Anime Impulse 2020, The Best Yet! :D

Another year, another con! Anime Impulse happened this past weekend on January 18th-19th in Pomona, CA at the Pomona Fairplex. This expo is run simultaneously with Asian American Expo and Blushcon. Asian American Expo is a convention featuring all sorts of Asian foods, performances, and Asian products being promoted here. Blushcon is a convention where different beauty products and beauty bloggers/influencers get featured.

To experience all of this, it only costed $24 for both days. Definitely worth it, right? YES!

If you weren’t able to go to the convention, let me lay it out for you. This was how my Sunday went.

Since there is 3 cons and I was a bit hungry, I hit up the other 2 conventions first: Asian American Expo and Blushcon.

Asian American Expo | Blushcon

Asian American Expo was held in 3 halls in the area filled with tons of vendors promoting all sorts of Asian products: food, clothing, electronics, cars, and more. It was a great way to get products on the discount, as well as discover all sorts of new things.

In addition, they had food stalls available in between each of the halls, so you were destined to find something that you will like.

For me, I was craving some “meat sticks”, so I picked up some beef sticks from Shen Yang BBQ. Quite delicious, loaded with spices, and felt a bit healthy. Later that day, I ended up snagging some Stinky Fried Tofu from a small shop and afterwards, got this Red Bean, Taro, and Coconut Pudding dessert from Kokonut Dessert Bar.

After passing through Asian American Expo, we did a quick drop by Blushcon, just to see what’s up. There were a bunch of vendors promoting their beauty products and they had panels involving beauty gurus and influencers. Definitely worth checking out to learn about some new products.

And now…is time for Anime Impulse! Let me explain to you how my experience was.

To start it off, they changed the layout this year. The artist alley and gaming hall got combined together in one building, all the itashas were in the walkway in-between the buildings, and vendor hall filled up the other building.

Before I get ahead of myself, let’s get talk Artist Alley and Gaming Hall.

Artist Alley | Gaming Hall

When you enter the hall, you are welcomed by this map that shows where all of your favorite artists are located and what is expected in this hall.

This is great because not that many conventions have this available and makes it a breeze to find the booth you’re looking for.

As you walk through all those booths, you find all sorts of anime merchandise. IT’S CRAZY! So many good artist, so many good vendors, it would be difficult to not buy anything.

If you made it passed the booths, there is an E-Gaming area where they had a plethora of gaming consoles set up. You can just grab a controller, make a friend, and whoop some butt playing your old favorite games! Herms and I played Super Smash Brothers on the Nintendo Gamecube. I won! Just saying.. xD

On the left of the E-Gaming area, Anime Impulse set up some cosplay backdrops. You were able to pose and take photos in front of some icon anime backgrounds. On the right, you are welcome to an Arcade area. All sorts of Japanese video games were available to play for FREE!! You were able to play some DDR, some classic fighters, and more!

Towards the back end of the hall, they had a stage for some panels. I wasn’t able to make it to some, but I did see a guy beatbox and that was hella dope! 😀

Itasha Alley

After heading out of Hall 10, you are welcomed by all of the itasha cars. Everyone in the community showcased their cars and the wonderful artwork on their cars. People would deck out their cars in their favorite characters and waifus. Here were some of the cars that were featured there.

One you pass through the cars and the crowds of people, you enter the Vendor Hall.

Vendor Hall

Right when you walk through the vendor hall, you get one of these amazing maps that locate where everything is.

To start it off, there are tons of vendors this year. It practically filled up the whole hall.

You were able to find all sorts of anime merchandise in here: clothing brands, tons of stickers, plushies for days, and of course, anime figures! It was really hard to not spend money, so I held that wallet tight.

If you manage to survive all the booths, what is cool is that on the other end, you are able to meet some great people: cosplayers, influencers, and more. In addition to that, on the back end of the hall, they had a full studio set up so that you can get your photos professionally taken. Shoutouts to Studio Chibi and the homie, @remcreate! 😀