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Anime Expo - Author's Notes - 2007 This best of times, worst of times story begins with the Sunday night costume contest. The last time Anime Expo was staged in Long Beach, the contest was held in the 3,000-seat terrace theater. In 2007, the contest was moved to the Long Beach Arena, along with the Skin concert and other major events. The 13,500-seat arena, comparable to the First Mariner Arena used by Otakon in 2006, had more than enough room for anything Anime Expo threw at it. Even the big Skin show reportedly didn't fill the place. However, that move made a difference in the way the costume contest was run. After the martial arts halftime show wound down, announcers Kyle Hebert and Brad deMoss rushed through the list of contest award winners, rattling through entry names and numbers like a race track announcer. Members of the winning entries were gradually brought on stage, but except for the One Piece group given best of show, they weren't presented as winners - just put on stage. Then at 11:08 p.m. PST, the show ended and the audience was told to leave the building. Typically, after a costume contest concludes, this site posts pictures of the winning entries, shown as they claim their prizes on stage. That didn't happen at Anime Expo this time, and the rushed procedure left the entrants confused about whether they had won anything or not. This writer heard from a couple of people associated with the costume show that the event organizers ran into a deadline, rushed the end to meet the deadline, and still missed. The most likely version we heard was that there was a 11 p.m. deadline to end the presentation and get the audience out of the hall, but there's a version that the deadline was first said to be 12 a.m., then was moved up by an hour. Regardless, if the deadline was 11 p.m., Anime Expo missed it by eight minutes, important because the convention apparently had to pay extra fees for the extra time. All of this leads to questions about whether the story was true, if the deadline actually changed at the last minute, or whether changes could have been made to shorten the show if the deadline was a factor. In 2008, the show moves to the Los Angeles convention center, as far west as the event has been in years after stops in Long Beach and Anaheim. The convention's return to Long Beach for the first time since 2002 raised questions of whether the convention center, smaller than the one in Anaheim, could handle the crowd. The dealers' room was large enough to handle the crowds, which was good for the convention because they came under scrutiny by the fire department. The LBFD made at least two sweeps through the convention center, but the big room never was crowded enough to justify limiting access to the dealers - no one person in for one person out action that we could spot. The main artists' alley in the convention center also was crowded. Pictures Panels and Interviews Anime Expo Main Page