they were a guy, too. hella based.
i only knew they were because of their voice, by appearance
alone i thought he was a girl LOL
it's finally happened!
ya boy finally went to his first anime convention
actually not really, since i went w/ my family to a smaller one in shanghai before, but i don't really think that counts
i debated a little whether or not to use Proper Grammar over discordspeak, but imo this makes it flow better, feel free to crucify me if you disagree
my good friend idkac actually went to ax last year with another friend conservemomenta, but iirc during that time i was either in china or caught working so i couldn't go, sadge
thankfully this year i remembered the event existed and wanted to go along
also, i know arknights isn't too big of a gacha game so some people might get irked by the amt of ak photos i took since i'm a huge fan of it. yall don't have to worry; i've moved all of them down to the bottom of the page, though they are all across different days so, uh, cry about it idk
though our flights were at 6 am, idkac wanted to start ubering over there at three in the morning for literally no reason. i got up at 2:30 to make some final preparations and was ready by then, but this man decides to sleep past his alarm and only get up at 3:30, so there's that.
anyways, we got to the con by around 11, and we got our first photo before we even walked in:
the cosplayer was a guy too, which was hella based. (we could tell by the voice, initially i thought he was a girl looool)
i bought my ticket late because i'd mistakenly assumed idkac bought it for me, so we spent like 20 minutes searching for the place you were supposed to claim the tickets
after that he went off for some blue archive panel event, so i was left to my own devices. here's some photos i took by myself:
while walking around the entertainment hall by myself, though, i struck veritable GOLD:
i did NOT expect to find any funny game cosplayers here, but there i was. she told me i was the second person to ask for a photo, too!
i also got some blue archive cosplayer photos to make idkac jealous
but soon enough the panel finished. after lunch at a mexican place nearby we went to artist's alley, a place where hundreds of artists were selling various trinkets and prints. idkac has the brain of a snail so it took him ages just to finish looking at a single booth
i also got this sweet photo:
rabbit hole was actually my most played spotify song in 2024, and will stetson's cover of it was in my top 5. idk man, the song just goes that hard.
by the way, the con started on july 3rd, 2025. famous vtuber gura reincarnated as saba on june 28, 2025. as we were walking through there were already prints and stuff of her. absolutely insane production time, if i do say so myself.
here's the rest of the cosplayers i got before we went home:
this was the day conservemomenta (i'll refer to him by conserve from now on) arrived because he was an absolute bum and didn't want to take off one extra day from work for the expo
but let's start with some more photos:
at this point i realized that despite near all of blue archive's characters being female, near half of the cosplayers of the game i'd met were guys. so, there's that.
astute readers might've noticed that in the photos now i'm dressed as sunny from omori! i've gotten into a teensy bit of cosplaying recently, which is really unfortunate for someone as ugly as i am
but i didn't wanna go to the con empty handed and sunny has a fairly simple outfit, so i did the best i could without makeup. when taking some photos i tried to give off the deadpan expression he always has in the game, but only when i was going through the photos did i realize i just looked sleepy as hell.
that day was also when i found out ax had these cosplay meetups, and the one for omori was on the first day. truly unlucky, but there wasn't anything i could've done, so it is what it is.
and here's some things that i thought were a bit more notable. first off, someone put these random tcoaal cutoffs on the balcony, idk if it was for some event or whatever:
we were also going through artist's alley when conserve runs up to idkac and me saying that there's class of '09 cosplayers here
it was really crowded so i was practically shoving my way up there. thankfully, i didn't lose them and got to witness peak:
unfortunately they didn't tell me to off myself, but you can't get eveything you want in this world
and here's some pics i took during the afternoon. the arknights cosplay meetup was also this day, but the photos for that are in the ak section so scroll down if you wanna
conserve decided to dip to do some standard LA tourist stuff. cringe.
but i'll first put all the photos i got here- the funny stuff's gonna be after.
but with those photos out of the way, i need to make fun of idkac here
we were walking down artist's alley at the usual snail's pace when we got to this:
normal people (me) would've just laughed and moved on. maybe we would've talked about it with some friends we knew and poked fun at that. but no, idkac BOUGHT ONE OF THESE STICKERS!!! (it was the topmost rightmost one with the black stocking.) ask him and he'll prolly say it was "for a friend", but he knows damn well what he's gonna do with that sticker.
also, as we were about the leave the con, we saw this cosplayer dressed as peak:
i actually also got a photo w/ another sagiri back in china, but this one's outfit is a bit more standard. she had the mask, drawing tablet and everything, it was actually insane. (gwen from league is also back there lol)
and just like that we were at the last day.
this day was also the most stressful out of the rest. my buffoon self actually forgot that by checkout day you were supposed to leave with all your stuff in the morning, so i just thought "oh hey, i'll just go to the con and come back in the afternoon before i go to the airport!" little did i know.
the airbnb owner contacted us at 11 saying all the stuff had to be out by like noon, so i had to call an uber there and back all because i didn't wanna lug a dinky suitcase around for a couple hours.
in the morning idkac and conserve decided to go to the adults-only portion of artist's alley.
i forgot my id and they didn't take pictures, so i couldn't go with them 😭
they called me inside and asked if i wanted a sexy print of thorns from arknights.
naturally, i told them to go kick rocks
also, today was the only day i actually got asked for pictures. here's two of them:
there was also a mari cosplayer, but i didn't get any photos on my own phone. all i have to remember her by is the plastic apple she gave me from her picnic basket:
but enough about me. here's the photos i got that day:
and to top things all off, here was the final cosplayer photo i took as we were leaving:
no real commentary here. how the meetup worked was that there was a host & cameraman tha would call up various related subsets of characters to take photos. there was also a table handing out prints & stickets, which was cool
a good number of cosplayers spoke chinese too, lol
but besides that i don't have much to say. arknights photo dump GO!
NO LIKE SERIOUSLY LOOK AT THESE
IT'S ACTUALLY INSANE
the line to take pictures with the cosplayers yostar hired was too long so i didn't get pictures with those haha
but hey, thank you so much for scrolling through what may be my longest post yet (even though most of it is just images)! it really means a lot that even one person wants to listen to what i want to say.