We've had a busy few months! Family vacation in Seattle, going to Philly for PAX Unplugged, birthdays, Christmas, then our anniversary and ALA. It doesn't stop there either, as we're getting married in in just two days!
PAX Unplugged was a very different convention than we're used to, but it was fun. We were primarily there for Zero to compete in the Transformers TCG big world championship, the Energon Invitational. Zero didn't do too well in the tournament, but it was still a great experience. Not that he'll likely ever see this, but shoutout to Vangelus for the good games and conversations!
This past weekend was Anime Los Angeles 16, and what a great weekend it was! Our panel turn out was great, so before we go into details, a big "thank you" to everyone who came out and participated!
We opened the con with a two hour block Anime Jeopardy on Thursday (ALA is a four day con). The only other time we'd done that long was at TFcon LA back in March, but we were ready with a bunch of new clues. We managed to get five rounds in, and everything went really smoothly.
Friday we had both Pictionary and Charades. It took a little poking and prodding the audience to help get them over their nerves of coming up in front of the crowd, but they all seemed to enjoy it and we had a lot of laughs. We have a bunch of ideas for new cards, so expect some great ones next time.
Saturday was the return of Anime Jeopardy. Yup, another two hour block! This time our good friends Jeremy & Dominque were there with us, and we're lucky they were. Somehow between Thursday's Jeopardy block and Saturday's our buzzer system broke. We did come prepared with backup buzzers, but they were back at the hotel room. Jeremy & Dom ran over to get them for us, and then stayed to be our judges on who buzzed in first. We can't thank them for their help! With that big hiccup taken care of, we managed to start right on time and had a great set of games. Four hours of Jeopardy at one convention, and we handled it with flying colors!
Sunday was perhaps the biggest surprise for us, and a great way to end the convention. We've ran Anime Chopped at a few conventions now, and while it's always been fun, it often ends up just being us in a small room with a four or five attendees trying to make each other laugh. ALA though, the attendees never cease to amaze us. We had well over 20 people at 3:00 Sunday, when most cons would be totally dead. The two teams were on fire too, and came up with some great anime pitches. It was by the far the best game of Anime Chopped we've ever had, and the perfect example of how we thought the game would work when we first came up with. An extra special thank you to any one who came out and participated in it.
We didn't go in with much cosplay this year, with just Cat going as ZeroTwo on Friday & Saturday. We plan to have some new stuff ready for the next con though. We didn't go too crazy shopping either, what with our Japan trip right around the corner. Still, you can see the few things we picked up in the pics below.
We love ALA, and this was probably our best year yet. Can't wait until ALA 17 in 2021! In the mean time, we have AnimeConji in May and AnimeCalifornia in August. Or at least, we assume so; neither con has officially announced 2020 dates, but if we're going off past years that'll be around the time. We're also heavily considering going up to TFcon Toronto in July.
As always, if you want to see us at a convention let us know, but more importantly, let the convention know too!