“Welcome to the CITY, we got fun and games, we got EVERYTHING YOU WANT!…”
…come on, just met me have this one.
Anyways, hello. It’s been a while but here’s Part 4 of my convention trip coverage for the year of 2024. This one is an interesting set in particular, since it involves two of New York City’s biggest pop culture shows coming together to celebrate anime and general pop culture respectively. And since they use the same venue and feature some overlap, I decided to cover AnimeNYC and NYCC differently than prior events this year: Both events together as a combo, going over the two events simultaneously. For the most part, you will get one paragraph discussing AnimeNYC, and then the other focused on NYCC. Admittedly, due to the sheer size of the events, there were certain features I was not able to cover: Panels in the case of both events, and the gaming section in the case of New York Comic Con.
But before we delve into what it was like to experience these events again for another year, let’s start with some background: Prepping for these two events, I knew that they both take a lot of the wind out of me by the day’s end. These are without a doubt the biggest events in my schedule each year, beating out the other anime events I attend in New Jersey and the general pop culture conventions on my home turf of Long Island. And they require by far the most amount of prep and setup before I take my trips there, given that I lose access to my car once we get to the Javits Center and the events’ size compared to the New Jersey and Long Island-based events means I must follow a stricter schedule with when and how much I choose to spend my time in each section of the building. So with that in mind, we can finally discuss the two events in detail:
By this point, and after having done these convention coverages for many years, the Javits Center needs no introduction. I’ve talked about this specific venue multiple times throughout the yearin the past and it remains the biggest venue I’ve attended in person and the most densely crowded with attendees. This year, I opted to get dropped off at the front of the event instead of arriving to the event after leaving my vehicle at a parking garage a few blocks down the road, saving me some time and allowing me to get into action sooner. While the main entrances were different between events, they all led into the main halls, overlooking entrances directly into the vendors, panel rooms, gaming areas, and in the case of NYCC, the Artist’s Alley. The routine for AnimeNYC was to begin in the back of the vendors’ hall to where the artists resided, as the Artist Alley was just as big as the year prior and would have taken me a few hours to get through it all. NYCC begun in much of the same way, riding the escalator to the lower floor where the artists resided, then beginning my tour around from there. Crowds unavoidably made navigating through difficult, but of the two events I found NYCC’s Artist Alley was the easier of the two to get around since it was in a part of the event not shared by the vendors and was able to have fewer but longer isles of artists—said isles also being generous in width, which you don’t see at a lot of the bigger events. Perhaps if AnimeNYC featured one less isle or reverted back to the fewer-but-longer isle format of 2022 and 2023’s events, it could attempt wider isles that provide more space for attendees.
The artists themselves remain a joy to interact with and share story and character ideas with, although I wasn’t able to support them as much I could in prior years due to needing the money for the holidays. Across the two events, I had stockpiled enough funds to obtain various commissions and not much else, meaning I couldn’t pick up prints or the original comics sold at most of the booths that interested me as I did at, say, Cradle Con or Eternal Con. Also, with the sheer scale of both events’ respective Artist Alley, I was forced to abandon the longer chats I usually have with the artists in the Artist’s Alley and wasn’t able to get as many commissions as I would have by the day’s end. Not that I would have had been able to regardless as in-person commissions at AnimeNYC were noticeably more expensive, and as I attended on a Saturday, some of the booths had stopped taking commissions or wouldn’t be able to complete a new one in the span of a single day. I avoided the problem at NYCC from the get-go by imposing a strict cut-off in the prices I would spend on each commission, as well as not scouting the back ends of the center isles which consisted of mainly professional artists each charging triple digits per sketch or drawing.
Aside from the artists, both events had quite a developed vendor’s hall on the venue’s third floor, or a dealer’s room if you prefer to call it that. Personally, I’ve gone back and forth on my preferred term to call where companies and hobbyists sell merch and even the events themselves don’t land on any one particular definition. But in the case of NYCC and AnimeNYC, their respective vendor halls, as in past years of the respective events, feel a lot more corporate than the hobby-driven vendor sections at all my other events in the year. From NJIT Minicon all the way to the Festival of Games, it was rare to see some huge corporation pull up with a huge booth at one of these comparatively smaller events even in the event they received sponsorships to help get the event hosted in the first place. As for me, I saw no need to purchase anything from the vendors at AnimeNYC, but I did interact with some of the booths at NYCC and got some free swag out of it. The big highlight of the venture into the exhibitors was finally getting a picture with Godzilla at the Godzilla booth after missing my chance the prior year.
I didn’t bother with the panels at either event due to the very strict schedules I was working under, but looking back on what was hosted, there were some intriguing panels. The panels at AnimeNYC were all located on the bottom floor, while New York Comic Con had them all stationed at the top floor, a floor that I have not managed to reach once in my years of attending NYCC since it finished construction during the early 2020's lockdown era. That, and the fifth floor has been sealed at every AnimeNYC since the Javits Center finished construction of its big expansion several years ago. Who knows, maybe at NYCC 2026 I’ll finally give the top floor some attention, even if it's only to see the sights . Now while the panels weren’t able to get my attention for 2025’s events, the gaming sections certainly did… at least at AnimeNYC 2025. Based on my own guesses from New York Comic Con 2023’s gaming lineup, the setup for NYCC 2025 was all competitive multiplayer games (mostly of the fighting variety) and tables set up for tabletop games that could be loaned for the rest of the day. It’s a similar setup to many of the anime events I attend, so I saw no need to visit it myself. AnimeNYC’s gaming area, on the other hand, was my destination once the remainder of the event closed for the day (after a brief visit halfway through to meet one of the artists selling art next to all the fighting games). The gaming offerings included candy cabinets with various Japanese arcade titles of different genres, a section of indie titles brought out for demonstrations, and the expected slew of console fighting games. Tournaments were held at both events as well, and alongside the earlier Defend the North Retro held back in July, was pretty much the closest you could get to a FGC event in New York. As for me, I’m not someone that likes to play games for keeps, and since my schedule was already quite filled for both days, I had no opportunity to lab and enter a tournament. That, and if I was looking to partake in a big tournament, I would preferably do so at a proper FGC event and not an event where I prefer to explore and socialize. I can only have so much to do in my agenda for one day after all.
As you all know by now, anime cosplays were always one of the big things at every anime event I’ve attended. While I still approach the idea of taking photos of cosplayers’ cosplays from a more casual eye, I do it with a love and admiration for the hobby and a respect for how much effort it takes to construct a single cosplay from scratch. Plus, I personally don’t see myself getting a more expensive camera to bring to these events anytime soon, especially out of fear of losing it or getting it damaged during the day. Not to mention, I’m also at the part of my life where I don’t see myself applying to become a full-time professional photographer is my future. But anyways, back to the cosplays: Somehow, some way, I did it. I set a new personal best for total cosplay pictures taken at a single event. Thanks to how densely packed the event was with cosplayers. I accumulated a total of 209 photos on that day alone. Looking back, it probably was one of the better things to come out of visiting the event on its busiest day, but I don’t know if it’s enough to make me want to consider going on a Saturday every single year. As for New York Comic Con, I didn’t arrive home with a single cosplay picture, and that’s true for all my visits to NYCC up to this point. I personally cite the overall size of the event and the ratio of cosplayers to non-cosplayers being much more skewed towards the latter compared to AnimeNYC (and other anime conventions) as my reasonings for not bothering with trying to get a big selection of cosplay snaps at one of the east coast’s biggest events. If you’re looking to see a collection of photos of cosplays at a comic convention after so many anime photo sets, there is a good chance I will be doing one at Brooklyn Comic Con 2026 later this year. As per usual, you can see the cosplays I took at AnimeNYC 2026 at this link. The commissions from both events will be scanned and posted at a later date on my sister blog as part of a big mega-dump of commissions, covering EternalCon to the Festival of Games, so please look forward to it once I can get around to using my scanner again.
With everything pretty much covered by now, all that’s left is to discuss how the events wrapped up, at least on the days I attended. AnimeNYC’s vendors and artists closed at the time common for most bigger anime events at 7PM sharp. Vendors were placing tarps up over their booths and attendees were instructed over one final live announcement to complete their final purchases and leave. Panels and gaming, including tournaments(?), continued on until the day’s full closing at 10PM. As for me, I would depart the Javits center at 8:30PM, grabbing my last few cosplay pictures for the night and a few last-minute photos of the venue, now mostly devoid of the crowds that piled into the event mid-day. New York Comic Con’s vendors closed at 7 with the artists following suit at 8, with the latter’s closure leaving little else for me to do on that day since I was too exhausted to explore what parts of the event remained open. And thus, I left 30 minutes later to get my ride and head home. I reflected on my time with each event on the ride home, beginning my recovery period in anticipation for the next event that followed.
Overall, I’d say the quality of both events remained mostly the same as last year. The move to August for AnimeNYC was a double-edged sword since it meant having to balance two big events only two weeks apart from each other. That said, I adjusted to the change pretty quickly and it opened up opportunities to attend other events towards the end of the year (namely, DerpyCon and AnimeNJ++). AnimeNYC and NYCC continue to be a source of solid entertainment year-by year, even when the heavier corporate focus makes certain experiences less genuine. As for how I could see these events improving in the future? I think these two events are grounded enough to the point that I don’t see them doing any sort of big shake up in the next few years. Maybe if AnimeNYC tried the longer rows of tables in its Artist’s Alley from 2022 and 2023 to segregate the vendors and artists away from each other, I would see that as an improvement, but I don’t think the organizers behind AnimeNYC would consider it since it’s not really something that inherently breaks what is only part of a much bigger event.
Well that was a lot to process! Anyways, I’ll be aiming to post the next part of the convention coverage sometime next month, followed by one-final wrap-up post.
