Alright then, today is the first day of AnimeNYC, the main reason why I made this trip and in particular to attend the Hololive Suisei concert in the evening. However, this day felt extremely long and tiring but at the end of it, it all paid off and I had a great time and brought some merch that I wanted and participated in a great Hololive concert, let’s see how today went down.
My plan for today was to go and pick up my badges because for international visitors they didn’t mail them which is a pain so I had to go and get the shit. I walked to the Javits convention center and they had some booths outside for pickup, it went smoothly and I got all my badges, all individual passes for the day. Noice.
Here I am showing my three separate badges for each day because they didn’t have three day passes sold out when I went to buy which is such a pain and cost more, probably intentionally. I could have just left and did some other shit for the morning as the convention didn’t start on Friday until 2pm. But. I was retarded and went with the flow. Fully knowing that, I still waited in line to get inside the building because it said in a email that if I had tickets to the hololive concert I needed to get a wristband for the evening and I could do that when they open the main doors for queue line at 8am. They didn’t open the door until like 10am. Motherfuckers. I was waiting there for over an hour. When they did let people inside, they had a small booth for you to get your wristband but since you paid for it it already in advance, there was no reason to line up in queue, you could have just got it later. The rest of the people in line, a very large amount were guided to another large waiting hall, to yes, wait in line to get into the main hall except with washrooms and not in the cold. wtf? I asked one of the volunteers if there was any incentive to wait for basically 4 hours until the con actually opened/started and she said not really, other than to maybe get merch quicker. Fuck that man lol and I made my way out back outside trying to figure out what I can do to salvage what was largely a wasted morning.
By the time I fully got outside of the convention center it was just past 11am and I thought it was going to be a long day, might wanna get something to eat now or never. So I opened up google map and searched for the closest Shake Shack and found it in a fancy expensive shopping building called the Hudson Yards. The mall was filled with brand name designer shit and Rolex watch bling bling shit and it took awhile but I found it on the fifth/fourth floor (can’t remember), the Shake Shack that was desired.
Aw yea boi, my nice expensive lunch of double smash burger and cheese bacon fries to some more expensive than usual sugar cane rootbeer. Tastes just like I remembered it when I tried it in LA via Uber eats. Tastes even better fresh in a sit down environment. Good shit would highly recommend.
The shopping complex was fully decked out already in Christmas decorations and they also built some kind of installation building outside in the center right beside it. Looks like something for the future. Wow.
Behold this crazy ass mad lad insanity art project/building/installation/sculpture. I think it was destiny that I ended up here eventually, the name of this marvel? “The Vessel”. Oh shitttt lol.
I tried taking lots of selfies both inside and outside of “The Vessel” but they were all kinda meh. Just taking photos of it from outside and inside of it are really cool man. Worth it just for the insanity. At this point it was past noon and for a mid Nov it was so damn hot man, like 20 degrees wtf and I was dying from all the standing and walking around in the morning. I had enough of “The Vessel” and went back to my hotel, which is like a 20 min walk from here but because it was so hot and my feet hurt, it was almost torture. When I got back to my hotel I just rested for like another hour or so which really helped my stamina and when made my way back again to the convention center. shit.
When I arrived back in the convention center it was like 2:30-ish they were still letting people in. I no joke didn’t give a shit and just cut in line and entered the building via the fastest route possible even tho there was a queue, it doesn’t really matter because once you get in there are like multiple entrances to the main hall which take time to get to anyways. Baller.
A few steps into the main hall and the hololive booth was just right there as well as Omocat, the main partner that sells hololive.
As you can imagine, I got in line for merch, which was a very long line. I wasn’t even in the official line and was part of the unofficial line for quite some time. At least they had some nice stuff on display in the hololive booth to look at like YAGOO and Achan cutouts.
They also had a big screen in front with hololive/holostars members doing live streams with the guests in the audience of the booth. Here is holostars Hakka doing some singing shit. Not bad, great way for live fan interaction as they had mics and cameras to see people as well. I mean, this is just on the side. For Anime Toronto, this kind of content was literally it’s own panel/event lol. Jokes.
One guy in line was loosing his mind or something and was giving out free hololive Weiss Swartz cards. “Name a hololive member and I’ll give you their card. Just not Sana, even I don’t have Sana.” Apparently this guy had way too many dupes to do anything about and was just giving them away to fans also waiting in line for merch. What a mad lad god. He must have pulled and brought at least 3 or 4 box sets or some shit to have this many. Noice.
All of the usual sizes for Suisei merch were gone already and even within 20 minutes of me getting in line I heard that the Suisei jacket was already sold out. Lest to say, I think I was here for almost 2 hours, damn, while pretty bad, I wanted to get this merch out of the way before it might be sold out later. At least there was good entertainment on the side like Hakka and Gura/Kiara doing some live quiz game with the audience. After I got my merch I went to the Gundam Witch from Mercury panel that has the main voice actors there. It was pretty good and they did some live script readings. I forgot to take any photos because it wasn’t allowed but ah well. I was there for just under another hour.
After I got my merch and after the Gundam panel I went to get a wristband for the autograph session that I won via online lottery, one of several in fact. This one was for the director and character designer of Lycoris Recoil, Shingo Adachi (director), Imigimuru (character designer). It’s kind of a pain in the ass but whatever. I was informed that I wasn’t allowed to get my Shikishi signed as they only allowed items brought from the Aniplex Lycoris Recoil store, a postcard they gave you or another poster to get signed. Damn. Ahwell. I had a nice conversation with two brothers who were behind me, it was apparently their first anime convention ever so they asked me how was it compared to other cons, and honestly I couldn’t give a good answer since the bulk of the day was just lining up and waiting for merch but I said “this is so far pretty good, quite good in fact.” Not as big in scale as AX in LA but a league above any of the shit we have in Canada, at least in Toronto.” Tru dat. Their wish was to one day go to a big convention that has these influences that they follow and get their autographs, then asked me if I’ve ever heard of “Trash Taste”. lol oh boi.
After about a half hour wait I got to meet the director and character designer of Lycoris Recoil and got this nice poster signed, it’s not really a poster but just a bit bigger than standard printer paper which is ok by me. I told the director that his show was the best original anime of last year in my book and via the translator he looked so pleased and happy, making a smile and tearful gesture of joy saying back to me that it really makes him happy to hear that because it helps motivate him to continue and make more anime. Noice. I told the character designer his designs were great and both girls were cute, via translator he then thanked me and said that it was his first time doing character designs for an original anime and it was really difficult for him so hearing that people like his work assures him that he’s doing a good job. Noice. At the end of the day, everyone just wants to be praised; so I did just that. Good work boiz, likes make Season 2 happen or at least a movie you know and don’t fuck it up.
In between time before the main event, the Suisei Hololive concert I ended up lining to buy official Anime NYC merch as the line had gotten alot smaller than before. Even still I was cutting it close man, by the time I got served and brought my merch there was only like 15 minutes left before the concert. After I got my stuff I went to the main event hall to get inside which is kinda a bit far away. Noice.
As I was a “Silver” ticket holder I just showed my wristband and they automatically let me through the general entry line, all the vips and gold were already seated so yea. it was fully packed with no seats in between people. I manged to find a decent spot at the center edge and was ok with that. Took out my penlights from the past and got ready to be a temp hypling.
Ready to roll. lol.
Overall the concert was great, just lasting about an hour it was still great to see Suisei perform and sing her songs with Cali joining for a couple songs as well. She tried to speak English and it was honestly not bad, a bit broken but better than most Hololive JP members. Good shit and very hype high energy concert with attendees having lots of blue glowsticks and such. Gud shit.
After the concert everyone made their way out. The building of the Javits center is actually pretty cool to look at in the night.
Damn tired and in no mood for exploration, I wanted to get any food possible and call it a day. Luckily I had just had Vito’s pizza yesterday and they were still open and so close on the way back to my hotel. It was pretty busy with lots of others thinking the same thing. Must be making a killing on those pies.
This time I got three slices, margarita, “upside down” square slice and the pepperoni again because they didn’t have any other slices at the time of selection, they were constantly making new ones but not the right time for me I guess. All were pretty tasty just like yesterday, would have again. Now I understand that the best pizza place is the one that is closest to you, in times like these you know you got a slice that you can count on. Good shit again.
Man, I am tired so I dont’ know if I have any thoughts more for today other than it was rough and wasteful in the morning but I managed to bring it back in the ladder half buy doing and getting everything that I had planned, the merch from hololive, AnimeNYC, autograph, Gundam Panel and topping it off with the Suisei concert. Shit was good and productive. Mission accomplished.
Hope everything goes well for me on Saturday but with most of my merch missions largely done, I should be ale to stroll more casually and actually look at other booths and start artists alley, I didn’t’ even go to like 80% of the entire main hall today lol, just lining up for shit. Let’s see how things go.