An Otaku Girl’s First Anime Expo

While I’ve been to a handful of conventions in the past, this one was like nothing else.

Credit to Chaye Mo, characters property of Mihoyo and Hoyoverse

I had the pleasure of attending Anime Expo 2023 and what an adventure it was – an adventure that I soon found I was largely unprepared for. While I’m fully aware of the fact that I technically qualify as a hikikomori (shut in) and nearly all of my life revolves around the internet (hello, online grad school), the amount of people present at this convention was not only staggering, it became overwhelming. Because of that, and a compromised immune system, I was not able to do as much as I wanted to or attend as many panels as I thought I could. I still had an incredible time and I’m excited to share my experience with you!

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News for my visual novel family –
Wow, there were a lot of cool things announced for translation! Easily my most heartbreaking and equally exciting time of AX was waking up and getting the notification for the announcements of Minikui Mojika no Ko and Dead Days from JAST and MangaGamer, respectively. I was so disappointed I had missed those announcements live! While I was fairly certain Dead Days was going to be picked up, Mojika‘s announcement definitely gave me a shock and it took till the end of the convention for the news to finally sink in. There are so many amazing, dark visual novels to have come out in the last few years that I’m struggling to keep up! Hopefully with the main Muv-Luv trilogy I’m pouring over out of the way (blazing through Alternative right now), y’all can expect a review of Mojika and Dead Days coming from me when they do release. If you’re looking for the full visual novel news breakdown, check out Fuwanovel’s compilation here.

Speaking of visual novels, let’s have a little sociology chat about gender diversity at AX’23…

Throughout the con, gender diversity was a noticeable and welcome sight. I saw just as many women as men in both casual wear, cosplay, and drag. There was one unfortunate and abrupt change in that diversity, however, that gave both me and my partner pause.

As we had gotten our 18+ wristbands as early as possible, we were able to rush past the line that was beginning to wrap around the barrier that separated the relatively tiny Adults Only section of the exhibit hall. Trotting our way through the barrier walkway, we were immediately stopped by a growing wall of men, all of which were staring longingly at the exposed bosoms and backsides of waifu dakimakura’s (body pillows) galore hanging from the inside of the barrier walls. It was the first day of con and still fairly early in the morning, but we were still shoulder to shoulder in the crowd. The lack of women was so apparent to me that I felt I was swimming through a sea of men with how short I am; looking up over the crowd with my toes before ‘diving’ in to move to my next destination. The AO section did however have slightly more women present on the third day of con.

To the right of the entrance was a fairly large booth courtesy of AX sporting queer pride flags, rainbow merch, and pamphlets discussing sexual orientation and safe sex. With how big this queer AX booth was compared to others in the general vicinity, it had little if no crowd compared to nearly every other booth present on both days. Catty corner to this booth and snuggled next to Sakimi-chan’s booth, easily one of if not the most popular booths, sat a respectably sized table displaying detailed male character dakimakura’s and yaoi doujinshi for sale. This area was just as barren as AX’s booth on the first day, with much more of the women present gathering in this corner for the third day.

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Besides the AO section, Hoyoverse, Demon Slayer, One Piece, and Spy Family were everywhere throughout the convention – merch and cosplayers. As it took longer and longer for me to find any merch of the titles I enjoy (even more popular ones like Madoka Magica or Evangelion), I started to feel like an elder otaku. While we should acknowledge that the anime viewing population has exploded in number in the west during COVID, I wasn’t aware of just how dissociated new viewers were from classic titles.

This article is already so late from when I intended to publish this, so I will leave you with a small gallery of the pictures I was able to get.
Reader, thank you for your support. Even a single view means a lot and I look forward to bringing you more in the future!

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