Con-Man: Anime Expo '15 Friday

Happy belated 4th of July! Hopefully you're recovered from a long weekend of celebrating the colonies and independence. For the pre-4th Holiday Friday it was time to roll out to Downtown, Los Angeles for my first full on experience at Anime Expo. But honestly after 8 hours at the show, I didn't even soak it all in, there's just that much going on. The Los Angeles Convention Center was hopping with religious protestors, food trucks, cars trying to park (TIP: Take an Uber!) and attendees waiting for their badges. The volunteers were hardcore about the crowd walking ON the taped lines, not between them, that's a new one for me. But the queue moved quickly and before you knew it, we were inside. In the lobby you had throngs of photographers and cosplayers, merchandise booth and huge banners for video games and cartoons.

The exhibit hall was packed with vendors from end to end. Not being an anime expert, much of it was familiar yet unfamiliar to me. Lots of Attack on Titan, Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z, video game giant Capcom had the latest Street Fighter set up while Bandai hocked toys then Funimation and Hulu showed off the latest animated series available. Figurines and models of Godzilla, Ultraman and Gundam filled booths while there was a surprising abundance of wigs and weapons. Wigs for all of the fantasty riffed cosplay characters and weapons like samurai swords, nunchucks, airsoft guns and fake brass knuckles for...whatever. Artist Alley was hopping with oh so many prints and sketches and my personal favorite; beaded magnets of 8-bit characters. One booth had giant Street Fighter characters like Zangief and Ken but not much in terms of Chrono Trigger. Then you had a guy walking around with a saxophone, playing the opening bars of George Michael's Careless Whisper. One of my anime expert friends will have to fill me in on that one...

Over in another exhibit hall was again the cosplay backdrops of bed and class rooms, the top of a building, Gothic cemetery and Japanese garden among others. Dozens of tables were set up for gaming and a small quarter operated arcade had favorites like Time Crisis, Terminator 2 pinball and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. A video game hall of fame was also in full effect with every home system imaginable set up for your playing pleasure. Taking a break, we people watched for a bit and realized every few attendees was carrying a stuffed animal or prop cane/sword/giant gun around. I also noticed that the demographic at AX was a little younger than your typical convention with many looking in their 20's and hardly a parent taking their child in sight. Lots of men dressing like female characters aka CrossPlay, lots of Pokemon and one group as Batman and villains.

I wondered how food set up worked for AX as many of the convention dining venues were closed. Outside there were a good two dozen trucks slinging food but we opted to walk a couple blocks over to L.A. Live. Just like Seattle and Emerald City, The Yardhouse was our lunchtime savior as it wasn't very crowded so it was time for some specials and Jameson Mules. Going back to the show, we opted to walk the floor some more and see basically every aisle. There was a wedding venue set up from a new anime that shows you just how deep the imagination and role play runs in these series. By my estimation there was only one booth selling garden variety Marvel and DC comic books as the bulk of vendors had manga and the ol' adults only hentai. Programming ran all day and into the wee morning hours with screenings, panels and separate ticket concerts. Would have loved to have sat down for some Cowboy Bebop but the timing just didn't sync up. To cap off the night in Downtown we headed to Little Tokyo's Wolf & Crane for some dranks ($5 Happy Hour!), way too much delicious food at Ebisu (Shrimp Shumai!) and some video games over at Eighty-Two (Sunset Riders!). With Anime Expo scheduled to take place in Los Angeles for the next five years, I'll be back next year ready to tackle more of the amazing show.

Animated Goods: Samurai Champloo

After attending Anime Expo and not knowing what the heck was going on for most of the time, I started perusing Netflix to see what options I had to catch up.  I hear Hulu has a dynamite selection of anime available but I already have two paid online streaming services and no real desire to add a third.  The Flix came through though as Attack on Titan and Samurai Champloo are both available.  Being a martial arts, medieval knights and feudal Japan nut I opted for the samurai action first.  The story sounded intriguing from the get go: a waitress saves two warriors from execution and demands that they accompany her on a journey to find the samurai who smells of sunflowers.  The opening episode introduces us to Mugen, a wild and crazy swordsman and Jin, a stoic, masterless samurai wandering the villages, starving and hungry yet utterly badass.  Mugen has a temper and gets into trouble in the restaurant waitress Fuu works in while Jin stands up for a put upon local business owner and against the fat ass province ruler by killing his top guards.  The duo then encounter each other and start to talk some shit before throwing down.  Before long, local ruler nabs them both and they're sentenced to die the next day.

Fuu saves the bickering duo with some coconut bombs stashed in her kimono and the trio are off to find the sunflower samurai.  Who that is or what he did, we don't know.  Then it's misadventures galore as they travel the countryside running into gangsters, human trafficking rings and the like.  Most episodes start with them being hungry and poor then getting mixed up with the local seedy element as they try to find work or cash to eat.  A vibrant and well produced show, the opening and closing titles are beautifully rendered pieces of art with splash pages a la a James Bond movie.  The music takes on a hip hop vibe and there's even a Psyche!  thrown into a title card which cracked me up.  Unlike American cartoons where characters fire guns and swing swords at each other with no blood or death, one of the shows signature traits is the quick and intense violent action scenes that showcase fist, feet and katana sword crime.  The odd sense of humor in the pervy yet knowing Japanese style is another memorable trait from Fuu's extremely bouncing bosom that turn out to be bombs tucked into her robe to the local investigator we think is pleasuring himself in the bushes but is actually working out with a Shake Weight style apparatus.  Episode 6 somehow manages to mix in an eating contest, reverse racism and a homosexual giant of a man from Holland who comes to Japan after reading a book on the similarities between the bond of samurai and male love.  Pretty impressive.

Upon further inspection, Samurai Champloo comes from director Shinichiro Watanabe, who brought us the awesome space adventure western/noir/jazz fueled Cowboy Bebop.  So it's no surprise that Samurai seamlessly blends historical events, modern music and attitude with old school samurai, swashbuckling mayhem.  Samurai originally aired in Japan in 2004 and 2005 for 26 episodes before being brought to the states on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. 

Con-Man: Anime Expo

Following this years Emerald City Comicon, Calgary Expo and BotCon, it was time to attend yet another new convention, Anime Expo.  AE has been around Northern and Southern California since 1991 and has recently taken residency in Anaheim and now Downtown Los Angeles.  With a childhood filled with comic books, Anime was around but never my forte.  Sure I've checked out Street Fighter: Victory, Vampire Hunter D, Gundam Wing, The Big O and Cowboy Bebop but that's about the extent of my anime consumption.  A friend is a staff photographer for AE and got me hip to the fact that they open the doors to the Exhibit Hall for free after 4:00PM.  Check out his bitching photography and Anime thoughts.  With nothing to lose and some awesome swag to gain and sights to see, we headed downtown for a movie and the show.

It was a very Comic-Con'esque experience as it was a hot day out, there were throngs of people about and the hall was CROWDED.  At least 20 food trucks were parked outside and across the street so there were plenty of attendees milling about waiting for ice cream and fries as well as the obligatory Bible thumpers who show up at every highly attended event.  We had just seen them in Anaheim at WonderCon where Con-goers fed the trolls and protested the protestors with funny signs and costumed antics.  I wonder if these guys show up to sporting events?  Lots of people go to those...The Los Angeles Convention Center is a huge space and the perfect location for a big show.  Ample parking, lots of neighboring restaurants and attractions with plenty of exhibit hall space laid out over several wings and buildings.  Surprisingly, Anime Expo only goes until 6:00PM so we walked the floor for 2 hours but it felt like 30 minutes.  Right away I was taken aback by the heat inside the hall, the sea of people and the whiffs of B.O.  Booths were selling toys and figurines, animated cels, statues, model kits, video games and clothes like any convention but AE vendors swap comics for manga and had a real penchant for stuffed stuff like cute animals and characters from page and screen.  Artist Alley was great and I picked up a pixel magnet of Chrono from Chrono Trigger!  I figured I'd see some recognizable video game swag and in my mind wondered if I'd find something from SNES classics from Japanese masters Square Co. Secret of Mana or Chrono Trigger.  90's memories yo.  Literally sitting in my room in Ohio, listening to Oasis' Be Here Now on my 3 disk CD changer and playing Chrono Trigger.  Those were the days, huh?  Anyways, this vendor had them in spades with awesome, straight from the game looking versions of Chrono, Frog, Robo, Ayla and more.  It was kind of a trip to be talking to a fellow fan at the booth who seemed to be a good 10 years younger than me about a video game that came out in 1995.  But hey, fans are fans no matter what age and he let me know that I grabbed the last Chrono.

With the show closing so early and my friend not being needed until 8:00PM for the Cosplay masquerade, we wandered around and grabbed some grub then he escorted us into another wing.  There, the organizers had set up half a dozen scenes from various anime for photo opportunities.  You had a bedroom, a classroom, Arabian Night motif, prison, woods and more.  It was a really cool thing to see and a clever traffic diversion.  In the same space were arcade games free to play, sit down console gaming and a huge area for table games like Magic: The Gathering.  That, plus programming and night time events?  Damme Anime Expo, I may have to up my intake just to be in the same book and attend next year as more than a simple casual fan.  My friend explained to me about this skinless, muscle guy walking around was from a show called Attack on Titan so I went ahead and added that to my Netflix queue.  At every show you notice certain things, at this one it was an abundance of cute and cuddly stuffed/plush animals and characters, colorful wigs, Sailor Moon outfits and men dressing as female characters which I was informed is not drag but CrossPlay, get it?  A very packed and exhausting evening and we were only there for a few hours!  A nice warm up for Comic-Con in 3 weeks.  See you in San Diego!