(But at least I can tell you the new OP is fire.) I felt guilty as I was ushered into the room with my press pass. The fiasco of the Mob Psycho panel was especially heart-breaking, as fans who had been waiting in line for possibly hours were turned away because so few people attending the previous panel left. Fans were left disappointed as multiple big-name panels - most notably for Demon Slayer and Mob Psycho 100 - ran out of room and had to turn people away. What started as a small gathering in the basement of a hotel in the early 90s now requires the LA Fire Marshal to come and beg organizers to open up more sections of America’s biggest city’s biggest venues. Indeed, I found myself wondering whether Anime Expo is getting too big. I kept wondering: how do you make something as huge as Anime Expo not a shit show? Everyone was doing the best they could, because everything was a lot. The Wifi at one of the entrances was spotty, so I had to run back and forth around the expansive outside of the LACC just to entrance that it wasn’t my badge which was malfunctioning (and I wasn’t the only one this happened to). The first day especially, it was evident that everyone was confused and malfunctions were everywhere. These volunteers are literally not paid enough to police people on mask-wearing to the extent that the convention organizers should have been preparing for. To be fair, Anime Expo relies mostly on volunteer labor. It was not uncommon to see a vendor in the artist alley post a sign to their shop which said, “No Mask, No Service.” As has become disappointingly typical, this left mask enforcement to individual vendors. Every new day of the con, it felt like less people wore masks. Anime Expo reversed their disastrous decision to not require vaccination or negative tests, but the enforcement of their masking policy was disappointingly lax. Considering the super-sized crowd, I’m very much hoping I did not get COVID.
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