kangel from needy streamer overload
man, time sure flies. i swear i blink and another anime expo has come and gone.
initially i thought this one was going to be hella scuffed, since i was working on the other side of the goddamn country for the summer and had to accommodate for 6 hour flights both ways. everything actually turned out pretty alright though, since work turned out to be hybrid.
i wound up booking the flight to la one day before the actual event and the flight back one day after to save some money, and convinced my angel of a friend to let me crash at their place for the two nights we didn't have the airbnb booked.
also, this time i was going with four others: idkac and conservemomenta from last year, as well as two other friends i'll just call canary and rouge. as such, the uber prices were basically halved for me. i think in the end i didn't even spend over a thousand at the actual event.
like with the other blog post, all the arknights stuff is at the bottom
i think i took more photos than last time, so i split it into
pics i took during the meetup and
random pics i took all throughout the entire con
oh yeah, uh, one more thing.
i realize as i'm looking through all these photos now that a lot of them have
AWFUL quality, glare, lighting, whatever.
like even given my poor camera skills some of these are kinda bad
eh whatever, i guess i'll just have to remember to clean my camera more next time
or maybe if i lock in i'll bring an actual camera?
the first day was pretty hectic. i was still technically working, so i got set back by a meeting with my manager a couple hours. then i had to get myself all the way over to our airbnb which was in huntington park this time, which took maybe two hours?
but yeah, after all that i didn't have much time to put on my actual cosplay, so i just threw on my old sunny cosplay from last year (with a fresh eyepatch, of course) and called it a day.
(i actually wear it to school or the workplace sometimes because of how "normal" it is. i swear, besides my friends, no one else bats an eye)
idkac and rouge were already at the con, while conservemomenta, the absolute BUM that he is, forgot his pass at home, and so decided to putt around LA instead of going to the con. i wound up sharing an uber with just canary, who had on a cutesey maid fit with cat ears for the first day.
once there, we didn't even get a couple of steps in before i got my first pic:
a good number of these characters i also had pics of last year. i mean it's bound to happen, but i think it's nice to see different cosplayers.
no real big events today, so here comes the standard photodump:
for dinner that day rouge was at a concert or something, so idkac, canary, and i went to fixins soul kitchen, where we got genuine truckloads of fried food:
by the end of the day i'd noticed a shift in the cosplay distribution compared to the big 25. probably due to the reze movie, there were hella csm cosplays now. there were also insane amounts of tadc and...witch hat atelier cosplayers? i don't really watch that much anime these days, so maybe i'm just out of touch, but i had no clue that witch hat would be so popular. or maybe it's just easy to cosplay maybe LOL
alright, there's no point in delaying. i'll just show y'all my attempt at this year's cosplay:
looking at it now my eyeliner is basically not even visible in the photo, but i did learn a bit of eyeliner with some help from a friend for this. it's not much, but hey, baby steps, baby steps.
one of these days i'll be able to take off the mask. one of these days...
quick tangent- it was actually hella hard for me to get the prop saw down to la. it was originally shipped to my house up in the bay, but tsa prolly wouln't allow prop weapons in carry-ons and i don't wanna pay for checked baggage. instead i had rouge and idkac who were driving down from the bay to carry it with them instead. everything worked out in the end, but it was stressful while it was a problem lol
oh yeah, a lot of the cosplay photos from here on out are just gonna have me as the camerman. with the sunny cosplay last year i still felt pretty comfortable taking selfies with them, but not so much with the yi xi fit. it's whatever, i'm sure you guys will still believe me when i say i saw these people myself.
we only got our lunch at a restaurant today. idkac and rouge were at a panel, so this meal was canary, conserve, and me. it was at this place called el patroncito just a short walk from the con and was pretty affordable, all things considered:
we went to this place a lot last year, but i guess it never occurred to me to take any photos
oh yeah besides some cosplay pics there were some other things i took photos of:
by the end of the day i'd already had 3 people ask me for photos, already breaking my sunny cosplay record last year. i guess even a crappy cosplayer like me has a chance at ax haha as long as i put in a little effort. before i went i was pretty scared that no one would recognize me, but i got a decent number of callouts as well, so it turns out the folks at ax do know ball.
this day was the most packed out of all of the convention days, mostly because i had to go to both the vocaloid meetup and the arknights meetup. thank god they weren't conflicting, otherwise i would've burned the entire goddamn convention center to the ground.
without further ado, here's the cosplay photos from today:
oh yeah i was going through artist's alley when i saw this one booth:
i also got creamy boys again w idkac and conserve. unfortunately, due to a combination of me ordering first and them putting WAY too much ice cream in the cup (not really complaining, just how it is), my ice cream was leaking over the edges like crazy. the gloves i wore for yi xi HIGHKEY came in clutch for preventing gooey stickiness all over.
and when walking across the back of south hall i came across what seemed to be tcoaal cosplayers. i confirmed they were and asked them for a photo, but they actually said no for digital footprint reasons, which is pretty valid. they did give me these very nice freebie stickers.
this day was also an amazing day for photos. a good chunk came from the meetups, but my tally was a cumulative total of 9 by the end! at this point i was just aiming for one more pic on the last day to hit double digits, which is a bit hard due to reduced activity on the last day but not impossible
ok i'm ngl, i don't think i was even at the con for like half the day here. artist alley was a lot smaller, so my friends and i were nearly done with the event today.
we just walked around a little and found some more cool cosplays:
just as we were about to leave, i got tapped on the back and got asked for my tenth and final photo
honestly still can't believe i hit double digits tbh, i thought i'd maybe get five if i was lucky
to celebrate, i took this photo with conserve:
and yeah, that was it for anime expo 2026. everyone else got on their plane, i went back to my other friend's apartment to crash, and the rest is history.
i was a little scared to attend, but it wound up being pretty enjoyable
these are the group photos, pulled from the meetup discord server:
and these are the pics i got individually:
this meetup was genuinely the best part of the con. last year i remember being hyped, but not nearly as much as this year for some reason. i'm not usually one to cheer or yell with the crowd, but something about the energy here just made me subconsciously start cheering as the host called each group up. if you know that two minute hate scene in 1984, it's kinda like that except this time it was the two minute joy.
during the group photos something that would happen is that people would chuck the sui bean plushies onto the stage for various cosplayers to pose with. it got to a point where the host had to tell people to cool it down for fear of injury 💀
anyways, here's the group photos. some of these are my own, but some of them were of such poor quality that i just decided to use the official ones the meetup photographer posted instead:
here's the individual photos i got from the meetup:
and last and certainly least, here's what might be worst photo i've taken oat in terms of quality:
and for the final section, these are all the miscellaneous photos i got from across the con. i thank god high school me decided to play one of the moderately popular ones...
and that's it! once again, thank you so much if you actually took the time to go through the whole thing. it really means a lot to me.
i'll almost certainly be back for '27, but i'm still deciding on what i should cosplay as. maybe it's time for me to actually put on an arknights one? who knows.