New York Anime Fest 09: THINGS THAT AREN'T TOMINO

Well, I'd better get all this out of the way before I forget it happened. New York Anime Fest was last weekend: this is the con's third year, I pretty much knew what to expect coming in, and I got exactly what I thought I would. Let's go through the pros and cons of this convention really quick, as they are the same every year.

As an NYC commuter I'm obviously very happy to be able to go to a con where I don't have to put down a couple hundred for room and board, but the convenient location comes at great cost. Everything that's wrong with NYAF is something that can't really be helped. They don't have enough room in the Javits: to visualize how crowded the place is, imagine Otakon numbers walking around in a space a quarter of Otakon's size at best. Of course, the Javits is really expensive-- during the CPM retrospective our host guessed that it was probably a couple hundred bucks a minute just to be in that room-- and high rent is just a fact of NYC life.

Side note: food prices are through the roof ($2.50 Coke cans!) in the building, so I advise anybody going to anything at the Javits load up on food beforehand. I did this at Go Go Curry on the first day and Subway on the second.

Because this is a for-profit con, the dealer's room is really the main attraction, with panels running on the side. Nothing really unusual there: one booth was selling really obvious bootlegs (HK DVD box sets and Prince of Tennis figures that weren't quite Sader but were really bootleg-ugly) and another had a ton of old VHS that I might have put up the cash for if it had been a buck or two cheaper per tape.

Behind the dealer's room was the World Cyber Games. A pro gaming league-- especially one that deals primarily in real-time strategy and first-person shooters-- is kind of out pf place at an anime convention, and for its part WCG made no attempt to reach out. Anime con people didn't go into WCG, WCG people didn't go into the con, you get the idea. I stopped by here a few times because they were playing nationals for Virtua Fighter 5 and many of the players are friends. I woke up a little too late to catch the finals though. I regret it: just watching the guys play really made me miss the game, and it was an even bigger bummer thinking about what's up with VF5R. It's so bad that every time I talk to one of my old VF buddies, we talk about jumping ship to Tekken 6 when it comes out for consoles. Sega, Sega, look what you've done to yourselves!

On the side, you've got your maid cafe, which has always been peculiar. The law ensures that the maids can't actually serve food or drink, so they're more all-purpose entertainers: last year we chatted with a maid while we rested from the con, and it was nice. This year, probably to avoid crowding, the event stage and the maid cafe were put together, to pretty ugly results. See, having a stage there means having huge, loud speakers there, and this means that the area was no longer a place to relax and get away from the con. We sat down for about ten minutes before getting hit with the maids yelling at people to come up and dance on the speakers, and we left juuust when they started Boom Boom Boom Boom (I Want You In My Room). Later, we would find that escaping the con entirely and sitting at the tables at the closed food court was what the cool kids do.

You kind of want to get away from the con after a couple hours of it, because man, the kids are really out in full force, being as obnoxious as they wanna be. This is a given at any anime con, but it's worse at NYAF because unlike many fan-run cons, nobody's come up with such wise rules as "no hug me signs", "no yaoi paddles", and "stop running and screaming and flailing and swinging that fucking ridiculous thing you bought at the dealer's room around". In summary, a cosplayer raised a sign inviting us to a con orgy on the way out Friday.

The only not-Tomino panel I went to was the CPM Retrospective, which was loads of fun and really deserved to pull more people. Did you know that when CPM hired you, they'd show you a highlight reel of their most atrocious porn (my buddy who used to work for them said he'd seen all these shows before) and then plop a "I am not offended by this" form in front of you? Because that's how they used to roll.

Highlight of the panel was definitely the anecdote about the host, his boss, the CEO, and a lawyer standing around watching Night Shift Nurses and trying to figure out if they were going to sell it. They were on the fence about the pissing, but CEO John O'Donnell decided "If it's in Penthouse, it's fine!", sent a secretary for a Penthouse, and sure enough, there was the pissing. Or maybe the time they took Utena's Kunihiko Ikuhara to a trashy bar where the hot chick bartenders made out with each other, and Ikuhara was all "RESBIANS!!" God, what a company. It really makes you wish they were still in business. Also, there was an apology for the Patlabor dub and that fucked-up Slayers DVD box, which I appreciated. I described this panel as both "owns" on Twitter while I was at it, and then "owned" on Twitter once I had left. This is the proper use of a Web 2.0.

The only anime I saw was Cencoroll: produced by one dude (Atsuya Uki), the story is basically JD Salinger's Pokemon. An antisocial young man and his pet shapeshifter fight another antisocial young man and his pet shapeshifter, and visual fireworks ensue. There's probably more creative animation in this half-hour than there is in many anime TV series' entire runs. People in the crowd after the movie were complaining that everything wasn't explained and spelled out to them, and to these people I say "go back to Jump and leave the animator alone".

I didn't take a ton of pictures but I'm going to go ahead and authoritatively pronounce that Maetel and her luggage (and, yeah, the Bumblebee guy) won cosplay.

Comments

[Hiryu02]

A post-con Cosplay Orgy? My mind boggles as it tries to picture the scene, then shuts down in self-preservation.

[Narutaki]

The Maid Cafe was exceedingly annoying and drew the biggest crowds causing major traffic flow problems between the panel area and the dealers room/WCG area. Also people from there seemed to keep wandering over to the Tomino lines asking "What is this for?" and then giving you a blank stare when you told them.

[David Cabrera]

When I was waiting for Tomino's autograph these two "ohmyGAWD" valley girl types approached and asked what the panel was for. When told they scrunched up their faces "eww"-like.

"He invented Haruhi!", I told them.

I don't think they believed me.

[Jessie]

Hi! I'm the Maetel in that photo. I randomly came across this and wanted to say that you very much for the compliment!

[David Cabrera]

You're very welcome!