AkibaFest Little Tokyo's New Anime Convention

AkibaFest, Little Tokyo's own anime convention had it's first run last weekend. It showcased a number of booths from major anime and video game companies, showed off anime films and had special panels from voice actors.

For my sake, it was a few hours to walk around enjoy a few cosplayers and the anime community come out a look around Little Tokyo.

Mainly, it was located outside in the JACCC Plaza in tents.

You could stop by Bandai Namco to try Dragonball Xenoverse or head over to Marvelous XSeed's booth for Akiba's Beat, even hear a panel about the game coming.

Goodies were given out by Sentai Filmworks and Viz and you could have your picture taken with some tank girls from Girls Under Panzer.

If you wanted to watch something you had multiple screenings at the underutilized Aratani theater and the soon to be dead Downtown Independent, seriously how is that place still open?

One of the more strange booths- I wish there were more of them- was the Sony Music Communications booth showcasing an app where you can ask an anime girl, Asuna, to be your alarm and just random questions. You can get it here.

Fun to play with and total otaku material to have on your phone when bored. The giant HDTV's showcasing the app and Asuna in different costumes with microphones sharing any "question" you might ask made it the stand out booth of the show.

Nothing more than freebies made me hunger for more booths selling all sorts of anime goods at Anime Expo and other anime conventions. Only Anime Jungle, which you can just walk into-and it's get hard to miss with its domination of the first floor of the Village Plaza mall, was selling goods other than Aniplex.

As an anime fan, I think Aniplex needs to grow with some more community events. Yes, there was a Gunpla tournament and a cosplay contest, but I would like to see some more fun fan run panels. The schedule was more than open to fill in more.

I would like to see maybe NinjaCon, the first Little Tokyo anime convention I know about maybe helping out or being absorbed into AkibaFest for some more fan events. Aniplex could stop anything they didn't really like, but fans might create some more fulfilling events.

AkiaFest's name still bugs me as it really doesn't seem to have a solid connection to Akihabara, the Japanese otaku mecca. Same goes for the mascot that was suppose to be named, but never was.

The shirts for it were named Akibafest mascot.

The event felt more like a very nice selling event for Aniplex products.

The films chosen, well, many were already screened or have been in theaters. I would have liked to see a wider selection of anime on the big screen or even some video games, which the theaters nearby are more than capable of.

In the end it was a nice new attraction for Little Tokyo to have and celebrate anime. There's room for improvement and I hope sincerely to see it come back next year, with sold out days online it should.

Now some cosplay and more photos

more photos after jump