If I remember before in 2018 he was a very bald looking man cause apparently he shaved his head. Today it looks like he decided to grow his hair out due to covid and hasn’t bothered to cut it off and gained a few pounds as well over the years, unless I am totally mistaken and this is some other dude.
The type of questions being asked was shit only a true FGO or Fate fan would really know about such as deep story lore related to servants or real life historical figure shit. One of the questions asked was about Ozymandias and my sister knew the answer but didn’t put up her hand to answer. In the end nobody got the answer right and the prize: a small Ozymandias plush went unclaimed. “Shit, I should have put up my hand, I was right, I had it.” “But you didn’t, so you failed cause you didn’t believe” after that we tried to answer the questions but the quiz became more and more obscure with shit questions like “What is the 13 oaths made by knights of the round table that servants obey in so that Lancelot did or something” and it was like wtf is this shit lol. “What is the name of Salter’s dog’s name and motorcycle” is far more manageable but hard. Other questions were like stat related bullshit related to servants like “What passive skill does summer tamamo have that no other summer servant has” or shit like that. lol wut. We were standing there for about half an hour since it was entertaining and a very hype lore master beside us was trying to feed us answers all through the time we were there cause he had already won a prize earlier. At the end of the day, we didn’t win anything, ah well too bad. Alberto-sama had won, he had beaten us.
Moving along the Entertainment are they have a fairly large area for console games, namely fighting games and smash. Noice.
I can kinda see through this women’s cosplay dress which is intentional I suppose. To bad I don’t know what she was.
They had busiroad FGO cards up on display so you can go to the booth later and buy/pull packs for Weiss Schwartz.
After a brief stroll around we ended up back at the Aniplex stage and this very great Mashuu cosplayer was here. Cool. I can’t remember the CE, fan artwork or future bunny costume this was but it was certainly quite sexy.
And here it is, the moment we had been waiting for. An appearance by the giant Riyo learning with manga FGO mascots, the same ones that appeared in 2018! Everybody get your phones out!
The announcer was trying her best. It’s the end of the day after all but it’s hard to stay hyped when this was like their third appearance/show for today.
Dat saber has seen some shit.
Big Mashuu appears.
I always wonder how the people inside control the arms and such, maybe sticks?
Saber and Mashuu reunited at last.
And lastly our crazy bitch Gudako appears to top off the super friends.
The gangs all here. They posed around and jumped about for about 15 minutes and that was it, show’s over and went back inside behind the stage lol. Well, it’s the end of the day after all.
After the top tier FGO show, we decided to head out for today. We had another mission to do today outside of the convention space. Walking by this banner of the Trash Taste Boiz we are reminded that they were a real main event/guest and that people actually came to AX to see them/talk to them personally. Wow, I guess they are famous I suppose.
Another hololive cosplayer spotted, this time Korone. She is fairly popular I suppose and relatively easy to cosplay. The easiest cosplay is probably Subaru or maybe even Ame maybe.
Outside now I see this touhou Reimu cosplay but she wasn’t really into it I suppose, she was waiting for someone and checking her phone so yea, kinda off but at least I tried.
Now proceeding with external premise mission.
Our Target is in sight.
Mission accomplished bitches. Additional luggage for merch obtained. Get.
The luggage area was pretty sparse and the selection slim pickings. It had been raided and depleted by other AX peeps who had the exact same idea as we did. In fact, once we got to the luggage area there were a few there already trying to figure out which one to get. We got the cheapest one possible I think around 70 or 80 dollars, if I remember correctly, it was the exact same one we had brought in 2018 as well. History repeats itself.
Didn’t know they had canned G-fuel in store. Throughout AX, as part of my routine to stay alive and awake I had been drinking powdered G-Fuel to stay hydrated and full of electrolytes and caffeine. It’s good shit, I would highly recommend it if you need long lasting energy Install since G-Fuel doesn’t have any sugar and has a wide range of interesting flavors and collabs with games/companies.
It should be noted here that we were carrying shit and as soon as we brought the extra luggage we put it to use immeidately and put our merch inside already for safe keeping.
I was curious what food they had in this interesting outdoors mall/plaza complex that is only possible in LA. The Melt seemed good but we opted to not since we had burger sandwiches yesterday already.
Walking a bit more and we see some other peeps doing the same thing. This guy had brought a luggage but did self serve checkout. Little did he know he needed to do regular checkout to get the cashier to remove the security tag and lock to even open the thing. The bois here were just waiting for him to get it done. Certainly quite alot of drinks it seems they packing to.
Walking back from Target we take a snapshot of our hotel, the Westin Bonaventure by Marriott. It is quite a visually appealing hotel indeed that looks like a flower I suppose from above.
Back in our hotel room we were dead tired and too lazy to go out again for food so we decided to do the Uber thing again. We decided to go for some bait ass Japanese meat and rice Teppenyaki shit. I had initially encouraged my sister to install the Uber Eats app and try to order food but when she did she had problems checking out and ordering because of some weird credit card issue. Because of those issues we just missed out on a discount offer from a similar restaurant a 2 for 1 kind of deal but couldn’t get it because the place apparently cancelled the order and closed. It was getting late I suppose, it was almost or past 8pm I think and we needed food. We ended up ordering our food from a place called Habachihana Grill, it had very similar Teppenyaki fare of what we originally wanted so just ran with it.
I ended up making the order and shortly later got a notification that it was being picked up by a women named Joseline. It did not appear that she had a car so I was expecting a normal bike this time unlike yesterday. Once I got the notification she was close I went down again to the lobby. I then received another message from her to come to the north building entrance, the same place where the AX shuttle picks up people, ok sure, it’s farther away but sure. When I got there, Joseline was a student aged women/girl with one of those rent a scooter things and handed me our food. After a brief thank you she went off to fulfill her other orders that she had on her. Heh. Multiple orders I guess makes sense. I didn’t tip her more like the wheelchair wonder of yesterday, bitch made me walk farther to an unconventional hotel entrance. No extra tip for you!
Getting right to it, my sister and myself ordered something of a combo mix of chicken and beef, with mines being sirloin steak and hers being tenderloin. I visually cannot tell the difference but you get the idea. They provide you a selection of two sauces to use, I choose safe ass terkiyaki and ponzu yuzu ginger sauce, while my sister choose some Mayo based thing that I can’t remember and teriyaki.
Overall the meat, both beef and chicken were fine, nothing out of the ordinary. I had asked for medium doneness for the steak but I guess because of the travel time by the time it got to me it was fully cooked well done. Ah well. While it was an overall decent and solid meal, the priced we paid for this was wayyyyyyyyyyy overpriced to the point of absurdity. For two of these meals including tip and service charges/fees, in total it cost us $97.58. MOTHERFUCKER FUCK. WHY SO EXPENSIVE. If we were only just a little quicker/faster we could have had a very similar meal delivered to us for half the price because of the promotional 2 for 1 discount! Sure, it’s steak and shit but still, WHY SO EXPENSIVE. Yesterday, our shake shack order cost us $43.18 total, our tacos and shit were $50.61 total. Man, it feels bad but I guess this is what happens when it’s like 8:30pm and your starving after a long day, price goes out the window and you just crave for a certain type of meal to be delivered.
We didn’t order anymore Uber after Habachihana Grill.
After a long day, we began to slowly arrange and plan our merch setup between our 3 luggage. There was a constant thorn in my mind how I could bring back my Fakku Skateboard on the plane or in luggage, but after running through a few scenarios yesterday night, even including bringing the skateboard onboard the plane, we figured out we could fit the skateboard in a luggage diagonally and it did. The next problem was the increased load overall and bulky nature of our goods, we just had no room and not enough weight to safely distribute them evenly. Thus, we went out and brought a new luggage to solve our problems. Yas.
Dead tired, we packed up our goods during our trial run packing for the night and went to bed for the final day at AX tomorrow. Day 3 was supposed to be a chill day but ended up being quite eventful and in many ways, very fun, even if we had no missions to fulfill. The last day at AX would be a much shorter day with the con ending at 3pm and really not any panels to go to, it would truly be last call shopping for artist and merch, in which we would definitely do, there’s also Kaho Shibuya autographs that we could try for but we’ll see, it’s not a priority.
Can’t escape from crossing fate.
AX2022 Day 3 End.
To be continued…