The Anime Almanac

On site / Soon to be on site:

Erica Friedman from Okazu	Kim	Hisui from Reverse Thieves
Scott from The Anime Almanac	animenext from AnimeNEXT	Vince A
DJ Ranma S from Anime Jam Session	Narutaki from Reverse Thieves	Vampt Vo from Ani-Gamers
Kyle Hebert

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As being both an anime / manga fan and a student of Japanese language and culture, I have been exposed to quite a lot of Japanese-related events and activities around the New York area through out the years. From the various conventions, to the “Japan Day” celebration in Central Park, to the various festivals thrown by my college’s Japanese culture club, I have gotten my fair share of culture.

But I have never been to the annual Sakura Matsuri festival held every year at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, nor was I really planning on going this year. It looked like it would be filled with the same activities I have seen day-in and day-out. Taiko Drumming, Kimono wearing, origami… I got it already.

But this year seemed to include a lot of otaku-related activities thanks to the involvement of Peter Tatara and the New York Anime Festival. Add that to the fact that a few of my friends and my favorite local bunny girl were attending, and so I ended up making the last-minute decision to go to Brooklyn last Saturday.

… and very much to my surprise, Sakura Matsuri ended up being one of the most enjoyable Japanese culture event I have ever been to.

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Warm weather, VIZ, podcasting, Scott Pilgrim, and going home!

And so we reach the final day of the New York Comic Con. Normally the Sunday of a convention is the time to chill and relax after a hectic Saturday, and it was most certainly looking that way with only one industry panel scheduled for today.

But there is one factor that can completely disprove this common convention characteristic, and he goes by the name Joss Whedon. Because of his panel today, the Javits center was packed wee early on a Sunday morning. This left many of us bloggers stunned as we try to push through the crowds to get to Viz’s presentation.

NYCC projects an attendance of 77,000 people this weekend, which is really freaking amazing. I will be posting my top highlights from the convention later this week, but for now, please enjoy reading about the last day of the convention through the tweets of those who were there.

On site today:

Deb Aoki from About.com: Manga	Scott from The Anime Almanac	Anime3000 from Anime3000
Narutaki from Reverse Thieves	Vampt Vo from Ani-Gamers	Bryan Lee O’Malley from radiomaru
Ed Chavez from MangaCast	Dave from Subatomic Brainfreeze	tania from Yen Press
animevice from Anime Vice	Hisui from Reverse Thieves	Brigid from MangaBlog

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Sold out, Jason Thompson OEL, Bandai goes digital, Yotsuba&! vol. 6, FUNimation’s popularity, and Ani-bloggers go out for a huge dinner.

What do you get when you stick tens of thousands of geeks into a single building?

Tens of thousands of iPhones killing my  AT&T internet connection, that’s what!

Good thing I had a whole crew of bloggers ready to twitter away every piece of news to come out of the five industry panels today. A lot of big news happened today, and I’m sure I’ll go into more detail about it in the weeks ahead.

On site today:

Deb Aoki from About.com: Manga	Scott from The Anime Almanac	Anime3000 from Anime3000
Trisha Lynn from Movie Make-out.com	MangaCast	Angry Rabbit from Kitsune Kiki
Narutaki from Reverse Thieves	Vampt Vo from Ani-Gamers	tania from Yen Press
Bryan Lee O’Malley from radiomaru	Dave from Subatomic Brainfreeze	animevice from Anime Vice
Erica Friedman from Okazu	Gia from a geek by any other name	Michael Pinto from Anime.com
NY_Comic_Con	Hisui from Reverse Thieves

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Teen girls with manga, dealers room, Tentacle Grape, Vertical, and Yatta, Yatta, Yatterman!

Yes, my readers, on the first day of Comic Con, I was graped. I didn’t want it at first. I kept on begging, “No! Please don’t! Stop!” But I eventually gave in and opened myself to the purple monster. Before I knew it, his tangy liquid filled my body.

… and I kinda liked it. I even went back for seconds.

Not a lot of industry stuff going on today. They’re saving that all for tomorrow. Check out Anime Almanac the Live on Saturday for all the crazy going on as it happens.

On site today:

Scott from The Anime Almanac	MangaCast	Narutaki from Reverse Thieves
Dave from Subatomic Brainfreeze	Anime3000 from Anime3000	Deb Aoki from About.com: Manga
tania from Yen Press	Vampt Vo from Ani-Gamers	animevice from Anime Vice
Bryan Lee O’Malley from radiomaru	Chuck from Chuck’s Anime Shrine	Michael Pinto from Anime.com
funimation	Hisui from Reverse Thieves	yenpress from Yen Press
CMX from CMX MANGA	Robofish

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Travel, checking in, ICv2 conference, dinners, and Gia sticking tentacles in her mouth.

So here’s the brand new feature I’ve been working on for a few weeks here at the Anime Almanac. With so many people I follow on Twitter attending the New York Comic Con with me this year, I figure it would be interesting to see the event play out through different perspectives. So here is a chronological recap of today in a very unique convention report.

To check out all the action at it’s happening this weekend, go to Anime Almanac the Live.

On site today:

Scott from The Anime Almanac	Deb Aoki from About.com: Manga	Narutaki from Reverse Thieves
MangaCast	Dave from Subatomic Brainfreeze	Hisui from Reverse Thieves
tania from Yen Press	Gia from a geek by any other name	animevice from Anime Vice
funimation	yenpress from Yen Press	Robofish

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Note: You may not want read the latter part of this post you are easily offended by sexuality or profanity.

I have always been a fan of the small MangaNEXT convention. Universal Animation, the group behind the AnimeNEXT convention held every June in New Jersey, had created it as a manga-centric spin off to be held in fall – generally after the traditional summer convention season. As the name implies, its defining premise is that the center of discussion is to be only about that black-and-white medium that often get lumped with anime.

After Anime Boston 2006, I had dropped out of the convention scene to focus more on finishing college and landing a job. I didn’t go back to Boston or Otakon or even AnimeNEXT for some years. But something seemed right about MangaNEXT. The timing, location, and size of the event seemed very manageable even with my busy schedule. So during my hiatus from the convention scene, I still made my way to the first MangaNEXT in 2006, and returned again in 2007.

Because of that, I can honestly say that MangaNEXT is the only convention I have attended since the very beginning, so I have seen its evolution through out the past three years. But I dove back head first into the convention scene this year, and I have attended four much larger cons so far this season. So now that I’ve experience such a wide variety of major anime cons so close together like this, how does this small manga convention stack up against them?

Still pretty damn good.

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I’m live at the Doubletree Hotel in Somerset NJ for the third annual MangaNEXT convention this weekend.

MangaNEXT is the spin-off of the AnimeNEXT convention I reported on back in June. As the name implies, it focuses mostly on manga-themed events and panels. This year’s guests include yuri comic artist Rica Takashima, OEL manga artist Misako Rocks!, and one of my personal favorites, manga translator Mari Morimoto.

I will be posting small updates and cameraphone photos all weekend long on Twitter. Be sure to follow my Twitter account or check out Anime Almanac the Live to catch my live con coverage directly from the convention floor.

I love New York. With it only being a 100-minute bus ride from my apartment, I often find myself going there at least once every month to escape the boredom of Central Jersey. But you would think that being such an iconic city would just be a great place for an otaku to completely geek out on his fandom, right? Surprisingly, this is not the case.

My first anime convention was actually the Big Apple Anime Film Festival in 2003. It was the first time I got to experience cosplaying, panels, and a dealers room like that. That was also the first time I saw what would become my favorite anime of all time, Millennium Actress. Since it was the US premiere of the movie, the film’s brilliant director Satoshi Kon was in attendance. After seeing the film, I was able to give the man a standing ovation. What an amazing experience for my first-ever convention!

But alas, that was the last year of the BAAFF. The con was canceled and our city was left with little to offer for hometown otaku for many years. That was before Peter Tatara and Reed Exhibitions stepped up to the plate and brought anime back to the city with the New York Anime Festival last year. As Ani-Gamer’s Vampt Vo wonderfully wrote in this article, Peter and the NYAF has done so much in this past year for anime in New York, and man, do I appreciate it!

So once again at the NYAF’s second annual convention, I just felt an absolute love for a great convention put together by great people. I did my normal “live” Twitter coverage over the weekend and I am in the process of putting together some great stories to be posted in the weeks ahead. But for this week, I want to highlight some of ways I really felt the love for the NYAF this year.

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Japanator’s Dick McVengeance issued a challenge in the comments of his response to my fansub controversy. He wanted to know if the American DVD sales of anime actually meant anything to the Japanese. Was the American market really important to the global anime economy, or were we all just gravy to them, just the icing on the cake?

It was a valid question, and one that I had been dealing with ever since I first said, “buy a damn DVD” all those years ago. Why did we have to worry about supporting the “industry” in America when all we wanted was the product coming out of Japan?

Well, being the industry fanboy that I am, of course my answer was going to be that we weren’t just gravy to the Japanese. I believed that America anime market was actually a critical part of their business over there.

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