Anime NYC 2017 Overview
Anime NYC was this past weekend and first, we want to give a huge shoutout to Anime Girls NYC. Meeting Stephanie was awesome since we talk back and forth on WordPress often, we actually unknowingly met at the checkpoint as I was complaining about taking off my backpack again to get in on the show floor after coming from the Artist Alley and she turned around and agreed. It was a funny first meeting before we met on the show floor and officially introduced ourselves to each other. Check out her blog and her review of Anime NYC here.
Overall Anime NYC was fun and since this is its first year it will need some tinkering to make next year a better experience. One thing they need to fix is the bag checkpoints in every area that you want to go in. So there’s a checkpoint at the Show Floor, Artist Alley, and The Main Stage, I understand the security reason behind the checkpoint being everywhere but there was no checkpoint when you first walk in which is dangerous in itself.
When I arrived on Friday I walked around the Javits for a good 20 minutes and no one asked me for my pass and when I realized nothing was open yet and we all needed to go to the queue hall that was when I ran into the first checkpoint and I have to admit I was confused as to why the checkpoint is all the way on the floor below the main entrance. That alone is a big NO if we’re talking about anything security wised, The checkpoint security guards after a while became tired of checking all these bags every minute that all you needed to do was open your bag and walk through.
I believe the multiple bag checkpoints will be my only complaint honestly, all we need is a good bag check at the entrance and enjoy walking around without the hassle of bag check at every area we want to visit. The Javits center was too big for Anime NYC being how spacious the Javits. They are doing construction to the Javits and maybe that’s why Anime NYC didn’t get all the space it could have gotten. I did love the convention being at the Javits Center because it been a few years since there was an Anime Convention at the Javits Center since it merged with Comic-Con a few years back.
I really hope history doesn’t repeat itself because it feels so good to have separate events for comics and anime. Also, another thing I loved about Anime NYC being in the Javits Center was all the elbow room we had walking around, I love personal space and this con really fulfilled my heart with all the space we had to move around. Walking the Show Floor wasn’t bad and you can actually see the merchant booths since there isn’t a huge crowd of people surrounding the booths making it hard to walk up and down the aisles, even stopping cosplayers seen on the Show Floor didn’t stop the flow of traffic that’s how much space we had and I loved it.
I attended a few panels and Main events over the weekend and I have to say Anime NYC guest was a list you would never see at a Comic-Con because it was specific to out anime needs. All the Japanese guests that came to the con were amazing, The first Main Event I attended was Anime Diva Night with Chihiro Yonekura, Miho Karasawa AKA True, and Yoko Ishida. Unfortunately, photography wasn’t allowed for this event but the ladies did do their own sets and duets of their popular theme songs. It was such a great experience because people had glowsticks and all of them were moving in rhythm with each other and the music it really was a really great concert to relieve some of the themes and ending songs I haven’t heard in forever which brings up the urge to rewatch some of the Anime I haven’t seen in years.
One of the panels I got a chance to sit through was The Blerd is the Word panel hosted by Blerd Con was very insightful and funny that I really want to go out to Washington DC for the next Blerd Con. Lizzo and I sat through the LeSean Thomas event as well and recorded most of the questions people got to ask, look out for the announcement for that video coming soon. I got a lot of photos of cosplayers that I’m in the process of editing and will hopefully be done with by tomorrow so they can go out for all to see.
I had so much fun this past weekend that I will most likely go to next years Anime NYC Convention and be able to meet more people and hopefully not have to go through multiple bag checkpoints. I would recommend going to Anime NYC to anyone that is skeptical about yet another Anime Convention in New York, Anime NYC brought back fun memories from the Anime Festival that was held at the Javits Center years ago. I want to mention my Anime NYC Expectations post where I talked about the Japanese Arcade and how it might be funky and all that jazz, I’m happy that it wasn’t funky all weekend which if you’re a convention hopper like myself you know that even if DDR isn’t at the event it can still be bad body odor lingering around. This concludes this long post, that’s all I want to say for now.
