Adventures at New York Comic Con/New York Anime Festival

For the first time ever, I got to go to New York Comic Con, held in conjunction with New York Anime Festival. I'd always wanted to go to this, so it was awesome to finally be able to go with my school's anime club. As if it wasn't obvious, I just had to cosplay for this event, a few of my other friends did as well. There's a picture taken of my friend Sano and I prior to the Con, I'm a Team Magma Grunt (keep that in mind, it's relevant later on) and Sano is a very crappy Maka from one of the Soul Eater endings.

Nevertheless I'm pretty proud of my cosplay, Sano and I made it together, she did the majority of the sewing, I made the belt, I dyed the stripes on the leg warmers (that was REALLY messy) and put stuffing in the lil horn things (we called them Conic Protrusions) on my hood that you can barely see in the picture. All in all though, in case anyone is wondering, we basically did this entire costume for $15-$16 and under a week of time.

Moving on though, as I said before, we went with our school's anime club, so going with a lot of our friends made it even more awesome, though only 4.5 of us cosplayed. I was freaking out the entire way there actually, just cuz I was so damn excited! And when we got there I was moderatly overwhelmed by how huge the Jacob Javits Center is...and the fact that somebody with an awesome cosplay of Matt from Death Note just randomly came up to me and was like "Omg! You're cosplay is awesome, you get a hug!". Oh, and as a side-note, one of our chaperone's brother-in-law was Master Chief, Master Chief with a shitty sense of direction I might add XD. But a good 80% of our anime club group (especially the guys) nearly had orgasms and died of excitement when he put the costume on. I'll admit it was pretty bad-ass, but nothing more than that seeing as how I find Halo stupid.

That picture was actually taken right outside the Javits Center right after we got off the bus and everyone in anime club was like "Master Chief! WE HAVE TO TAKE YOUR PICTURE!!! *fanboy spazz*" it was pretty nuts, I just took a picture solely for this post and because my friend told me to take a picture of anything Halo related for her.

Anyway though, back to the actual Con, when we got in, we were made to stand in a line that was litterally almost a block (not a city block, a normal block) long and we sort of paniced because it seemed like we'd never get in, however that line, whatever it was for, was over with in like 5 minutes. Though along the way we saw really awesome cosplays that I should've taken pictures of but I didn't, however some lady stopped me and this other kid in anime club dressed as a Kabuto (the Pokemon) and was like "Can I take a picture of you two!" in a strangely rushed and excited manner, it was sort of creepy.

While we were walking through said line, we got a lot of stares from city passerbys, it was sort of funny. And on our way in my friend Ginookami-chan (whose real name I wont reveal) got her first free hug of the day from a Con official. In that picture you probably can't read her sign, but it says "Free Hugs from Namine" and inside she kept a tally of how many hugs she got throughout the day. I think the grand total was 30, with 1.5 from me (I rarely give hugs, so mine counted extra) and another .5 from a super-soft sushi plushie that I bought. Personally I don't think her Namine cosplay was that bad right? And it was original, we didn't see any other Namine's, lots of Kairis and Soras though.

At first when we got there we wandered around the Comic show floor, not really knowing what anything was because, well, none of us are really that into comics. However we did run across a Pokemon Trainer cosplay who seemed as though he wanted to battle with me. We also ran across the first of many (seriously, there were TONS) Vocaloid cosplays, a not-so-amazing Hatsune Miku and Kagamine Rin to be exact, but there were far better ones that sadly I didn't get pictures of so this'll have to do.

I guess they're not bad, but there were far better ones that I wish I got pictures of. Actually, my one regret of the day, besides not getting to see the Hatsune Miku concert and not getting to get Veronica Taylor's autograph, was not taking enough pictures, but oh well. It was sort of hard to take a lot of pictures because of the HUGE crowd and the fact that everybody was moving around a lot.

After we finally figured out that we were on the floor solely for comics and whatnot though, we went down to the anime section Artist Alley. For those of you who don't know, an Artist Alley at a con is basically an entire area where amature artists sell various things that they've created relevant to the subject of the con. There were quite a lot of very artistic and VERY skilled computer and drawn renderings of anime characters, which sadly, we weren't allowed to take pictures of for obvious reasons, but there might be some in the background of other shots. Quite a lot of yaoi and overly bishounen stuff actually, a long with a very disturbing picture of Sesshomaru in which he only had a towel covering his dick and one of Renji looking like he just had a freaking orgasm! Sheesh, I will never understand the fetishes of some people.

In the Artist Alley area, Ginookami-chan got plenty of free hugs, 2 of which were from a very well done Sora and Kairi, the 3 of them sort of freaked out and hugged eachother and the Sora was like "Kairi!! I Found your other half!". I gotta say, for me it was pretty laughable. Even more laughable was when Ginookami-chan was freaking out over not being able to find a Roxas to hug, so when she finally found one it was a little kid. She all but glomped him (though not with quite so much force) and apparently the little Roxas had no clue what was going on because he looked theroughly truamatized. Safe to say it was the hillarious moment of the day and Ginookami-chan kept saying "I didn't mean to truamatize him! But he was like the only Roxas". (Until later when she found a Roxas that she didn't have to rape in order to get a hug)

After that we looked around the Artist Alley a bit more, I bought a Pokeball pin to put on my belt, a Tobi mask pin and a pin that says "I (heart) sushi Om Nom Nom Nom". Later, Ginookami-chan and I went to go see Crispin Freeman's Q&A Panel which was AWESOME! Though we were too far in the back to get any pictures, it was still pretty funny, and it was way cool to actually see Crispin Freeman. For anybody who doesn't know, he provides the dub voices for Itachi of Naruto, Alucard of Hellsing, Kyon of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Holland of Eureka 7, Jeremiah Gottwald of Code Geass along with many more, and he will be voicing Shizuo of Durarara! once it gets dubbed...if its not already, I don't keep up on that particular anime, though his panel made me kind of want to watch it. He also poked a bit of fun at Twilight and how the Twilight "vampires" really aren't vampires at all, they're fairies because fairies sparkle, vampires don't.

After that, back in the Artist Alley we ran into a pair of Team Rocket Grunts whom I got into a brief team "debate" with (more of a short rp than anything else) when they were like "Hey, we're gonna steal your Pokemon" Me (playing along): "I'd like to see you try" Them: "Oh, yeah? We're gonna tell Archie on you" Me: "*laughs* surrrree" then Ginookami-chan and I left and it dawned on me that Archie isn't in fact the Magma Admin, he's the Aqua Admin and Maxie is the Magma Admin, but whatever.

I guess while I'm still more or less on the topic of Artist Alley I should probably post the rest of the pictures I have from there; an Envy cosplay, a Sesshomaru cosplay, and Sano with a much better Maka cosplay, who seemed pretty scared when she asked for a picture. But either way, the rest of my pix from the Artist Alley area:On our way out of Artist Alley we ran into another Team Magma grunt and we high-fived and were like "Team Mates!" Him: "Hey, I havn't seen any Team Aqua members today, have you?" Me: "Nope, I think we scared 'em off". That was pretty cool...Oh! I should also probably mention at some point we ran into somebody cosplaying as Soul, so of course Sano had to get a picture with him/her (couldn't tell XD)

I got into talking to this girl cosplaying as Miya-Miya from Bamboo Blade who admitted she cheated in her costume and that it was her real Kendo outfit, at which I freaked out because to meet somebody that actually practiced Kendo was awesome for me, because ever since I watched Bamboo Blade I've wanted to do Kendo, it seems like so much fun. Her friend then took a picture of us and Ginookami-chan, Sano and I wandered elsewhere and ran into the coolest Zero cosplay...wow you know I'm getting way out of order with the event of things but oh well. A whole bunch of people stopped to take a picture of Zero, myself included so here it is: couldn't quite tell if it was bought or made, but either way it was really awesome! Couldn'ta been very comfortable to wear though, I mean seariously, a full body costume, he/she must've been sweltering. I was hot in my costume! and that was a very thin strapless dress and a poncho, I truly pity the people with fullbody costumes like that on. Hmm...yeah it's official, this is definately way out of order.

So anywho, at some point later on, Ginookami-chan and I went up to the 3rd floor where all the exhibit/store booths were, met up with our friend Meg and did some shopping. There was soooo much cool stuff there, but it was kind of a pain to browse efficently because at points, it was litterally so crowded that you could barely move your arms. In this general area I think we ran into the same Lucy and Erza (from Fairy Tail) cosplays like 2 or three times and they were AMAZING, at one point there was a Natsu with them...God I could kick myself for not taking a picture. But that's a picture of one of the store displays, dunno how much you can see, but there's quite a lot of stuff there along with a bit of cosplay along the back such as a Vampire Knight school uniform if I'm not mistaken. And those fans are just awesome.

The first thing I wound up buying was a black messanger bag that had the Kanji for Samurai on it, which I'm glad I did cuz I needed it to carry other stuff. So after that I bought a really nice Death Note with all the rules (even the ones between chapters/commercials) and Meg and Ginookami-chan agreed that I looked really shady slipping a Death Note into a black bag. Ginookami-chan also got an Ed Elric plushie because she's probably the biggest Ed-fangirl I know.

We also finally found the plush sushi store that I'd been looking for the whole time, they had many different kinds and sizes of sushi and riceball pillows, all handmade. The stands had a tag on them that said "hug me" so I hugged one and I was like ''OMG THEY'RE SO SOFT!!!'' so I told Ginookami-chan to hug one and the guy was holding out a riceball one for someone to hug so she hugged it and was also amazed at how soft they were. So I bought a tuna roll pillow that Ginookami-chan kept snatching and hugging whenever I took it out.

After shopping we had some time to kill so we went over to the AnimeNEXT manga library (AnimeNEXT brings their manga library to various cons) and...well aside from being the only quiet place there, it was just amazing how much manga they had. Picture that shelf in the pic, but at least 10-15 of those FULL, some of which were taller. No matter how much time I spent looking at manga in Barns And Noble or Borders, there were still a bunch of titles in this library that I'd never even heard of before...granted it's not like I'm overly into manga, but it was pretty mind boggling.

We just kind of browsed through the manga selection seeing as how we didn't have enough time to read a volume, but it was still pretty cool, I should've taken a more diagonal picture to get more shelves but what can ya do. Note to self (and to anyone planning on going to Comic Con 2011): Take time to take as many pictures as possible!!!

All in all the day was pretty awesome, though if your highly clostrophobic or you just really hate crowds, I'd reccomend going to a smaller con, because the crowds here were just insane. This was the first time that the Saturday show had ever sold out and as I said before, in soome areas the crowd was so dense you couldn't move your arms. But there were cool events, awesome stuff to buy (some of it pretty cheap) awesome cosplay and it was just overall awesome!

Definately a must-have experiance for any anime fan, I'd most definatly reccomend going at least once in your anime loving life. Cosplaying is also a great idea for it, many photo-ops and short rp's with people having some relation to your character plus it just makes the experience so much more awesome (though depending on your character, maybe harder to get around.

A word of advice though, look online for events that you want to go to before hand, because it's kind of a pain trying to look through the posters outside every door. And if you're limited on money, the Artist Alley is a great place to look for really cool stuff. Oh! And watch out for yaoi paddles XD They're everywhere! And remember to eat, otherwise you'll wind up with a headache. And contrary to popular belief, unless you're planning on watching a ton of panels/screenings/other events, 5-6hrs there is plenty of time to do a lot of stuff.