NYCC 2010: Everyday is Like GR Sunday

Giant Robot Invades
New York, October 10 – The last day at New York Comic Con was much calmer, and I saw more children in the crowd. My game plan for most of the day was booth duty. I spent most of the day answering questions and promoting Giant Robot Magazine.

Sho'nuff visits the Giant Robot Booth

The booth had many different visitors. Most of the visitors to our booth were young artists looking to get involved with Giant Robot. I had long running conversations about Superflat, street graffiti, and the current art scene. I even ran into a few David Choe fans. They were hoping that Dave was going to be at the booth. Unfortunately I had to give them the bad news. On the other hand, younger booth visitors were looking for recommendation about everything. I was dispensing recommendations for anime, manga, Asian cinema, J-rock, and other related topics.

NYCC 2010: Saturday Funnies

Ultraman (ウルトラマン) Cosplayer
New York, October 9 – Saturday is probably the busiest day during the New York Comic Con. I arrived early for many of the interesting panels including the Spotlight on Harper Collins, Digital Comics & Distribution, and Sushi Typhoon.

Vampires, Witches, and Zombies. Oh my...


Spotlight on Harper Collins. Seated (Left to Right): Erika Tsang (editor), Margaret Ronald (author), Jeaniene Frost (author), and Pamela Palmer (author).
I popped into this panel to check out the announcements and support my cousin Erika Tsang. She is an Executive Editor at Avon Romance. The panel announced several supernatural romance fiction titles such as Majorie Liu's In the Dark of Dreams, Jeaniene Frost's Side of the Grave, and Kerrelyn Sparks' Vampire Mine. Despite the romance nature of the imprint, the line was filled with sexy vampires, powerful witches, and zombies invasions. The trend in romance fiction is leaning towards the supernatural with the popularity of book series like The Twilight Saga and The Southern Vampire Mysteries (True Blood).

NYCC 2010: The Brave and The Geeky

Cosplaying Couple posing as Superman and Wonder Woman.
New York, October 8 – Due to a late night pre-con party, I arrived to the New York Comic Con 2010 late on the Friday afternoon. There weren't too many interesting panels except the Aniplex one. I had a difficult time finding the press office to pick-up my badge, and the volunteers at registration had no clue. I wandered a bit and eventually got my badge. I headed over to the Aniplex panel.

Aniplex of America


Aniplex PR team. Hiroe Tsukamoto (right).
As I was waiting for the panel to begin, Anime News Network (ANN) Editor Chris Macdonald sat right in front of me. I've run into him at other conventions over the summer. I greeted him, and we were trading war stories about this year's anime con season.

New York Anime Festival 2009: Pictures and Words

NEW YORK, September 27 – Here are a some of my impressions from this year's New York Anime Festival (NYAF).


Ed Chavez at the Vertical Inc. booth
As soon as I got to the convention floor, I immediately went to the dealer's booths to check out the deals. I ran into Erica Friedman, President of Yuricon & ALC Publishing. She was helping out the guys at the Media Blaster's booth selling DVDs. I also found Ed Chavez, Marketing Director for Vertical Inc, working in the Vertical booth. There seemed to be a positive buzz and a lot of traffic around his booth.


Lillian Diaz-Przybyl and Kasia Piekarz. Tokyo Pop Panel.
Unlike many fan run anime conventions, the NYAF tends to have a large industry presence. The convention guide listed panels for many companies such as: Viz, Tokyopop, Vertical Inc, Aniplex, Del Rey Manga, Bandai Entertainment, and others. At many of these panels, I often run into noted members of the anime blogosphere (see related link below).


Yoshiyuki Tomino at a Q&A Panel
On the second day of the convention, Yoshiyuki Tomino(富野 喜幸), creator of the Mobile Suit Gundam series (機動戦士ガンダム), held a questions and answers panel. During the event, he responded a wide range of questions regarding his career and his work on the Gundam series. Tomino is notorious for refusing to answer questions, and this panel was not an exception. However, he did provide lengthy answers to questions about film and film-making. Tomino stated that he approached his animation work like a film director focused on cinematic storytelling.

According to an announcement by Reed Exhibitions (the company running NYAF), this will be the last time that NYAF will be a standalone convention. They plan to merge the NYAF with the New York Comic Con for 2010. I don't know if this is good or bad for the NYAF, but I will miss it as a standalone anime con. I've had some memorable experiences at NYAF and have met very cool people. Most of all I will definitely miss the late night karaoke parties.

Related Links:

• Uwa…! New York Anime Festival 2009 « OGIUE MANIAX
• About.com: New York Anime Festival 2009: Friday's Manga Highlights
• About.com: New York Anime Festival 2009: Saturday's Manga Highlights
• About.com: New York Anime Festival 2009: Sunday's Manga Highlights
• Anime Vice: NYAF09: Del Rey Madness
• Anime Vice: NYAF09: Day Three Wrap-Up
• Anime Vice: NYAF09: Bandai's Bob
• Anime Vice: NYAF09: Vertical's Ed
• Reverse Thieves » New York Anime Festival 2009
• Anime Diet: NYAF Anime Blogger Panel » the Video
  

Happyfunsmile Christmas: New York Anime Festival After After Party!

Happyfunsmile at Forbidden City
NEW YORK, December 12 — Brian and the entire crew at Happyfunsmile rocked the Forbidden City Bar and Lounge (14th Street & Avenue A). This was their last performance of the year, and they were in great form. They played three fantastic sets of Okinawan pop.

Peter Tartara, the Programming Manager of the New York Anime Festival, declared this the "After After Party" of the convention. I met up with Peter and Petrina at the bar. They introduced me to Newton, another alumni of Central Park Media. They were very cool. We traded anime convention war stories with each other. It was great fun.

After the first set, Ame, Detour Noir Studios writer and artist, rolled into the bar with a couple of friends. They joined me at the bar. We enjoyed the Happyfunsmile music with hard liquor and good food. Happy Holidays to Happyfunsmile and everyone at the Forbidden City!

The New York Anime Festival: Hard Drinks and Harder Karaoke, Part 2

NEW YORK, December 9 — After the ending ceremonies of the New York Anime Festival (December 9), some people took the party to the Forbidden City Bar and Lounge (13th Street & Avenue A). This is the so-called "After Party". The bar had half price drinks for everyone with the New York Anime Festival badge. This badge discount gave everyone a quick and cheap infusion of alcohol.

New York Anime Festival After Party at Forbidden City.
The post-con gathering consisted of con attendees, cosplayers, dealer room merchants, and volunteers. Party goers came to the bar as individuals or small groups. I tried to corral everyone with con badges around the tables in the back of the bar. Most of the party goers were strangers, but they quickly became fast friends.

After some heavy drinking, the group quickly moved over to the karaoke bar across the street. No, it was not my idea. The group was pulled by the gravitational forces of the karaoke machine. It was against my better judgment, but my better judgment was impaired by several Jack Daniels.

Looking for the perfect karaoke song.
The karaoke bar was extremely small, and they only had one karaoke machine hooked up to several televisions in the bar and lounge area. The bar supplied us with little yellow post-its. We wrote our song selection on the post-it and gave it to the bartender. The bartender put the post-its on a board. All requests were placed in a single queue on the board. As song came to the top of the queue, the bartender punched the song numbers into the karaoke machine, and he handed out the microphones.

The first song was free, but each additional song was $2. I put in my song and waited for quite a long time. The queue was freaking long. In the meantime, Jess, a cosplayer, got her song on the machine. Jess and a few other otaku got together to sing Weird Al Yankovic's "White & Nerdy". It was a surreal experience.

Otaku singing "White & Nerdy".
When my song came on, I rocked the bar with Harvey Danger's "Flag Pole Sitta". I was jumping around and screaming the lyrics with a drunken confidence. Shortly after I exorcised my karaoke demon, I took a short rest. After a few more songs, we all left the bar and went home. It was a hard rocking finish to an awesome weekend.

And yes... this round of karaoke was also fueled by drinking.

The New York Anime Festival: Hard Drinks and Harder Karaoke, Part 1

NEW YORK, December 8 — The New York Anime Festival was a very cool anime convention. Peter Tatara did an amazing job with putting together this convention.

I could only attend the very last hour of Saturday's show (December 8). I was stuck at work until 5:30 PM because of an insane amount of paperwork. After work, I raced over to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center with all haste. I got to the convention at roughly 6:30 PM. I got a little lost, and I had a tough time finding the registration.

After all the pain of getting my badge, I walked around the convention looking for the Otaku USA panel. I ran into Angela, Mandisa, and Dan from the local Metro-Anime club. They seemed to be shopping happily. They had the anime con game down to a science. I talked to them for a little bit.

Otaku USA panel. Left to Right: Joel White, Dave Riley, and Daryl Surat
After some searching, I found the Otaku USA panel and stayed for the very last minutes of the panel. After the panel ended, I got to meet-up with some friends. The group consisted of Dave Riley (Fast Karate for the Gentleman), Joel White (Fast Karate for the Gentleman), Daryl Surat (Anime World Order), Erin (Ninja Consultants), Patrick Macias (Otaku USA), and Matt Burnett (for tax reasons).

After the convention, the group met up with other very cool cats including Noah (Ninja Consultants), Chris Oarr (ADV Films), Zac "Answerman!" Bertschy (Anime News Network), and other members of ANN. Patrick took his leave.

Karaoke All-Stars. Left to Right: Daryl Surat, Erin, Noah, and Joel White
The rest of the group found it's way to a local karaoke bar in Koreatown, NYC. Everyone took turns rocking the mic. It was a crazy round-robin of embarrassing 80s pop hits and hard edged rock-n-roll classics. Erin rocked the Bon Jovi play list, while Chris belted out some great classic rock hits. I worked some Steppenwolf. Noah, Zac, MCBurnett, and Joel also rocked the mic pretty hard. There were awesome performances from everyone. It was a night of All Stars Karaoke players.

Our voices were fueled with a powerful mixture of Japanese snack foods and alcohol.

The Ninja Consultants: Erin and Noah. The fiercest tag team since Demolition.

However, we were all humbled by Dave Riley, the grandmaster of the mic. His Kung-fu was in top form. Pai Mei would be proud of Dave, his spiritual disciple. Dave sang everything from Back Street Boys to the JAM Project.

Masters of the Wu-tang school of karaoke.
We rock hard so you don't have to... to be continued (Part 2).

Related Links:

• Show #169: Tell 'em Joel Sent Ya | Fast Karate for the Gentleman
  
• Show #170: Jonnie Wong Doesn’t Mess Around | Fast Karate for the Gentleman
  
• TheGline's New York Anime Festival Photos