Well that was fast: Preliminary Anime Expo 2015 schedules are now up!

Murphy’s Law strikes yet again here at Otaku no Podcast. (Seems to happen a lot around here.) Mere hours after we released our most recent episode — in which we talked about Anime Expo 2015 but couldn’t really give any details because the schedules weren’t out yet (and we didn’t think they’d be out until at least the middle of the month) — Anime Expo goes and drops a bombshell on us, in the form of the AX 2015 preliminary schedule.

(In the fantasy world inside my head, I am imagining the AX staffers crowded around their computers, listening to the podcast, when one of them (the leader, who, naturally, has adopted the Gendo pose) calmly intones, “So, they don’t think we can release an event schedule until way closer to the event, do they? Well we’ll show them! Mwahahaha!!!” complete with that little smirk that Gendo puts on whenever he says something devious. The reality, being much more boring, is that it was probably just nothing but coincidence. 🙂 )

Anyway, yes indeed, Anime Expo announced that the preliminary schedule for AX 2015 is now available online for your viewing pleasure. With over 200 hours of programming already entered, this is definitely shaping up to be one awesome weekend — and they’re nowhere near finished filling in the schedule yet! Definitely keep an eye on it. In particular, this schedule does not include any autograph sessions, video room schedules, gaming schedules, or any event/guest/whatever that they haven’t yet announced. (Surprise 11th hour guest/programming announcements, anyone?)

Now for the bad news: there is not (as far as I can tell) a downloadable PDF version of the schedule as there has been in the past. Maybe they’ll make one available closer to the event; this is, after all, still early days. Also there is no word on whether the schedule will be made available through some sort of mobile-friendly format (hopefully Guidebook again… fingers crossed…) Again, I’m guessing that they’ll probably wait until very close to the final version of the schedule before releasing that.

However, they did set up a web portal where you can view the schedule, using the SCHED app, which they’ve used before in the past. As web portals go, it’s pretty decent. You can view the schedule in one of several formats: as a simple list of events ordered by time, as a list ordered by location (room) or as the traditional schedule grid. The events are color-coded to make identifying the various types of events (panels, main events, workshops, etc.) easy. There is a search function that lets you easily find a particular event or panel you’re looking for. And finally, you can create an account on the site, and mark down events that you are interested in, which puts them in a special “My Schedule” section for easy access. (Note: there are two ways you can register for the site; either by supplying a traditional email and password, or by using your Facebook account. I could not, for the life of me, get the email/password to work; I had much better luck going through my Facebook account.)

Go check it out today!

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