ANIME EXPO 2025 WAS A BEAUTIFUL CHAOS OF COSPLAY, COMMUNITY, AND CULTURE
BY A BOOK OF TEAM
ANIME EXPO 2025 turned downtown Los Angeles into a living, breathing love letter to Japanese pop culture from July 3 to 6, bringing a sold-out crowd to the Los Angeles Convention Center and surrounding L.A. LIVE venues for its 34th edition. Organized by the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation, the convention welcomed fans from more than 65 countries, logged more than 410,000 turnstile attendees, delivered over 1,300 hours of programming, and generated an estimated $110 million-plus economic impact for Los Angeles.
The scale was massive, but the spirit felt personal: major sponsors, partners, studios, and activations such as VIZ’s Manga Lounge, the Sukeban x TikTok Fanzone, Crunchyroll, Hulu, HoYoverse, WEBTOON, Bandai Namco, TOHO animation, Aniplex, SEGA, and more helped build a weekend packed with panels, premieres, signings, concerts, gaming, merch drops, cosplay showcases, and interactive experiences.
What makes Anime Expo special is not just the size of the event, but the way it makes Los Angeles feel like a global meeting point for fandom. Anime is no longer a niche interest hidden in bedrooms, on forums, or in late-night TV blocks. It is mainstream, international, stylish, emotional, and deeply communal. You could feel that walking through the halls as cosplayers posed under the summer sun, friends compared schedules like strategy maps, and fans from different cities and countries found instant connection through characters, series, and stories they love. For a city like Los Angeles, where film, fashion, music, gaming, and immigrant culture constantly overlap, Anime Expo feels less like an outside event arriving in the city and more like one of L.A.’s natural cultural languages.
The activations gave the convention its spectacle. VIZ’s Manga Lounge offered a needed pause from the crowd with thousands of manga volumes, giveaways, photo moments, and a space to slow down and read. The Sukeban x TikTok Fanzone brought Japanese women’s pro wrestling into the anime conversation with photo ops, workshops, merch, karaoke, surprise appearances, and a live championship fight. WEBTOON made its official show-floor debut with exclusive merch, creator appearances, games, and Tower of God creator SIU’s first U.S. signing event. HoYoverse brought Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero into one immersive showcase, while the Exhibit Hall and Entertainment Hall turned into a maze of figures, games, apparel, collectibles, posters, exclusives, demos, and the kind of impulse buys that make perfect sense in the moment.
Still, Artist Alley remains the soul of Anime Expo. With nearly 950 artists across more than 127,000 square feet, it felt like a convention within the convention: stickers, prints, charms, embroidered patches, fan art, original comics, nostalgic designs, queer artists, Filipino-American artists, Afro-Latine artists, artists from Los Angeles, Chile, Mexico, Japan, Canada, and everywhere in between. The crowds were intense, but the diversity of voices made it worth navigating every aisle. Anime Expo 2025 was overwhelming in the best way: loud, generous, crowded, creative, emotional, and full of discovery. It is the kind of event that reminds you why fandom matters, why art travels, and why, every year, I look forward to stepping back into that beautiful chaos again.
