Anime NYC 2024 Gallery & Writeup Part 1

Anime NYC returned to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City for its seventh annual convention on August 23-25, 2024. According to an email from the convention, over 101,000 people were in attendance this year, as the convention expanded to using the full main building of the Javits, utilizing everything other than the recent addition of the North building.

I’ll touch upon these big changes, as well as some others in this article, but I’ll get more into detail on that in my second article on Anime NYC. For now, let’s take a look at some of the features and attractions that brought in six-digit attendance to the convention this year.

Anime NYC’s website describes the convention as “A showcase of the best of Japanese pop culture in the biggest city in America,” bringing “anime fans and publishers together for three days of unique exhibits, exclusive screenings, extensive panels, and appearances by some of the biggest creators in Japan.” The convention welcomed numerous voice actors, producers, composers, and other industry guests to meet and greet fans for photo ops and autographs. A few of those in attendance this year included the cast of Critical Role, Chiwa Saito, Daigo Ikeda, Kazuki Uejima, Sayuri Date, Minami Tanaka, Bryce Papenbrook, Steve Blum, and Anjali Bhimani, among many others.

The dealer’s room and artist alley took up the lion’s share of the 3rd floor of the Javits Center this year, as both were located together in the expo halls on that level. Attendees could browse an enormous amount of art, apparel, games, figures, plushies, trading cards, and collectibles of many kinds in this area.

Also located on the 3rd floor was the “Japanese Food Hall,” where attendees could purchase authentic Japanese foods, similar to what you might find on the streets of Tokyo. The food court on the lower level of the Javits was also open during the convention. The lines for the booths in the Japanese Food Hall were a bit long at times, but I found the lines for the food court to be very short. Some attendees mentioned that they thought the food court was closed during the convention. I believe this may be because some of the stalls closed an hour or two before the end of the convention hours each day.

The gaming hall on the first floor of the venue was a popular destination for attendees. This area was open until 10:00 p.m. on the first two nights of the convention, so guests could get their gaming on for several hours after the exhibit halls closed for the night.

Arcade cabinets in this area were provided by Psychic Drive, which included games such as Taiko no Tatsujin, StepManiaX, Dance Dance Revolution Extreme, Dance Maniax, Initial D Arcade Stage 8 Infinity, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Capcom vs. SNK 2, Puzzle Bobble 3, Windjammers and more. Console gaming was provided by Defend the North, with titles including Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Mortal Kombat 1, and Guilty Gear Strive, among many others.

Level 4 of the Javits, also known as the River Pavilion, was home to “Destination Cosplay,” presented by HIDIVE with the currently airing anime 2.5 Dimensional Seduction. Cosplay meetups, which were held in the Crystal Palace last year, were moved to this area for this year’s convention. These meetups were held for almost the entire duration of the convention, as over 50 of them were held throughout the three-day event.

Anime NYC also hosted a number of cosplay guests to hold meet and greets in this area. Mangoloo Cosplays, Nicoolinn, Philip Odango, and VantaCreates were a few of the talented cosplay creators in attendance this year.

There were also several beautiful themed sets located in Destination Cosplay, which were provided by candiiland_by_abicandi. The overwhelming majority of photos in both of my photo galleries were taken in front of these sets, so I have to give them a big personal thanks for their services.

One of the biggest highlights of Anime NYC 2024 was the hololive STAGE World Tour ’24 -Soar!- concert, which I should mention was a separately ticketed event. The concert featured VTubers including Kobo Kanaeru, Moona Hoshinova, Ninomae Ina’nis, Hakos Baelz, Takanashi Kiara, AZKi, and Tsunomaki Watame.

Dozens of panels were held throughout the convention on the first level of the venue, covering topics including anime, manga, cosplay, gaming, and more.

As I mentioned earlier in the article, the move to summer dates and expansion of the convention were among a number of big changes that came to Anime NYC this year. Stay tuned for my next article, where I’ll go into detail about these changes and others, and discuss the feedback attendees had regarding them.

Cosplayers in this first of two galleries and writeups include zephiween, raindbell, electric_meow_, magik8cosplay, abicandi, samkuso.cos, sandaesandstorm, chula_spice, mangopostalservice, grrracexface, christinawinnie, iam_lordk3vin, d1gital.d0ll_, jandoras_box_boutique, tasiajanee_, sugarcoatedkiss, infinite_tsukuyami, mymelocosplay, cozypeonies, and many more.

We now use Smugmug to present cosplay photo galleries and will post all photos there, with a link to each gallery in its own gallery article. This will allow us to give you higher resolution images to download — still for free.

To view the entire gallery, just click on the image below. If you are pictured in any of our galleries, feel free to download the images and use them non-commercially on social media, with appropriate credit.

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