Category: Anime

AnimeNYC 2026

August 22, 2026

The past two days we spent over 13 hours at AnimeNYC, the annual anime convention in New York.

That’s the entrance to the convention center. There was a bit of a wait to get in each day since lines were very long, but the process was smooth and to my surprise they didn’t even check bags (aside from everyone walking through a detector).

I took these photos of the main floor from a viewing balcony upstairs. Here we see some of the large booths just inside the entrance, mostly for manga publishers and game companies.

This photo looks in the opposite direction at various other booths including one from Friskies (yes, the cat food company) which was unexpectedly one of the most popular booths of the show since they gave out freebies and printed customized trading cards of your cat! (We didn’t line up but I read the wait was over an hour!)

That shows half of ‘artist alley’, which is our favourite part of the show. In nearly 600 stalls, amateur artists sell their own work. Much of our time at the con was spent here.

There’s an average view from the show floor. Crowds were intense and sometimes too thick to walk easily. Today was busier than yesterday, and the excess of people made finding a quiet spot to rest or using a toilet a challenge!

Since it was where we spent most of our time, I wanted to showcase ‘artist alley’. The above is a photo of a typical artist’s booth. Most usually sell prints, pins, keychains, stickers, postcards and some sell stuffed toys, t-shirts or acrylics as well. All the merchandise features the art of the stall holder. Most of these artists are young women, and the topics of their art vary from ‘cute’ to ‘horror’ to ‘romance’ to just weird. Sometimes the art is anime-themed, but just as often it’s not.

Here’s another booth. This woman’s art was exceptional, and we bought some prints from her. Prices vary a lot, from small items (stickers usually) for a few dollars up to large acrylics or tapestries for well over a hundred. Most of our purchases were made in artist alley, and I’ll do a follow-up post detailing what we bought in a few days.

That’s a ‘behind the scenes’ of a typical booth. I’ve watched YouTube videos some of these creators have made about the process of working at a con, and it’s amazing that often it’s just one person. She arrives to an empty table and a single chair, and had to set up and stock the booth by herself! It’s a lot of work, but for popular artists can pay off in a big way. I’ve read that this con in particular can be one of the most profitable in the world, and artists come from as far as Australia to sell at AnimeNYC!

Back over a decade ago when we went to New York Comic Con the artist alley offerings usually started and ended at colour prints. These days the prints often include texturing or foils, and some even have heat or water-activated coatings. They can be printed on metal, cloth, acrylic or even wood. The artist above sold their original art printed into acrylic plates and enhanced with multiple foil layers. They weren’t cheap, but they were dazzling when the light caught them!

Many artists sell original art as well, and some even do sketch commissions on the spot (we saw some long lines for these today). The above was a small (2 x 2 inches) sketch in a ‘shikishi board’ and she had a sign that she’d be putting newer ones out as she finished them.

My favourite artist was a guy who was passing time hand carving rubber stamps! We found him yesterday and I returned today with a postcard to get an impression (which he didn’t charge for) which you can see above. His talent was prodigious, especially since he just did this as a hobby. I tried to buy one of his stamps but he wasn’t selling! He also had another hobby, but you’ll read about that one when I blog what we purchased…

That’s the Hololive vtuber booth, which much like last year was the most popular location at the convention. Vtubers appeared live on the big screen and interacted with the very enthusiastic crowd. Today there were so many people clustered around the booth they had a bunch of employees controlling the crowds to keep an avenue open for people to walk past!

That’s an independent vtuber; one of many scattered around the show that you could talk to. Vtubers are ‘virtual YouTubers’ where a (usually anime styled) avatar is controlled by a human actor. The person on the screen in the photo is the digital puppet of a girl that could have been anywhere in the world at that moment. Vtubers are a phenomenon now, and remarkably popular consider you may have never heard of them!

This professional model was at a booth for a new mobile game. With the stage, perfect lighting and the professional costume she was the spitting image of the game character she was portraying. Of course the average con-goer doesn’t look half as good as she does, but these days cosplay is a big part of the con (of any con) and a decent chunk of participants attend in costume. Here’s a few of the better ones I saw:

I’m not sure what this exactly is. It looks like the character Chiikawa, but isn’t exactly correct. It was gigantic, and just sort of bobbed around just inside the convention center, as if the person inside could barely move. If this wasn’t some sort of promotion, I imagine someone spent ages making it!

This trio was upstairs on the cosplay level. That’s a Mandalorian and a ‘slave Leia’ and I’m not sure who the third guy is. I believe that’s the Puerto Rican flag, and they had a whole choreographed routine. This group was very popular, with a large crowd photographing them.

This guy – portraying Pochita’s true form was also very popular. I saw him a few times and he always had a massive crowd stopping him to take photos. Chainsaw Man was a popular character for cosplay but most used the red version so I think this guys advanced depiction earned him special attention.

This was my favourite, and she was as charming as she looks. The character is Shirahoshi the giant mermaid from One Piece (see the tiny Luffy in her cleavage?) and she made the entire costume herself. She said the scales alone, which were sewn on individually and made of some sort of glittery fabric, took her about a month! When she walked she sort of glided along the floor and it was very convincing.

There were loads and loads (hundreds actually) of shops selling anime and manga and figures and games and cosplay equipment and so many other things. There were gacha machines (some outrageously expensive), lots of booths from companies advertising their newest offerings. There were panels and dozens of celebrities doing autographs. There was an entire floor dedicated to card and board games. In short there was more than you could reasonably see in only two days, and we were happy to stay mostly in the main room aside from a quick walk through the gaming center.

Speaking of celebrities the highlight of the con for me was seeing Tetsuo Kurata. He was the lead actor in Kamen Rider Black, a series I loved, and it was a little emotional seeing him in person. Through his translator I expressed my admiration for his work and I got a fist bump from Kamen Rider Black himself. I’ll remember that for a long time 🙂

It’s late and I’m very tired and I think this post is long enough. As I’m sure is obvious we had a great time and we’ll surely be returning for AnimeNYC 2027!

New Japanese TCGs (Part 3)

October 28, 2025

It’s time to open some more packs of Japanese TCGs, all purchased during my trip either last year or this recent summer. Most of these are new expansions for old games, but some are brand new games as well.

Shadowverse Evolve is a physical card game based on the digital Shadowverse card game. This expansion – Duet of Light and Shadow – was released in April 2024 and is the 9th of now 18 expansions for the game (they seem to release about every 2 months).

The cards are attractive, which is unsurprisingly considering the games heritage. There were eight cards in the pack, three of which were foil (the three on the left side of the bottom row). The most unusual card was the knight card at lower right, which was made of thicker card stock:

I wonder if this is some sort of avatar card? Surely it doesn’t get shuffled into a deck since it would stand out.

Shadowverse released a switch version which I enjoyed a great deal, and I hope the sequel gets a translation. I’ve never played this physical version but when I was in Japan last year there was an event in Akihabara that drew enormous crowds. It seems to be a successful game in Japan.

Speaking of successful games, Duel Masters continues to be Wizards of The Coast’s most successful game in Japan, outselling Magic The Gathering. These two packs are from recently released expansions.

Duel Masters has been around for 26 years now, and actually began as a manga (which itself was based on Magic The Gathering)! This card game began in 2002 and has to date received nearly 100 expansions. Two attempts to launch the card game in English markets have fizzled, but it remains one of the most successful card games in Japan.

The first photo above shows the cards in the left pack, and the one immediately above shows the right pack. I played the English Duel Masters when it was released and I remember the game world and ‘story’ being fairly insane and this card art seems to suggest that hasn’t changed.

I buy Duel Masters boosters every time I visit Japan since they are cheap (~¥100) and because the special rarity cards are amongst the prettiest in any game. While this example I pulled from the second pack is dazzling, it’s still well below the most incredible cards I’ve pulled from boosters in the past. This seems like a fun game.

Here we have two Kamen Rider Battle Spirits expansions, one very recent and one from a year ago. I’ve opened Battle Spirits before and I knew these cards would impress.

The above are from the left booster pack. Battle Spirits cards are plasticized and feel like thin credit cards. The print quality is exceptionally good, with super detailed artwork created just for the cards. This is clearly a product aimed equally as much at collectors as players.

I’ve read that each expansion introduces at least one new mechanic which is strongly supported by the new cards, so the game evolves with every new set. This is another game with organized play in Japan that must be interesting to watch since nearly every expansion is based on a licensed property.

The high-rarity cards are very pretty. In these two packs I got one textured foil and another with a sort of spiral foil design that rotates as you tile the card. It’s a shame that a much bigger-selling game like Magic can’t implement these types of foils since it makes the cards feel very special.

We’ll end today with the first three expansions from the new Quintessential Quintuplets card game. This game debuted last year, and I believe five expansions are now available.

Each pack has five cards, and three of the cards in my first booster (volume 1) used manga art! I won’t say this looks bad, but it’s an unusual choice given that they do apparently have enough high-resolution colour art to use.

One card was foil, and the effect was a bit lazy since it was simply a background. But looking close I noticed even the manga art seemed unusually high-resolution, as if it had been redrawn.

That’s the second pack, and again the quality of the art jumps out. Games based around anime often suffer from the curse of simply using screen grabs that are not of adequate resolution to look good on a card. That’s certainly not the case here. Look closely and you’ll see the foil also has a flower effect in the background.

This game is based on a manga/anime about a man that tutors five quintuplets and eventually marries one. The catch is the story begins with the wedding, but since the girls are identical we don’t know who he chooses until the very end. It’s wholesome and very well written and was a massive hit a couple of years ago.

I’m a big fan of the story (the manga is one of my favourite completed series ever) and these cards are very attractive. I can see why this has been a success in the relatively short time it’s been out, and I’ll probably purchase one each of the expansions after these as well.

Con Haul

August 26, 2025

Here are some of the items I got at the con. I’m not including the half dozen or so volumes of manga (mostly isekai trash) or the many stationary items (postcards and stickers) since I haven’t yet decided which will be gifts and you may even see a postcard in your mailbox one day.

The above is an English ‘special edition’ of the Weekly Young Magazine, a Japanese manga weekly from Kodansha. This is a hefty (1000+ pages) volume containing the first chapters of 14 series translated into English. Readers can vote on which ones they want to see serialized, but it’s unclear whether this format (an anthology magazine) will continue or if they’ll be serialized online.

This is a beautiful book, printed in Japan and with the same feel as the Japanese anthologies. I had to join a longish line to get one (for free) at the con, and the next day I saw a big pile just sitting around for the taking at Kinokuniya in the city!

This is a vinyl figure of a kaiju that I bought from the designer. The monster itself is from an old (1980s) Korean film which I’d never heard of, but the guy who designed this figure also designed two of the kaiju in the recent Godzilla x Kong film and had a few impressive 3D prints of his work on display. His was a somewhat out-of-place booth for an anime con but I’d been looking for a vinyl kaiju figure and this one wasn’t expensive and scratched the itch.

There were hundreds of anime figures available, almost all of the prize variety. I’ve got loads of these BiCute girls, and picked up the above two at the con. Prices were extremely good – possibly due to competition? – and had I more space I probably would have bought more.

Bandai had a display and shop for Gundam kits, as well as an area where you could sit and make a beginners version for free. I charmed the dude into letting me take one! I like that it’s on a single runner, and will certainly assemble it one day.

I got the above clear file at the Japan Tourist Board exhibit. I was just throwing all the free handouts into my bag and didn’t even notice it was a clear file until I got back to the hotel. It promotes a 2022 short anime that reimagines Japanese castles as transforming robots, which was partially funded by local tourism agencies.

Loads of exhibitors were selling TCG cards, mostly Pokemon and One Piece, but one booth seemed to specialize in Weiss. I’d been considering buying a Weiss box for a while, they had them for a decent price, so I bought this Nikke one. I’ll let it age a year or few before opening.

Speaking of TCGs there were also a few being launched at the con. They all had the whiff of scam about them – companies wanting to cash in on the current TCG mania – but I wasn’t going to decline a free promo card. Maybe I can sell it for a fortune and retire one day. Or maybe not 😉

I’ve put most of ‘the cute stuff’ together. This is what I bought specifically for Kristin, and all of it came from artist alley booths. The envelope with Korean text is a blind pack of animal stickers, and the frog pin was also a blind box item. The bottom left is a capybara coaster. Had KLS been with me we would have purchased much more like this!

Even though it wasn’t a con purchase, here’s a bonus pic: dollar-bin comics purchased at Midtown Comics. I have no interest in recent superhero comics, but always find the late 80s and early 90s stuff a fun read. I wonder which of these will be best and which worst?

Robot Claw