Can
it really be two conventions on two consecutive weekends, three conventions
in August and five events in the last six weekends for the author? Damn.
Think of how busy he would have been if he had real money to spend.
So why head back to the world's second most expensive city for the Big Apple Anime Fest? The author's
already demonstrated a lack of fiscal sense by going to so many conventions,
but this time there was another reason: the convention wanted him to attend.
The Big Apple event wanted someone to help moderate and appear on panels, and someone
figured that the author would be a good choice.
Hmm. The organizers of a Japanese cultural festival in the nation's largest
city invited the author to attend, and to participate in seminars on the
aspects of that culture as interpreted in the West. Not a bad request for
someone who was hanging around figure-eight races a few years earlier. So
it's off to New York again, hoping the power stays on this time and the construction
zones aren't as bad as they were on the previous trip.
One of the panels was on "cosplay and body image," and the other was on "otaku culture - who we are."
The author was the only non-cosplayer on the cosplay panel, but he brought
all of the pictures to illustrate the show. One of the interesting points
of the discussion came when the author held up two pictures - one of a female
Fifth Element costumer whose outfit looked like a narrow red ribbon and one
of a bare-chested Maijin-Buu
male from Dragon Ball - and asked why people would say the female was "scantily
clad" while the same comment wouldn't be made about the male. One fan replied
the the man would be treated differently "because he was painted pink."
The otaku culture panel saw a bunch of new fans talk about how they gradually
discovered anime, usually when they were 10-12 years old, and grew into fandom.
What struck the author about the panel was that most of its participants
and audience were under 20 years old, and most of the audience had never
before attended an anime convention.
The author hopes that the Big Apple's long lines didn't turn off the new
fans. Remember the video from the big power blackout that showed all the
people trying to walk home or catch a ferry across the Hudson River? That's
what the inside of the Marriott looked like at the convention's busiest hours,
especially with fans trying to get into the dealers' room.
Around 4,000 people attended Big Apple's first day on Friday, and most of
them headed to the dealers' room. That attendance was more for the first
day of the 2003 event than had been on hand for the opening day of the combined
Anime Expo New York and Big Apple Anime Fest in 2002 (which was on a Saturday).
It was an attendance success that stuffed the Marriott's halls to something not
quite as bad as the previous April's Anime Boston. The crowd did overload
some areas of the hotel for several hours, including the dealers' room.
So, from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, the convention "closed" the fifth
floor where the dealers' room was located. Those who managed to get into
the long, winding dealers' room line had even longer waits to get inside. With New York's
Bravest (the fire department) likely keeping track of the crowd, the convention
didn't have much choice but to limit access to the dealers' room.
The hanging out that is part of a convention also was controlled more tightly
than usual because of the hotel's corridors, which were fine for business
gatherings but not wide enough to hold convention crowds.
While the Big Apple event had thousands of fans, the proportion of costumers
among those fans was lower than at most conventions. The author will guess
that from six to eight times as many people attended the New York convention
as went to the previous weekend's AnimeIowa, but there were no more costumers
in Manhattan than at Cedar Rapids. That's probably for two reasons; the expense
of attending turns the Big Apple event into a commuter con where a lot of
people have to carry their costumes to the hotel, Comiket-style; and a lot
of the East Coast cosplay regulars chose instead to go to DragonCon in Atlanta.
With the big jump in attendance from 2002 to 2003, the Big Apple organizers are going to have
some challenges planning for what could be an even larger crowd for the Labor
Day weekend of 2004. Only a few meeting rooms went unused in 2003; the conventions
may have to consider putting them into action in 2004. And eventually, they'll
have to look for a place with more space, which won't be easy because of
the expense of staging anything in New York.
There could have been better ways of using the existing space at the Marriott
Marquis. The dealers' room setup for 2002 was the same for 2003, which saw
some of that fifth-floor space used for panel and video rooms. The author
will guess that those panels and video showing could have been placed in
other rooms and the dealers' area expanded to that entire section of the
hotel.
Then there was the Saturday afternoon English-language voice actors' panel.
It was placed in one of the smallest rooms used by the convention, and drew
so many fans that some people weren't able to get inside after waiting in
yet another long line. Perhaps the convention organizers didn't expect that
kind of crowd for voice actors since the 2002 version of that panel left
a larger room half-full, and maybe they took too seriously the kind of fans
who swear they don't like dubs. In any case, a larger room for the voice
actors would have been useful and prudent.
The author can't say anything abut the anime film screening at the Virgin
Megastore's movie theaters because he didn't attend any of them. This site's
emphasis on panel discussions and cosplay pictures doesn't leave the author
the luxury of enough time to watch an entire feature.
The only New York disappointment of the weekend came when director Satoshi Kon didn't
show for his scheduled Saturday panel. The author really wanted to know what Kon thought about female fans dressing as Cham from Perfect Blue; wouldn't that be like cosplaying in Janet Leigh's office outfit from Psycho?
Just when the author wants to brag about his organization and preparation, trips such as this one happen.
The author wasn't sure until the morning before the convention
that he was going to make the trip. He didn't make the hotel
and flight reservations until 24 hours before he arrived in New York. And
it still worked out, mostly because both flight and room were fairly affordable (we won't use the word "cheap").
Usually, discount fares last until two weeks before the flight. In the week
before a flight, the "walk-up" fare, aimed at business people who make last-second
decisions travel, is two or three times the advance discount fare. Had that
been the case, the author would have stayed at home (he didn't have the funds
for the plane ticket until the last minute). But for once, the discount fares
stayed at a discount until Thursday for a Friday flight. The author's trusty
travel agent (yes, they still exist and do a good job) guessed that the Labor
Day weekend wasn't a big flying weekend, so the airlines kept the fares
low.
Also, rather than spend a lot of money at the Marriott Marquis, the author
found a cheaper Super 8 motel a few blocks from the convention and walked
over.
The author's cheap indecision did cost fans of this site a chance to see
the Big Apple costume contest. Since it's on a Monday holiday weekend, the
contest is on a Sunday, and the author didn't get a chance to take Sunday
off from the job that pays the travel bills. Usually, anime conventions have
their costume contests on Saturday nights. So, you'll have to do without
costume contest pictures on this site for once.
And the author's late airline ticket purchase cost him some extra time at
the security checkpoint. It's no secret that last-minute ticket buyers get
extra attention, based on the assumption that someone with bad intentions
is going to wait until late to book a flight. So the author got to sit at
the checkpoint, shoes off, watching two Transportation Security Agency workers
sort through his stuff, trying to make sense of the batteries, lenses and
memory cards in the bag.
Considering what had happened in New York two years earlier, the added security
doesn't come as a surprise - and it gets tighter every time. As the author
waited for his flight, an airport police officer and a substance-sniffing
dog strolled down the concourse. Fortunately, the dog only paused at the
author's bags before heading in another direction.
Recall the author's childish, arrogant brags about being able to check weather
radar through wireless internet cell phone access on an airliner? That arrogance
evaporated in midtown Manhattan when the author got lost when trying to walk
back to his hotel, two blocks away from the Marriott. All of the overconfidence
plummeted when the author realized that his vaunted dead reckoning sense
was worthless when night fell in New York.
Fortunately, the author regained his bearings and found the Super 8, which
hadn't moved an inch since he had last been there, seven hours earlier. What
followed nearly got the author confused again: riding down Sixth Avenue were
thousands of bicyclists, shouting at motorized traffic as if they were protesting
against the tyranny of cars in Manhattan. Makes sense for a moment - Manhattan
Island remains one of the nation's worst places to drive - but a car ban would
make it hard for the author to get to anime conventions.
One week earlier, the author splurged on a excellent seafood buffet in Cedar
Rapids. So what does he eat in one of the world's great culinary centers?
He heads to the Burger King next door to the Super 8.
Making up for that decision, on Saturday night the author found a seafood
buffet at the Marriott and filled a plate with beef, chicken and fish. That
buffet cost only five dollars more than the previous weekend's Iowa meal,
and a friend said "That's reasonable for New York."
At least the TV was free in the author's Super 8 room, where the author glanced at a Yankees-Red Sox game in which Aaron Boone
drove in three runs for New York. A month earlier, when the author drove
to Cincinnati for Ikasucon, Boone was playing for the Reds.
This convention came as people gathered to commemorate one of the great moments
of the 20th century, the 1963 March on Washington, highlighted by Martin
Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. That march wasn't the ultimate moment
in the postwar civil rights story, but it's come to symbolize a huge change
in American culture. The march, the civil rights act that Congress passed
the following year, and a thousand more reforms large and small changed the
U.S. for the better. The sacrifices of the grand people of that era - Bayard
Rustin, Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer and countless others - created a society
that made the growth of anime conventions possible.
There would have been no way for conventions to grow in the Jim Crow era.
Attitudes hadn't developed that would have let Americans celebrate Japanese
popular culture. As the repressive attitudes declined, a new generation was
raised that was ready for Japanese animation, right as Japan was producing
some compelling, challenging films. The people born at the time of the March
on Washington came of age at the same time that Star Blazers and Robotech first reached American TV, a conjunction that led to the rise of fandom and the remarkable 50 U.S. anime conventions in 2003.
Can
it really be two conventions on two consecutive weekends, three conventions
in August and five events in the last six weekends for the author? Damn.
Think of how busy he would have been if he had real money to spend.
Around 4,000 people attended Big Apple's first day on Friday, and most of
them headed to the dealers' room. That attendance was more for the first
day of the 2003 event than had been on hand for the opening day of the combined
Anime Expo New York and Big Apple Anime Fest in 2002 (which was on a Saturday).
It was an attendance success that stuffed the Marriott's halls to something not
quite as bad as the previous April's Anime Boston. The crowd did overload
some areas of the hotel for several hours, including the dealers' room.
