Anime Expo 2025
July 3-6, 2025
Los Angeles Convention Center
Los Angeles, CA
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Reading: Bosnian Chronicle, Ivo Andrić
"So finally, after five years of scratching a living in flea-infested villages, we're finally going back to where we belong. The Colosseum."
— Proximo
June 30-July 01 (Day -1) : Scheming
Until day -1 I wasn't going to go.
The past year since graduation has not treated us well and I am more or less a "mess". I've been in a bit of a spiral of self-castigation and hobby-denial while I try applying for jobs, attending workshops, anything to get out of the hole I've put us in. In January when badges and hotels went up I signed on to fight for a room, and we got them all together... but after a few months, no one had communicated to follow up on plans, and I made a mistake that I make fairly often.
I assumed we weren't going, without asking.
So at noon on June 30th, when I get a text announcing that the room has been transferred to my name, I'm caught off-guard. I spend much of the rest of the day discussing logistics and probabilities with friends. For my part, the only restrictions are financial, and buying a flight two days before takeoff is not a great way to stay in the black.
What are you going to do? Stay home and be ethical, and have the cat look at you funny again?
That's a crude paraphrase but the intent was the same. Stop punishing yourself as if it will make things better, and go have fun for a weekend. Well, I feel bad leaving Maddie behind, but her favorite Anime Expo slogan is "I never want to go back to Anime Expo again", so I think I'm clear on that front. I'll ask for a birthday loan from the birthday loan officer and make my first appearance since 2019.
It took a day to make plans with Clay, but he's on board for the trip now as well. We discussed him maybe coming late since he had already scheduled a hiking trip, but I think (I think) he decided that the opportunity was too unique to pass up. I went to ask for help and was dunked in cold ice and inadvertently insulted repeatedly.
[...]
Around 10pm I'm in the car on the way to Clay's house again, to tell him I'm ready to go in the morning, to confirm what we're bringing, and to finalize plans that were only just spun that morning. When I get home there will be a brand new reckoning that I don't know how I'm going to come back from, and it probably means starting to leave this side of the state permanently, but for now we're going to Anime Expo.
July 02 (Day 0)
Up at 0710 when my alarm goes off. I need to be out the door in an hour but both of the other cars are still in the driveway. Everything's tense and charged so I'm going to stay out of the way for a while.
Just before taking a shower, P. sent me the update that DereSute is sunsetting. Wow, way to celebrate the 10th anniversary! This is actually huge news and very auspicious timing. I've been logging in daily since coming back early in Covid (after a lacuna of a year and a half). I already finished the FredericaDex; I hope to finish the RankoDex before the game ends. There just wasn't enough time, Michael...
I will not be playing a gacha ever again; one was enough for a lifetime.
0810 is when I said I'd be out the door, but I sat with Maddie five extra minutes. I'll speed a bit if I have to. Still plenty of time to get to Clay's and walk to the 0900 ferry. My suitcase+duffel experiment isn't working out and my bags are falling off of the handles and flopping all over. Note for future use: the duffel needs more clothescubes and fewer shoes to make it something that can be thrown about carelessly. My next laptop needs to be smaller and aluminum so I don't have to baby it. One small bump and this Thinkpad screen will snap in half. My next phone needs to be half the weight so I stop putting holes in my pants.
Our original plan in Bremerton was to wait for the regular ferry and its hour-long crossing. It's not here yet, but we conveniently arrived in time for a 0915 fast ferry. That's half an hour of transit shaved off, and also around twenty minutes of waiting around (for the low price of a $2.00 ticket). Off we go, quite a bit earlier than expected but at least we'll be safely on time.
1008: Since we're super early we have plenty of time to head to either Westlake or the international district. There's a coffee shop I want to stop by, so we head south to the international district.
Hello! Elm Cafe has closed. Stay tuned though, something new is coming!
Abama strikes again... a double-back to Cafe Nerv—Umbria it is. Then around 1115 we hop on the light rail and, eventually, arrive at the airport.
Our flight is at 1410 out of the N gates, which means I get to ride the train! I spend the next few hours in Napoleonic Bosnia.
Many hours later... we've gotten our metro tap cards loaded up for the trip, and are en route to the convention center. The new light rail station is surprisingly duneeasy to navigate and would feel somewhat safe, if I didn't know we needed to make an eventual transfer in buttfuckistan. And sure enough, when we get there, the connecting train is delayed because an entire squad of armed officers are sweeping the cars for some[one]. It strikes me that this is the first time I've been in LA post-2020.
1828: On the LA Metro: Nosering El Che on the E line is [performatively holding] a book on worker's rights, checked out from UCLA. And it's these kind of dreams again in Californication.
Once we finally arrive at the Moxy, getting our room turns out to be a royal scam. It's booked through our absent friend, and his card / points / etc. are on file. The hotel won't let a charge through on anything except a card physically in their lobby, right now. A few phonecalls ensue, and Clay gets some free drink tickets. Judging by the lobby, this is one of those bare-minimum hotels that has to lean heavily into a "theme" to mask how utterly barren the actual digs are. The lighting is dim and "ambient" (whatever the fuck that word means today), and the employees are all wearing denim. Oh well, as long as we get a room to sleep in, everything will work out.
NOPE, this room is just shy of one of those Japanese "we stuff you in a suitcase and throw you on a luggage rack" hotels. Not only is there no room for two people to move and stand, but there's no bathroom, per se. The sink and counter is out, right by the doorway, and the toilet and shower are small sliding doors that exit directly to the room. From the bed, one has a perfect view of the mirror... which perfectly reflects straight to the opaque but not solid toilet and shower cells. Basically, it's "honor system" not to look while someone takes a shower.
I would have preferred our third roommate be able to attend, but in this situation, thank goodness we didn't have to triple up in this cell. There will be no parties in this room. Anyway, we have our operating base for now, and it's been about twelve hours since I woke up, and as long since I've eaten. It's time to make a trip to Ralph's, which shockingly still exists. The lines are now snakelike and restrictive and there are 40,000 more security guards than there used to be.
On the way out we cross through the JW lobby briefly, and Clay spies Ivo from a distance. I run up to tap him and yell "TAG, YOU'RE IT!" and run away. Now THAT'S going to leave an impression!
Day 0 is a travel day, so all excitement is incidental. It's 2200 and we're finally roaming; I at least want to scope out the JW lobby and see if any remnant of the enthusiast era remains.
It doesn't.
We walk through L.A. Live / Xbox Plaza / Nokia N-Gage Center / whatever it's called today around midnight. They've blocked off the entire center of the complex for a beer garden and live band area as part of the convention expanding. They seem to be making a lot of good moves and this is not one of them. It was always nice to walk through L.A. Live, and it was a nice place to meet people and eat. Now we're forced to walk the perimeter of the complex and can't even see the entire field of view because of the 10 ft beer garden walls. Alas. The film major from New Zealand we met wasn't exciting enough to keep me awake, and so it's bed before 1am. That's not bad for a day 0, all things considered.
July 03 (Day 1)
The bed wasn't so bad. With only two of us, there was plenty of room for a pillow fort to keep each other from trying to cuddle. My body still isn't used to conventions on the other side of sucking chemical cocktails and somehow I'm up at 0800, laying in bed, waiting for the time to attack. This is not something I ever experienced from 2012-2020.
1057: In line for coffee in the "I'll settle for anything" joint in the JW lobby. I text Clay "POTATO ALERT! POTATO ALERT!" and he doesn't know what it means. That's my failure. I got to make a mental note of the potato though, so at least one of us wins.
I've had my coffee and — no, I'm NOT going to make that joke. I'm NOT! It's time to start the convention proper though. First thing's first: sweep the entire convention center in my civvies and scope out the state of things. We start off with the closer of the two halls. The exhibition hall where I once stood on top of the AX booth's scaffolding and cracked open a Rock and Rye while watching the hall clear out on the final day.
Aside from some Macross cardboards, nothing immediately jumps out at me from this hall. There's a Piapro booth with a wall-length sheet of paper for everyone to draw on and almost immediately I spied a particular symbol that would get the whole poster thrown away. I gently edited it to dodge the censor.
I am very bad at drawing hearts (and at drawing).
I've been given a few modest missions to carry out and I am nothing if not a good soldier. The first is that I have to spin the random gift wheel at the Copic booth as often as I can. If that means once per day, contingent on costume swaps, that's just what I'll do. The booth was a bit hard to find because it was against the farthest back wall on the right side of the exhibit hall (relative to your orientation as you enter), but after a few sweeps it finally showed up.
COPIC MISSION DAY ONE RESULTS:
Two stickers. That's a wipeout. Today the wheel wins, but I'll be back.
At some point (and my notes do not reveal precisely when this was) Clay and I decide it's now or never on sampling the Moxy pool. On our walk to the hotel we have a Strange encounter and bring him up to the room. We head back down to the pool and the... button for that floor doesn't work. We ride back up and hit the floor after it, then take the stairs and walk down a floor. The plan works, but the doors from the elevator room are closed. So we do what we would have done had the year been 2015 and the BAC of .2 and opened the door to waltz into the pool.
Bad move. Not only is the hallway not empty, it's actually full of security-looking gauchos, with the door to the pool wide open about twenty feet in front of us. There's an awful lot of activity for a closed floor in a "place to sleep before eventing" hotel. I have two primary theories:
- Someone drowned / OD'd and they're cleaning up
- Someone rented out the whole pool for an onlyfans shoot
I hate, HATE that I think the second theory is highly probable. Back to the convention center we go.
One of the craziest merch finds was the booth of $40 (that's forty American dollars) for a technically unlabeled bag of what is probably a shitty blend of coffee beans. Neither Minka Monstrasate's nor Bobobo Bubobomo's bags of beans said "single origin". None of the bags had tasting notes (unless they tasted like the Vtuber?) and I couldn't smell anything from the bags I randomly sampled. The most expensive bag of beans I've ever smelled and salivated at was in Seattle, and it was $29. Vtuber fans are getting raked over the coals.
"Which expires first, the coffee or the vtubers?"
"If you don't tweet that right now, I'm going to steal it from you."
After the exhibit hall it's time for the dealer hall. We're a long way from the days when the Weapons Grade Waifu guys would let me hide out in their back room, but I've got to see the state of things anyway. The first thing to notice is that the trend that began around 2017-2019 is now the rule, and the front two or so rows of the hall from the entrance are enormous industry booths. But Crunchyroll is nowhere to be seen among these!
The usual figure kiosks abound and I find that I don't recognize most of the characters. Has a good anime come out since 2017, or are all of these from gachas?
"Anthony Kiedis!!! Can I take a picture of you?!"
Anthony looks at me and then at his friends, perplexed. His crew give him a nod of approval. He didn't sing Under the Bridge for me but that's okay.
The Aniplex booth is actually very impressive. An entire hallways is erected in the middle of the hall and it's floor to ceiling kiosks and screens displaying assets from Aniplex games and shows. There's some interesting booth tech emerging; their setup has a story-tall billboard that cycled through what must have been every anime they released in the states since I started watching anime in 2010. Fate/Zero, Madoka, Oreimo, Angel Beats... these all passed for currency when I first came to AX, and here they are. Not to mention the PSG banner and Madoka trailer playing on loop as you enter the Staples Center today.
That little thought confirms it: no good anime has come out since 2017.
Finally at the back of the hall the Crunchyroll... temple emerges. I don't know how else to explain it. It takes up multiple aisles of the dealer hall and has a line of penitents lining up to enter the orange nave from which I imagine there is no emerging. I did not go in and I did not go back.
1850: It's Burger Time. Smashburger still lives, which is good, because it's the only edible food available in the entire convention area.
Even later, we're doing one more pass of the exhibition hall before it closes. Who should I spy, but [citizen F.] and his entourage. I'm surprised but not; after all, everything is permanently stunted into repeating 2019 over and over again, so why shouldn't I run into them? It's a group I have a colorful history with, to say the least, so I gently follow behind them without saying anything and attach to their fin like a remora. When they finally see me and look past the years, we all greet each other and swap new contact information. But here I do something I would not have had the tact for in the past!
I say "good to see you!" and leave.
Still, I'll send a feeler tomorrow and invite them up to hang out. No one is coming to our room while we're in the boxy Moxy though.
And only after all of this, close to 2200, did we suit up and head outside. Ononoki roams the Anime Expo campus once more. But the night turns out to be a trial run, which is fine; we'll have better beds and more strength tomorrow, so we turn in at an early 0100 again.
July 04 (Day 2)
Today is the day we stop slumming and become major dudes. Since we're bogged by an 11am checkout, the morning is going to evaporate quickly. We're already mostly packed so we exit the slum and head to the JW Marriot. And then through the secret hallway in the Marriot.
We're off to the Ritz.
After setting up it's time to reverse some bullshit from yesterday and head to the pool. The fun thing about the Ritz is that there is effectively zero elevator wait in the equation. Only two floors of the building seem to be hotels, and the pool is actually the roof of the JW Marriot. We head up and get in the water for an hour. It is impossible not to drop eaves on the late twenty-somethings talking in the pool about how "my dad owns the company that contracted X building", and so on. It turns out there's a party in the Ritz pool soon and we're going to be kicked out (the Devil's luck!) Ritz staff says that if we go to the JW lobby they'll give us a key to that pool, and we got an hour of poolside in, so it's not a total loss. The roof pool has a great view of the abandoned skyscrapers polluting the Los Angeles skyline. Surely there's a money laundering story involved here somewhere.
I go to the JW help desk to get key cards for the pool.
The Ritz pool was reserved for a party and we were told we could get cards for the JW pool.
Sure, here you go.
No credentials? No other questions? How did we end up in this high trust exchange in the year 2025? Clay and I still have some pool in us, so we head straight to the 4th floor of the JW...
The pool is completely swarmed by children and no one is speaking English. Pool's closed for us. It's time for a quick trip to Ralph's and back to the room to begin in earnest.
Strategy: Ononoki is my ace in the hole costume, so if I'm going to suffer through the polyester and the wig for an entire day, I want it to be Saturday. That means today is the perfect day to get into K-On! outfits (they're easy and lightweight). There's a slight snag that I forgot about, and I don't have enough pins for the Yui wig that I am borrowing (stolen valor!), so the first stop will be the exhibition hall for the cosplay repair station and Copic booth round 2.
The cosplay repair station wants your ID or phone or some important collateral before they'll let you enter. Uh, no thanks. When I tell the woman working the entrance that I just need hair pins, she half rolls her eyes and tells me that I can just take some. There's a little jar full of them right on the desk in front of me, no need to enter the repair station. They clearly get morons like me pretty often.
COPIC MISSION DAY TWO RESULTS:
The wheel is closed today. Complete bust.
There's allegedly an iDOLM@STER display in the dealer hall and I missed it yesterday. The main mission now is to hunt down that display. Once we found it we did a little photo session (see the stolen Miki photo at the top of this page). If Takane had been one of the cardboard cutouts, I might have had to commit crimes. I was saved from that temptation but you better watch out, Scamco booth. You just killed Starlight Stage, there's no telling how unstable I might be!
Begin hours of peripatetic aimlessness. Drinking in the environs. Smiling at people having fun, scowling at people being performative, screaming Steely Dan belters in the convention center like I don't know I can't sing. It's fun, damn it! We stopped by the "rave" and it was a tiny room that could have been used for a panel, and DJ Mikuwig on the turntable. Everyone is standing in place. Even at its absolute worst, the Sakura-Con rave is lightyears ahead of this. Evacuate, now!
My favorite mischief of the night is in minor key compared to the domestic terrorism I put the world through in my twenties. The help desk is empty and I want to get a picture of myself sitting in it, easy peasy. I sit down and get the photo, just in time for some dweebus to walk up to me.
"Excuse me, d-do you know [I have no idea what his mouthbox said at this point]"
"Я не понимаю."
"Huh? Sorry, I need to find [...]"
"Извините, не понимаю."
"Um, okay..."
Then he leaves. Can't be helped, I'm afraid. Good thing he couldn't call me out on my day-one phrasebook sentences!
Of course, that was only the warm-up round. A new dork, bolder in his movement, struts to the desk with a shit-eating grin on his face.
"Hi, how may I help you?"
"Hello, can I ask you what you're doing?"
He whips out his staff badge and slaps it on the table, knowing that I'm about to become a grovelling sycophant.
I inform him that I have a badge too, and show him my regular attendee badge.
"I'd like to know what you are doing at my booth."
"If this is your booth, why did you leave it unattended? I have a badge too."
When this sort of thing happens I just can't help myself. God do I wish I had a video of his grin fading. We had a bit more of a back and forth, and he finally asked me very politely if I would mind leaving, and I am nothing if not... Ah, who are we kidding.
2B:
"Please don't take a picture of my feet, it's too late in the night for me to put my heels back on."
Well... It's going to be weirder for me to take a strange angle photo of your entire cosplay group than it will be to just take the photo, feet and all. But I have honor in my blood and USA instead of DNA, so I will just refuse to share the picture with anyone.
At some point before the convention center closed I got into a round of DDR with a girl in a lolita dress. I think her dad was behind us. She'll be playing heavy mode soon, I think!
Midnight, the convention center is toast. Luckily I know the outdoor festival is going on, and that seems like as good a place as any to find anything to do. I desperately wish that the lobby scene were still alive, but there's no use bemoaning what's done. Even from a distance, I can tell this isn't going to be my scene, but at least I can say hi to some familiar faces. And boy do I find them; first up is Ginko, who sees me from a distance.
Ryan...? Ryan!!!
He's a goofy and good guy. But I think he'd better beware the demon rum. Prudent counsel enough. Today he's in the zone, master of his Beyblade arenas (this is NOT hyperbole), so I leave him to his sport and move to the next target, which is Mike. Mike is alive! Mike is here! Of the crew I originally met him with, he seems to be the only one still hitting up conventions. I catch up with him for a while and take him to the room to make him a drink, like old times. Gunzo made a guest appearance, though he's down his signature blazer and obligatory binders. One of these is a positive change.
Somehow the last picture on my phone suggests I was still crawling the streets at 0240. I'm not really sure where that last time-slip came from. No Ritz party, but that's a solid night of adventuring, and there's a wig to remove from my head now.
July 05 (Day 3)
Because today is the big day out, it's just about time to become Ononoki for the next twelve hours. This is my thorny crown. It was easier in the old days, but I am prepared. Before we commit, it is usually wise to do a sweep of the hall out of costume, especially if there are specific missions that might benefit from visibility and mobility.
COPIC MISSION DAY THREE RESULTS:
One Copic tote bag and one white pen. I assume artist types know what the hell they want to do with a white pen. Maybe they're saving all the cool black paper for themselves? Anyway, I'm just the quest guy, and mision accomplished (the email I used for this spin was robzombie@bandcamp.edu).
We take a midday dip in the pool and take a shot at the JW again. It's not much better than yesterday, but during the investigation I get an unexpected ping by [Citizen F.], who wants to sync up. The pool isn't worth fighting over so we head up to show him the Ritz while we suit up and head to the dealer hall. Aniplex has an enormous screen that plays the OPs to a handful of currently airing shows and I want a picture as Ononoki with the trailer to the Monogatari spin-off that aired recently. Something weird about the technology plays poorly with our phone cameras so I don't get the money shot I'm hoping for, but I do get some interesting g1itchc0r3 photos.
Around 1830 we head back to the JW to visit [Citizen F.]'s room and I find a sight I'm legally obligated to take some photos of: the entire front entrance has become dollcon, and Hina isn't here. I take a shotgun blast of photos from all angles so a certain doll enthusiast can have her fill, and then head up to the room, where I find myself biting into an absolutely rancid pastry and trying to subtly and inoffensively gag, vomit, and scrape a layer of stomachAIDS bacteria out of my mouth. Disgusting as this is, it's actually a point in favor of the pastry shop that made it — there was actual DAIRY and not just cancer ward chemical waste involved in its production, and I'm the foozle for just biting into something without asking if it was purchased today or a week ago.
So begins one of my favorite parts of conventions: aimless wandering and incidental encounters. A few impressionistic episodes from these hours follows.
In the exhibit hall, by the cosplay photoshoot sets:
"Ononoki! Yay! Yay! Peace my brother! Those are wonderful glasses!"
"Thanks, they cost $5 on Amazon a decade ago."
"Five dollars? No, they should be five hundred dollars! America!"
I'm not sure that's how money works but I like the attitude!
Around the back exit of the exhibit hall:
"Wh... what are you doing up here?
"Oh, I was just taking a picture of my friend while he took a picture of me."
"Charlie? Are we letting people take pictures on the staircase??? CHARRRLIE????"
I guess we won't be recreating our photoshoot from 2017 now.
Or when the convention security guard who didn't speak English well just opened the door for us after we showed him our badges, we found ourselves wandering in the [currently locked down] rear exit of the dealer hall:
When [Citizen F.] heads to bed he takes me to the front desk and gets me a card for his room so I can store my bags there after checkout tomorrow. Just a solid guy in the final reckoning. I'm glad I got to leave him on good terms in 2020.
At some point today (or another day? This memory is hard to place) I'm wandering through the dealer hall and handed an enormous bag from some gacha booth. There's not a chance I can fly home with this thing, I'd have to fold it in half and ruin it in the process, and I don't really need it anyway. It's just hard to say no to the free stuff! Accumulating it is a little game to play. Later on the same trip out, in the other hall, a Hispanic man (accompanied by his son?) asks me
"Yooo, where did you get that bag?"
"I don't remember, but I know where you got yours!"
And I hand the bag to him. Problem solved for both of us.
Just before midnight, I finally get my turn in line at DDR. Clay has wandered off, as he should have, because the line took long enough that I was starting to feel the sunk costs cope. Before I got to go there was a guy silently brooding, sitting on the floor in a huff, and by the polite rules of the game I should have ended up in a round with him. The people before him played Butterfly. Three. Times. In. A. Row. When it was his turn, he got up and picked doubles to show off to everyone. Turns out people are a lot more interested when you're not... quiet and brooding. Lesson in there.
Something incredible happened during my second track: I fell off the dance pad.
For my part, I've definitely let myself get beaten down the past year, but also being day 3 of little sleep and lots of walking. The constant stomp of the same arrow got my ass and my leg just... stopped doing leg things. I jumped back up and still passed the song. Everyone watching told me good job, which was nice because I was pretty embarrassed! I was never in a "game community", but I've always found most DDR players to be pleasant (because everyone likes it).
After that incident I feel clear to leave the convention center. The JW lobby is predictably dead; another ghost from Christmas past floats by and I meet Curt Kobain, who seems to be off to a shady club. I'm amazed he remembers me! 100,000 attendees and I still find myself running into people from the past. But the train moves on...
Back at the favela, I run into more old faces. I don't follow Vtubers so my data is faulty, but my impression was that the "true identity" of the streamers is supposed to be a secret. Someone tells me that's not true anymore, because the streamers were tired of not being able to physically attend the events they were guests at. And on that note, cue Ms. Bishop. Her little sister is here too (breaking news: she has a little sister) but since this crowd is actually her livelihood, I have no expectations of getting a party going in the hotel room. But then I see Ginko looking sad, and I ask him how he's doing.
I just found out a really good friend of mine is a piece of shit!
Oh no. I don't want to be a drama bug but I know exactly who he's talking about, and exactly what the offense was. So I invite him and his friends up to the room for a classic Ryan Ice.
Ryan Ice Recipe:
- vodka to taste
- Squirt to taste
- ice
(Invented around 2017 as a way of legitimizing the Smirnoff Ice). Of course, we're in the Ritz, where there are no ice machines, and it's long past midnight. Lesson for the future, get your ice early in the Ritz.
The room is a good outlet and I have Ginko explain Beyblades to me. I am now an official ten year old, and 8x more radical than I was this morning. On the way back down we run into a Twitter mutual of mine I don't think I've met face-to-face before. My vague impression (I've kept your name out of this in case it's not true!) was that favelacon was not "the vibe", but that that's where all of the people who know each other are. And THIS is actionable information, but not something I can do anything about alone. I too want to avoid the wota/mahjong/horsegirl/vtuber abyss, but without enough people to get an old-fashioned party started, all I can do is express interest here and there.
The one upshot of the favela — Minh showed up with one of those pizza box-sized electric scooters and let me do a lap on it. I am a buffoon but a man of my word; I came back after my one promised lap and he walked away to talk to people. That's an invitation for five more laps, I think! Thanks Minh. But I'm at my limit, and the scales are tipping in favor of exiting this orange mint costume and coming back as a civilian. We make moves towards doing this, but of course once one is in the hotel room and changing at 0300, it's foolish to think anything but bedtime is on its way.
July 06 (Day 4)
The final day means an overload of logistics and not nearly as much time. I find myself awake at 0900 and took down posters and tidied up the trash situation. Having a key from [Citizen F.] makes our lives incredibly easier, and Clay asks for late (1400) checkout on top of that. We get into the convenient HTT t-shirt outfits and run out to the con. This is going to be the first and only time that we stop by the artist alley this year.
(Side note: I'm not usually one for feeling physically faint, but the AX artist alley is one of the only places I ever had to tell friends "I have to go or I'm going to pass out", so I'm not fond of it as a rule.)
Even with the bonus room as an FOB, our timeline is tight. Flight at 1830 means getting there around 1630, which means hitting the metro around 1500. Travel sure eats away at life. We dip out of the convention center around 1330; in defiance of the tap card lines, I don't tap out. Now I'm still there in 2018 and 2025.
We headed up to the room and changed back into what will now be my uniform until the next con. For some reason, the LA Metro kiosk gives me change in Sacagawea dollars? What a strange thing to see on this side of the Bush administration! What's left of the day is travel and crappy in-flight coffee and another trip to Bosnia. I dread going home except for the person waiting for me there and the promise of a week in an AirBnB in Seattle for the upcoming workshop I'm headed to. I could narrate every bag drop and TSA pat-down if I wanted to, but at this point, the story of Anime Expo 2025 is at its end.
Final lessons
Favelacon reduced what used to be a fun ecosystem of people sharing in mutual interests and excitable hyperactivity into a monoculture of the same bland noninterests, with a Venn-diagram overlap of 100% in every category. The circles aren't even concentric because they're unit magnitude: you will like all of the activities equally or you will be a naysayer.
Well, I'm a naysayer. Groupthink is safe and boring, and real bonds can't be forged under those conditions. I want to know what people like and dislike. I want to get into conversations and even arguments, and I want to scream music with a few distinct voices and not a 200 person group orchestrated "yay", "wooooh". Does anyone else feel this way, or am I a violin in the void? If there are people out there who want to meet, want to talk and listen, and not to merely ride the monoculture katamari, I think they will have to be sought out from scratch. The better ending would have been to make the grand farewell tour at 30; that plan was sinisterly snatched by Covid, and so here I am, still traveling. The feeling is different but remnants of the old fun remain. We should all be trying to find the new way together.
All together now—
Still I remain tied to the mast
Until next time.
07.03.2025 – 05.29.2026