Anime Pasadena 2022 took place on November 19-20, 2022 at the Pasadena Convention Center in downtown Pasadena. What brings people to Anime Pasadena are the English dub voice actor reunions. You can meet the main dub casts of Dragonball, Death Note, Demon Slayer, and Naruto. This brought in many autograph hounds to the event – people had wagons of Funko Pops for voice actors to sign. Anime Pasadena is anime con that has a lot of great value for what you pay – voice actor reunion panels, plenty of vendors to explore (and time to shop), lack of lines for main events, a chill karaoke room, access to amazing locations for cosplay photoshoots, and a maid cafe.
This is our first Anime Pasadena. I was invited to judge the cosplay contests on both days. Saturday had the adult contest and the Sunday contest had the kids contest. It was an honor to be invited to take on a huge responsibility alongside some of my favorite people in the cosplay world. Outside of both cosplay contests, I took time to explore the convention. I was delightfully surprised with this convention!
This convention report is dedicated to the memory cosplay photographer and anime convention historian, Kevin Lilard (1955 – 2022) of Fansview. Rest in peace, friend. I’ll pick up the work from here.
Written by Dame Aznable
IG: @damescarletaznable
Twitter: @dameaznable
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