No Pink Spandex at New York Comic Con and New York Anime Festival

There weren’t any Power Ranger alumni at New York Comic Con and New York Anime Festival, but this is the time where we get to see how many geeks don their Power Ranger pride. Good news is that there were many! Bad news…well, we’ll get to that.

This year was the first time that NYCC and NYAF were at the same time at Jacob Javits Center. You could definitely tell. The days I went (Saturday and Sunday) were so packed that you could hardly walk. It got a bit better on Sunday in certain areas of the convention center, but not by much. The other flaw was that Anime Festival seemed like it was an afterthought. They had their own artist alley that was put off to the side. The “screening rooms” were a few flat screen televisions with some couches on a balcony. Great in principle, but you could hardly hear what was being played. And if you were looking for anime-related vendors, you’d have to go through the maze that was Comic Con because all the vendors were jammed on the show floor. The show floor definitely had designated areas for different categories, but anime seemed the most disorganized.

The mass exodus on Sunday the 16th.

I say all of this because anime cons have become a way to find Power Ranger- and Super Sentai-related things, and that was my hope. Comic Con is so broad that it’s harder to find our small niche. With anime cons, it’s a little easier. Admittedly, I’m not an anime fan, but at the same time I wouldn’t want a well-established convention get melded into another con. New York City doesn’t have many geek cons, so I wouldn’t want more disappearing, especially the types of cons that have made a little home for Power Rangers.

Now let’s get to the good stuff! Comic Con estimated 105,000 attendees for the weekend, and it sure felt like it! There were more Ranger cosplayers, Ranger and Sentai merch, and LOTS of people in Power Ranger shirts. I took pictures of the cosplayers I ran into (and sometimes ran after):

I will definitely recommend New York Comic Con if you want to see a geek spectacle. Hopefully, ReedPOP (the company who runs NYCC and NYAF) will separate both cons again, but I highly doubt it. Next year’s dates are already set at Jacob Javits, and I already predict pandemonium.

Browse Timeline

• « Patricia Ja Lee in Citi Card Commercial
• » Johnny Yong Bosch Filming “Rise and Fail”

Comments ( 3 )