Travelsty: Animu

This is Tokyo Big Sight, a convention center.

I did an internet search for "what's on in Tokyo today?"
and the answer was "Anime Japan 2019"

Luckily tickets were still "available at the venue",
So I got my Anime Passport and headed off

The enormous carpark had been converted it a series of
back and forth lanes to have people wait in line to get in.

I arrived about 30 minutes after the doors opened and spent
about 30-45 minutes slowly marching to the doors.

Inside were a great many booths and display areas set up
by various companies to show off upcoming shows and sell merch

There were multiple sections of the building devoted to the main convention.

In addition there were some event stages that required extra tickets to get into, which didn't seem worthwhile if you can't understand Japanese well enough to follow along with whatever was being presented. In addition there was a sister convention for Children's Anime, but you had to a) have an extra ticket, and b) be a child or parent/guardian. Kidnapping charges aside, the main convention was a full enough day for me.

various upcoming products were on display

as were some historically popular items

The robots that will soon replace us were on display

as were the stop motion models...

...and rubber suit from the upcoming Godzilla reboot.

One display booth had each season represented on each outer corner,
Autumn

Winter

Spring

and Fireworks

there were models

adverts for upcoming shows

a DJ

he was really getting into it, as can't be seen by this still frame
from a video I took.

An upside down cog woman thing advertising an Anime based on a series of Spanish YA novels
Paella Magi Madoka Magicka or "Madoka's Magic Paella"

Some German WW2 re-enactment enthusiasts had parked in the wrong place.

A TV show about plastic wrestling toys that don't come to life
is as interesting as it sounds.

there were cut outs of characters from various shows and games.

This is a display from a cartoon reboot of Charlie's Angels,
except the Angels are Japanese schoolgirls with magical powers
and Charlie is a cat
oh, and the cat is an interdimensional Cthulhuesque monstrosity.

more cut outs

This was an ad.
Probably for a show. But maybe for off brand starbucks,
or for life insurance. Who knows?

This is a display for a toy sword that costs about $1000.

It's probably not $950 better than the light up lightsaber I have, but it is pretty sweet.

A new season of Psycho Pass

More cutouts for more shows

An anime version of Grimm

An artist draws something in chalks or pastels for the crowd

Models for an upcoming show

the name of the show escapes me

If only there were three or four 80 inch TVs around here
displaying the name so I could remember it

Netflix had a booth and were running a competition that you could enter by tweeting a hashtag.

I now have a twitter account with 1 tweet and this cool monkey.

From the Anime where Shinkansen trains turn into giant robots
and fight... uh, other forms of robot transportation?

More cutouts

Cutouts for Girly Airforce

Complete with J-Pop music video

A diaorama

The same diorama

pretend to be a Titan

below the hole

Diorama-o-rama

An ad for... choking schoolgirls?

This mobile game was the main sponsor of the whole shebang

A list of anime characters and their favourite Sake?
Possibly just shameless merchandising...

Gundam probably

Who knows?

Kawaii Communism!

One of the things that appears to be popular is collecting character badges that are purchased randomised in their packages. As a result, you'd expect people would want to trade to get a full set, so the convention had set aside and fenced off a large area for people to trade merch.

The edge of the area with a sign barring people from selling stuff.

I noted several things.

1) Towards the end of the day the area had spilled out of the fenced off area to encompass an area ten times the size.

The fence from above is about in line with the first set of speakers.
Everything from the third set of speakers on is the Cosplay area.
There's also more trading going on behind me.

2) People seemed to be less collecting sets, so much as collecting as many of a particular character as they could.

They even have special bags 痛バッグ (translates as "painful-bag" apparently)
designed to show off their collections

unwanted non-husbando badges

3) This is an almost exclusively female hobby. Of the hundreds and hundreds of people in the trading area, there was one Japanese guy and one Gaijin guy wandering around taking photos like a lost degenerate.