Anime Expo 2011

Last Fourth of July weekend, the Los Angeles Convention Center looked like the electronics & otaku Akihabara district of Tokyo as fans of Japanese anime, pop culture, and games (many in cosplay costumes) filled the area for Anime Expo 2011. Anime Expo is the largest and longest running anime convention in North America and draws in people from around the world. During my time there, I not only met con-goers from all over the United States, but also Spain and as far as China and Japan. Anime Expo 2011 marks the 20th anniversary of the convention and had the highest attendance yet with 47,000 unique attendees. My experience there was a lot of fun, but a little overwhelming for my first anime convention and first time at any sort-of convention for that matter.

 

What’s it like to attend Anime Expo? Simply put, it’s like attending a huge carnival. Hundreds of people are dressed up in cosplay, which is quite a sight to behold. Personally, one of my favorite activities was taking pictures of beautiful cosplay, some of which you can see below. There is always something happening and something to do including panels, demonstrations, screenings, shopping, and concerts. Unfortunately with all the festivities come enormously long lines. Take picking up my badge for the convention the day before it started: the process entailed a two and a half hour wait in a line that snaked around the outside of the LA Convention Center.

 

Since this is a video game website, it’s time to address the gaming side of Anime Expo. The Japanese video game localization company Arksys Games, famous for bringing the Guilty Gear and BlazBlue fighting series stateside, was present. At their industry panel, Arksys Games showed off two upcoming titles coming to the US later this year and took questions from the audience. On the note of fans’ desire for a Guilty Gear/BlazBlue crossover, studio Arc System Works stated that they prefer to finish BlazBlue’s story before considering tackling a crossover. The most prominent game Arksys Games featured was a spinoff of the Type Moon’s famous visual novel Fate/stay night titled Fate/Extra. The game is a dungeon-crawling RPG on the PlayStation Portable that takes place in a parallel universe to the original. An English dub cast has not been decided for Fate/Extra yet, however the original Japanese audio will be included. For those hoping to see the original Fate/stay night game localized in English, Arksys Games currently has no plans to do so. You’ll just have to make do with the fan translation patch or the anime TV series.

 

The biggest and most important gaming feature at Anime Expo 2011 was the man behind the tactical RPGs La Pucelle: Tactics and more famously, the Disgaea series: Guest of Honor Sohei Niikawa. Niikawa discussed his history with video games and how he got started in the industry. Despite playing games as a child, he went to college to study archaeology, hoping to be a professor like Indiana Jones. Then Final Fantasy V came out, which he played, and inspired him to get into the industry by applying to Nippon Ichi Software (NIS). The rest as they say is history.

 

With Disgaea 4 coming to North America on September 6th, Niikawa and the NIS America industry panel addressed some information about the game and trivia about the Disgaea series in general. As of now, NIS America cannot promise that it will be able to bring over all of Disgaea 4’s DLC, but said they will try to get as much of it as possible. On another bad note, because of regional and other technical issues, Disgaea 4 players in US and Japan will sadly be unable to play maps from one another’s country. Although the main Disgaea games have been released on Sony PlayStation consoles, Niikawa said there would be a possibility of porting the first two games to the Nintendo DS if fan interest was high enough. When asked which Disgaea game was the most difficult to translate to English, the localization writers replied that due to the more serious nature of Disgaea 2, that game was hardest. Finally, the name Disgaea came from the original desire to use dystopia or Gaean as the game’s name. Both did not fit and because the game was actually “dis-Gaean,” the final name was created.

 

This year’s Anime Expo saw a number of video game voice actors in attendance such as Cristina Vee (Noel Vermillion & Nu-13 of BlazBlue), Toshio Furukawa (Jann Lee of Dead or Alive series), and Miyuki Sawashiro (Carl Clover of BlazBlue series, Elizabeth of Persona 3). There were even a number of video game Internet celebrities. Monty Oum, a CGI animator most famous for his Dead Fantasy Final Fantasy/Dead or Alive crossover CG short animation series, was present at Anime Expo this year. The team behind Mega64 online video game-related comedy skit videos was back at Anime Expo to hold another Mega64 panel as well.

 

Lastly, there’s the elephant in the room for those that know about this year’s Anime Expo: the Hatsune Miku concert. This year’s record attendance may be attributed to Miku as a Guest of Honor. That experience is another story for another time and will be part of a story for my article next week looking at the history of the world’s most successful virtual idol, Hatsune Miku, and the impact gaming has on her. As a final point, Anime Expo was a blast – definitely one of the best parts of my trip to Los Angeles.