This year's masquerade was held at a cavernous theater, with twice as much seating capacity compared to previous years. The added space, combined with tickets that guaranteed assigned seating, made for a drastic improvement and overall higher level of satisfaction with the seating policy for the ever-popular event. This of course didn't eliminate the initial line for tickets, which started as early as 5AM in the morning and was practically visible from orbit.

The most memorable aspect of this year's masquerade, however, was the collaborative efforts of Anime Expo and the Starlight Foundation to realize the wish of Omar Brown, a young boy battling sickle cell anemia. As Omar was brought on stage and introduced to the audience, ADV Films, Bandai, and Pioneer practically stumbled over each other as they showered Omar with a generous amount of anime DVDs and assorted goodies. Pioneer presented its gift basket with a group of Tenchi Muyo cosplayers. And figuring that all the DVDs were no good without a DVD player, Suncoast even donated a DVD player for good measure.

Omar offered his thanks to Anime Expo and everyone else for making his wish come true, and received a standing ovation from the audience. After this heart-warming moment, it was time for the masquerade proper to begin.

The overall craftsmanship of the costumes has been steadily rising over the past several years, and this year was no exception, though this year it seemed there were few true standouts in terms of costumes or skits that would've made the audience drop their collective jaw in amazement or laugh uncontrollably. Nevertheless, the costumes and skits were very satisfying overall, and the virtual host Max (who traded her armor suit for a china dress) provided witty commentary after each skit.

As always, current pop culture showed its influence on the costumes, with numerous appearances of the black wizard from Final Fantasy IX as well as several Moulin Rouge-inspired dance numbers. Other stalwart favorites included Rayearth and Fushigi Yuugi. In the case of the latter, the group cleverly dodged the time and group size limit by splitting the skit into two parts and identifying themselves as two "separate" groups on the schedule.

As the judges deliberated over the winning entries, the audience was treated to a live performance of Kikuko Inoue's performance of the A!MG opening theme. Kikuko Inoue proved to be one of the more loved and popular Guests of Honor this year, no doubt due to her sweet voice and amazing talent, and the whole audience clapped along during her performance.

Last but not least, one of the most popular and requested "cosplay" entry was the chair, which was often brought out on stage to placate the audience during some of the delays between skits. This year, the chair met its rival in the rocket Mimi-chan, who rather unfortunately tipped over during its skit but endeared itself to the audience regardless.

For more masquerade photos, please check out Day 3 of our daily AX2001 coverage posted earlier.