The NYAF for all those that couldnt go

*Warning. Large blocks of text for the ADD impaired (that means 90% of you)*

This post is about the New York Anime Festival for all those who didn’t go, and I’m looking at the majority of you (I don’t necessarily blame you since it was such a new convention and didn’t have any reputation). Well this convention was held very close to home; in fact it was held in Manhattan at the Jacob Javitz center, although it didn’t take up the entire building it took up a large part of it (well I really have not seen any convention use up the whole building except maybe the auto show). It was held between December 7th and 9th.

Like any regular anime convention it had a dealer’s room, panels, anime screening rooms but it also has it also offered some unique experiences. Paulo and me (Eric) were the only seniors that attended and the only ones that also attended Anime Boston and the New York Anime Festival. As such I will compare this convention to my experiences to Anime Boston due to the fact that that is one of the most impressive and first experience with a Anime convention. Because of this you will see me refer to Anime Boston many times as a benchmark. This will also help those that are going to Anime Boston understand this con better and what to expect from it. So without further a due here is my experience from NYAF (for all you slow people this is the abbreviation of the festival name)


First Experiences
Well my first experience of NYAF was buying the VIP tickets. So as such we will first talk about the stuff it came with and the badge. Although this isn’t essential to the convention it offers something that other conventions don’t. Well to tell the truth the stuff is under my desk right now.

To elaborate the T-Shirt was nice but wearing it is not really high on my list of clothes to wear, the sake set is worthless to me (for all those that drink all the best wishes to you), and the plushy is really not all that great. All right I’m being a little harsh because in truth I’m just too lazy to take the stuff out and try to use it. But truthfully I don’t really think the stuff was all that great.

Now to move onto the badge, wow what apiece **it (synonym for crap). It’s a piece of cardboard with silly little cartoons on it (not anime its really just cartoons). Its nothing like Anime Boston with its nice plastic badges and nice rope necklace, it’s only a stupid piece of twine and easily breaks causing your badge to fall. Okay onto the next topic of discussion the actual con.


Quality
To begin I would like to say that is convention had very high production values, for all those that don’t understand please let me explain. In terms that you simple people would understand it was pretty. There was no garbage lying around anywhere throughout the three day convention. The bathrooms were clean and sanitary and the side rooms for the games and manga libraries were well kept. There was not the mass of lines at the game room and the manga room was organized.

Another thing to talk about was the seating, one word great. The seats were very comfortable, as any con goer knows seats are very important. After spending a long time scouring the dealer room floor you get tired and want to sit down. So how were these seats great, they were cushioned. I know most of you haven’t been to Anime Boston, but trust me the seats were good even though they were plastic. Many late nights (mostly done by Paulo and Andre) were spent sleeping in these chairs. According to their testimonials the chairs were great but once Paulo and me experienced these seats we quickly saw the flaws in the Anime Boston seating.

But the major flaw that we saw in the production value was the lack of water during screenings thus making us very thirsty once we ran out of our own water supply. For all those ignorant people who say just go buy your water you should go to Manhattan and see how much water costs.

Finally we go to talk about the decorations, although sparse there were some interesting things that they did that were never seen before. In the dealers room there were banners hanging from the ceilings with numbers and anime (specifically Bleach). This allowed easy direction giving in the gigantic Dealers room. Beside this though there were some posters and quite a bit of sponsor logos.


Room sizes
Next we go on to talk about the setup and room design. Well in general there are really 4 sections of this con very much unlike Anime Boston, which is held in a huge convention center. But the NYAF was big; these four sections were very large and were very accommodating to the attendees. There was no shortage of room to say the least except for one instance (but a little later for that story). Well the four rooms are the Main Hall were the main events are being shown, the famous Dealers Room, Screening Rooms, and the Side Rooms. The Main Hall has a giant screen and many seats. The sound quality in this hall was great and the screen allowed many people to see. But beside the opening ceremony Paulo and me only used it as a place to eat, as no café existed. In Anime Boston there were some interesting events that the main hall had but here there were many things but none attracted our attention all that much.

Next the Screening Rooms, they were very large much bigger in fact than Anime Boston. They Screen was of decent size and the sound quality powerful but there are some gripes to be had. These Screening Rooms are temporary and built out of plaster sheeting which is less than sound proof; there were some, just some instances of sound pollution between rooms. But as said before the seating was great.

The Dealers Room was also something to marvel at. I actually believe that it was actually on par with Anime Boston’s dealer room. They had many different vendors and many different sponsors had very interesting booths. The Tokyo Pop booth was nice and big booth nothing really to say. But the Capcom both had hands on demos from their upcoming games (cough Devil May Cry 4 cough). And Ubisoft was showing off Naruto: Rise of the Ninja. These were some interesting additions that I found nice to see that the sponsors actually helped us con attendees for once.


Video Game Room
Lastly the side rooms, personally I can only comment on the game room since I never attended the manga library. The game room to say sadly was subpar. The Anime Boston even though it was very disorganized and such a mess it was big and offered a variety of both Japanese and American games and even some 18+ games late night (Don’t get any ideas now). The tournaments were also much more organized during Anime Boston. But there are some new cool new ideas that I found very appealing and should be implemented during Anime Boston. First they had projectors for the tournaments, which allowed more people to see they competitors in all their glory. They also had mats in front of the games describing the controls, which is very helpful for newcomers to the game.


Screenings
Okay now I am betting that you’re dying to know bout the screenings (if not go to hell, this is my post and if you have any qualms just shove it). All right a very weird thing about the screenings was that they were in English. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that the sponsors were major contributors. But this isn’t all bad since it allows devoted fans (such as Paulo) to see the dubbings of his favorite animes. They also showed a variety of animes ranging from action to comedy to romance. They also decided to show some live action material that was based off of Anime. But the highlight of the NYAF was the screening of an upcoming movie crossover between Tsubasa Chronicles and xxxHollic, almost like an advanced screening since the movie still hasn’t come out yet. So all in all I give it a balanced rating not the greatest I have seen but interesting concepts and much better than other conventions that sucked.


Cosplaying
Finally we reach my last topic of discussion (for all those that made it this far congratulations you have an above average attention span and don’t have ADD). Well this is my miscellaneous topics that fit no were. First well talk about the quality of the cosplayers, alright as a guy I will come out and say it, I look for hot girls in nice costumes but seriously there was a lack of pretty girls. But on a positive note there was also a lacking of fat girls also.

Another thing was the maid café, this was a cool concept but it wasn’t fully fleshed out and could have been done much better. Basically it is a café were you eat but there are girls in cosplay walking around. Although my previous gripe still applies this was the major concentration of all right looking girls. Finally one big shout out to the waffle stand. This was the most popular attraction during the convention it was the best smelling food ever within the history of conventions. It also boasted the longest line.


Conclusion
Well time for my concluding thought. In all honesty I really enjoyed this convention or festival or whatever you want to call it. I really wanted more of you to attend but know that the first one is over I hope to see you attend the next one.

Many of the mistakes can be attributed to a rookie mistake. You must consider that this is the first of its kind and that despite many of its flaws it was surprisingly good. I really enjoyed it and there is no doubt that the will continue to improve on this convention. Despite what you might think as serious complaints there are just small criticisms. In all actuality this was really close to being a spectacular convention. I just hope the fix some of the aforementioned mistakes.

Another point is that Anime Boston is a very popular and I believe the second largest convention in the east coast. Comparing this convention a relative upstart to Anime Boston with at least 5 years of experience is harsh. I doubt that Anime Boston’s first year was as good as the latest ones.

I know this might sound like me trying to redeem the NYAF, it really isn’t since I just want you people to experience something new. NYAF brought many cool new experiences that were sometimes even better than Boston (well definitely not the travel, Damn traveling home everyday was the one of the most tiring things to do in my life).

Anyway with this post I hope to convince you to go to the next NYAF and to also look out for some of these things when you go to Anime Boston. What I have mentioned in this post are all great ways of judging and experiencing a convention.

**If your keeping track on how many words it is, its exactly 1891 words not counting this, titles, and the warning message -TheGrape