New York Anime Festival Report

I had hoped to finish writing this and post it Monday, but while in New York last weekend, I managed to get sick — 103 degree fever sick. So I’m just starting to catch up with things like blogging.

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I spent a fun but tiring weekend at the first-ever New York Anime Festival this weekend. You can check out A Geek By Any Other Name for coverage of news items from the con; for a late-in-the-year first-year con, there were a fair number of announcements. I’m not going to re-hash these, unless they were made at panels I attended.

What follows is a (long) recap of my impressions on the con.

Friday

I arrived early on Friday, expecting to find at least a bit of a line to pick up badges. Nope, nothing. I walked up, got my badge, then walked over to the Starbucks kiosk and got something to drink. I settled in to finish reading the Trinity Blood light novel that I’d started to read on the train while I waited for the show to open.

Ten a.m. arrived, and the show floor opened. Nearly everyone was still setting up. I made a couple circuits to see if there were any must-pickups. I was “convinced” to pick up a plushy baby dragon from the Gaia Online folks, and I grabbed a pair of (expensive) Pinky Street Neon Genesis Evangelion figures.

My other Friday morning purchases included a sealed box of Negima figures (my first of several purchases from HammergirlAnime.com) and a Haruhi figure. By noon, I had already spent over $100. So I thought it might be time to hit some panels.

First up was Retailer Secrets to Anime Success, which was about as much fun as you’d expect with the current industry climate. The panel presenter spoke of his experiences operating a retail store in the Washington D.C. suburbs that rented and sold anime… which mostly seemed to be centered on the futility of trying to operate a specialty anime store in the face of competition from Best Buy and Internet resellers considering most of his clientele preferred to rent and the younger fans didn’t even shop in his store. One interesting insight that was offered is that fans are more apt to rent titles as they come out, then pick up the collections for titles that they really liked.

After that, it was back to the main hall. Most of the exhibitors had finished setting up, at least. I bought a pair of Bleach figures and a pair of Nana keychains, then I decided to get some lunch while waiting for the opening ceremonies.

Fifteen minutes past the scheduled start time, there was no sign that the opening ceremonies would be getting underway in the near future. So I gave up and headed to the Trinity Blood: After Armageddon panel, which was canceled.  According to the Tokyopop rep, the company had hoped to bring in the artist who did illustrations for the light novels, but it didn’t work out. The handful of people who came got Tokyopop t-shirts and were offered copies of the first light novel.

Since I’d had enough of the main hall, I opted to check out the Manga Entertainment Industry Panel.  The only noteworthy aspect of the panel was the showing of a few minutes from an episode of Strait Jacket, which had some nice animation.

The panel finished early enough that I had to sit through an episode and a half of Magikano, easily the worst anime I’ve seen this year, before the premiere of Kanon. Kanon looks like another sweet tear-jerker. The dub sounded mostly ok, but a few of the voices sounded significantly older than the characters. (I imagine this is often the case with the original voice actors as well, but I just don’t have the familiarity to notice it.) I’m looking forward to seeing episodes three and four when the disc comes out next month.

Then it was on to the live-action screening room for Viz’s premiere of Lovely Complex, which I highly recommend to anyone who might like a wacky romantic comedy… whether or not they are an anime fan. I finished out the day by checking out the Anime Insider & World Cosplay Summit Masquerade.

There was a bit of a line to get in to the masquerade, which surprised me a bit since the show floor was pretty empty for most of the day Friday. There were some really talented cosplayers who put on some really cute and/or funny skits, but the masquerade seemed to drag on a bit too long… and the awards were much too drawn out and disorganized. I (and most others) left before the World Cosplay Summit winners were announced.

Saturday

Saturday was a much busier day. Fortunately, the event organizers had a place to let us line up inside to get into the show. I’d guess that when the show finally opened, the line was long enough to go all the way around a football field. While Friday’s crowd featured some cosplayers, I didn’t see many who weren’t involved in the masquerade. Saturday was a different story. I think there were more shinigami at the Javits Center than there would be in the Soul Society at any given time. There was a really cute pair of kids cosplaying Kira and L, too.

I spent a little time in the main hall and picked up a Shakugan no Shana shijitaki before starting on the day’s schedule of panels, premieres and events.

First up, the Media Blasters Industry Panel. Media Blasters confirmed that they have licensed the second season of Genshiken as well as Doujin Work. Most of the panel was focused on a new online card game called Alteil, which has some really nice art and is supposed to be free to play. :surprise:

Next up was the Translation Roundtable, which was a bit disappointing. The panel description made it sound as though the focus would be on the process, but in reality it was more about how to break into the business. As I don’t know more than a handful of words in Japanese, this was not a subject of particular interest to me.

The Katsushi Ota Spotlight was one of the highlights of the day. Mr. Ota was personable, pleasant and funny (quite an accomplishment for someone who had to rely on a translator.) I’m sold on giving his Faust anthology a shot when the American edition comes out next year.

I wish I could say the Kobun Shizuno Spotlight was as much fun. It started late and got bogged down quickly because he kept giving long answers that the caused the translator to pause and ask clarifying questions before she could relay what he said. To make things worse, there was a group of people behind me chattering away, making it difficult to follow Mr. Shizuno’s answers. This was one of the only events I left early.

I walked around the hall for a bit, purchasing a Yuki Nagato figure, before heading to the CODE GEASS: Lelouch of the Rebellion panel. Adult Swim picked up Code Geass, which will air sometime in the spring if I recall correctly. Bandai also announced the principal dub cast and showed a trailer, which looked very cool. They’ve also licensed three manga series as well as a light novel series.

Next on the schedule was the FUNimation Industry Panel, which was devoid of any real news. They did get the obligatory Kodocha question, and I didn’t care for the answer. Look guys, I’m not expecting you to pick up seasons three & four if you don’t think you can make money on them… but could you just admit that seasons one & two weren’t successful? I’m getting tired of the phrase “not as successful as we hoped.”

After the panel, I went to the much-anticipated (and, unfortunately, disasterrific) premiere of the XXXholic and Tsubasa movies. The screening room was standing-room only when I got there — the only event all weekend that I didn’t get a seat for. We got to see about two-thirds of the 35-minute Tsubasa movie; technical difficulties (multiple copies of a bad DVD-R disc ) spoiled the event. The XXXholic film played all the way through, and was pretty neat. Lots of creepy visuals, suspense & humor. The voice acting was all top notch, as well. But guys, next time, please check your screener disc before the con.

The end-of-the-day event was a concert by Unicorn Table. The concert started late, and the sound system setup was terrible. Despite all that, the band played with infectious enthusiasm and I found myself handing over $20 for the band’s album and lead singer Salia’s solo pre-release CD-single. The songs sound much better on CD.

Sunday

Sunday was much quieter and less crowded. When the show opened at 10 a.m., the line may be been long enough to surround a basketball court. I hit the main hall bargain hunting; I scored a set of Final Fantasy trading figures (not exactly bargain-priced, but at least one dealer opened his boxes and made sets instead of forcing you to blind-buy or take the whole box) and a set of bargain priced Asuka Strikes Sega figures (all three for less than the original price of one.) I almost asked about a Mai Tokiha PVC figure price, but I realized that I didn’t really have a place to display her, so I let it go.

The first panel of the day was Bandai’s Lucky Star/Haruhi panel. Bandai Entertainment President Ken Iyadomi played a bunch of stuff off of the last Haruhi DVD for the early arrivals to the panel (the special ending with the full “Hare Hare Yukai” dance animation, the ASOS Brigade episode with the dance, and the “God Knows” segment of the concert episode.)

Then he started the panel off by asking the audience to sing “Bouken Desho Desho” to the karaoke video that Aya Hirano used for her Anime Expo concert. He got three brave souls to come up and sing into the mike - I was impressed. There was a fairly funny dub outtake reel provided by Bang Zoom Entertainment (best moment - Kyon “Whatchu talkin’ about Willis?”) and then the subject segued over to Lucky Star.

Wendy Lee will be playing Konata, though she had to audition for the part. Kari Wahlgren is playing Kagami and I forget who’s playing the other rolls. They did a guessing game of sorts, playing a short clip of each actor in-character then asking the audience to guess. Wendy Lee may be ok as Konata, but I don’t think this is a show I’ll spend a lot of time listening to the dub on anyway. No release date or information on whether any of the CDs will be coming, which was disappointing.

Nothing too exciting from the ADV Films Industry Panel… except for Kanon, just about everything they were hyping fell into the action (read: violent) category or the screwball comedy (Magikano) category. Wallflower looked like it might be worth checking out… the trailer looked decent and they’re claiming it’s their biggest release of the season.

I froze during the premiere of the live-action Nana movie, but I loved the film. I can’t wait to see the sequel.

Back for the Bandai Entertainment Industry Panel; we got a re-hash of the announcements from the Code Geass and Lucky Star panels, some trailers (My Otome Zwei looked cool) and one new announcement. Bandai Entertainment is partnering with Kadokawa Pictures to release The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

I went to the Central Park Media Industry Panel, which is recapped at ToonZone News by Ed Liu. I haven’t been to all that many conventions, but it was one of the more bizarre panels of my experience. Then, of course, the subsequent “riot” when CPM decided to give away whatever they had left in their booth at 4:30 p.m. :shock:  I did not run, push or shove, and I split when things became too chaotic. But I did score World of Narue manga volumes 1-4 (anybody know where I might score a copy of the semi-mythical volume five?) a Shadow Star Narutaru t-shirt and a copy of the Japanese language script to the 21st tv episode of Record of the Lodoss War.

CPM co-founder John O’Donnell said that the giveaway was something that had never been done before at a con — and I doubt it will ever be done again. Not a bad way to end an interesting convention, though.