Sadly New York Comic Con 2010 has come to an end — but what impressed me is that I think in the long term this may turn out to be the one show that can rival the San Diego Comic Con. Part of my evidence for this was the sheer scale of the number of quality cosplayers that could be spotted at the con. Here is our collection of our top 100 photos that we captured this past weekend:
I’ve got to say that I’m very impressed at how in a short amount of time that Reni Mimur has really perfected her Japanese maid show act — and has won over so many fans in the process. This year Reni returned to the New York Comic Con and I think what’s great is that this will give her an opportunity to win over non-anime fanboys while warming the hearts of the local otaku community. Read more…
Our fear that with New York Comic Con being kitbashed with the New York Anime Festival that the anime aspect of the show would be swallowed up by the comic book aspect of the show — however the high quality of anime cosplay and lolita fashionistas proved otherwise:
With the addition of the New York Anime Festival to the New York Comic Con non-anime cosplayers have been forced to step up their game to gain attention — and from the looks of these photos competition can be a very good thing!
New York Comic Con opened up today and this year since it’s been combined with the New York Anime Festival it’s bigger than ever. Here are a few shots from the showroom floor to give to a taste of the show:
Most studios are okay with just using ads and merchandising tie-ins to drum up publicity for their upcoming animated films, but not Dreamworks. No, they had something much bigger in mind to promote Megamind, Will Ferrell’s upcoming CG superhero movie: they wanted to break a world record. Specifically, the record for most superheroes gathered in a single place. And they did it! In Los Angeles’ Nokia Plaza, over 1501 people showed up in superhero garb, edging out the previous record gathering of 1500 costumed crimefighters. Let’s hope that the movie, out November 5th, is worth this kind of (admittedly awesome) publicity. Read more…
San Diego Comic-Con is the biggest event in geek culture, the Mecca toward which all self-respecting nerds point themselves once a year. But it almost became Los Angeles Comic-Con, or Anaheim Comic-Con, thanks to price gouging by local venues and hotels looking to capitalize on the 130,000 fans who flock to the area every year. Negotiations were fierce to cash in on the $150+ million dollars the event brings local tourism — Los Angeles reportedly offered the administrators convention space at no cost — but in the end, the con’s old home beat out all comers. Comic-Con will remain in San Diego, at least until 2015. Sorry, Anaheim — looks like you’ll have to lean on BlizzCon for another five years. Read more…
I love Calvin and Hobbes, and I’m sure by now you’ve probably seen every Calvin and Hobbes crossover your mind could dream up, but none of the ones I’ve seen to date have really felt as perfect as this illustration, and t-shirt by artist Chris Wahl. Not to imply that Chewbacca’s a devious prankster who takes pleasure in occasionally tormenting Han, at least, as far as I know, but they certainly share a friendship that only the two of them really understand. Either way, it’s easily one of the coolest crossover t-shirts I’ve seen in a long time. If you’re interested in picking one up, head over to Redbubble and order yours for a mere $22.
“Candy isn’t really a geek thing,” you might say in response to the video I am about to show you. But if you think of a nerd as someone who is obsessively knowledgeable about a topic then you can’t deny that what follows has got to be nerdcore, even if it’s about the history and awesomeness of chocolate and peanut butter combined rather than about, say, differential calculus or the extended adventures of Wesley Crusher.
And wouldn’t you know it, I’m all out of peanut butter cups? But I have this jar of Skippy and a bottle of Hershey’s chocolate sauce…
Gia Manry is a professional writer specializing in geek culture. She currently writes primarily for Anime News Network, but also likes being followed on Twitter. She can be contacted via her website.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 30, 2010 in Animation, Fandom
We wasted many hours trolling the net to find interesting and amusing anime inspired images so that you don’t have to! Most of these images were found via Twitter although the above screen shot is from this Japanese blog. My personal favorite is the parody below which makes fun of the typical charts that showcase what new anime shows we can expect to see in the new season: Read more…
Danny Choo’s latest book entitled Otacool 3: Worldwide Workspaces has hit the shelves in Japan. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept of Otacool, it’s a book that basically details an aspect of otaku culture. The first volume dealt with otaku rooms/living areas, while the second book dealt exclusively with cosplay. This third volume, currently available via J-List, deals with — you guessed it — otaku workspaces. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some pretty awesome workspaces — the book has plenty of them, and some of them are pretty impressive — but honestly, I fail to grasp the concept of a workspace, otaku or otherwise, being cool. Read more…
Any proper Star Wars geek (or Japanophile) knows Danny Choo, aka the Tokyo Stormtrooper. Choo famously shoots videos of himself in Stormtrooper attire dancing around Tokyo, including in geek-town Akihabara, on a Tokyo subway…you get the idea.
But now a few others have gotten into the act. Read more…
I recently read about some new Street Fighter sneakers from Nike, only to be disappointed by how little the shoes seem to resemble the characters they’re supposedly “inspired” by. I can understand Nike’s desire to aim for subtlety rather than an out-and-out declaration of geekdom, since they could sell plenty of these shoes by “accident” and still probably hit a few sales among the Street Fighter fans, but that Chun Li shoe looks like it could have been sold by them for years and just decided to slap Chun Li’s name on the tag. BORING.
Bruce Campbell is a geek’s hero: the star of the Evil Dead franchise and the man’s own tongue-in-cheek charisma have skyrocketed him to superstar on his own terms. If you’re ever at a fan event featuring Campbell, you should do yourself a favor and attend his panel– especially at Comic-Con. Here’s why. Read more…
Improv Everywhere is a group located in New York City that puts together flash mobs and other public improv events (or “missions”) conducted by volunteers (“agents”). Some of these missions are more infamous than others– the Slo-Mo Home Depot mission, for example –but quite a few of them are astonishingly geeky. Here are the ten best, organized by geek type. Read more…
Posted by Christian Liendo on Jul 19, 2010 in Animation, Fandom
Mechacon was held this past weekend in New Orleans and we captured some of the best cosplay going down in the big easy! While there were many sexy cosplayers (see above) this young lady below in the Lucky Star outfit wins our award for cutest cosplayer: Read more…
I know some of you miss having your flip phones for the sole reason of getting to pretend you were Captain Kirk asking to beam up. Who could blame you, though? They looked just like the Star Trek original series communicators, after all. Unfortunately, some of you probably gave that up the moment you purchased your first iPhone. Well, thanks to CBS Interactive, you might not have to. Their recently released Star Trek Communicator app manages to reproduce the look and sounds of the original series handset using your iphone’s interface. In fact, you can even use it to access your contacts and make real phone calls via the app — assuming you’re using an iPhone and not an iPod Touch , of course. The app will cost you $1.99 via the app store, but I’d say that’s a small price to pay for the novelty. Read more…
Forbidden Planet in New York City is still very much open, but sadly the shop today is less than 50% of the size that it was in the 80s. This stunning set of videos gives a tour of the place and serves as a vivid time capsule what a comic book shop on steroids looked like back in the day. My art school was just a few blocks away from this place and I spent so many lunch hours there back in the day, so this video brings back a ton of memories: Read more…
This surrealistic collection of cosplay photos shows the actual model model before and after Photoshop. At first I was sort of offended by looking at this, but then I realized that what the Photoshop artists are doing isn’t any different than what fashion magazines do with their cover models by creating a idealized version of reality that might not be so realistic: Read more…
As any well-trained fanboy (or fangurl) should know, Comic-Con International— also known as San Diego Comic-Con –is right around the corner, running from Wednesday, July 21st to Sunday, July 25th. Those five days are jam-packed with programming, and as usual, some of those days are…special. Read more…
I really got a kick out of this short film titled AT-AT Day Afternoon by Patrick Boivin. Boivin is a French Canadian director and special effects artist who started drawing comic books fifteen years ago and the gradated to video. Read more…
