AnimeNEXT 2019 Friday Cosplay Gallery by Adam Etheridge
AnimeNEXT returned to the Atlantic City Convention Center on the second weekend of June again this year, for its 18th edition of the convention and 4th year in Atlantic City, NJ. The long-running convention, which was previously held at the Meadowlands Exposition Center and the Garden State Exhibit Center (which is no longer in operation), has drawn thousands of fans of anime, manga, cosplay, and Japanese and pop culture over the years.
The Atlantic City Convention Center is one of the largest venues of its kind in the Mid-Atlantic, boasting nearly 500,000 contiguous square feet of exhibit space, and 45 meeting rooms with an additional 109,000 square feet. This amount of space has proved to be more than sufficient for the number of fans and exhibitors that have attended AnimeNEXT at the venue over the past four years, and ensures there will be ample room for many more attendees, should the convention see a spike in attendance in the future.
Fans traveling to the convention have a number of options on how to get there. The Atlantic City Convention Center is located within a few hours’ drive of nearly one third of the nation’s population, and has a large parking lot at the venue. The NJ Transit Rail Terminal, which connects Atlantic City to Philadelphia, is conveniently located within the convention center. AnimeNEXT also provides a Jitney service which runs between the convention center and a number of hotels in the city.
Plenty of content
As always, AnimeNEXT featured a large number of panels with a wide variety of topics over the course of its three-day convention this year. These panels covered interests including anime, manga, movies, fashion, cosplay, and much more. Panels and events ran all the way up until around 1 a.m. on the first two days of the convention, which included some 18+ content during the late night hours. This included the always popular Cosplay Burlesque show, which featured a Kingdom Hearts themed performance this year.
AnimeNEXT also hosted a number of voice actors for fans to meet and greet during the show. Josh Grelle, Max Mittelman, Richard Epcar, and Lex Lang were among those in attendance at the event this year.
The convention also featured a large gaming room, with dozens of arcade cabinets courtesy of Tokyo Attack. Gamers looking to test their skills against others could join in one of the numerous tournaments hosted by the United Gaming League, which featured popular fighting games including Street Fighter V, Mortal Kombat 11, Dragon Ball FighterZ, Soulcalibur VI, and Tekken 7.
Other attractions and events held over the course of the convention included Cosplay Pro Wrestling, cosplay chess, a hall costume contest, and several concerts. AnimeNEXT also featured a large dealers room where attendees could browse and purchase a large variety of wares.
Last year the event organizers extended their contract with the convention center all the way up until 2022, so the show will continue to be held at the Atlantic City venue for at least the next three years. AnimeNEXT will return to the Atlantic City Convention Center June 12-14, 2020.
Cosplayers in this first of three galleries include Echo Chronum Cosplay, Hikaru Cosplay, Lyra Bird Cosplay, Flowithit Cosplay, AkaneSaotome, ManaKnight Cosplay, Lana rain, Minnie d’Moocha, sleepinginsakura, vyda_cos, dagger_starlight, hanveygabrielle, bootybrigade_cosplayandart, taiyoko.sen, doctorfunkbeat, sunnyday_life, typicalcyd, kay_san_cosplay, strawberrymilk.mia, ringartandanime, geecosplays, givemekashh, tinyfairycosplay, tymris, dankumemesu, vipcosplayproductions, 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.
