Earlier this month I had the great pleasure of attending the New York Anime Festival in Manhattan, New York. I took lots of pictures and will arrange them for you according to theme. I wish I had been taking pictures of everything I saw because sometimes I just put down the camera and watched in awe, it really was a memorable event.

Above is a picture of the inside of Union Station, one of the central train stations in New York. Now it is essentially for commuter traffic but the domed ceiling with fresco art recalled earlier days in the cities history as a major entrance for immigration to the United States.

This is a shot of an amazing building that I saw after visiting Kinokuniya Book Store. The Empire State building, Statue of Liberty or Chrysler building are all famous symbols of New York but there are so many other beautiful buildings that go unnoticed because there are so many others around. I did a search for it but couldn't find the name of the building, if anyone knows it please leave a comment!

Here is a hint to the building from above, I found this amazing little merry-go-round in the park across the street. The design is almost like something you would find in Paris. There were many more amazing building, these were just a few of them.

The NYAF event itself was held at the Javits Center, a giant convention center with beautiful architecture in its own right. There was cosplay on Friday and Saturday at the center stage but there was plenty of other stuff for the otaku minded to enjoy.

Above is the fan art area, manga fans were actively drawing and selling art of their favorite anime and manga characters. You can see the artist tucked in between their drawings hanging all around the front of their booths. Dojinshi is very popular in Japan but artistic drawings of this quality were something quite different; not common or not existing at all at events in other countries I've been to.

There was a massive gaming area dedicated to the World Cyber Games USA event. Loving games myself I spent some time here just watching the competitors up on stage taking on the opposing team in their cyber battle ground.

The sign explains it all, this is a space where manga fans can relax and browse through their favorite manga or new releases. In the merchant area there were plenty of people selling manga but as the "tachi-yomi" (standing and reading material at a sales location) is rather frowned upon in the US, there was a space provided specifically for the purpose of looking through the manga available.

While walking around the event floor I was regularly surprised by how people were enjoying themselves. Here are a few of them, some promoted by NYAF and others spontaneous acts of culture.

Here is a group of people "popping" or doing a hip-hop style of dance, good music and great moves, best of all Spiderman is right in the middle. Another neat things that I saw but didn't get a shot of is maybe a hundred or so fans and cosplayers forming a chain and running freely through the crowd. These exact forms of otaku enjoyment would be unheard of at an event in Japan but when the "pedestrian paradise" was operating in Akihabara Tokyo, similar local kinds of fun happenings were regular.

Here is a kind of controlled battle zone. With a referee and a scheduled list for fighters, two combatants with soft bat style weapons would enter the ring and start swinging. It wasn't a haphazard random whacking of each other, the fighters often had stylized forms. Perhaps they had taken kendo or another martial art or just were just having fun. According to NYAF staff this controlled battle environment was created because as with the dancing above, people had begun to whack each other with weapons. To prevent injury to fans during the event they created a special space for more spectacular battles.

Above is a side stage that was running pretty well from Friday through Sunday. In this picture they are doing a kind of organized dance but for most of the weekend this stage was dedicated to a dating game style event. Maids would call members of the audience onto the stage and get one person to ask 3 others fairly personal questions to determine their best match. What happened after that I'm not sure but it looked like a good group of youth were spending their time there and enjoying the show.

A lot of the signs that the staff put up around the event hall were very otaku friendly, I loved this one:

This next image was for the volunteer room, I like the pirate image.

I didn't get a picture of it but the helping staff also had t-shirts on that said "hero" on the back. I think a hero is about as approachable a person as you can get.

There were 2 days of cosplay performances. On Friday NYAF had a casual cosplay stage where performers were not judged and there were few restrictions. Performers could go up as an individual, a pair or a group.

Above is a performance done by a popular cosplayer in the New York area, Mario. He had about 15 to 20 friends and did a extensive performance from Code Geass. There were other as well including a girl playing violin among others.

Here again is the large group posing outside the Javits center. Seeing them up onstage reminded me of the larger cosplay performances you can see in China. They reenacted a scene including all the characters and showed that a lot more can be done with a big group.

After Liz and Dia did a talk about advanced costume making we had a chance to get everyone together here we have Eva and Cecilia of France 2009, Abi and Sabi of Mexico 2009 and Liz and Dia of USA 2009.

This is a shot of a "Chika Idol" from Japan Reni Mimura who performed on Saturday. She is currently living in New York and actively performing at conventions in the area trying to spread the word of cutting edge otaku culture from Japan. She instructed everyone (including the MC) about the intricate moves and translated her songs into English. Only thing missing were the otaku fans in matching coloured t-shirts with glow sticks!

Here are a pair of performers on stage for the final cosplay stage on Sunday there were about 30 performers and some amazing costume including a 3 meter tall Bumblebee transformer! There were a plethora of prizes that went out and the performer qualities that are a symbol of New York could be seen in the cosplayers quality performances.

Thank you NYAF!

I am now in Rome for the Romics convention to determine the Italy representative for WCS 2010. I had a chance to do a little looking around the city and took some pictures.




Amazing architecture but for anyone who has been to Rome before you may notice that all the pictures are of the Vatican which technically is not Italy. Oh well, I was busy at the event location so couldn't get any proper touring in, I'll try to work in some other nice Rome pictures later.

With everyone very busy at the Romics event we did not often get a chance to have but one night we did get a chance to share dinner together here is a shot before we left.

In the middle up front is Aoki-san the Ambassador of Kawaii, there's me top right then Sabrina beside me. From the left at the back is Emanuella and Liz who are Romics staff along with Sabrina and in the middle at the back is Sakurai-san.

The cosplayers from Italy who will be representing Italy next year are Giancarlo di Pierro and Luca Buzzi! You can see them here accepting the prize from the Japanese ambassador to Italy, the honorable Hiroyasu Ando.

Here they are as Taurus and Pegasus from Saint Seiya. I have plenty of pictures of cosplay, parade, and the event itself that I'll update for you in the coming days.

On Friday night Romics tried out something new, a cosplay parade through the streets of Rome.

Here you can see a couple of Michael Jackson impersonators displaying their moves at the starting point.

All together there was about 50 cosplayers, smaller than the numbers we have now in Nagoya but considering this was the first year there is plenty of room for growth.

In this picture you can see the "Ambassador of Kawaii" in the gothloli dress up front in the middle and the high school uniform model beside her.

The parade ended at the Piazza d'Espanga and we tood a commemorative photo on the famous steps. There was plenty of room on the 1 km parade route and police blocked off the streets for us. Above all the beautiful architecture and buildings that Rome has to offer made for a spectacular event.

I found the Romics event to be overall similar both events in North America and Asia. Less frenetic than in the USA where there is so much going on but a lot bigger than most events in Asia and with a greater variety of things to see and do. I took some pictures of some of the sales booths below.

This is a shot of the event hall from above to give you an idea of the size of the event. With 75,000 people attending over 4 days Saturday and Sunday were absolutely packed. Unlike many events in the US, Sunday was the day with the highest numbers.

This is one of the booths selling manga, there was a vast selection most of them written in Italian but some could be found in English or Japanese.

I found one booth selling dojinshi. Actually these guys had come out from Seattle with their manga to test the waters for the first time in Italy. Considering there were no other booths selling dojinshi (as far as I could see) they had their work cut out for them but it looked like the crowds on Saturday and Sunday made the trip worth their while.

As the events name was Romics naturally they also had comics. Here is one of the comic booths.

There was a fair number of comic booths with a great selection of special high quality comic anthologies as you can see here.

I found the Gundam Italian Club, they had displays layed out and were discussing Gundam with guests.

This is a mideaval armory club. It sounds like there are groups throughout Europe and along with some pretty cool armour on display they had pictures layed out of some of their battles.

Speaking of battles I found a sword fight area like in NYAF except here they were using soft swords instead of complete foam ones. There weren't attracting the crowds like in the US but that might have been because of the time of day that I was there.

There were about 10 to 15 tables laid out for card gaming.

Finally here was a neet booth of a group from Japan that had made the trip out selling girls highschool uniforms. They had a variety of colorful skirts, cardigans, ties and bows laid out. The girl on the left is actually a real live school girl from Japan! Pretty cool work considering she's still in school, I hope they did well, I did see a few people dressed up in casual school uniforms for fun around the event hall. I'll have more about casual school uniforms in an upcoming post.

Here are some shots around the event hall of guests dressed up in different costumes which would arguably be more fashion than cosplay.

A maid being pushed around on a trolley

A girl standing in front of an accessory booth dressed in gothloli

2 girls dressed in casual high school clothes.

Particularly gothloli is something that I saw very little of when I was in New York, since 2008 in Europe it has become pretty popular at conventions and in the otaku community.

I ran into Emilia and Elena Fata Livia of the 2005 Italy Group team. It had been over 4 years since we met so it was a great surprise. They are both still actively cosplaying and Emilia has created quite a name for herself in the Italian cosplay community. It was great to see them again!

I also saw Alessandro Leuti and Alessia de Magistris from Italy 2006 but I did not get a picture of them :( They called out to me while I was judging and they were looking great. Also Nadia from Italy 2008 competed on stage, I have a picture of her which I will put in the WCS competition post.

There were over 200 cosplay teams to select from and over Saturday and Sunday a team of 5 judges including myself took a look at everyone's costumes and selected the 60 teams who would be taking to the stage on Sunday evening. On Saturday we were in a lecture room and then Sunday we were on the main stage. Here are a couple shots from that.


I have a much better idea of the passion cosplayers have for their hobby in Italy. I don't like having to cut people from performing, but it would be logistically impossible to see 200 performances on stage.

Here are some shots of the teams for the WCS competition. They may not be in the right order nor complete but I wanted to give you an idea of the high quality of competition.

This pair put together some excellent Trinity Blood costumes.

This was a nice touch pulling out the Japan and Britannian flags in a Code Geass performance.


This is a shot of Nadia on the right from Italy 2008, you cant really tell as she is wearing a mask and standing on a 1 meter high platform.


This was a very creative Naruto performance you can see the monstrous tails and appendages that were a part of their costume.

This pair put together a creative battle drama with plenty of surprises like the balloons you can see in the picture.


Here is another shot of the winning pair.

As I mentioned before, the list of performers is not complete but thanks to some caring cosplayers I do have a shot of the first pair who competed in the WCS competition. They performed Final Fantasy IV and the picture does not do their spectacular costumes justice.

Thank you DarkMisa!

The WCS representative selection for Finland took place this weekend at the Cosplay Finland Tour event. The winning pair are Sami and Riina Saltiola, a brother and sister team. Their performance was from Final Fantasy 7. Congratulations!