Greetings everyone. Since the final batch of conventions have come and gone and I finally have a few months on break, I think it’s only natural that I write up a blog post on the final two events of the year, as well as some looking back on the other events I’ve attended since April this year.
With the pandemic loosening it’s grips on society, the experience you all know as “the convention” could resume after two years of being affected gravely by the virus that resulted in said pandemic. While some conventions did happen towards the tail end of 2021, I was still in hiding from the virus and didn’t become fully boosted until February of this year. And by then, all six conventions that I had attended in 2019 planned to make a grand return in 2022, to varying results.
Castle Point Anime Convention 2022 was the comeback to cons that I had long, long dreamed of. Meeting artists and seeing my buddies and several other artists for the first time in years was a welcome experience, and the convention was just big enough to where there was enough to do without feeling too large or overwhelming. The same can not be said for AnimeNext, as they were forced to bail out for another year due to schedule conflicts with a concert that was happening in the same timeframe and the venue’s total disregard for COVID-19 safety procedures. As for the local conventions that took place on my home turf, Eternal Con was a slight disappointment, as the new venue the con was forced into didn’t really bring much new in with its somewhat confusing layout and a reduction of artists in the artist alley compared to the pre-pandemic era, making it feel emptier than usual. Long Island Retro Gaming Expo gave some of its smaller components a much needed expansion, resulting in a much meatier event overall with its only downside being the lack of an artist alley somewhere in the event space.
And after taking September off, New York Comic Con arrived guns and blazing in all its corporate, advertisement-filled glory, still being by far the largest event I attend year round. Maybe a bit too big, as I’ll elaborate later. Without a doubt this was a big event with lots to do, and like most modern incarnations of NYCC, there was a decent amount of Eastern media present front and center at the show- One Piece, Dragon Ball, and Gundam had entire booths set up, and other prominent franchises of Japanese origin had presences at the event. Of course the bread and butter of New York Comic Con was, well, comics, western TV shows, and films. I’ll admit, back in the day, I never thought I would gain an appreciation for comic conventions, but after various past NYCC’s genuinely entertained me, especially NYCC 2018, I welcomed the event into my yearly schedule with open arms. That said, this year’s NYCC felt a little too overblown for me, especially since my mother, whom I brought to the event to experience it with me, was still in the mist of recovering from the surgery that out her out of the summer conventions, so it made the event more tense and stressful for the two of us, combined with having to survive the typical crowds everyone that has attended the event (or any big show for the matter) is familiar with.
Usually in comic and anime conventions, I easily glance over the vendors hall (or dealers room as I sometimes call it) in favor of the artist’s alley, but New York Comic Con’s vendors easily steal the show year by year. Gigantic booths full of spectacle spanned the front of the vendor’s hall and had gigantic lines with unique experiences and free goodies for grabs. There were so many big booths this year that it all just blew past me and I ended up missing a good few of the larger booths, but then again I come to conventions more for the social aspect and the views, not the “experiences”. Thankfully the vendors’ hall was not as swamped with people as you would expect in a big event once you got past the booth closer to the front, but the same can not be said for the artist alley. The artist alley was just chaos at New York Comic Con and remained mostly so even into the final hour. Large industry vets with history working with the biggest names in comics were shoved in alongside indie artists and other local talent, making everything feel overwhelming and, dare I say, claustrophobic. Simply put, having all these artists in one place was too big for just one of the exhibition halls on the lowest floor and by the time I left, I had only seen half of the artists in the artist alley.
Overall the experience was alright, though having to rush between the vendors hall and artist alley and make sure my mother was alright made things a bit more stressful than I would have liked, and having to divide the artist alley on a separate floor, while understandable due to the sheer number of artists, contributed to the rushed feeling I was experiencing as the sun dropped outside and the place slowly began to close in the evenings. Considering how disorganized everything was on my end, there were no cosplay photos for this event and I didn’t shoot any videos (to be fair, the place was packed and my phone doesn’t have the greatest camera, being several years old and all). I packed up my belongings, said goodbye to the people I met, and left, wishing I had an extra day to take in more of the event and the artists crammed into the lower floor.
Luckily for me, Anime NYC returned in a blaze of glory the very next month. With the crowds not as dense as New York Comic Con, it was much easier to get around the lobbies and the openings into the vendors. The convention had expanded gradually over the first three years it was held—the vendors’ hall easily seeing the biggest jump in booth quantity once it re-opened in 2021. The artist’s alley, spending the first two years on the fourth floor and getting shoved behind the vendors in 2019, now has its own section off to the northern side of the venue. This easily solved the crowd problems the artist alley suffered in 2019 while still making it easy to access and walk around, compared to the severe congestions of NYCC’s artist alley. As for the vendors, I didn’t really pay much attention to them. Some of the major vendors had really neat setups, including the return of the giant blow-up Luffy from the Toei Animation booth and two giant Gundam statues for the Gundam booth, which was presented as its own expo within the convention. Most of the other vendors were typical anime convention vendors, though being a bigger venue there was at least more to offer, too bad I don’t want to lug rare anime merch around for ~10 hours…
Ticket prices went up this year compared to prior events, and access to panels and autographs were done through raffles instead of just simply being there at the right place at the right time, so there was quite a bit of controversy before the convention had even started. I wasn’t planning on attending panels this year (I only attended a single panel during this year of conventions) and I never went to conventions for the special guests anyways; plus that would have been even more crap to carry around for an entire day (and my backpack is only so big, do I need to plan for a camping trip here?). Still, a seemingly unnecessary price hike and having to use raffles for something as trivial as going to a panel seems like an attempt to combat the ever-ongoing pandemic, considering Anime NYC 2021 was one of the big spreader events towards the end of 2021. Maybe by 2023 things will go back to normal and people will be able to go to panels and see their favorite guests with no tickets required? And if people cite “the line”, every con has lines whenever you like it or not, though some are far worse than others.
In the end, I enjoyed the event a great ton, it had a better artist’s alley but a downgraded vendor hall compared to New York Comic Con. I would say that it was a better time due to being less overwhelming and less packed than NYCC, but considering an explicitly anime convention would mostly only attract anime fans, it would be unfair to compare it to NYCC and the multi-genre approach it has taken in recent years. The lack of massive crowds did make it easier to take cosplay photos, and you all know where this is going…
Yup, cosplay time. Since AnimeNext didn’t happen, I ended up going overboard with the cosplay photos. Demon Slayer was still the top dog when it cane to representation, and fellow Shonen superstars Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and My Hero Academia still had a grand presence in the venue. The new flavor this time around was Chainsaw Man thanks to its very recent and hugely sucsesfull anime adaptation, and Bleach cosplays would make a surprise return in part due to the comeback of the anime. The hype of doing all these cosplay shots after resulted in a gallery of 199 photos, and considering the massive pain my legs were in, I don’t know if was worth the physical trauma or not. I doubt it’ll be a number I’ll ever top in the future especially when it only beat the previous record by 9 photos, but hey, quality over quantity they always say. That said it does make me realize that I could go for a new phone/camera for a bit of a picture quality and resolution boost sometime in the future.
You can find the gallery of event cosplay photos here.
And that’s pretty much it for 2022’s season of conventions. Where do I go from here, and what are my plans for 2023? The resulting soreness from Anime NYC made me cancel a trip I had planned to a local con on my home turf that took place the same weekend as Anime NYC. Thankfully I do have two other local events besides that, including a small local comic convention and a winter-themed one-day spinoff of Long Island Retro Gaming Expo. I don’t consider them major enough to widely post them—especially when they’re both only one day long, hence why these smaller, local events have stayed off the schedule image I’ve used all year. In terms of new, bigger events, I briefly considered something to fill the void of AnimeNext’s cancelation, but nothing came of it. For potential new ventures, MAGFest, Thy Geekdom Con, and Otakon have all made an impression on me, but it would either make the schedule too over-bloated in events or take too long to drive to (especially when AnimeNext, back when it was at the Atlantic City Convention Center, was a four hour drive the way there and back). Never say never, but at the moment I’m sticking with the main six cons on my platter (with hopes that AnimeNext’s new venue choice will still deliver and EternalCon will be able to re-grow most of what it lost next year).
As for this blog, as well as myself, I think I need some time to think of what I would put into a new blogpost, especially since I still have an overall end-of-year blogpost to write up. Until then, I'll see you later.
