Hit sensation Spiral Cats has released their tentative schedule along with some additional details during their appearance at Anime Expo 2016. Limited merchandise and autographs will be available at the Cosplay Photographers booth #4426.

Returning to Anime Expo 2016 is the stunningly beautiful professional cosplay duo of Doremi and Tasha from the South Korean cosplay group Spiral Cats. Famous for their amazingly accurate depictions of video game and anime characters including League of Legends, Starcraft, Blade & Soul and most recently Blizzard's Overwatch. They have gained international stardom through appearances and partnerships at countless international events, advertisements and broadcasting/reporting on multiple gaming events.

As part of their 25th anniversary event Anime Expo and parent organization the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation has announced a new initiative titled the "Youth Protection Program" (YPP).  On the surface its intent is to provide a fun, safe place for its attendees but it has raised a number of issues including actual effectiveness, timing, and cost.  We will take a look at some of the benefits it brings about as well as some of the potential pitfalls.

With just a few days until Anime Boston starting, who are you most excited to see this year? If you loved some of the recent favorites and older favorites in Anime like Love Live, Your Lie In April, Kill la Kill, Code Geass, or Idolm@ster Million Live, then there’s probably a guest that will be appearing at Anime Boston you wouldn’t want to miss. Stay tuned with The-O Network as we provide on site coverage of the guests and concerts that will be happening this weekend.
For more information check out Anime Boston’s home page.

Although Gen Con sounds rather crowded, the convention is spread across various hotels that are connected to the convention center, which helps alleviate congestion.  Badge pickup was surprisingly well coordinated, with lines being moderated by volunteers who also helped keep the lines from blocking the traffic through the halls. Similar to many large conventions, Gen Con allowed those who pre-ordered their badges to pick them up the day before the convention. The wait in line was around 30-40 minutes at around 4:00 p.m. that day. I was impressed with how fast the line went as well as the line system that the staff had. This line system was further used for picking up event tickets (to attend different events) as well as customer service lines. On top of the neat lines, Gen Con also managed to keep all lines inside the convention center where there was plenty of air conditioning to be had.

Celebrating the seventh year since their inception, J-POP Summit 2015 in San Francisco was simply a resounding success. Building upon their excellent traction in attendance from last year, this year's event would prove to be a defining crossroad for the annual festival as it was the first year that the organizers decided to charge for attendance in addition to moving it to a new centralized location; or as one of the event's organizers Erik Jansen put it, “it's a reboot of the entire event.”

Anime Expo’s twenty-fourth year has once again shattered attendance records, and raised the bar for Los Angeles’ most popular anime convention. Last year’s convention saw a huge increase in attendance, with special events such as the Kill la Kill special event, Sailor Moon panels and premier screenings.

After Anime Expo 2014 had concluded, SPJA President and CEO of Anime Expo, Marc Perez, had issued an open letter to attendees acknowledging the issues that plagued 2014 while vowing to do better. Though initially met with skepticism, the team behind Anime Expo certainly took the challenges head on to give fans a smoother experience for 2015; although not perfect by any means, the AX 2015 experience had improved immensely over AX 2014.

For July 4th Club Nokia plays host to both Wagakki Band and their opening act in the form of the Vocaloid IA.  This happens to be the first stateside show for both.  The two acts are part of the twenty-fourth iteration of Anime Expo in a mini-event dubbed the "Cool Japan Festival."  They couldn't have picked a better stage to debut on in the United States.  Out of all the concerts and events at AX this one was what I was looking forward to the most.