Comic-Con vs. Anime Expo: Our Picks

Check out our complete coverage of San Diego Comic-Con and Anime Expo. Read Liz Ohanesian's story "Ever Get the Feeling You've Been Conned? The Search for Authenticity at Comic-Con 2010."

For us Southern California geeks, there is no shortage of fan conventions at our disposal. Our two biggies, though, are Anime Expo and San Diego Comic-Con International. Both draw over 100,000 attendees and feature a heavy industry presence, making them the events to hear breaking news regarding your fandom of choice.

Shannon Cottrell

​ Anime Expo takes place annually every Fourth of July weekend at the Los Angeles Convention Center and is a genre-specific event, focusing on anime and manga with some Japanese fashion and popular music added to the mix. Comic-Con is a multimedia, multi-genre extravaganza held at the San Diego Convention Center in late July. They're very different conventions, but because of both the size and the timing, they consume us every July. Here's our comparison.

Exhibit Hall

Shannon Cottrell

Munky King's booth at Comic-Con

​ Comic-Con's exhibit hall is at least twice the size of the one an Anime Expo. It's also at least twice as crowded. The trick to getting around the Con exhibit hall is to avoid the center entrances. This is essentially the greatest hits section, where you'll find the bulk of the major media booths. Whether you're here on Preview Night or Sunday, it will be packed.

We usually roam around the outskirts of the exhibit hall. This is where you'll find lots of cool artists, like Camilla D'errico and Alex Pardee, the indie toymakers and comic books.
Anime Expo's exhibit hall seems to be friendlier to non-established artists. The artist alley is fairly large. You'll see a lot of artists working with different media, but the subject matter is frequently the same, with a heavy focus on fan art, occasional slash pairings and Lolita-friendly accessories.

Our pick: Comic-Con

Panels

Shannon Cottrell

Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer at The Venture Bros. panel

​ Comic-Con has an amazing offering of panels. The problem, though, is that it can be very difficult to get into one. Comic-Con doesn't clear the room before each panel, so people frequently spend hours, if not an entire day, sitting through one panel after the next to see what they want. Nicole Campos wrote about the Hall H experience, which you should read for some background.

For a lot of fans, this situation is problematic. With so many of our favorite comics, series and movies in the same large convention center, it's only normal that we would be racing from panel room to exhibit hall to another panel room. Clearing out the room is a simple way to create a better fan experience. (And, in case you're wondering, we did get stuck in one line for so long that we almost didn't make it inside the room. We talked them into letting us in about fifteen minutes before the panel ended.)

At AX, rooms are cleared after the panels. If you want to see two panels in a row in the same space, you have to leave with enough time to line up again. The lines at AX can be very long, but they move quickly and the rooms are large enough where most, if not everyone, in line will get in much of the time.

Our pick: Anime Expo

Social Scene

Shannon Cottrell

Dance party at Anime Expo

​ There's more to a convention than panels and exhibit booths. Ideally, you want to have the chance to meet with your friends and make some new ones over the weekend. That's why meet-ups, tweet-ups and parties are crucial to convention culture.

At AX, most of the meet-ups revolve around cosplay. Fans of specific shows will designate a time and meeting place, usually somewhere between the convention and Staples Center, and gather for photos. In the evening, there are official con dances, an all-ages one and an 18+ event, that are kind of like a cross between a high school dance and a rave. Occasionally, there are other get-togethers. This year, we attended an anime blogger gathering, but missed special guest Danny Choo's meet-up. For the past two years, J-pop/J-rock club Tune in Tokyo has thrown an offsite event on the Fourth of July. The problem with AX, though, is the crowd is largely young, as in under-21 young, and downtown Los Angeles is a predominantly over-21 area at night. This makes the nighttime street scene surrounding AX kind of, well, boring.

Shannon Cottrell

Geek Girls party at Comic-Con

​ With an older crowd and a lot of people in town on business, much of the action takes place in and around the bars of the Gaslamp Quarter. We hit The Wired Lounge, took in a superhero luncheon and attended parties hosted by Munky King and Geek Girls. We traveled far offsite to see Voltaire play live at the League of Temporal Adventures' Society Gala. We met new people at The Venture Bros. Blog tweet-up and hung out with our friends from Topless Robot at their parties.

Our pick: Comic-Con, as long as you're at least 21.