(note: No Type-Moon Weekly News Round Up
or All Points Bulletin this week.)

The sophomore year of Anime NYC is going all out by bringing over the main character from the 1983 anime classic Stop!! Hibari-kun! I suppose that Toru Furuya might also be known by weirdos for his roles as Amuro Ray, Tuxedo Mask, or Pegasus Seiya but those are roles that he did to kill time while he was not voicing Kosaku Sakamoto. No matter who you know him as, Toru Furuya is a remarkable convention guest.

Anime NYC has a great lineup beyond what we could have hoped for: manga artists, directors, and illustrators as well as premiere screenings and concerts. Might it surpass its spectacular first year!?

PRE-ANIME NYC 2018 PODCAST

Our tentative schedule for the convention:

Friday
01:30 PM – Toru Furuya Autograph Signing
03:00 PM – Toru Furuya Spotlight Panel
04:30 PM – FGO Localization Panel
06:30 PM – ICHIRAN: The History and Culture of Tonkotsu Ramen
07:45 PM – Natsume Yujin-cho the Movie: Ephemeral Bond North America Premiere
08:00 PM – MOB PSYCHO 100: Psycho Helmet Gathering in NYC with Mob a.k.a. Setsuo Ito
09:00 PM – A Beginner’s Guide To Import Gaming: From The Experts

Saturday
10:30 AM – Arc System Works Presents: Ask Us Anything, We Might Answer
11:45 AM – Kodansha Comics & Vertical Comics Present Manga… of the FUTURE
01:00 PM – MOB PSYCHO 100 II: World Premiere Screening
01:00 PM – Fate/stay night [Heaven’s Feel] Special Event featuring Aimer
03:00 PM – Mobile Suit Gundam NT (Narrative) Panel
03:30 PM – Range Murata Live Drawing & Q&A
06:00 PM – TRIGGER presents Promare and SSSS.GRIDMAN Talk Show
04:15 PM – Yen Press Industry Panel
07:30 PM – Kase-san and Morning Glories
08:30 PM- Warner Presents HI SCORE GIRL

Sunday
12:00 PM – Live Drawing and Q&A with Studio TRIGGER
01:00 PM – Hiroyuki Asada Live Drawing & Q&A
02:45 PM – Sneak Preview Screening – Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki

I was not exactly sure what to expect with the first Anime NYC. As it had no history I was not sure what would be the parts of the convention that would stand out more than others. Some conventions are known for their in-depth panels, others are cosplay or AMV hubs, while some have really high-profile guests. I’m a little hesitant to mark this as the defining feature of the convention for years to come I will say that Anime NYC had an amazingly strong musical lineup out of the gate. When I first saw the musical guests I thought they were good for a first-year convention but nothing out of the ordinary. In retrospect, they might have been the most important parts of the convention.

For some of us, concerts are a fun and enjoyable part of a con. For some others, the musical guests are the reason they are at the convention. I land more in the former category, sometimes I don’t even go to the concerts and sometimes they end up the highlight of con. Before the weekend of the Anime NYC, I wasn’t sure if I’d be attending the Sunday concert but now I’m very glad I did.

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Anime NYC did an excellent job of running a tight ship appropriate to a first-year convention. They had enough content to get people in the door but not so much that anything felt empty. That had its benefits and flaws. It was very nice to see all the panels and events getting a healthy attendance. At the same time, Anime NYC had only 3 panels rooms and the main events hall. There feels far more sparse in comparison to Otakon and AnimeNEXT which are the bigger northeast anime conventions known for their panel content. Even small conventions like Castle Point Anime Convention and Genericon have a larger amount of paneling. Considering how often we state that New York City is a wheat thresher of anime conventions it makes sense for Anime NYC to be a bit conservative with their debut schedule. It just meant that there were fewer panels than we might normally be used to.

One odd thing that broke the accepted norms more than anything else: 45-minute panels. They had the very useful 15-minute buffers between panels that a lot of the conventions do but 1-hour panels are sort of the unwritten standard. So much so that I know Kate and I always plan our panels to be an hour-long by default. I don’t remember any panels being super rushed so it did not seem to be a major problem. I think it was helped by the fact that I went to a lot of industry panels at Anime NYC and those tend to be highly modular. If you cut 15 minutes off of one of them you just lose some Q&A time.

I went to several industry panels but I’m not going to talk about most of them. Most of the important information out of them is available from any good anime new site. I have two exceptions to that rule. One is mostly just because it was so odd and the other because it is Type-Moon related.

The first AnimeNYC struck a good balance of panels for the number of attendees. There was always something to see, but I didn’t feel like I was constantly missing out.

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