Anime Expo 2012 Cosplay + Thoughts

Last year I tried doing a series of posts that would cover each day of Anime Expo, but that failed quickly! The thing is, it’s not really an organized thing to go to an anime con. Sometimes I hung out with friends, sometimes I went out to get lunch, sometimes I bought things, sometimes I went to the dance, and the rest of the time, I actually went to the panels and screenings. Anime Expo is close to me, so we may not necessarily treat it as special as other individuals do. For us, it’s a casual thing that we do every year. However, there is one thing we did all the time, and that was taking pictures of beautiful cosplay.

So without further ado, here are the details of the event! This is meant to be a single, informal ramble about the things we did while showing the very best images we took at the con. I may sometimes go off-topic.

Danny Choo’s three automobiles: A Toyota Celica, (Left) A Mini-Cooper (Middle) and a Nissan Cube. (Feel free to correct if I got them wrong.) If you take a picture of anything Mirai-Related and post it on his facebook, you’ll be entered for a chance to win $100.

I personally never get my badge for Anime Expo ahead of time. I’m okay with paying the full amount, and in the past, I just passed by whenever to pick up my badge. As of last year, I visited the Convention Center during Day 0 to get my badge via the late registration line. It was quite short, in comparison to the preregistration line, which was immensely huge. Our line started moving at 3:00 PM and I already had my ticket by 3:45. Meanwhile, the prereg people were still waiting until 6:00 PM to get their tickets, all while under the blazing rays of the sun. My friends and I decided to just buy the tickets at the door this year instead.

Yoko Littner / Gurren Lagann. Our photography team was composed of four cameras, and four individuals. We traded cameras every now and then and by the end of the entire event, we wound up with 1000 photos, 200 of which I chose to process. Of those 200, I only did about 100 of them.

Weapon restrictions were stricter this time around, actually. To get an item peace-bonded, your weapon would have had to be made from scratch. If it was a non-working replica and depending on how realistic it looks, 50% of it would have to be colored in bright-colored tape. Some cosplaying attendees tried to get around this restriction by making their props look like they were peacebonded or just building it while inside the convention center.

We used a variety of different angles and cameras during the con. We’re not particularly experienced, but comments are welcome. Please share your feedback, as well as what you’d like to see more of in the future.

Zero from Code Geass. Digging that FMA bag in the background.

I love his mask.

The first thing I went to was the English dub version of Panty and Stocking! This was Day 1 and Funimation took quite the liberal approach with this show! If anything, this is perhaps one of those rare occurrences where the English dub surpasses the original Japanese. Of course, a show like PSG, which takes many American influences, would make sense for it to be this way. There are more shots of these two, so stay on this page!

Tomoe Mami / Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Aniplex acquired Madoka Magica by Shaft and has released a full English dub on June 12, 2012. Jump on it if you like Madoka and English dubs, the bloopers are quite funny too.

One of my friends playing Terminator in the arcade during AX. Some of these photos aren’t sorted by date, so I may have uploaded things from other days while I’m still talking about things we did the current day. Sorry about the confusion.

Janna / League of Legends.

Hyperdimension Neptunia?

Overexposed shot. It helps if you also shoot a RAW image as you can adjust the values later without hurting image quality.

Our two best cameras were the Sony Nex 3 and the Sony A330 DSLR. The other two we used were compact digital cameras and I think I actually used my phone once or twice…

Wang Yuanji in Fantasy Costume, from Dynasty Warriors 7

Panty chewing on panties.

Hinanawi Tenshi left, Kurenai Misuzu Hong Meiling middle, Chen Yakumo right. Touhou cosplay. There was quite a bit of Touhou this time around, but I suspect the overall quality of Touhou cosplay will continue to improve over time.

Deku Scrub spotted!

Perhaps not exactly cosplay, but the whole military get-up is quite amazing in itself. My friends and I are actually quite into this sort of thing, so we didn’t hesitate to take more shots.

Reviving a weary soldier.

Triple Moe Threat

From the anime “Tiger & Bunny”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_&_Bunny
(From Left to Right) Ivan Karelin (Origami Cyclone), Barnaby Brooks Jr., Kotetsu T. Kaburagi (Wild Tiger), Keith Goodman (Sky High).

Quietly waiting for the enemy to appear…

Serah Farron / Final Fantasy 13.

Altair / Assassin’s Creed. Amazing series of adventure / espionage games by Ubisoft. A little too easy at times, but the exploration is quite amazing.

Storm Trooper and the soldier we saw earlier.

If anyone knows who these two girls are, make sure to tell us below!

Another Tomoe Mami cosplayer.

Gantz cosplay?

Cirno / Touhou

Taken at the end of Day 1.

The exhibition hall! There’s a lot to choose from, and so very little time to get it all! I bought some music and a Touhou artbook.

Hen Da Ne’s panel sells Doujinshi, Music, and games. Also, just because something is being sold at a con doesn’t mean it is any cheaper. The Kinokuniya bookstore located in Little Tokyo sells a little cheaper than most booths here.

Touhou Perfect Cherry Blossom being put on display. Yukari isn’t that tough despite being a Phantasm boss.

Evike also had their own booth this year. They specialize in all kinds of things airsoft. My friends and I typically tend to go for games every now and then. It’s a lot of fun and you get a total workout.

All sorts of goods, ranging from mag holders, patches, hats, pins, and other accessories.

Airsoft pistols on display. Some may or may not have the orange tip.

Evike also has their own mascot!

More goodies.

Master Chief / Halo. His cosplay was amazing. A complete suit with glowing LED’s.

Tifa Lockhart / Final Fantasy 7.

Day 2, and now we’re at the NIS America panel. Responsible for games such as Disgaea, Ar Tonelico, and the Atelier Series. Recently got into Atelier Meruru, and I desperately wanted to hear about a Disgaea 5 release.

The Witch and the Hundred Nights is an action rpg that is more based on hack-slash style combat. It’s a quite nifty game with some pretty cool features and gameplay elements. Coming in 2013 to the US. Below is a video that covers the game releases that NIS announced that day:

As as you probably have guessed, you can summon 100 other knights to join you in your battles.

Sohei Niikawa, announcing the new games. NIS plans to make Disgaea 5, but didn’t specify when it would be released. If you haven’t done so already, go pick up Disgaea 4 in the meantime.

A Hatsune Miku nendoroid that one of my friends picked up.

By this time, my friends and I didn’t have any panels we wanted to see, so we just went out in search of food. Along the way, many trucks and people like these were walking around, giving free drinks to everyone that passed by. I managed to get quite a few out of them, actually! Shh, don’t tell them!

Cityscape in Downtown Los Angeles. Whenever I start to see these towers from the freeway, I know I’m home.

Was thinking about making this my cover image for this post, but decided otherwise.

Ralph’s is just across the street.

Sandwiches, everywhere! What should we get?

Mashed potatoes and potato wedges.

More urban scenery on the way back to the LACC.

Here’s Zero again! I think we covered his reflection perfectly.

Stocking is my favorite character. Which one’s your favorite from the series?

Cosplayers are everywhere. We found her at the arcade.

More Yoko.

Catherine / Catherine. If you haven’t played this, go play it right now! It’s Atlus’ take on the puzzle game genre. Don’t let the idea of a puzzle game phase you, it’s immensely addicting, the animated cut scenes are top quality, the story is amazing, and it’s quite challenging.

Which ending did you get? For me, it was the true Catherine ending. The best ending, in my opinion.

Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny. You know where they’re from, right?

Anime Expo took place during the same time as X-Games. Many alterations have had to be done inside and outside to accommodate both events at the same time. Roads were blocked, walkways were created, and so on. It was quite nice being able to see the race cars from inside the LACC while getting a snack or looking at our goods. At night, it felt more like an adventure to navigate through the walkways and improvised streets.

Perhaps one of our best images. We found Oshino Shinobu from Shaft’s -monogatari series. A mysterious vampire girl who finds her way into Koyomi Araragi’s life, helps save his life in the beginning, and continues to aid him in his daily struggles with life’s oddities.

Quite a cult anime, but amazingly stylish and beautiful. Perhaps Shaft’s more emotive work. The art style in each and every episode and second screams “Shaft.” Go check it out!

Nisemonogatari isn’t an ecchi show. It just happened to turn out that way, but their fanservice isn’t excessive.

And now, we’re off to the Danny Choo panel.

First things first, taking photos of his daughters.

Danny Choo has been working on creating outfits and props for these kinds of dolls. In contrast to his presentation last year, he concentrated more on the things he’s been working on and the Moekana (Hiragana learning aid) cards he’s selling rather than about himself and how he became a notable figure in the promotion of Japanese animation and culture.

Danny Choo’s post on Anime Expo 2012 is here. Danny Choo also took the time to explain to us about Culture Japan, a series of broadcasted episodes where he talks about Japanese life, customs, hobbies, food, technology, pop culture, and so on. If there’s one thing I noticed, it’s the frequent usage of beautiful music. You can find more information here.

Danny Choo has also been working on a project known as “Mirai Millenium,” but he said he wasn’t able to work on it recently because of the time he devoted to creating moekana. Mirai Millenium is essentially an anime that stars his mascot, Suenaga Mirai. However, he hasn’t gotten around to completing the story for it, so who knows? The cities and backdrops used are quite amazing, though.

Here’s an alternate OP:

There’s bad guys too! They’re the guys who aren’t wearing any orange!

Aside from that, there was also Danny Choo’s motivational words, and tips about time management. Towards the end, he took a series of pictures of his audience and also gave away a few Akemi Homura figures.

After the Danny Choo panel, we left the convention center to go out for food. We decided to stop by The Pantry, which is a restaurant and cafe located in Downtown LA. It’s a little steep, but it’s quite delicious and the portions are also quite large. We brought some food back with us for the other starving members in our party.

We spotted a wild Komeiji Koishi / Touhou just as we were heading for the AX dance. Shown here is a very legit cosplay.

Touhou isn’t the easiest franchise to cosplay, actually. It requires a lot of time and effort because some outfits are actually quite elaborate.

A few more photos later and we all went to the dance. AX Dance 2012 was alright. It took place in the Petree Hall inside the LACC and not in the Nokia Theater like last year. It was a bit cramped, but music selection was quite good. No hardstyle or much j-core, though.

Getting a good shot of her was ridiculously tough for some reason. I took a bunch of photos and pretty much narrowed it down to these two. Each shot would just end up blurry and then taking the time to enhance a little in Photoshop took quite a bit of time.

Very lovely, though. The photos simply don’t do it justice.

Yakumo Yukari / Touhou

Kirisame Maria (Front) + Reiuji Utsuho (Back, she was shy!) / Touhou

Tewi Inaba (Left) + Reisen Udongein Inaba (Right) / Touhou

I wasn’t able to go to the Panty and Stocking panel during Day 4 at Anime Expo, (Due to late night shenanigans during Day 3.) but some of our other friends were able to.

It was a voice actor panel starring the voices of Panty, Stocking, Chuck, and Garter Belt and Brief, all voiced by Jamie Marchi, Monica Rial, Ian Sinclair, Christopher Sabat, and Joel McDonald, respectively. Those who asked excellent questions received Heaven Coins. My friend who was there managed to receive one, and he didn’t even have to ask a single question!

“You and me are like Korean BBQ. You be the meat, and I’ll be the griddle, lay it on top of me and I’ll make you sizzle.”

That line was too perfect, of course he received a Heaven Coin for it!

More images.

There’s just so much. I should make a separate post and just dump some more in there.

Mirai Suenagai Solar Uniform cosplay.

The last notable panel we saw this AX was the Muvluv Alternative Total Eclipse screening. Originally based from an eroge developed by âge, Total Eclipse takes place in an apocalyptic setting, where aliens known as BETAs (Beings of Extraterrestrial Origin) are wiping out the human race quickly. Mankind fights back with mech known as Senjutsuhokousentouki, but their chances of success dwindle quickly. Photography wasn’t allowed during the screening.

Animation is done by Satelight. Vocalists ayami and Minami Kuribayashi preformed on the stage just before the screening. I was especially excited for ayami, as she has collaborated with both REDALiCE and Masayoshi Minoshima in RAMM. Ayami’s voice is absolutely precious and she is quite invoking as well. She truly feels her music, and she knows how to please her fans. It was quite a sight to see ayami preform live, and it has easily become one of the many highlights for me this AX.

Hara Yumiko

We were shown the first two episodes, only the first of which has been broadcasted in Japan so far. There is quite a lot of action, gore, and fanservice. Even if it doesn’t turn out so good, I’ll just watch it if only for the opening and ending theme songs. Ayami’s that damn important.

And with that, thus concludes our summary on this year’s AX. Lots of beautiful cosplayers, exciting panels, good food, great dances, and awesome artbooks to get! This was easily the highlight of our summer. Thanks to our wonderful photography team, we were able to take better quality pictures than last year. Last year’s posts? Don’t search for them as they’re nowhere to be found! I may add to this some more later, but for now, check the links below for more cosplay images, and other opinions and experiences by other attendees. May your summer be a wonderful one!

Muvluv Alternative Total Eclipse Episode 1.mkv (Commie) 287 MB.

There isn’t a whole lot of words in this post, really. Don’t feel intimidated by the huge amount of pictures. It just happened to turn out that way. This is also our hugest post on the site so far.

Full resolution of the OP image. This is the 100th image in the post. Congratulations on making it this far! I now deserve a good night’s rest.

Edit 08/06/12: Added more information about the cosplayers.

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