After Sakura-Con, WonderCon, FanimeCon and Anime Expo, #TEAMJUMP headed to the king of cons—Comic-Con! SDCC, as it’s called, is the nerd mecca of the western world. It attracts 130,000+ fans of manga, anime, comic books, video games and everything else associated with geek culture. We hung out with fans, had a panel, gave out free ice cream and more!

Because it’s Comic-Con, you don’t see as many anime and manga cosplayers, as they get lost in the sea of Batmen, Supermen, and whatnot. However, using my secret gland that senses SJ-related cosplayers, I managed to find a few good ones, like this cool girl!

The VIZ Media booth this year was more JUMPed-out than ever! I’ve been to a lot of Comic-Cons, and I've never seen so much SJ stuff on the VIZ booth. They had a variety of SJ-related activities going on: live SJ Alpha demos, stamp rallies to get the highly coveted VIZ Media bag, and whoever signed up at the show got a free Slifer the Sky Dragon Yu-Gi-Oh! card!

We also had the recently announced Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 game demo right on the floor! This great Hidan cosplayer is giving the game a go and seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. I’ve always wondered, does dressing in the cosplay of the character you’re playing give you a psychological advantage? Someone should do some studies in this field.

Then it was on to the SJ Panel! This was a very special panel, as we had several high profile manga editors from the Japanese Weekly Shonen Jump on the panel! Along with #TEAMJUMP, we had Yoshihisa Heishi (Editor-in-Chief of Weekly Shonen Jump, founding editor of Yu-Gi-Oh!), Shuhei Hosono (editor of Rurouni Kenshin: Restoration), Kouji Yoshida (editor of Death Note), and Kengo Monji (editor of Bakuman) as special guests. It was a great panel, and much was revealed, including how the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga began and how similar the editors are in real life to the versions of them in Bakuman! The audience even got to ask the Japanese guests some questions at the end, and I have to say, they were some of the sharpest questions ever asked at an SJ panel. Smart fans!

In case you’ve ever wondered what you, the audience, looks like from our perspective, take a look at this! You guys are handsome!

After the panel, we had to book it to set up the next event—the One Piece themed JUMP Truck behind the convention! The incredible truck rolled up to a rousing round of applause from the early fans that had been standing in line. If you didn’t get a chance to see the truck, it truly looked spectacular! Thanks to our friends at Trimex Mobile Marketing for helping put it all together and the guys from AArrow Advertising for helping people find the truck with their amazing sign-spinning display!

An interesting mix of people came to enjoy the truck, score some free ice cream, and hang out. There were hardcore One Piece fans, SJ Alpha fans, cosplayers, and random people who just wanted some free ice cream on a hot day. It was quite the ice cream social!

Aside from free ice cream, there were a variety of cool events going at the JUMP truck. Every SJ Alpha subscriber who brought proof of their subscription in the form of a special ribbon attached to their badge got a special bag full of goodies. And anyone who came got to take a picture with a special 3D Luffy! We’ll post the rest of the photos next week!

And that pretty much sums up SJ’s shenanigans at SDCC! We had a great panel, a party at the JUMP Truck, and got to hang out with the our fans (the best part!). I want to thank everyone who came to any of the events and give a special shout out to the One Piece Podcast crew, thanks for your help!

While the West Coast con season’s over for now, we’re definitely not done with all our hijinks yet! So keep checking the website, following us on Twitter so you don’t miss our next SJ Fan Meet-Up!

by Urian Brown

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Slifer the Sky Dragon