Alright then, today is the first day of AnimeNYC, today is the reason why I came to New York in the first place; the Hololive Soar world tour concert in the evening. Let’s see how today went and how AnimeNYC being moved up earlier to Aug in summer rather than being a Fall convention impacts the overall feel and attendance of this event compared to last year.

Getting up pretty early like at 7am because I have shit to do and eat. Nice view for the city and the Empire State building in this bright morning indeed.

On the way to the Javits center there is a Russ and Daughters, a famous chain of Jewish delicatessens that primarily deal with smoked salmon and other smoked fish and other deli fare. Their bagels are not made in house, they are primarily a smoked fish and meat place. You can tell from the people that most are going to the con.

I didn’t know there was so many differnt kinds of smoked salmon and fish. I think the one that I heard from youtube reviewers as the most solid base is the Gaspe Nova; not sure why it’s called that. Maybe it’s from Nova Scotia?

I order a classic bagel and lox with cream cheese and a coffee. They ask you if what kind of cream cheese and if you want capers, onions or tomato, bagel type. I opted for everything bagel with scallion cream cheese and tomato. The classic has the Gaspe Nova smoked salmon and the sandwich itself cost like $17 before tax. Add the coffee and tax and this is over $23. Overall I would say that the smoked salmon is pretty damn good, one of the better ones I’ve had, perhaps the best if not up there I’d say. The bagel is just mid, not that great since they don’t make them there. The quality is good for the smoked salmon, just wish there was a little bit more. I would say to try this place once for the smoked salmon, although it is on the pricier side of bagel and lox fare.

After my breakfast I head to the convention center, peeps on the way there.

I pick up my remaining two badges that I need for the convention, Friday today and Sunday. Man, I really wish I just brought the 3 day pass way back when. The total cost in badges is like over 3 times the amount had I just brought the 3 day pass when it was available, which wasn’t long at all, maybe a day or two? Maybe hours? I can’t remember before being sold out online as well. Ah-well, brute force money trick I did here to get to the convention.

Lining up to get in. The time right now is like 9am something. The con opens at 11am today. I waited all this time, like 2 hours man fuck lol. At least I sat down for half that time but still, I want to be in early so I can buy shit first quicker. The price to pay I suppose.

Some hololive fan in the other row saw that I was wearing my Suisei shirt and just gave me this. Said it was extra merch he had, I said thank you and yea, that was it. Hey, free merch from a fellow fan, can’t hurt to know, noice.

A number of people had these stool things sitting on. Are they collapsible or what? If they are then damn, that is pretty useful. Might look into it one day.

After a long as wait, we finally get inside and the con opens. Of course just like last year the main hololive booth is in the entrance, noice.

Annddd I am in line again at the hololive booth. Waiting to get free nice looking bags and sticker shit, granted you follow them on twitter or something, which I did. Nice happi and suisei plushie, nice cali cosplay too.

The big screen at the booth has noone there now but there will be once they start having talent streams on there later today.

For some reason, so many yuri manga and shows kinda start like this green sign/title. lol jokes.

After waiting for roughly an hour I got my free bag and sticker, noice. Hololive EN is starting a new project, called enigmatic recollection. I have no idea what it is, it might be a game or some other program/song but all EN talents are involved, interesting designs and clothes. Hmm.

And now to get into line at Omocat for another hour or so to get some of their official concert merch since they partnered up with Hololive again like last year and other events.

The main art for the world tour is by the omocat artist, noice. Looks good.

After I got my omocat merch and purchases, the ID talents opened today’s live programing with a on floor karaoke singing and chat, good shit.

I more or less stayed for the rest of the hour for their time-slot, which was already half an hour in. Good shit and fans.

Goodsmile booth with interesting name and branding, like a candy store maybe.

For a second i thought this was hololive but it’s not. Guess Bandai namco can’t escape from trying their own vtuber idol thing too maybe. At least that’s what it seems to me.

So sad, Love Live is a shadow of it’s former self. No one chilling here or stuff to give out for free. Even though they have love live guests at the con.

Aniplex doing it’s thing selling overpriced basic ass merch and pumping FGO and now Tsukihime now and Mashle.

Official AnimeNYC merch store quite busy, would come back to this later on to get an official Hololive pen light.

I think some VR shit about gil and archer doing fighting shit in 3d, a decent line for the experience, might try on Sunday.

Nice wall art for Tsukihime, line is for VR experience I think.

By the time I found and got to Ohmonah, they were sold out of the shark bag that my sister requested to buy her. Ah-well, can’t win them all. I didn’t think this would sell out, apparently it did on the first day. Wow.

Wow, they have official breaking dimensions concert merch too. Some already sold out and only online selling. Damn, it’s only been a few hours and sold out already? Damn.

Went outside the main hall to go above, where I tried to get into the Sawano concert last year to check what’s there now. Nice view of inside the con.

Apparently a lot of spaces are directly sponsored/brought by Ito En, this green tea drink beverage company from Japan. Just for display tho, machine doesn’t actually work, too bad.

Looking down from the space, wow, lots of artists booth and stuff in general in the main hall. This is specifically overlooking the artists alley area, which has expanded considerably over last year.

The place above is now some kind of cosplay meetup space where people also fix/change into their big cosplay or fix them. Kind of waste of space to me but sure, it’s a cosplay space now.

At this time it was almost 3pm, I was getting hungry so choose the nearly food I can get quick. Looks like today is gonna but chicken tendies and waffle fries lol.

Honestly, for $16 this is not bad, the amount is quite large. The coke is massively overpriced at $6, just for a fountain drink with no straw. The chicken was well, white meat tendies and alright, not greasy but at the same time, not exactly tender, kind of dry and over battered hard. Fries were alright. They should have come with like a dip or bbq sauce but no, you just get either ketchup or mayo from the self serve dispenser. I ended eating about 80% of this plate before I got tired of it and dumped it. I mean, it’s not great food, but it’s good enough to fill you up for the rest of the day.

I still needed to get my wristband for tonights concert so I made my way to the same waiting area in the morning to pick it up, which has been converted to check tickets and wristbands now, heh, not exactly the most efficient means but it works.

Wow, what do you have here? Official English Gashapon? Oh shit, looks like they might be expanding Japan Gashpon proper into America and elsewhere, maybe no more bootleg china bullshit copies.

Nice hair bro. It’s quite busy here understandably and the machines all have English labels and translated titles Cool. They don’t accept coins tho, just tokens shaped like 100 yen coins.

You exchange your bills or tap your credit card to get tokens, just like in Japan machines. But well, instead of 100 yen coins, it’s just tokens that look like this, which have no cash value, just for gashapon machines.

And just like Japan machines, some machines cost more tokens than others, some just 2 tokens, other up to 4, wow like this Hololive Pekora  one.

Bushiroad showing off their hololive weiss swartz new decks featuring hololive summer swimsuit art, noice. This is a Hololive convention after all.

Oh they gonna have Frieren too, nice.

After doing a very bad job of exploring the area, I needed a rest so sat down. I also picked up the Hololive tour pen light when the line was smaller and a few other things too. Noice.

The vendors and artists are like right besides each other, so I saw some artists too. This one I think I saw at evo, but they also have these pockets and small plushies now too. Cool.

 

Hello Initial D man’s friend from Canada. Nice to see you again still alive.

For a Friday, it was very busy, too busy in my opinion. I couldn’t even look at the artist area yet since the rows are too narrow. Will try again tomorrow, but it’ll probably be even worse.

Damn, ebi hats hot. Not bad, thought about it lol.

Kinokuniya, which I was at yesterday also has event con only merch from hololive Meet, their collab con line of merch each year featuring different talents. Maybe I will get a bae and kobo stand.

If there was any left of Bae or Kobo. Damn, all Bae and Kobo stuff specific for the con were gone. I kinda can’t believe it lol.

Crowd grows in waiting for the last llive hololive program of today.

The Sad Girls Company, Phase Connect is also here, with a small booth with vtuber talents speaking to people. This particular one was doing a karaoke session, she was singing the Attack on Titan original OP, not bad. Small crowd but you do what you gotta do you know to grow.

Gfuel booth. I was hoping they had free samples or shit but not when I came. I guess tomorrow they will give out more stuff, try again.

M.Rage, not too busy right now unlike at EVO. Honestly, they might not do so well in this con, it’s a hololive convention after all. Maybe they will make some vtuber merch too, granted they can get the license and permission from Cover for a collab.

For some reason the US Marines booth is not bad looking, why red tho?

FAKKU booth, pretty small, like last year, no skateboards or such. I guess their main shit is at AX.

J18, another popular adult manga publisher that is getting bigger, in direct competition with FAKKU for artists rights and permissions for offical English versions.

The last event of today was a karaoke stream by Nenechi, not bad, pretty good shit lol. Nice and hype glowsticks. I brought mine out too for the hell of it.

Mint is American I guess, there was quite a few American flags with vtubers on them, like Gigi and Neressa of Hololive. I guess they are just so American, makes the fans so proud I guess, same for Mint too I guess even as an Indie now.

After super Nenechi at the hololive booth I had like time to kill before the concert so went back to my hotel for some much needed rest. Nice folks bringing back some pizza for dinner I guess.

I rested for roughly 45min-1hour, it’s not alot but it helps. It takes roughly 15 minutes to walk back to my hotel from the convention space so yea, half hour gone there. Wanted to go sooner to line up for a better spot in the concert. So left again at like 7:45pm. The concert is at 9pm, and they start letting people in depending on tiers at like 8:30pm.

While people are leaving, I am coming back lol.

Nikke is really popular with that nice gun girl booty and ass shaking. So big they even got EVA collab. Pretty nice art of the eva girls too.

Proof of existence, waiting in line as a silver tier concert goer.

Folks with silver or gold tier going in. Gotta raise your hand for the peeps or else the popo gonna get you.

In my seat, not bad seat but honestly, hardly any difference from gold or even bronze general. There was a few late gold people coming in and the front was kind of empty until the concert actually started.

Proof of existence, waiting edition, just behind bronze tier, which is basically the same view at least close to silver me.

The concert is over now and people are allowed to take photos and such. They are very loud and strict saying no videos or cameras during the concert. If you are caught with your phone out, you will be escorted out as it will be assumed you are recording or taking photos. I saw a few gold guys get escorted because they couldn’t contain themselves near the end, like 80% way through the concert, too bad.

Proof of concert attendance, pen light holding edition. Overall this concert was pretty good, good songs and good members selected for this tour. It really shows the talents off Bae and Kiara, in particular their dancing ability which is top notch as well as Watame and Azaki’s singing. Would do it again, but I wished there were more talents in the show. I suppose that’s why Breaking Dimensions concert exists on Sat and Sun as a separate event outside of animeNYC, that’s the real true Holo EN concert with everyone in it, not just 7 featured here, ah well. Good shit still.

Nice Bijou happi, maybe I should get one.

Oh shit this crew of friends. Someone got ruined, the one with Pomu hapi, who is now indie as Mint since she left Nijisanji while the other two friends have Bae and Suisei hapi. Jokes and sad.

Late night dinner pickup, good old Vitos pizza near my hotel once again.

It’s just past 11pm and still open, good shit. They are not exactly cheap pizza and their slices are much more expensive but quality is very high.

Just like before in my first NYC trip, brought a few slices and took it back to my hotel room to eat. Good crispy shit. Got sausage and onion, pepperoni and grandma slice. Good shit, probably the best slices near the hotel but costly.

Go to convention for Hololive, got back to hotel and watch more Hololive talents streams, even JP talents play FF8. Good shit while eating pizza.

And that ends my day, man I am dead tired even writing this. Gotta start Saturday sleep so yea, good successful merch buying today and great concert attendance success. My main goal for this trip is already done, mission accomplished, everything else from here is bonus. Let’s see how tomorrow goes.