
Even with just the preliminary numbers out, an estimated 96,000 attendees, New York Comic Con (and Anime Fest) far and away had more people than any other convention I’ve attended in the past. It made it exciting but also daunting, however at the end of the day things went pretty smoothly considering the enormous crush of people during points of the convention, especially and not surprisingly on Saturday. All different sized cons have their own magic, but there is no denying the elation felt at something huge like Comic Con and you can only expect it to get bigger in the coming years.
I have never been to the madhouse that is the San Diego Comic Con but I got a bit of a taste of what that is like by going to the New York Comic Con. At a busy time during the weekend it was like being thrown into a sea of humanity (some of which could use a little more exposure to water). I saw a ton of people I knew but hardly got to interact with anyone for an extended period of time because everyone was always running off to do something. The convention itself had a bit of something for all variety of geeks, nerds, and otaku. There were panels, premieres, and announcements for anime, manga, video games, comics, movies, television shows, and almost anything else you could imagine. The broader your interests the more you could get out of the convention and in an ironic note the more you missed out on. But unless you had extremely narrow interests there was always something for you to participate in every day which is the greatest benefit of such a huge event.

