Category: Miscellaneous

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!

Gamebooks For Girls?

July 22, 2026

In the early 1980s, gamebooks were topping children’s best-seller charts in many markets. And while they were popular with both boys and girls (and adults), this didn’t stop publishers from dabbling into gamebooks targeted at girls.

These are four books from TSR’s 1983 Heartquest series. These were a spin-off from their successful Endless Quest series of Dungeons & Dragons Gamebooks, only with less combat and more romance.

In the books you play teenage heroines on quests to defeat evil. You are joined by one or more young men with which romance inevitably ensues. In advertisements of the time the romantic aspects of these books were highlighted, which seemed quaint now until I recalled the ‘romantasy’ genre currently dominating women’s book sales!

In Secret Sorceress you play an orphaned girl going on a quest with an equally orphaned prince to find a magical scepter with which you can defeat a usurper. It’s a slim volume with only about a dozen choices and the D&D trappings (a Dragonne, Leprechauns) take a backseat to fluttering hearts!

The book ends when the scepter is found (there is no mention of what the scepter does and the big bad never makes an appearance), although some ‘bad’ endings throughout don’t seem bad at all since they involve your character living happily ever after with the prince after all!

Both as a gamebook and as a fantasy novel I found this underwhelming, but then I’m not a young teen girl in 1983! My opinion may not be too removed from the original audience since the line failed and the final two books (which I don’t own) received extremely limited distribution. Forty-three years removed this series is now a curious footnote in the history of D&D, and the books themselves have become expensive and rare collectibles.

The Starlight Adventures were six gamebooks released by Puffin in 1985. These were a spin-off from the very successful Fighting Fantasy series and featured similar trade dress, formatting and even utilized many of the same artists for interior art. They were advertised in some of the Fighting Fantasy (FF) books at the time, although they have no fantastic elements at all, instead taking place in the real world.

The books are much longer than the Heartquest series, telling a robust story with many more choices. While they all include potential romance, the player can choose to ignore it if they wish. Also, despite a whimsical series title, these are definitely written for an older reader than Heartquest, featuring young adult protagonists who have careers and drink alcohol!

In Trance you play a young nurse investigating the cause of your brothers mysterious illness. You’ll discover a conspiracy to defraud wealthy patrons of a clinic, and in the process you may be aided – and even abetted – by several eligible young men.

It’s a mysterious albeit predictable scenario, but I found it interesting to read a real-world tale using the familiar skeleton of a FF book. Some of the jumps between sections are too abrupt, and I would have preferred dice or even some sort of game system to replace choice in a few spots, but overall I felt this was a good read and enjoyed the book.

Like Heartquest, only six books in the Starlight Adventures series were ever released. I was still actively buying new gamebooks at the time, and I have no memory of ever seeing these and didn’t learn of their existence until over twenty years later! I’m happy to have them in my collection now, since these have skyrocketed in price on the secondary market.

One last series I’ll mention is Lifegames, also from 1983. Four of the six books were targeted at adult women. I’ve never read these and even by gamebook standards these are rare today and I can’t even find reviews of them online. I recall reading once that they are very simplistic branching-choice choose-your-own-adventure style books and they may have contained Christian elements!

Aside from these three series, I know of very few other gamebooks published ‘back then’ specifically targeted at girls. Possibly this is because the above ‘failed’, or probably it was because publishers realized girls were happy reading ‘normal’ gamebooks 🙂

This One’s For Adam (And Maybe Bernard)

July 12, 2026

We’re in NYC for two days, and I will blog about it in a day or two, but I had a fascinating experience today that I knew Adam would be interested in so this post is just about that.

There’s a store here called The Compleat Strategist that’s been selling RPG and board game products for many decades. I’ve shopped there many times over the two-plus decades I’ve been visiting the city but it was very obvious in recent years the store had seen better days.

So today when I walked in and found it revamped and rearranged and clean it was obvious a change had occurred.

The first thing I noticed was a big glass case containing lots of vintage Games Worshop Warhammer items. Books, games, models: all mint condition and most still shrink wrapped.

I don’t know much about this stuff but I do know how unusual it is to see so much brand new stock of products released over thirty years ago. It was a bit like visiting a museum, especially since it was all clearly labeled as ‘not for sale’.

And then I walked to the back and saw the three larger cases of TSR products! This is just one of them:

Dozens and dozens of Dungeons and Dragons books, as well as other games released by TSR over the years. I’ve got a good D&D collection myself, but not close to what I saw here. Take this for instance:

And many modules, some still sealed:

And obscure TSR games, like these:

Or this (still sealed) board game from 1982:

The manager saw me taking these photos and wandered over. He was younger than the guys I used to see here and I didn’t recognize him. I immediately asked “You bought this store didn’t you?” to which he laughed and confirmed.

We talked about this amazing collection of relics he now owned – some of which he wasn’t very knowledgeable about (I educated him) – and he was quite interested in my gamebook collection so I told him a bit about that.

And then he said out of the blue: “Want to see the basement?” Of course I instantly said yes, and he took me through two doors to a large metal staircase we descended down into a games room they use for events, then through another door into a large room filled with tall shelves stuffed with boxes of game materials collected by the previous owners over decades.

To say I was amazed is an understatement. The above photo shows boxes of Spellfire – the failed D&D card game from thirty years ago. Those boxes in the back? Sealed cases of the same game. He’s got dozens of boxes of each expansion, up to the 7th which almost no stores stocked since the game was already dead:

In the blurry background you can see boxes and boxes of other dead TCGs, including many I’d never heard of. These were stacked three or four shelves high up to ceilings well above my head!

As incredible as this was, we then turned to the D&D material, and he showed me this:

That’s a box of sealed copies of a D&D solo module from 1985. I’d estimate 30 or more, untouched for decades. And this was one of many boxes of sealed modules for TSR games, including D&D, Star Traveler, Top Secret, Gamma World, Indiana Jones, Marvel Super Heroes and probably more.

I took the above photo since I’d never seen a GURPS board game (which is still sealed and would sell for $300+ based on a quick internet search) but there was so much to see in this basement I barely noticed the stack of MSH modules behind and below the board game, or the pile of a couple of dozen Gamma World GM screens to the left.

I’ve read in the past about people stumbling on a cache of ‘new old stock’ in a warehouse somewhere, but it was quite an experience to see it. It’s all for sale too, although since TSR products are very collectible now it’s hardly cheap, and he’ll make a nice profit if he can sell it all. (I purchased a Blizzard Pass module, which I’ll keep sealed.)

There was some advertising material as well, including the above board for the 1976 (I think) edition of TSR’s Dungeon board game. This was heavy and may have been printed on or at least stuck to a wooden back! This is a true grail for a collector somewhere.

I regret not taking more photos, but I was simply overwhelmed by the magnitude of what I was seeing 🙂

He told me they’re slowly going through everything, including 25 long boxes of 1980s comics, many more sealed cases of RPG books and modules, and even “a box of novels signed by Gary Gygax” (!) and continuing to find treasures he didn’t know about when he bought the store. His goal is apparently to open a museum and if he ever does I’d certainly love to visit it!

Robot Claw