We had a fun time. We went as attendees and just hung out and watched people. I realized a few things. Steven Universe is pretty big among the con-going crowd. If anybody cosplayed as the characters from half of my favorite mangas, I wouldn't recognize them. You could stick anyone from Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, Cross Game, or Angel Densetsu right in front of me. I'd only recognize Alpha if she had her lute.

It doesn't help that I'm kinda out of touch and most of the stuff I used to watch is now ten to twenty years old. I had to ask Isabel who a lot of people were dressed as.

It's funny. The most recognizable costumes were Ryu (from Street Fighter - white gi with torn sleeves and red headband) and Kiki (from Kiki's delivery service. Shapeless black dress, red bow). The most recognizable costumes were the ones with the fewest accessories. Or the ones where there aren't any other characters who dress like that; if we had gone to some fighting game con and there were a dozen slightly different karate dudes, I'd be just as lost.

One of the cool things they do at Anime LA is ribbons. You can get them for visiting the manga library, singing karaoke, or, well, there are dozens of people giving them out. There's probably a better way to do it than to find someone who's got a handful and ask nicely, but that's kinda the best way I've found. Some people have challenges or questions. I was going to try to answer an Avatar: The Last Airbender trivia challenge for one until Isabel reminded me that I haven't actually watched that show.

Most of the ribbons we got were for the Pokemon tourmanent. You get your starter Pokemon ribbon from a professor. Then you find the other trainers - in cosplay, of course - and if one of your pokemon's types is super-effective against their pokemon's type, you get a new pokemon ribbon. So we spent most of Saturday evening finding people in Pokemon cosplay and collecting ribbons. This was not an official thing. This was just something that a bunch of people got together and did that made our day awesome.

We went to the masquerade - one of the judges was dressed as John Lennon, from The Yellow Submarine. It made me so happy that there was something out there that I recognized (and that the kids there probably didn't).

We picked up some awesome stuff that we might show off later on. Got to meet Christina Major, who does the comic Sombulus and picked up a few books. We're looking forward to next year.