Anime Expo’s biggest convention was marred by long lines and bad organization this year. All photos by Lionel Lum, courtesy Anime Expo.

Anime Expo, anime fandom's biggest annual convention which started with only 1,750 attendees back in 1992, leaped from last year's 18,000 to more than 25,000 this year. The July 2-5, four-day event seemed to flood and overflow the Anaheim Convention Center and its adjacent Marriott and Hilton hotels.

Unfortunately, the chaos seemed to be due as much to unexpectedly poor management as too many people. There was almost no directional signage; attendees were constantly asking where events were. Registration lines on the first couple of days were four to five hours long! AX's Website had promised that, “Self-Registration machines will be available at the convention site from Thursday, July 1st to Sunday, July 5th and they will be setup for credit card or PayPal payments only.” But fans found no registration machines; only two live registrars (more were added later) to process the thousands of fans, at a table next to a sign that credit cards and PayPal could not be accepted.

For the first time, major anime labels cracked down on pirated merchandise on the expo floor and expelled some dealers. Legal action is also pending.

There were lines almost as long of fans getting cash at the convention center's ATM machines so they could get their membership badge. It was also possible to buy a $10 admission ticket to the huge exhibit hall. Some fans settled for spending the day in the exhibit hall and photographers, rather than waiting for hours for the badge to get into the members-only areas of the Expo.

These were the most serious problems. Others such as many events starting late are endemic to many conventions. Once the fans finally got their membership badges, it was a weekend of fun & games.

Not for everyone, however. For the first time in the fandom's history, the anime companies began a high-profile crackdown on pirates selling bootleg and unlicensed anime DVDs. This has been an uneasy “gray area” since anime fandom began in the 1970s, largely through the trading and club-meeting screenings by fans of technically illegal anime videotapes. Many of the founders of the professional industry in the 1990s came out of anime fandom themselves. They have not wanted to crack down on overenthusiastic fellow fans who are, after all, not showing anime for money and are providing lots of free publicity for the industry. But going after profiteering merchants of unauthorized DVDs, including actual counterfeits, is another matter. The anime companies have actually been doing this for almost 10 years, but they have preferred to work behind the scenes.

No longer. Bandai Entertainment had a large WARNING sign at its display booth that it would henceforth protect its licenses and intellectual properties to the full extent of the law. At its Sunday afternoon presentation, Bandai's evp Ken Iyadomi and marketing manager Jerry Chu announced that they had just had four dealers at Anime Expo expelled and would be bringing legal action against them. A couple of days later, Bandai named the dealers in a press release. Anime Expo issued its own press release stating, “During Anime Expo 2004, several exhibitors were given warnings to remove counterfeit products from their floors. Exhibitors that continued to sell counterfeit/questionable products were escorted from the exhibit hall floor and were not allowed to return.”