Last year, there wasn’t much of a Power Ranger presence, but this year was another story. Jason David Frank made an appearance at the con signing autographs and the Tamashii Nations booth had all types of Power Ranger-y goodness.

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting any Power Ranger-y events at SpringFestNY 2012. It’s a free, anime convention ran by the anime club at Polytechnic Institute of NYU in Brooklyn, NY. No offense, I had low expectations. I was somewhat surprised.

The morning was a bit slow. There were attendees there, but it’s as if everyone wasn’t thinking about showing up until noon. For a one-day convention on a Saturday, that surprised me. But then I remembered that I’m in New York. We get up when we feel like it!

So for a Power Ranger fan, the start of the day was really dry. Why did I go again? Geek cons are a rare breed in New York City. Everyone thinks we’re the hub for everything and anything, but geek conventions are slim. I’m not talking about your occasional club here or meetup there. I’m talking straight-up convention. So if there’s are con here, I try to support them as much as possible. Unfortunately for me, my support was running low midway until my friend and companion for the weekend Shana started talking to people. Then I talked to people. And that’s when it clicked.

We both had a lot of postcards to promote No Pink Spandex Live 2012 (with guest Jason David Frank), so that became the ice-breaker. There are a lot of Power Ranger fans. A lot. One girl literally squealed with joy when we mentioned NPS Live to her. We had another conversation with two vendors about good-looking Power Ranger men.

Seeing a Power Ranger cosplayer made my day! It’s an anime convention and he could have cosplayed as anything else, but chose the Black Ranger. Thank the Lord Jesus!

Then at 3:30pm, there was a Tokusatsu panel. Shana had never seen a lick of Sentai, so this was conversion time! And if anyone knows me well, it’s really weird coming from me to covert someone into a Sentai viewer. She’s lucky Go-Busters is awesome, lol!

The panel itself was rough. Again, I like to support my fellow brothers in Toku but I have to keep it real. It was hard to get through. The guys did show excerpts from Kamen Rider and Sentai, so that helped a lot. And the great ending to this story is that Shana is gonna check out Go-Busters. That’s all I needed to hear!

After the panel, we did talk with the guys and it was just good to talk with Power Ranger fans. That’s what made this convention for me. I didn’t need a guest or any event to enjoy myself. All I did was talk with people with like interests and had a good time. That’s my advice to you at conventions: Go out and talk to people. And carry an ice-breaker!

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.

- Peta Rutter (Udonna from Power Rangers Mystic Force) passed away July 2010 from a brain tumor. Our condolences to her family.

- Saban Brands, Nickelodeon, and Power Rangers were in full force at San Diego Comic-Con July 2010. Not only were there Rangers in costume, but Adelaide Kane (Tenaya 7 from Power Rangers RPM) was in costume…as Wonder Woman. Awesome, but dressing up as Tenaya 7 would be awesomer!

- John Green from GrnRngr.com interviewed Dan Evans, producer in charge of Disney’s MMPR “reversioning”. He talks about the process and why certain choices were made. Also, Evans is now at Nickelodeon.

More to come of the Summer News Round Up, because there are just some things that need their own time to shine. Trust me!

[youtube width="480" height="295"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za3HGpsZxTc[/youtube]