Those factors explain the strengths and weaknesses of the conventions over the Labor Day weekend. Both events were reasonably well run. The Anime Expo portion of the weekend seemed to work better than the same organization's California convention two months earlier. And since the author spent nearly all of his time at the Anime Expo events, most of the coverage and comments deal with that portion of the weekend.

There was some confusion about the relationship between the two events, but you could understand it had you stood on Broadway. On the east side of the street was the Virgin Megastore with the Loews' theaters in the basement. That complex served as the home of the Big Apple Anime Fest, which was basically a film festival. The Big Apple organizers brought to New York the creators of some of the films they screened, and shared some of the guests with Anime Expo New York which used the Marriott Marquis hotel on the west side of Broadway, across the street from the Big Apple events.

With more than 15 million people in the metropolitan New York area, the events should have expected to get thousands of people, and the Anime Expo portion of the events drew around 3,000-4,000. With the hotel rates of $180-$200 per night, Anime Expo New York was mostly a commuter convention. One costumer in an elaborate Lulu costume from Final Fantasy said she had taken the train to the convention, carrying her outfit in Hefty bag.

The cost of staying at the Marriott Marquis is going to continue to be the major obstacle to continuing a New York event on Labor Day. The 2003 event will be a Big Apple event run by Central Park Media, which we understand has arranged to hold conventions on the Labor Day weekend for the next three years. Anime Expo New York was a one-shot event, operated as a trial run for the organization's planned convention in Japan in January of 2004.

Most of the fans at the twin events were at their first conventions. Some familiar East Coast convention faces were seen, but the author guesses that many more spent the weekend at DragonCon in Atlanta and AnimeFEST in Dallas, which could turn out to be the major competition for future Big Apple Anime Fests.

The weekend's big event pattern was offset by one day, with the convention starting a day later than usual. If you had visited this site on Friday, searched for pictures of costumers and found none, you missed nothing - because there were no cosplayers that this author could find. Friday was the quietest Friday this author has spent on the convention circuit in a lot time - no surprise, because Anime Expo New York didn't start until Saturday. The start of the Anime Expo event had a bit of the slow, unrushed feel that the first couple of Animazement conventions had.

At one point, the costume contest coordinator was walking the halls, trying to fill a dozen open slots in the contest roster. By show time, there were more than enough entrants and she show went well. And that contest produced one of the feel-good moments of the event. One costumer had worked hard on several outfits, only to have an airline lose the bag containing those clothes. So she wore what amounted to a backup Chobits costume in the contest, sang the same song she had planned to sing, and still managed to win an award.

Typically, the author plans these convention trips months in advance, plotting every travel detail so he's absolutely ready to go and can anticipate every move well before the last bag is packed. Not this time. 

The author dithered and procrastinated, deciding one day that he absolutely needed to go to the twin Labor Day conventions, then thinking the next day that he had better stay home and not spend the money on the expensive Manhattan hotel room. He told more than one person at AnimeIowa that he'd be better off staying home and using the money for something else. 
Finally, sitting in his (wonderfully affordable) Cedar Rapids hotel room during AnimeIowa, he pushed the buttons to make the flight booking for the trip to LaGuardia - after waiting too long to book a less expensive flight to Newark. and, of course, the trip to New York went just as smoothly as if the author had worked out every detail in advance. 

Every flight ran exactly on schedule, even the homeward bound flight from LaGuardia airport which departed in a driving rainstorm. The biggest surprise was the cost of transportation from the airport to midtown Manhattan; less than $20 each way.

Of course, the September 11th attacks, which had happened less than one year earlier, two miles from the convention area. 

This convention trip was the author's first trip to New York. The author preferred to stay at the hotel and never went to the place where the towers fell. 

Besides, New York seemed to have recovered quite nicely from the tragedy, if you looked at the way people acted in Times Square on the convention weekend. The honking horns of Times Square taxis could be heard from the author's 28th-floor hotel room. On the street, the famed intersection was just as much a human zoo as ever. Street dancers held sidewalk performances that seemed as energetic as anything you'd see in the Broadway theaters. A group of men in costumes that rivaled the anime fans' outfits held a street preaching service that night have involved the Bible. Serenading it all was a guitarist clad only in a shiny pair of white briefs and a cowboy hat.

The conventions were held nine days before the anniversary of the attacks. Anime Expo New York acknowledged the tragedy by holding a charity auction on the event's final day. 

If New Yorkers act as if they live in the center of the universe, maybe they do - after looking at events on the convention weekend.

Not far from Times Square were the negotiations between players and owners that ended the possibility of a major league baseball strike. To the east was the U.S. Open tennis tournament. To the west in New Jersey was the Notre Dame-Maryland football game. In the Marriott Marquis was a National Football League meeting. Across the street from the hotel was a theater where comedian Jackie Mason was playing; that show produced a national controversy when Mason rejected a Palestinian comedian who was scheduled to be his opening act.

On the Labor Day weekend, New York was the center of the anime universe in a special way. At the Planet Hollywood in Times Square, Viz Video held a party (thanks to producer Toshi Yoshida for the invitation) which celebrated the first cablecast of the dubbed Inu-Yasha on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim late-night program block.

While listening to the anime fans cheer as the first episode was shown on Saturday night of the Labor Day weekend, the author wondered if they realized the significance of the event. It was the first national television broadcast of a Rumiko Takahashi-based series in the U.S.; neither Ranma 1/2 nor Urusei Yatsura have gotten more than local or regional TV showings. For one of Japan's most popular artists to have her works shown to the entire U.S. for the first time was another strong example of the inevitable mainstreaming of anime, a force that led to the New York conventions.