Previously announced last year that the annual Japantown Anime Faire held in San Francisco would be on indefinite hiatus, the organizers have announced that it's back renamed as the Otaku Amusement Festival.
It will be held this year on Saturday November 14 and Sunday November 15 at the Fort Mason Center.
The World Cosplay Summit ended a few days ago in Japan with 13 countries competing.
For those unfamiliar with the event, the World Cosplay Summit began in 2003 as an invitational event to promote the Japanese pop culture internationally.Beginning in 2005, each country holds a preliminary competition to select their representatives to compete in Japan.
Brazil took home first place this year with China as the runner up. Japan's Osaka team had an impressive yaoi skit so fan girls may want to take heed. Korea chose to have 2 male representatives
You can watch the videos and view more pictures at their site here . Bewarned that for some reason they chose not to record the audio for the performances; instead, they added their own track.
We have included some other videos with the original audio inside.
We're still working hard on Anime Expo reports, and we've just finished picking and editing Masquerade Backstage photos. You can find them at our gallery here .
We interviewed Takehito Harada, full transcription will be available soon.
Our newest staff member Alice Yan interviewed AX's musical Guest of Honor, Jyukai. Jyukai also left a special message for all their American fans, we will have that video as well as the interview transcription up later this week.
The Masquerade was very short. Originally scheduled from 8PM to 12AM, all the skits from the Masquerade finished at 9:30. Regardless, t-ono.net was backstage taking pictures of each of the contestants.
Lastly, Imagi Animation Studios at Anime Expo was playing a motage of their new Astro Boy movie set to release Fall 2009.
Greetings from Anime Expo 2008! Starting oddly on Thursday this year, Friday had a decent attendee turnout. Definitely tomorrow (Saturday) it will be packed and we hope to bring you tons of photos of more cosplayers, and events. (Today we took around 500 photos.)
We were able to attend Jyukai and Yoko Ishida's joint concert. At first, there appeared to be some mix up, but eventually we were notifed that press were allowed to take photos of the band. We'll have those up later after the convention.
Quite a few panels we visited today including Dark Horse, Bandai, and ADV. In Bandai's corner, they pretty much listed each new title they would be releasing in the future with a short clip of each. (more details on that later) In ADV's case, mostly answered what happened to the company in their few months of withdrawl from the anime world.
For tomorrow, we've scheduled ourselves to visit David Hayter's (voice actor of the American version of Solid Snake from the video game series Metal Gear Solid) press panel. We will also be attending Shoko Nakagawa's concert, and will be bringing you pictures and video coverage if Anime Expo allows for it.
We'll also be taking pictures of the Masquerade, again if allowed to do so by Anime Expo. The rules and regulations this year at Anime Expo have changed a bit and a lot of confusion has ensued especially for the industry and press.
Regardless, don't forget we will have our one on one interview with character designer Takehito Harada tomorrow!
The staff is pretty much pooped, and we'll have a few full length reports ready in the next few days.
If you haven't already guessed, yes we will be in fact covering Anime Expo 2008! Currently planned, we will be hitting various industry and press panels. We try to provide as much live updates as possible so for the fans at home can also enjoy the experience. Our associate at Anime Expo will be directing AXBackstage, so you might see us on cam if you look hard enough. We will also be bringing you a one on one interview with Nippon Ichi Software's character designer, Takehito Harada which has been currently rescheduled to Saturday due to his late flight arrival. Our camera crew will be walking around the convention filming various gathers, events, and panels; while our photography team has over 12GB worth of memory space for pictures on hand.
A couple press releases from AX hit the air today: First off, they announced the 3rd annual SPJA Industry Conference with inclusive key notes and panels, at which we'll see reps from SPJA, Japan External Trade Organization, FUNimation, and Crunchy Roll. Among the keynote speakers/panelists: Trulee Karahashi (CEO SPJA), Shigeru Kimura (Chiefe Executive Director JETO), Gen Fukunaga (CEO FUNimation), and Vu Nguyen (VP of Business-Development Crunchy Roll).
Anime Expo and Intermixi Japan Tours are giving one lucky Jyukai Concert premium ticket holder at Anime Expo 2008 an all-expense paid ultimate trip to Japan.
The winner will choose one of three Intermixi sponsored tours: The "Kame Hame Kansai" tour hits up various locales in Kyoto, Osaka, and Tokyo while the "Neo-Tokyo" tour takes you to the Tokyo Anime Fair, among other sensational spots in Tokyo. Lastly, the "Tokyo Game Show" tour brings you to one of the biggest gaming conventions in the world: the Tokyo Game Show.
Conventions 
Previously announced last year that the annual Japantown Anime Faire held in San Francisco would be on indefinite hiatus, the organizers have announced that it's back renamed as the Otaku Amusement Festival.
The World Cosplay Summit ended a few days ago in Japan with 13 countries competing. 
We're still working hard on Anime Expo reports, and we've just finished picking and editing Masquerade Backstage photos. You can find them at our gallery 
A quick update, NIS America has released character designer Takehito Harada's schedule at Anime Expo.