There were a few notable names missing that always had a presence which includes: Kadokawa Shoten, Sentai FilmWorks, Idea Factory International, NIS America, and most notably Funimation which always had a huge presence but now as it’s merged with Crunchyroll it’s sort of lost its identity which is a shame as they always had something cool happening at their booths. The Exhibit Hall was a very familiar sight, that I’ve come to miss….kinda only because I am sure my wallet was happy I was able to not spend so much over the last two years. That’s also not any slight to English voice actors, while I am more of a fan of subs over dubs I have a list of voice actors I really enjoy but most of them appear at smaller conventions around California so I have a higher chance of meeting them over the course of a year over say Masakazu Morita (Ichigo Kurosaki) whose last appearance at Anime Expo was back in 2014. Part of my convention experience has always been camping out with friends at 5 am or earlier to get autograph tickets for various illustrators, artists, writers, voice actors, and it’s always been worth it….this year there wasn’t the same urge to do so, Studio Trigger was the only one I was interested but I decided to skip it this year. Sure it sucks that we didn’t get any big names this year but I didn’t feel this would take away from the con overall, it’s something I’ve come to appreciate about Anime Expo as a whole. Normally there would be a huge name announced ahead of time, for 2020 it was to be Yoshitaka Amano but of course, the pandemic happened and things weren’t looking good as the final weeks before Anime Expo there was a lack of announced names. One of my biggest concerns leading up to Anime Expo was the lack of big names being announced. Still, I will leave that for another story as I want this to be about the return of AX as a whole and how this year felt like a triumphant return but with some asterisks. I could go into some of the things I saw over the next few days like the massive crowd of what I can only imagine is a few thousand people packed into the South Hall lobby waiting to get in, or how I became claustrophobic while checking out the artist alley. I made my way to the Los Angeles Convention Center early on Friday, July 1st (aka day 1), I wanted to avoid the hell of parking so I left my house around 7:30 am and was in line to pick up my press badge and covid bracelet by 8:40 am. For obvious reasons, all these events couldn’t happen but it was finally time and while I had some concerns overall, I really needed a few days to let loose within reason of course. As someone who attended Anime Expo for more than a decade, it’s been really odd not having any type of events or conventions for the last two years.
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