Conventions of 2023: Castle Point Anime Convention

The year is 2023. It’s April, and you’re in the mood for a good anime convention. After about five months on break from AnimeNYC 2022, the latest Castle Point Anime Convention arrived to gather anime fans across New Jersey for another event celebrating Japanese animation and beyond. Normally in the past, I waited until after two larger events before writing up a big summary of the spring (CPAC and AnimeNext), summer (EternalCon and LIRetro), and fall (NYCC and ANYC) conventions. However, this time, I wanted to see if I had enough to say about Castle Point Anime Convention to give it and the rest of the bigger conventions one giant breakdown post while they’re still on the mind. It might not happen for EternalCon but for now that’s the goal I’m setting so I can at least keep life on this blog as healthy as I can make it.

So anyways, Castle Point. As you all know, April was somewhat of a busier month than usual, with me continuing to work on some leftover projects from Winter and resolve some recent tech issues I was running into with my computers. The month also brought some very unusual weather patterns, including early Summer weather for one week after Easter weekend before the temperatures suddenly dropped afterwards. Then, the weather conditions got gloomier towards the end of the month, with large amounts of clouds and rain in the skies for most days of the week... and then it rained, rained, and rained. Pretty much the entire convention took place under a heavy storm that ran through both the 29th and the 30th, forcing everyone to stay indoors and deriving attendees the chance of enjoying the sunshine and being able to wander the exterior of the complex. Thankfully, with the move to the Meadowlands Expo Center that occurred in 2018, attendees were able to stay under one roof where the convention’s main attractions and almost all the panels and live performances resided, with cosplay meetups, some panels, and the “Maid Cafe” being in the Harmony Suites building right next door.

The layout was identical to Castle Point Anime Convention 2022. Walking into the main building, you had four distinct regions: The Gaming Area on the southwest corner, the Artist’s Alley on the southeast corner, the Dealer’s Room (Vendor’s Hall) on the northeast corner, and finally the photo booths and live stage on the northwest corner. The first thing the jumped out when looking at the schedule was that the artist alley was set to close an hour later than usual: 8PM instead of the usual 7PM. While it did give attendees the chance to finish up their vendor and artist shopping without being rushed, some of the artists were exhausted by the final hour and a few would close up anyways up to 30 minutes earlier. The Gaming Area was pretty much the same as well, just with a few shakeups in the arcade and console game lineup (some of which were genuine surprises while others, like the rhythm games, were mostly expected). Unlike last year where I was able to play a few of the games following the closure of the Artist’s Alley, this yeah I didn’t bother because I would leave not that long after the closure of the vendors’ and artists’ respective areas.

Because of the size of the venue compared to, say, the home of NYCC and AnimeNYC at the Javits Center, transitioning between each area was short and seamless. You could go between the gaming room and artist’s alley in no time flat, access all the panel rooms (sans the one located in the Harmony Suites next door) whenever, and if you needed to get some food, the dining area in the back end was easily accessible, even if most of the attendees didn’t want to travel out in the rain to access the food trucks. However, everything being located in a large, open room meant that whatever performances were at the live stage drowned out most of the audio throughout the event, making it harder to chat with people. A similar issue occurred at CPAC 2022 as well, and I’m wondering if it’s even possible that the audio could be turned down slightly so other parts of the convention aren’t as affected by the loud music blasting everywhere. At least they saved their loudest performance for the very end of the day right when half the con was closed up and the only things still open were the gaming area and the live stage. 

Now let’s talk about convention cosplay shoots, because boy do I have quite a collection. Owing to the smaller venue size and me going into two panels throughout the day, one for 30 minutes and another for a hour, I didn’t make cosplay photos a priority (especially with exterior shots not being remotely possible due to the rain). After going all out at AnimeNYC 2022, I felt like it was a necessary procedure so I wasn’t overexerting myself looking for more things to photograph. In the end, I wound up with a total of 124 different cosplay photos, each representing different popular series in the anime scene when also taking the artist’s alley into account:

• Genshin Impact still has the strongest showing of all, with most of the artists in Artist’s Alley carrying one or several pieces of merchandise for it and there being quite a few Genshin cosplayers roaming the venue. I couldn’t tell if it got more or less cosplayers this time around, considering the complexity of the outfits and how much other anime franchises got support this year.
• One Piece got a very strong showing, especially amongst the cosplayers— so much so that several medium and large crowd shoots occurred with a bunch of One Piece cosplayers out in the main hallways.
• Pokemon was also a favorite amongst the cosplayers and the artists in Artist’s Alley, some of it having to do with the “Castle Point Pokemon League” where you could collect badges from certain Pokemon cosplayers and challenge a Champion attending the convention in a real Pokemon battle in Pokemon Scarlet/Violet.
• Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure was almost right behind Genshin Impact, having a fair number of cosplayers and a healthy dose of artists supporting it to boot. Parts 3, 5, and 6 received the most rep.
• Demon Slayer had a good presence at the convention, although not as much as I remember it having when it was at its peak back 2019.
• One franchise I was surprised to see make a resurgence this year was Naruto, which is impressive considering the series’ heyday has long passed by now, yet it still remains relevant in anime culture and I wouldn’t be shocked if more Naruto cosplayers appear at AnimeNext and AnimeNYC.

Overall, the event delivered, though a part of me feels like I enjoyed 2022’s event a bit more in comparison. Probably because of the hype of it being the first main convention I attended since the start of the pandemic and not being stuck in poor weather. With the review concluded, here’s a direct link to this event’s cosplay photo gallery on my Facebook as well as this convention's round of commission scans. As for where I'll be next? Well, none other than AnimeNext next month.