AM2: Just A Laid Back Con

Relax, laid back anime convention. After two days of AX, I headed to AM2, said out loud, " AM Squared"

AM squared was a easy going con and for a first year con was relaxing. I can easily see it growing and becoming a much bigger-con. I enjoyed myself going through the merch booths and sitting down to anime to watch. I think AM  squared will be more fun fan run in the future or more fan community based.

The biggest highlight for me was the Scandal concert, which had a huge line hours before it was set to even start. I'll have a separate post on that later.

Buranku was also shown two a large crowd, it had such big stars , but the movie couldn't decide what it wanted to be. It tried being to many things and ultimately failed me. I wouldn't recommend it.

I found out that the Toyopop out of business sale was over in a hour, everything was bought that fast.

What was a nice touch that I could see being improved were festival games. Simple ring tosses and other parlor games were dead center of the con, with some damn good prizes for relatively cheap. My suggestion would to make the games more like a Japanese festival that we see in the anime or manga we read. Another possibility would to look more like the high school cultural festival I see in every anime with students. The problem to me is the festival games didn't have a overall theme. They could have easily integrated anime jokes into the different games like rings toss over a gundam or shoot the tentacles.

Artist Alley was small, I hope it grows bigger, it's such a simple concept that I hope more atrist consider showing up for next year.

Below, I'm mostly going over merch I saw.

 I couldn't believe they had Sailor Moon slippers, so odd.

 Yes, of course there was still dirty stuff to buy.

        Hyper Game from Sawtelle was in attendance, they had some fun products and rare games to get.

          So many plushies!

I hadn't been to the Anaheim Convention Center in a long time, it's just nicer looking than the LA Convention Center and L.A. Live. The whole design is for much easier access for newcomers and overall is just more aesthetically pleasing. The floors in the hall could be carpeted. Bathroom placement, perfection. Unlike the poor design of Staple Center, L.A. Live and the downtown Convention Center, everything was easy to find. The ways use get to LA LIVE from the convention center shows a total lack of care from those who designed it. I also think the Long Beach Convention Center is nicer than the downtown convention center. We can all agree though, that the Marriott Convention Center near the Burbank airport is the worst .

The only other changes I'd make would be the use of space, it's seems like more could have been added, maybe more booths or some sort of new concept, there are so many talented people in LA, that I'm sure something could be thought up for next year.

The convention needs to be nurtured and will grow, I don't know if it should be at the same time as AX, maybe during another time every year, because it did make it hard to choose which one to go to. I didn't know why it couldn't be in August or June, having two cons to go to in the summer would be quite nice