Long time no talk?

Yeah, I know, I'm bad about keeping this blog updated...  As I said at the scanlation blog though, I'm finally home, so maybe stuff will all get a little better organized now.  Someone asked whether I bought anything at AX over in the main blog comments, so I figured I ought to give you guys a breakdown on the rest of my Cali trip and perhaps discuss AX a bit.

I stayed with Gief, one of our typesetters, for the majority of my trip, down in SoCal.  I did go visit my grandmother in the valley for a while though, and it was over a hundred degrees there...  seriously, fuck that weather, I'm looking out my window at a rainy July day here in WA, and I'm perfectly happy with this.  Other than the weather though, the whole time between Fanime and AX where I was just kind of hanging out and vacationing in California was pretty fun.  It wasn't terribly eventful though (my birthday fell during that part of the trip, I think I wound up playing League of Legends and going to bed early that night), so I'll skip over talking about it too much.

AX was... interesting.  Allow me to open by saying that I had heard stories about how bad line management was at AX, and had a long-standing promise with myself not to go to AX.  Well, then they announced the Miku concert, and I had to go and break my promise.  I think I've been to enough cons at this point to be justified in making some generalizations.  Anime Expo is the first con I've been to that didn't feel like it was being run by fans for fans.  Every time you turned around, they were gouging you for more cash, the way events were run was counter-intuitive to the thought of making things the most fun for the most people, and they had the same problems with lines that I've been hearing about for at least 5 years.  I won't go into gory details on the negative parts of the con unless someone really wants me to, I'll just leave it with what I said already.
The Miku concert was fantastic.  The models were better than any of the ones used at the previous Japanese events, they had extended and improved a lot of the dance choreography, and the setlist had been updated a bit (huge improvement).  When they intro'd Uraomote Lovers and later World's End Dancehall, I pretty much couldn't contain myself, I'm a pretty huge Wowaka fanboy, and two Wowaka songs at the concert was two more than I was expecting.  The official Miku merchandise was marked up to hell and back, but I did get a free concert poster that's really nice, so at least I did walk away from it with something to remember the event by.  I think they did a pretty good job of recognizing that a lot of the attendees were there because of Miku, and the other Vocaloid panels and events were all pretty interesting, and we got some cool sneak peek stuff (KAITO Append is going to be amazing, the song made with the beta version that they played was really good already).
Other events were a much more mixed bag.  It was next to impossible to get autographs, so I didn't bother waiting in the massive lines for the guest Q&A stuff.  I always go to some of the industry stuff, I find it interesting, but not to the point of being able to go to all of it and work for a 'news' site or anything.  Viz should have been the highlight, but it was a shit panel.  I went in hoping for some mention of corporate stability in the wake of Tokyopop shutting down, perhaps some discussion of the licenses Tokyopop left behind, and maybe some new announcements.  What we got was a low-level staffer who wasn't allowed to answer questions talking about properties like Naruto and Bleach that we already knew they held, and a massive push for their iPhone/iPad app stuff, which also isn't anything new.  Honestly, that panel flowed more like a 40 minute commercial than an industry panel at one of the largest conventions in the world.  In contrast, we went to the Wakfu panel directly after the Viz panel.  They opened the closed beta for the mmo for us, showed us gameplay, discussed their vision for the game, asked for feedback from people who had played already...  and then, they answered the question "are there any plans to bring the Wakfu animation to the US" by showing up episode 9 dubbed.  That was a hell of a panel, and it was put together by the US rep for a French animation company that's done a mere handful of projects.  The Touhou panel was the same presentation by the same guy from Fanime.  It was kind of fun, I dunno...
Alright, now to address the dealers' hall, since that's the question that prompted this...  I didn't get anything for WOW!scans, yet again...  Even at a convention as big as AX, there's little to no josou/otokonoko/trap/whatever stuff.  To add to that, there's very little in terms of non-H that isn't already covered for scans either by us or by some other group.  Doujins, I wish there was wider availability, but the closest you'll get to our demographic at a con is two bishounen going at it.  What I did end up getting though, is a Suwako fumofumo plushie and a little piece of Suwako fanart.  That makes my haul for this year's conventions: 10 figures (Asuka, Miku nendo and figma, Dead Master figma, 2 Sheryl figures, Klan Klan figure, the poseable Suwako figure, a Suwako mini figure, and an Arcueid swimsuit figure), 4 autographed Yoshitoshi ABe books, 9 Touhou doujins (no big name stuff, just fleshing out my collection, all non-H, one of them was made in the west and sold in the Artists' Alley, which was pretty damn cool to see), 3 Miku albums (Vocarock 2, Vocalonexus, and Cinnamon Philosophy), the Exist Trace album, 2 pillows (an Asuka daki and a mini pillow with Sheryl on it), one bedsheet (trap Hayate, too good), the plushie, and the concert poster.  Time to let my wallet hibernate for 6-8 months, I think.  I'm fairly happy with the purchases this season though, some of the things were just such amazing finds...  Anyway, I'm going to go take a shower and hope it washes away my hangover so I can get to work on some WOW! stuff.