Anime Expo offers a variety of cosplayers from a variety of series. You can get cosplayers from new series like Macross Frontier and classic series like Cowboy Bebop.

The usual tradition is that if it is too hot outside, your best bet was to stay cool inside the dealer’s room. I met up with Julie Goldstein (Bang Zoom), Lauren Landa (Bang Zoom), and Marianne Miller (Bang Zoom) to talk about voice acting. Otherwise, I just window shopped around and looked at a few Lolita items at Artist Alley.

Jared's Perspective: When the Groove is Dead and Gone

As I try to do with all conventions I took a nice trip around the con to panel crash. However, Anime Expo did not make this an easy task. There were three panel rooms, however, they were poorly marked for passers by and often had their doors closed with no sign or guard to let attendees know they were at the right place. As I do love memorizing room numbers as much as the next person I found myself rather annoyed at not having a handy “Live Programming 1” sign. This is sadly in contrast to other sections of the convention. The video rooms, arcade, card gaming rooms, and mostly every other room in the convention center was well marked. This was a major oversight and should have never happened considering how many years Expo has been going.

Another problem came with the Maid Café. Not only was it difficult to find, but it was a ticketed event, it was open for a short time, and had the same issue that Fanime 2009 had, that being, maids who do not understand “master” comes first. Maid cafés are not about attitude, they are about service and about letting us poor boys imagine what it must be like to be rich and surrounded by many pretty maids. As a lover of maids and maid cafés it is sad to see them being done so poorly. I can only hope that Anime Expo will do more to improve their maid café next year, as I am tired of hating on maid cafés.

I went back to the Omni Los Angeles to change into Ayaka Kisaragi (Phantom Quest Corps). I was not quite sure who would recognize me since this series dates back all the way to 1994. After having ramen and a light nap, we went back to the convention center.

We ran into Marianne Miller, Lauren Landa, and Tony Oliver. I really liked how these voice actors were very warm and approachable. It made me believe that Anime Expo’s industry guests were very fan friendly. If Marianne Miller and I can talk about shoes and fashion, that goes to show you how friendly these industry folks are.

Saturday evening had three main events to choose from – Masquerade (Cosplay Contest), Cosplay Chess, and Last Comic Standing. All three events entertained many attendees until convention center closing.

Jared and I went to check out the Anime Los Angeles con suite on the Fourth of July evening. There was hardly a spot to catch fireworks at the convention center. The view from the Anime Los Angeles con suite was good enough. As always, the food was great – meatballs and pink lemonade.

Of course, Jared was very particular to the cream puffs.

Patrick (aka Taskmaster) turned the Anime Los Angeles con suite into an 80s party kicking things off with Rick Astley. Don't worry, we also played "Together Forever."

And then some Poison.

We went back to the convention center to catch cosplayers who entered in Masquerade and Cosplay Chess. Quite odd to have two big cosplay events side by side! However, Stan and Matt (aka Maguma) mentioned that the Anime Expo Cosplay staff liked Cosplay Chess that they will add it on as an official event for next year.

Stan's Perspective: Saturday Cosplay Events (Chess, Masquerade, etc)

Convention night life was still very strong into the midnight hour. Attendees performed a dance battle outside the convention center. Everything was all in good, harmless fun. It is good to know that even in a dance battle at Anime Expo, certain attendees know dances beyond Lucky Star, The Melancholy and Infinite Sadness of Haruhi Suzumiya, etc.

And the King of Pop is alive? Last I checked, his funeral was scheduled on a Tuesday. At least the spirit of the gloved one was still alive at Anime Expo. Several of our bus drivers played his songs on the radio. One particular driver had Moonwalker playing on the monitor whilst wearing a memorial T-shirt.

Jared and I returned to our respective hotels. I took scary route 3 back to the Omni Los Angeles. My roommates were still up getting things together for Sunday departure. It was just us girls being girls. We started to joke around with Jared’s idea to cosplay Addams Family. Caitlin showed off her in progress Cousin It. Julia is still working on some touch ups for Thing.

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