Most people by now have heard of the show "Whose Line is it Anyway." At one point hosted by Drew Carey (I have no idea if it still plays or if it's hosted by Drew Carey still), but Anime Expo has their own spin on this, called Whose Line is it Anime.

Now I've been attending Anime Expo for the past three years in a row but I've only made it out to see this performance twice. Last year it filled a small room and had gotten to the point where we had people standing on the sides and sitting in the aisle. They had to at one point shut the door because they risked breaking the fire code.

This year they had a larger room and the people packed in filling the seats and the con staff rather than attempt to squeeze more people in simply shut the doors after the last of the seats were filled.

Now for those who don't know how this works; it usually has a host, four comedians (improv comedians) and some crazy suggestions from the audience.

However, this isn't Whose Line is it Anyway, its Whose Line is it Anime. There was a host; a secondary host whom while never speaking took the suggestions from the audience and seven improv comedians.

Now, being that I was a fan of the show I was used to four to five comedians tops but was of an open mind that perhaps more could be entertaining. They had their usual crew and included some special guests however; the more wasn't the merrier in this case.

I immensely enjoyed much of the jokes at first but quickly found some of the material being regurgitated to the point of no return.

The common joke at this point in time is "Over 9,000!" but you can only beat a dead horse so much before this joke becomes overused, and just plain annoying. I think in the two hour performance I heard that comment at least five times. By the third or fourth time it became almost cliché, something to say when you had nothing better to say.

The skits, improv skits, consisted of the usual favourites "World's Worst", "Unlikely Interviews" and "Film Noir" among others, however with the amount of comedians on the stage you rarely got to spend as much time getting to know the performers and figuring out whom it was that was your favourite out of them.

The first game, "Unlikely Interviews", was almost like watching a failed attempt at "Guess who". The way the game worked was you had an interviewer, and interviewee, each interviewee picked an Anime character to pretend to be while the interviewer had to guess who they were while interviewing them.

The first up was a woman whom recently gained the opportunity to become a voice actress for upcoming animes. (Which forgive me I forget the name of.) She sat down in the chair and the interview began, the questions were simple and common but the responses were meant to hint to whom the character was. Perhaps though when picking the person whom was the interviewer they should have picked someone whom actually knew anime a little better. Despite the given references, the interviewer needed the audience to inform him who he was interviewing. It became almost a theme as the second and third interviewee stepped up to the plate, each becoming a challenge that he failed. The only humour I could really find in the whole issue was how many times this man was going to get who it was wrong.

The games continued and I quickly realized something, the host seemed to mimic the lines from "Whose Line is it Anyway".

"Welcome to whose Line is it Anime, a game where the points don't matter!" She said, and instantly brought me back to that feeling of sitting in front of my TV watching Drew Carey host and Colin making me laugh repeatedly with his outlandish ideas. Even as awarding points I found myself listening to repeated content. "100 points to the sound volunteers, and 1 point to Wayne."

Sadly, I would have preferred some more original dialogue from her. It was like watching someone whom had taken the time to memorize the show just so she could mimic it.

Improv is all about thinking off the top of your head so with this in mind my favourite games include the games where all the participants are involved and they must step forward to say a quick one liner that will make you laugh, cry or well won't affect you at all as was the case from some of the lines.

Though thoroughly enjoyed I found it was in these performances that the "Over 9,000" comments and "Pokémon" themed issues came to the forefront most. It seemed almost like the comedians had found what made the audience laugh and when they couldn't think of something original, or the cheering wasn't there enough they whipped out the failsafe and threw it out there.

While this type of skit or scene happens to be one of my favourite ones to watch I was disappointed by the number of participants, it created a lot of confusion and often didn't really display a lot of the talent that could have been in these performers. Each one would often only get out one or two lines before the scene had to change.

Overall the performance was a generally good time, even with the consistent "Pirates, Ninjas!" "Pokémon!" and frequent sexual themed topics that were often turned down because of the PG-13 rating.

My simple suggestions to them would be to limit the amount of participants to five at most, four ideal. Allow for the audience to gain their favourite and learn their style, allow for the performers to display who can be the best and while the points don't matter, give us something from them, declare a winner or maybe more than one winner, whom can perform something else for us as a sort of bonus.

At the end if asked would I watch it again, I'd say yes, I love watching comedy and I truly believe that a little laughter can go a long way.