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Image Credit: @seil_vt / X I am going to vindicate myself here. A few years back, I went to Anime Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center, stood outside in a brutal, shadeless two-hour line that felt like a mild form of torture, and decided, Yeah, I am good on this forever. It was packed, it was frustrating, and for what? To see the same vendors in the Artist Alley I saw at three other events that same year already?
For a long time, whenever I voiced this, people looked at me like I was a cynical buzzkill who just hated fun. It seemed like it was some accepted factoid that real nerds should be willing to stand in a barely moving, sweaty crowd just to see the same sexualized mousepad with breasts that’s been at every other anime event the past few years.
Well, looks like I was onto something after all.
AX 2026 just wrapped up, and the internet is absolutely melting down because the cracks in the foundation have officially turned into a massive sinkhole. The convention has become an absolute pressure cooker, and attendees are finally admitting out loud what I realized years ago: AX is a logistical dumpster fire.
Here’s a look at some of the tweets from the poor anime fans who suffered through Anime Expo 2026.
If you check social media right now, it looks less like a fun celebration of fan service and predictable plot points and more like a dispatch from a disaster zone. People are describing the convention floor as a lawless land with “zero line culture,” where crowds just form into massive blobs of shoving and pushing.
LA has no sense of personal space, no line culture, it’s just blobs of pushing, shoving, linking hands like nonsense tetris shapes for no reason, i’ve been stuck here for 10 mins and im somehow further back in line (i give up) 😭 pic.twitter.com/Ls8ThY8k1F
At a few points over the weekend, the fire department announced that no more people could enter the convention center (even with tickets) because the event was at capacity. Yes, it was literally a fire hazard. You’d think they’d just, I don’t know, sell fewer tickets after this continued to happen the last few years.
“AX was fun and all, but it was unbearable to stay in the convention center for more than an hour, and it was just so disgustingly hot in and outside, and it kinda stunk, and they had to evacuate the floor I was on. like if there’s some virus here w all got it,” said one attendee .
Some attendees stood up for the Anime Expo, saying that the event was not at capacity, and the Fire Marshall was there due to a bottleneck at the entrance. Others pointed out, however, that the crowds didn’t seem to know “how to walk,” making spaces feel crowded and chaotic. Is that even better?
Fire Marshall said Anime Expo is at capacity and they're not letting us in. #animeexpo2026 pic.twitter.com/BLyvwD7UDe
On Thursday night, there is supposed to be an event called Midnight Mahjong , an after-party of sorts with mahjong. But this was also, of course, way too packed to function properly. It was so overrun with weebs that some attendees reported th…