To The End Of The Galaxy

It's already the end of July and I've finally finished sorting out most of my photos from Anime Expo. As usual, I was in attendance, but I actually went all four days (Thursday to Sunday), which I haven't done in a long time.

Some of the differences I noticed this year included streamlining of security, allowing people to get inside the venue quickly, unlike previous years where the process could literally take hours. This year they didn't ask to look inside every purse, bag, or backpack even after coming through the security scanners, which helped enormously.

They also capped attendance this year, so despite there being a huge number of attendees, it was not as densely packed as it was in recent years. I'm not sure what the unique attendance number was, but AX reported that the turnstile number was estimated at >407,000 (which is actually up from last year).

Despite it being 9:00am, the South Hall was crowded with people waiting to get into the exhibit hall.

The South Hall Lobby had booths for BiliBili and Honkai Star Rail.

1/12 Gundam

Star Rail gacha machine

Metaphor: ReFantazio display

Seeker archetype

The hall running off to the south side of the lobby had booths for Blue Archive, Gunma tourism, and Nikke.

Gunma-chan

Throughout the day, the official cosplayers would appear at the booth to pose for photos and hype up the crowd.

Blanc

Rapi and Scarlet

Anis

The exhibit hall was not busy, but definitely did not feel as overwhelming as last year.

Atlus booth Metaphor: ReFantazio display

The entertainment hall included booths from Hoyoverse and hololive.

The artist alley was jam packed as always.

Fakku was sent to the basement with the artist alley, but I think that their exhibit area must have been twice the size of what they had last year.

Also in the area where they had autograph signing in the past, a number of vendor booths were set up as an exhibit hall overflow area, which gave off more of a boutique vibe. The area was certainly was less crowded than both the main exhibition hall, and the artist alley. It was quite pleasant actually.

Dungeon Meshi seemed to be one of the most popular series this year, with many panels and cosplayers.

Laios' Party

Laios and Senshi

Falin, Dark Marcille,
and Izutsumi

Inutade

I did not see much representation from the doller community.

In addition to the official cosplayers at their Summer Holiday booth, there were a lot of other Nikke cosplayers. This particular costume was massive, and essentially completely immobile.