NYAF 2009 Wrap (Once Again, with Feeling)
[Shorter version/prequel here. This post is like, 10 blog posts squished together.]
As much as I care about anime conventions, I don’t attend very many of them. The thing is, they are not exactly the most enjoyable things in terms of time and effort. I see them as opportunities–a chance for fans, once they put in the effort and time and energy and HEART and whatever that forms Captain Planet, to make memories and things you tell your grandkids about. It’s a different question if those kind of fans will end up with grandchildren, but that’s beside the point. The point is, again, it’s tiresome business. It’s not a cruise vacation. It’s about working to make your desires come true.
On the flip side, it’s also a business. What comes to my mind is people like Funimation’s Sheehan, who supposedly attended 6 cons in the past 5 weeks or something as a rep. Regardless if it is for work or for pleasure, that is just madness. Anyways, it’s an opportunity to do business, make some money (especially for dealers and artist alley types), or whatever agenda that you may have and whatever you want to achieve.
In short, there’s a technical, skill aspect and an art to going to cons. Let’s take a look at what happened this year at New York Anime Fest.
Gib Money, Receeb Bacon
At NYAF this year I found a few organizations at the dealer’s room that I’ve never seen before. Being the weeaboo that I am I do most my shopping for domestic media (and imports too) online, so except for figures (because shipping can be significant) I don’t pay sagging shelves of VHS tapes or $5 DVDs any mind. Needless to say what sells to me at an average US anime con dealer room is not exactly the entire thing. So when I realized I was holding the entire discography of Aoi Tada’s singer-songwriter career in my hands, on the other side of the world from Japan, available only via indie presses, it makes you wonder what the hell is going on.
I mean I sort of make it into a bigger deal than it really is. But as I later learned, a lot of the stuff indie record labels release in Japan are hard to get in America. Big “long tail” sites like Amazon.co.jp sometimes do not ship those things overseas for one reason or another, if they offer to sell it at all. Proxy works but it is significantly more expensive, especially considering a lot of indie labels sell their wares for less than mainstream publishers as a way to make people check things out. Well, the hardest part is to be able to find out about these things in the first place.
Things like this has happened in the past, where a random yet awesome Japanese retailer or publisher set up shop for something, tied to a con, and it usually fizzles out. This time there’s this MySpace page full of Lia music. I’m no Lia fan, but there is something going on with a lot of her songs that they’re available only via this particular venue. If that’s your thing, then you owe it to yourself to follow up and figure out what is going on.
There were some other weird groups, like KDDI. What are telecom companies doing at an anime convention? I guess Samsung was at NYAF this year as a part of WCG…so it’s not a stretch to see T-Mobile or AT&T? I don’t get it. As awkward as Reni’s act may be in real life, I’d rather see more of her kind of thing than odd corporate interests doing stuff here.
FALE is spelled with a E. For eh.
In general NYAF should be considered as a cross between a large, professional-style con with an industry bent with a new, local con that hasn’t had that much experience. Comparing it with Otakon, it could be said that one is like going to a fast food joint in NYC versus going to a fast food joint in Tokyo. The latter being what Otakon is more like.
At the same time, the key to keeping attendees happy is to manage their expectations. I think NYAF’s VIP system, where attendees can pay for an extra-expensive badge to get more perks over normal attendees, ultimately works pretty well. Some people who go to these cons are big spenders; NYC is not exactly a cheap place to live after all. However Moy and I totally got the wrong expectations this year, as based on last year’s VIP experience. Without dwelling on the details, let’s just say that the most compelling reason for the VIP pass is to save me time, and it didn’t really save me all that much time. In general I would’ve spent about the same amount of time as if I didn’t, and the only real difference is that I would have gotten worse seats and one fewer autograph. At the same time they scheduled me a bonus autograph session that I couldn’t go. So whatever. Moy probably rants better on this.
But in retrospect that might be worth the difference, seeing how the extra session that I did go I had a great time at someone else’s expense.
If there was a cause, it was because NYAF sucked at line management. Totally sucked. I mean people didn’t toally get killed for certain things, but what happened was a few “head” people who knew what they were doing kept things in line, but the volunteers and lower level staffers didn’t know what was going on and communication sometimes broke down. Some people got shafted because of this.
Some of you press-freeloaders got better treatment than VIPPERs. That’s kind of messed up now that I think about it.
Still, the rule of thumb at cons is to not presume too much and ask people what the hell is going on. You gotta fight for your right to party no matter what kind of badge you wear.
*POOL POOL*
Ryu Moto has a table in the dealer’s room, like last year. All he had there, though, was just one doujinshi/sketchbook and prints of the cover. I think I would have came back and buy more if he had other stuff, but it felt just like (presumably) a comiket table. When we visited his table on Friday it was because fellow con buddy starcreator had to run an errand to go and pick up something, after being given a map of the dealer’s room, a circle over a booth position, attached with a number. We had no idea who we were going to see. It felt like a Japanese variety show intro segment…do you know what I’m talking about? Anyways we went and got it, being $5 a piece. “The Mari picture [inside] was worth that just by itself,” I said. (Why do I like her so much anyways? I don’t know.) Next to him was this other Japanese guy with a pad, who kept to himself while Moto went about his business and fending off WAH.
We later found I think the guy first told me about bkub was Kransom, who then probably told some other people who also told me about him. I didn’t know who he was at first, but I think by the second day I realized the oddity that I frequented previously, even if just casually, was his responsibility. Danbooru for the win–bringing fans and creators together lolol.
Idolmaster 48
I thought AKB48 was pretty good. They are quite pro, and for the stuff they did it’s very nice. I sort of thought about it during their Sunday show–what if they were Koreans? Would their moves be even more precise? Or if they were Chinese? How do they compare to those Americans that bust a move? On the sliding scale of quality they were a good mix of being natural, being pro, and being just cheesy enough.
But it wasn’t perfect, of course, and the whole AKB48 affair was an exercise in working with limitations. Things felt kind of odd during the robot set, but I liked that costume the best. The I <3 NY shirts were second best. I definitely liked the whole “theme” pop thing that was going on during the middle of the set, too. Good variety. I missed out on the short at-con concert but I think I’ll live. Webster Hall wasn’t the ideal venue for this kind of a thing, but it probably was much better than a converted convention hall.
Oshimen! Yes…I am still not sure who it was, but during the Sunday show she was one of the shorter twin-tails. She’s quite young looking so she could be a Kenkyuusei. It’s probably Erena or Sumire Sato. I’ll wait for a video or something to confirm before I commit. For what it is worth I didn’t see her in the Saturday videos, so it may very well be the Kenkyuusei…
Hit the links to find out more:
http://j-ongaku.org/wiki/AKB48
http://www.akb48.co.jp/english/members/index.html
“Call me Yuuchi!”
So Yui Makino came and went. I think her blog posts and pictures do more justice than I could say. Hit her blogs and leave commentstrackbacks!
Sept. 29, 2009 - Hey I see someone I know!
Sept. 28, 2009 - Her focus panel and the East x West voice acting panel. Attended both… It was pretty educational. In the East x West panel they didn’t really cover anything I didn’t know, except some sad American voice acting stories about no-name hard-workers getting snubbed by celebrity voice actors. There are some interesting takeaways at the Yuuchi Q&A, such as WAH’s question on her Misaki Nakahara act. Yui Makino was genial but ultimately a little bit aloof and didn’t do anything too exciting. Roland Kelts, who moderated the panel, asked way too many fluff questions and took up a lot of time however.
Sept. 27, 2009 - Oh God. orz. I am WOTA, hear me ニコニコ? Or LOOOOOL.
Sept. 26, 2009 - A girl in New York.
Anyone want to give translating them a stab? They seem pretty simple. Also, I’m not sure if you can comment on this set of blogs, but you could on her ameblo which is what I linked to in earlier posts.
I should also add I’ll write a proper concert thing and more about the Q&A, possibly on Jtor. Moy and I spent like an hour and half trying to get the set list for Yuuchi’s concert, and it was tough since a few songs were not out yet. Little did we know we should just ask a real Yuuchi fan?
Tomino was just as I remembered him to be.
I think watching the video for the key note speech sums things up. [Also ran into GodLen finally on Saturday.]
Sadly Makino’s first autograph session conflicted with Tomino’s Q&A session, which by hearsay indicated that it went off the ANN Q&A script and turned into a general Q&A session. But you want to hear the WAH story. It’s one that needs a picture to tell, and I wish I had a camcorder at the time. It was great.
So the story goes, I somehow scored two tickets for Tomino’s autograph session on Saturday (…and I forgot who gave theirs to me? Terribly sorry!) and on the second trip it was just me and WAH. He was quite excited about meeting Tomino (as you can imagine) and he flaunted around his treasured, now-105-yen program book that dated back to 1982 when the Mobile Suit Gundam movies were screening. Inside it contains pictures of Tomino from back when. We killed time in the autograph line talking about the silly things in that book and how FABULOUS Tomino looked, etc.
In time we reached the autograph room. It’s easy to guess what Tomino would say after leafing through the booklet, so I’ll tell you what this other guy did when he leafed through the book. There was this sharp young-ish man of…6′3 or so, Japanese guy in a suit. I believe he was Tomino’s handler of some sort. He wore this special Gundam 30th Anniversary pin on his black sports coat. Very pro looking. There were a couple other people going through what the attendees submit as eligible autograph items, and WAH’s cultural artifact baffled the one lady who couldn’t figure out what it was exactly, or rather if it was legit or not. This man then took the program booklet from WAH and proceeds to be impressed. Except he was kind of like, “woah this guy is super kimoi otaku” impressed. It’s all in the way the “eeeeeh” intoned. After paging through the book, he makes the mental connection of how this crazy looking gaijin kid is actually kind of impressive, to be able to bring something like that to this event.
At any rate, we get to the Man himself. After figuring out how we’ll photograph this, WAH handed off the book to Tomino who also took a little bit of time to figure out what it was. WAH was probably too giddy to say much but his Japanese was going when it could. Tomino actually leafed through the whole thing, more or less, given it was only a dozen or so pages. And if you couldn’t guess in the previous paragraph, “natsukashii” is the correct answer.
It seems every person who came through the autograph room wanted a picture with Tomino, so he was mechanically and mentally prepared for it after he signed the front cover of the program booklet. Now while in line, WAH has already came up with the idea of what comes next and passed it to me, and I just didn’t think it was the best idea. Perhaps worth a try anyways? So he did.
The rest is best told in video or by picture, but let’s just say that WAH politely expressed what he wants both by speech and by gesture and Tomino didn’t quite like it. Well, he grinned and pouted in similar manner, drawing chuckles from me and the translator/photographer. I believe the words WAH used was “pouting like a baby.”
In essence, WAH wanted a particular pose with Tomino as they took the picture. I hate leaving the punchline out of the joke, but it isn’t mine to tell. So go pester WAH for that legendary picture.
Panels
I attended the Funi panel, which was partly a waste of time although it’s always good to see the right license rescued. And the Blu-Ray news are great for me, always.
I poked my head in the “get famous” panel and ran away. I also stayed at the blogger panel for about 10-20 minutes. It was a sparse crowd but I think I know like half the people there… Hangout panel more than anything.
Which was probably about the same as the “Cute” MMOG panel JP & Hinano ran, though that one has a pretty good attendance. I like how people lump Aion in with all these other “kawaii” type games, when it kind of straddles the boundary. I think two of the very otaku-poi games demoed at the panel deserves more investigation, if they’re the kind in which you spend the entire time in the game staring at your butt, EQ style. Kind of like Lineage 2 I guess. Well, maybe not Ai Sp@ce.
I actually recorded Hinano’s panel. Interested people should let me know. The presentation itself is kind of short and we spent most of the time watching demo and trailers. Q&A was mostly “did you play x game y/n?” which could be helpful if someone compiled a list.
The three panels I wanted to go to but didn’t attend were Tomino’s Q&A, the AMV panel, and the copyright + anime panel. Anyone went to that one? How was it? Everyone I knew was in either Tomino’s keynote or in Vertical’s.
It Is Delicious You Must Eat It
The trend in my con going expenditure the past year or two is that outside of travel and hotels, it’s all going into food and drink. It also means I am doing cons with fellow hataraki men and women. Or whatever you call us wage-slaves that live comfortably? At any rate, there are a lot of good eats in Midtown, of various price ranges. If you are visiting the city make sure you scout out all your eats ahead of time, or find someone who knows some of the good places! There are probably so many good (and not-so good) eateries that nobody knows them all.
Again, Javits center is really not the greatest place to run an anime con, which is the sort of event that people “live” around and spend all their time from awake (and before, for line campers) to asleep (and after, for ravers) at the con. Javits center is more of a serious business exhibit place where they expect people leaving by early evening as they hit up one of the countless ways to spend the evening in NYC, having way more fun.
But at the same time the Javits is way out of the way from the rest of Manhattan, so it’s really a pain to go anywhere. And everything costs money. Here are some places that we went to or I would’ve suggested:
Terakawa Ramen - Not great for picky eaters, but it’ll do in a pinch. Just don’t take Hinano with you if you go. I recommend the soy egg topping.
Yakiniku West - Recommended, but yeah, yakiniku is $$$. Do invite animemiz~
Otafuku - I am so coming here again and again, that was a great choice Paranda ;)
Famous Halal Guys - I hope it didn’t upset you guys too much.
Go!Go! Curry! - You have to have this at least once, if you ever hit 8th Ave in midtown. (Or several places in Japan.) Especially if Hideki Matsui homers the day before or if it’s a 55Curry day. Or if you are SDS & crew.
Mad For Chicken - Definitely go with someone who knows the place, with a love for gimmicky Korean food. Like JP and stc’s friend. Or me!
Pinkberry & Red Mango - Newtype fro-yo. Red Mango’s pom flavor is highly recommended.
Ippudo - the benchmark of New York ramen
Naruto Ramen - nothing to do with the anime, but a good joke.
Last regret
The New York Anime Festival 2009 itself was a marked improvement from last year. I believe attendance might not have increased so much because the whole thing felt about as crowded as it was last year, but maybe there is more space now? Certainly not having to wake up at 4:30 am to go line up for tickets is an improvement by all means.
At some point, at NYAF this year, while in the VIP line for Yui Makino’s concert Moy and I were chatting with a random kid (under 18 it seems) with parents who would put him through with cons. Rich Jewish people from Staten Island? Yeah, I always run into them it seems. He’s a nice kid, but during our conversations I got the impression that he has the wrong idea of how these American anime conventions work as he rattles off the dozens he’s been to the past year. Sure, in a nutshell they are just geek parties, but it really isn’t something that gives cumulative value the more you go to them. Certainly the first few you go to are all eye-opening experiences, and for curious fans of anime/manga and Japanese culture in America, cons are a good sample. But it isn’t a vacation kind of thing, you know? One possible reason why anime cons skew young is that older folks just can’t expend the energy and get as much out of the opportunity a con affords its attendees. Over time it gets to the point where returns are diminished, but it will still take the same amount of time and money to do a con.
It’s not surprising that on my way home on Sunday I thought about the death of an anime fan. It’s not so much that we stop liking anime, but large aspects of anime fandom become a difficult thing to integrate into your way of life. In exchange for giving it up, you gain a life in another form, where your passions can flow towards something else, hopefully more beautiful. Well, sleep was sparse that weekend.
Thank you and good night, I’ll take out the trash so just leave it there.
I spoke with many people this past weekend, and I think I linked everyone that I know and had eye contact(?) that I knew I could link except awesome photo-man Eric (hey, where are all your Yui Makino shoots? I wanna browse…and maybe purchase!), Dave over at CD, boss man Brad, Gia, OGT, and I should probably linkdrop Anime Diet as well. If I missed you I am sorry, and if I didn’t see you I am sorry as well. I wish I had more time to talk with everyone, especially those out-of-towners and Fuyumaiden (just so I can tease Lela-chan), but there’s only so much we can do.
Loot consists of a lot of random things, but most notably a set of Cencoroll postcards, the one and only Witch Hunter Robin artbook (DVD box re-release out in R2 this week, coincidentally), and some random Kanan artbook that I picked up relatively cheap. There are a few other notable items I picked up but I am selling or giving them away, like that Lia autograph and some Yui Makino items. There are also the three CDs I bought.
Lastly, some inane sting of words: Tofu-sensei, flipping glow sticks for random people, Pocky, 12, lost backpack, free parking, side scrollers on imported xbox 360, sleep, hi-touch.
Well just wait until you see my con report. That is at a complete stand still. Photos are back up. Oh and I keep on forgetting that my comments get screwed if I use the backward bracket, in that favorite emoticon I like to use. What the heck did I write. Did I mention that I got invited to being a Yelp Elite, after I initially followed Hinano onto reviewing restaurants. Go Figure, my reviews on places in a dump like Brooklyn pays off.. Ehhh KDDI was in the dealer room.. that is weird. My shopping I rely on my friend in Japan or I go to bookstores. It was great to hang out with you, are you going for a con report on Japantor as well?
(whistles).. Tomino did a pose for Eric’s camera. I pushed Eric after Moritheil on Friday. and sooo.. re: “Some of you press-freeloaders got better treatment than VIPPERs. That’s kind of messed up now that I think about it.”…. hmmm?
And not only that, but Yakiniku West is less expensive than a lot of the other yakiniku places in Manhattan like Gyu-Kaku. Koreatown is much cheaper, but that’s not the same kind of BBQ.
Menkui Tei is probably our preferred ramen place, although we didn’t recommend it this time since it would have been another couple stops on the subway away from the con.
AMVs in a nutshell: drama was stuff like Clannad, action was stuff like Karas, “upbeat” was well, upbeat rather than comedic, and “special effects” was half videos with not that much anime content and lots of effects and half parodies.
For jtor i will just do focus pieces. probably one on tomino too. Yea also don’t do the lessthan_greaterthan emoticon.
Yeah, I saw the picture in Eric’s camera, it was awesome. But WAH’s was … epic, if not legendary.
Well, let’s just say that people who paid $200 to get preferential treatment will be kind of angry if random bloggers just stroll in front of them in a premiere event. It’s just a matter of expectations. It also doesn’t help that press creds are really easy to get for NYAF.
@jp: I will prioritize menkui-tei for next random food expedition in manhattan.
Well that is the way of the game.. unfortunately. I actually have no idea why the VIP treatment was changed this year? Last year I was remembering cursing that aspect because of the autograph lines.
Premiere event, you mean the premiere of that movie, or the Tomino event? Unfortunately didn’t see Wah’s picture.. ehh did I meet wah.. (>_<) May the god strike me down, but have a horrible times with names and such. Is that a piss poor excuse?
@animemiz what I am saying is basically what I read from some VIPers who complained to the con on their forums. It’s not a big deal to me, but it just seems kind of unjust, you know. Premiere event means anything in that big room where the concert/speech/movie/cosplay is.
Wah’s picture will get posted soon enough, hopefully when he gets to it.
Hmm did I reach a quota for comments… -_-() Ahh oh well… if you can’t see my other comment.. then oh well. What I said was that I can’t believe I missed Ryu Moto. I saw him last year, and then at NYCC and I forgot to get his artwork.. wondering if I can purchase his artbook. That should be like Mugeno or like another artist friend then.
http://mistakesofyouth.com/temp/DSC00031.JPG
i have no idea who this guy is, but he must have been a real asshole to ask tomino to do something like that
animemiz, wah was the dude in the 501 blue hat. I won’t say anything else since we all know he wants to hide his identity from the internets.
FYI on KDDI, checked out their mobile site where they’re giving free ring tones and wallpapers. Just got the AKB48 ringtones but yea there was some random stuff like for Reni on it ^^;;
Also thanks for tthat takoyaki stall name; totally forgot what it was! Definitely going back there next time I venue into the city, which knowing me probably won’t be til next year LOL
Ohhh… (nods head)
>>Hey I see someone I know!
Looooooooooooool. Wow, we are actually in a lot of those pics, good times.
Your Sunday ride home, I always think about that at the end of a convention. It’s strange because I don’t like anime any less now than I did ten years ago, but there’s always other things to do that we never have enough time for and one of those things will get you to move on.
I’m just waiting for the day super rats sells his figure collection :D
omo, when that happens it may be the end of the world XD
[…] Yuchi did, but apparently not so as I read and research some more. I am going to take a cue from Omo, and include in this Japanese link from an honest Japanese fan who was at the concert, and then […]
[…] bunch of other cool guys have already put up their reports on NYAF, and since mine will materialize formally […]
Damn, I wanted to attend the JPMMOG panel, but I couldn’t go to NYAF. Do want @ your recording of it!
So, how moe was FuyuMaiden? :P
Since I did not see her, I can only guess it is over 9000.
Shizuka: I will try, but I don’t think it’s really all that necessary. Just go bug JP to give you a rundown of their panel on their blog.
[…] was a lot like Idolmaster,” fellow anime journalist Omo noted, drawing a parallel to the infamous Japanese […]