New York Comic Con 2018: Overview

Soulcial Dreamin’ Entertainment attended New York Comic Convention (NYCC) at the Jacob K. Javits Center. This year NYCC collaborated together with Anime Expo to create Anime Fest,  a new convention that was located at Pier 94. 

This year the artist alley was located in the lower level of the convention center and so were the panels. Anyone who wished to attend this year (the same as last year), had to purchase individual day passes which can be expensive if you plan to go all four days. I personally chose to go on Friday and Saturday which are the best days in my opinion. The convention activities were extended to other sites, The Hulu Theater, Madison Square Garden and the Hammerstein Ballroom (Manhattan Center).

Every year Comic Con shows exclusive video footage from shows, movies and this year was no different.  They showed pilot screenings for Legacies, Roswell, Blindspot, Manifest, The 100, Riverdale, Gotham, Deadly Class, Nightflyers and The Walking Dead.

There were also exclusive game demos that you could play that have not yet been release.  I was able to test some games like Life is Strange 2, The Last Remnant, and the beta of Kingdom Hearts 3. I was so excited to be able to test these games.
Other games we had the opportunity to play were the new Resident Evil 2 remake, Soul Calibur 6, Shadow of The Tomb Raider, Just Cause 4, The World Next Door, Boku no Hero Academia game: My Hero One’s Justice and many more.

Anime Fest and New York Comic Con had shared events such as DreamWorks Voltron Legendary Defender panel, Dragon Ball Super: Broly Panel, RWBY and gen:LOCK Mega Panel, and Cowboy Bebop Panel. With either pass you were able to attend outside the convention events. The locations were pretty far from each other and the lines were long to attend an event.

I spent my entire time at the convention on the show-floor which my wallet regretted it. I stopped by every booth and went down stairs to Artist Alley. I purchased lots of stuff from Kingdom Hearts. I was able to purchase The Kingdom Hearts 3 Play Arts Sora, The Kingdom Hearts 3 Static Riku version, Keyblade key-chains, and posters.  I spent most of my time by the Square Enix booth buying Kingdom Hearts Stuff.

I walked around the show-floor admiring all the booths and everything they were selling. I saw beautiful paintings done by comic artist’s like Alex Ross and work from Disney Studios artist’s as well. Their were tons of collectible statues that looked really amazing, that I would love to own myself. It took me a span of two days to cover the entire show-floor because their was that much to see and do.

The last thing I did at NYCC was attend the NYCC Eastern Championship of Cosplay presented by Singer, it is one of the biggest events at the convention. I enjoy watching the cosplayer’s come out with their cool cosplay outfits. The Cosplayer’s work very hard to create their outfits and all the cosplayer’s outfits came out stunning. All their hard work shows when they put it together, from the craftsmanship, gadgets, outfit and the overall look.
The winner’s are chosen to represent the state and participate in the 2019 C2E2 Crown Championship of Cosplay in Chicago, that is the final event before the Global Championship of Cosplay.

New York Comic Con was not as big as I was expecting but it was still fun.  I did hope for more opportunities to do more things but, but unfortunately that was not the case.   For all the big events you needed a ticket and that made enjoying those opportunities that much harder.

To play certain games you needed a ticket, to buy exclusive Funko Pop’s you needed to win a lottery ticket and sign up in advance. Most of the good events were hard to go to but I still had a good time and I wish I could have attended all four days but the ticket pricing was expensive.

Hopefully next year I can attend and am able to attend panels and do so much more.