New York Anime Festival 2008 – Sunday and Final Thoughts

So Long, Farewell....

Another Anime convention comes to a close. I am freakin’ tired of walking all over the place and sleeping a total of 7 hours the entire weekend. The organizers just HAD to screw with my sleep patterns by putting the Rie Tanaka panel and Autograph signing on a Sunday. Sunday is for sleep, for Christian worship, for hangovers and for football, not an awesome panel featuring an awesome voice actress from Japan.

Still, it was a duty of mine to show up.

Me and my friend got VIP passes for this occasion. I missed the masquerade last night because I wanted free swag at the Anime News Network panel. Rie Tanaka sang at the masquerade. I weeped. Nothing, not even the crummy weather nor my weak, aching sleepless body would stop me from getting my “Chobits” DVD box from getting blessed by the holy sharpie of Rie. Still, despite the fact that we were both VIP and got there about a hour prior to the panel, we still missed the giveaway for the limited edition pens. (There were only 20 of them, I was 21. OUCH.) ONLY the VIPs got a chance of getting one. Getting into the panel was pretty easy. We were pretty much guaranteed admittance. Prior to the panel, me and my friend went around the booths to see if he could get some stuff to sign in the last minute. I went over to the Yen Press booth to kill some time and was quite enamored by reading “With the Light”, a manga about autism which I found rather fascinating (first overheard via animealmanac. I found it so fascinating, I managed to interfere with the booth staffers breakfast (they needed to sit down to eat, lol). I guess for all their troubles, they let me have the first volume for free. How nice of them. I have to get volume 2, luckily Rightstuf happens to have a sale on Yen Press manga right now.

Back to Rie Tanaka. The horde of fanboys and girls were expected, but the Japanese media seemed to outnumber the American press by a tremendous amount. It seemed like every Japanese guy there had some serious photography hardware that dwarfs my Nikon D50 in size and scope. None of the questions weren’t really that deep nor thought provoking. Yes, Rie did some voice examples of her most famous characters such as Chii from “Chobits” and Suigintou from “Rozen Maiden” and she even sang for a bit. She also wanted to ask a question to the audience . As Rie is a gamer and quite busy with her work, she wanted to know how we handled playing games with our (presumably) busy lifestyles. Needless to say, it got different responses from the crowd. At the time, I didn’t have any question to ask her. Maybe I should’ve asked her about how do you like New York City.

Lining up

As for the autograph session, there seems to be a bit of tension amongst those who were VIP and not. Apparently, people were on line as early as 5am. I overheard one dude who was not VIP that traveled all the way from Saratoga Springs, NY and apparently slept the last two nights at the Port Authority bus terminal! And he sure smelled like he slept the last two nights at the Port Authority bus terminal. I hope Rie Tanaka’s nostrils wasn’t assaulted with such vile body odor. Of course, I didn’t have to sleep half the night outside the Javits in order to get a John Handcock from Rie. I still had to wait, but it was significantly less than if I didn’t splurge for that VIP pass. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to take pictures at the signing or even take a pic of her signing stuff. Understandbly, her greeting was very polite and brief to me. This was the first time I got a signing by a Japanese VA. Previously, I got my Nanaka 6/17 DVDs sign by Monica Rial and Chris Patton, my Gunslinger Girl and Moonphase DVDs signed by Rial and my Rozen Maiden DVD signed by Mela Lee. Other than that, I didn’t do much else on Sunday other than get some last-minute photos. There were too many people in Anonymous masks. Do they have any ideal of what it truly means to be anonymous? Are they even aware of 4chan?

*Facepalm*

Final thoughts on NYAF.

As the event is run for-profit by Reed, a lot of the “fan passion” is sucked right out. The VIP packages, sponsorships (Anime News Network Theatre anyone?) location of the dealers room (first thing you see once you enter!) are evident. Still, even with all of this commercialism, it is in the company’s best interest to make sure things run smoothly or end up running in the red. It is something that you can’t say about most non-profit cons. Not a lot of equipment failure, more awareness of schedule changes, fan panels that aren’t a waste of my time and more staffers that KNOW what they are talking about. If Otakon was run for profit, it’s operation would be A LOT better, but at the expense of the passion of fandom. I’m not saying that “for-profit” cons are better, it’s a double-edge sword. You will lose something and gain something at the same time. While VIP packages might be a sign of greed and unfairness, I would easily pay $200 or more for the right to skip lines at Otakon (especially after this year). Paying up the nose for VIP access is one thing, but waiting forever and getting shut out of panel after panel is not fun.

If DigitalLife did not succumb to economic downturn any sooner, then the NYAF would’ve dominated much, if not all of the JJCC. Unfortunately, only the bottom floor was utilized along with the Diabetes Expo. I’m sure that next year, it will be much bigger in scope and size. After two years, the resurrection of a New York City Anime convention in the form of NYAF has risen in notoriety and may compete with Otakon, AnimeNEXT and perhaps Anime Boston for the crown of biggest East Coast convention. The lineup of Rie Tanaka, Yoshitaka Amano and Hideyuki Kikuchi this year put the convention to the forefront of the con scene. I guess “con season” isn’t over once Anime Weekend Atlanta wraps up now.

The New York Anime Festival will return to the Jacob Javitz Center in September 2009. You can see all of the photos that I took via Flickr. I’ll talk a bit more about the cosplay there in a future post.