One of the main events I attended during this year’s New York Anime Festival was the Hatsune Miku “concert” at 8pm on Saturday. This was actually an “encore performance,” arranged due to the high demand for the initial “concert” that morning at 10:45. It was held in a room far too small for the event, and most people who wanted to go ended up unable to attend, it seemed.

My friend and I had actually arrived at the room for the first “performance” 30 minutes before it was to start. When we saw that there was no line, I decided to show my friend around the anime section’s artists’ alley a bit. When I got back to the room literally 8 minutes later, a line had formed and had already been cut off for new people as the room had reached capacity. Clearly I and the con organizers had misunderestimated the popularity of Hatsune Miku.

I was initially pretty pissed, at myself, more than anything. I was right there, less than 10 minutes ago! I could’ve been at the front of the line! But, well, there’s no use dwelling on the past, and I got over it pretty quickly. So it came as a pleasant surprise when I learned that there would be an “encore performance” of the “concert” that evening at 8. This one, I wasn’t going to miss, even if it conflicted with the Minori Chihara concert. I wasn’t a fan of Minorin, anyway.

I was at the front of the line for the “encore performance” an hour early and got to meet some very nice fellows from Baruch College, a college of the City University of New York. I can’t think of the last time before that day that I had played the card game bullshit.

They called it a concert, but really, it was just a screening of a special 1 hour cut of the Hatsune Miku 39′s Giving Day concert Bluray. That said, that’s pretty much what I expected going in, as I heard that the earlier “concert” in San Francisco in September had been the same thing. Though it would’ve been nice to have exclusive footage from the concert other than the ones on the disc.

Some people brought glo-sticks. Fans started claps, cheers, applause, etc. as if it were a real concert. When some of the more popular songs started playing, cheers would spread throughout the crowd. The loudest one was for a Kagamine Rin + Len song, when Rin initially appeared and Len suddenly popped out from behind her. Megurine Luka also made an appearance for the always fun Just Be Friends. The guy to my right, who knew nothing about Vocaloids going in (“So it’s like a virtual Japanese Britney Spears, right?” after the first couple songs – note that at this point, he didn’t even realize that the singing was synthesized) was one of the most energetic of the people I saw there, starting claps and fist pumping along with the fans in the video.

There was a very surreal feel to the whole thing. Here we were, sitting in a room, watching a recording of a concert that featured a virtual idol that had been projected onto a glass screen, and people were loving it. It was one of those experiences that was uniquely possible in the world of Vocaloid. All in all, it was a lot of fun, thanks to the concert-like atmosphere. It was somehow fitting that the fans had made the “concert” a success, given how the success of Hatsune Miku and the Vocaloid software is thanks to the fans.

The final song, fittingly enough, was Melt by supercell. Though I’ve grown to like supercell’s final Nico Nico Douga song, When the First Love Ends, more, Melt will always hold a place in my heart as one of the classics, the one that put ryo on the map. After the “concert,” I went up to the front with a lot of people and got to shake hands with Hiroyuki Itoh, the CEO of Crypton Future Media and one of the creators of Hatsune Miku. I also got to have a photo taken with him, which was pretty cool. Even though there wasn’t supposed to be anything after the “concert,” Itoh was very welcoming of everyone who wanted to greet him and get their photo taken with him.

What I want to get to, though, is my disappointment in the concert. Not the fact that it was just a screening – again, that was expected – but rather, the unimaginativeness of the contents of the concert itself. The guy to the left of me – one of the students from Baruch (sorry for forgetting your name) – and I had some short conversations throughout the “concert” about how to improve it. For example, there was a lack of variety and difficulty in the dance moves performed by Miku. Given that she’s a computer generated image, I thought she should be doing “flips and shit” that normal humans can’t do, or at least can’t do consistently. She’s a computer generated image! Have her do some freaky circus-type shit!

And on the flipside, how about making her seem even more real? For example, why not have her appear to sweat as the concert went on, like a real performer would? That Baruch student commented that that might be too kinky – my response was, all the better. Or, have a staged trip or wardrobe malfunction that shows her messing up. The Baruch student suggested that she could throw something out to the audience, which would be synced with an actual item being thrown out.

Really, there are so many possibilities that become open when you have a virtual performer, and the producers of the concert seemed all too happy just to emulate a regular idol. They did prepare an “encore” at the end after the show was technically supposed to be over, but that was too predictable. And the performance of The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku did use the fact that Miku was just a computer image to some effect, having her faze out into static at the end. But more could have been done throughout the concert.

Perhaps reflective of the anime industry in general right now. In the world of animation, anything and everything is possible, but the industry players seem all too content to pump out the same shit again and again. Even though I’m enjoying quite a few shows this season, the only one I can honestly say is doing anything creative with the animation is Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt.

Another idea I with regards to the concert was to have some of the popular Nico Nico Douga Vocaloid performers come on stage, unannounced. Start a song with Miku, then have someone like Nayuta or Chouchou walk on stage and sing. Reveal partway that one of the guitarists or keyboardists is a Nico Nico Douga performer. Use the concerts not just to promote Miku or the composers, but also the performers who have helped create this movement by uploading their own renditions of the work. I, for one, would go absolutely nuts if Nagi suddenly appeared on stage and started singing Melt, instead of Miku.

So I wonder, what else do you think could be done in a Vocaloid concert that simply wouldn’t be possible in a regular one? What should be done to take full advantage of Hatsune Miku’s unique properties? I feel like there are some real opportunities being missed here by playing things too safe, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s had ideas like this.

This past weekend was the New York Anime Festival, which was combined with New York Comic Convention. Being located about 4 hours away in Boston and hearing that The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya would be playing, I decided to make the trek down. Here is a chronicle of what I saw and experienced there. I originally intended to make one post, but the post on Friday alone was getting too long, so I’ll split this into two parts. Saturday and Sunday were much less eventful than Friday, so the second post may end up shorter than this one.

Table of Contents

• Getting There
• Minori Chihara Panel
• Anime in Academia Panel
• Minori Chihara Autograph
• Disappearance Screening
• The Evening Afterward

Getting There

First of all, getting to the place was pretty hectic. Not crazy, but I had to get up at 5:30 in order to get to the train station to catch a 7am bus from Boston to New York. The trip was supposed to last 4 hours 15 minutes, so with an arrival time of 11:15, but the actual arrival time was 12:10. Also, wifi on the bus wasn’t working, so I was limited to using 3G on my phone instead of wifi on my laptop. Here’s a tip: never use Megabus.

The bus dropped us off at West 28th and 7th, and with my hotel on West 39th and 9th, I hurried to get there. I ran with my suitcase rolling behind me on the New York City streets, to check in so that I could get to the con in time for opening at 1:00. Why did I want to get there so soon? Bandai was giving out tickets for autographs by Minori Chihara to the first 100 people to buy Haruhi related products at their booth, and I wanted to be one of them. I’m actually not a fan of Minori Chihara at all, but, what the hell, she’s the only actual Japanese voice actor to be at a convention I’m attending, so why not get her signature, right?

Once at the con, the line to get in was huge, but it moved very quickly, only taking maybe 20 minutes at most. I snapped a photo of my first cosplayer there, a great Rena Ryuugu who was a little in front of me. I also got to shake hands with Stan Lee as he passed by. I’m no US comic book fan, but it was Stan. Fucking. Lee.

The line led to the entrance to the show floor, and, wouldn’t you know it, Bandai’s booth was right at the entrance, and they still had tickets left! I bought the first season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya collection on DVD – I actually didn’t own it before – and collected my ticket. The festival was off to a good start.

Let me make a note about the layout of the place. The Jacob K. Javits Center is a big place, and the entire 3rd floor was divided into 2 huge show floors. There was a section with vendors on the right side, and an area for smaller vendors, gaming, and artists on the left. These were all Comic Con related stuff, except for a small corner on the right where there was the Bandai booth, and another small corner on the left with a stage. At the beginning of the convention on Friday, there were girls dressed up as the K-On girls and playing those songs. One of them was Mio’s dub voice actor, I believe.

The actual anime festival part was at a small basement area on the lower left of the building. An escalator led straight down to the anime artists’ alley. To the right was a “maid cafe,” which was just a bunch of tables and chairs in front of a small stage where some singers performed. Past those were 4 rooms for panels including 1E09, which was 3 times as big as the others and used for the main events. This was the room in which the Minori Chihara panel and the Disappearance screening were held.

Minori Chihara Panel

The first actual event I went to was the Minori Chihara panel that went from 3:15 to 4:15. I’ve never been to a voice actor panel before, but I’m guessing this was a pretty standard one. A translator and a handler was up there along with Chihara, and no photos or video were allowed until the end. There were some brief comments by Chihara, mainly about the trip to New York, and then Q&A for the rest of the time.

(Occult Academy spoilers below)

Chihara herself did an amazing job selling herself. She was absolutely adorable, both in looks and in voice. She spoke in a way very similar to how she played Mikaze in Occult Academy, which is fitting, because that was all just an act as well, designed to lure in the audience with a false image. Speaking of which, one of the questions that I considered asking was on how she decided to play Mikaze, knowing that she would ultimately turn out to be a villain. I decided against asking it, because it contained spoilers for a show that had just finished airing, but someone else went ahead and asked it anyway. And although the cat was out of the bag at that point, the handler decided against answering the question because of the same reason I didn’t ask it.

(end of Occult Academy spoilers)

I also wanted to ask her if she was afraid of being typecast because soon after playing Yuki Nagato, she had played similarly monotone characters in both Lucky Star and Minami-ke, but we ran out of time before that.

Anime in Academia Panel

Next was the Anime in Academia panel, a discussion panel run by Alex Leavitt, and featuring 3 panelists, Casey Brienza, Mikhail Koulikov, and Jennifer Fu. You can read about who these people are on Alex Leavitt’s own blog, Department of Alchemy, on which he also posted the audio of the panel. I’ll note that I had actually met Jennifer Fu before as well, at the MIT anime club, which is open to students outside of MIT. I found most interesting the parts when they discussed how to actually find research material, as well as the ethical dilemma of using pirated material. The difficulties of getting published and the extremely high quality of writing expected in academic journals, well, I think anyone who’s done research in college must understand that. I was mainly a math/science student in college, and even in those fields, the quality of writing has to be top notch, so I can only imagine how stringent the quality must be in softer fields like sociology or Asian American studies.

Minori Chihara Autograph

Next was the actual Minori Chihara signing at the Bandai booth upstairs. That was at 6pm, and I was very paranoid about missing the 8pm screening of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, because I assumed that people would line up for it around this time (turns out, my fears were unfounded, and I ended up getting a front row seat). Anyway, I was the last person in line, but Bandai did a great job moving the line quickly, each person only getting like 15 seconds with Chihara. I decided to get the cover of the DVD set I bought earlier signed.

So yeah, I then rushed back downstairs to room 1E09, only to find it mostly empty, and no one lined up. Across the hall was a Hatsune Miku panel, which featured guests from Crypton Future Media Inc, the actual company that created the Vocaloid software and characters. It was absolutely packed, and I could only stand at the doorway, but that worked for me, because I was keeping an eye out at room 1E09, in case too many people were going in. It was pretty cool to see the actual creators of Hatsune Miku and friends, and they mentioned that if 39,390 fans “like” their Facebook page, they would create an English speaking Vocaloid (3-9 is a pun on the name Mi-ku). Now, I’m sure they’re counting on the fact that there won’t be that many fans signing up, and at last count, it was only around 18,000, but what the hell, if you have a Facebook account, do it anyway and try putting them in a tough position.

And finally, to cap off the day at the convention was the screening of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.

Disappearance Screening

I was lucky enough to find a single seat at the very front of the room. The Miku panel was over at 7, so I waited for about an hour in the seat, and I met a couple of friendly guys from Maine who were into some of the same things as myself, namely, Type-Moon and Vocaloid. One of the two had even dabbled in making songs using Megurine Luka. Jay and Colin, if you’re reading this, you guys were a couple of the best single-serving friends ever!

When 8 o’clock rolled around, Minori Chihara appeared once again, along with her handlers and a representative from Bandai. There were just a few brief forgettable comments, and then the movie began.

It was a lot of fun watching the movie in a large room full of fans. Everyone laughed along at the in-jokes, cheered at the cute moments, and there were audible gasps at the truly OH SHI- moments. It was basically what I expected; a lot like watching a movie at a theater, just where everyone was a fan. There was a hitch in the reel switching midway into the movie – yes, this was shown from a full 35mm reel – but it caused us to miss only about 5 seconds, so it was no big deal.

As for the contents of the movie, well, you can read my full review of the movie. I will say that I went in extremely skeptical. I loved the first season to death, but I’ve hated everything else Kyoto Animation has done since, i.e. Kanon, Lucky Star, Clannad, K-On, and, yes, the second season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I had also already read the novel on which this movie was based, and I hadn’t thought too much of it. But everyone who had seen the movie had raved about it, which is why I was so dead set on watching it in the first place.

There was a dumb grin on my face all the way back to my trip back to the hotel. Day one of NYAF was over, and it alone had been worth the price of entry.

The Evening Afterward

The movie being 2 hours 40 minutes long, it was 11 by the time I got back to my hotel. I was pretty exhausted from the extra long day – even on workdays, I generally get up past 9 – but hey, I was in New York City, the city that never sleeps! I decided to take a walk outside, find a bar with some food, because I hadn’t had a proper meal all day (I did have a horrible convention center cheeseburger, but that was neither tasty nor satisfying). Unfortunately, even in New York, it seems bars close their kitchens for the evening, so I ended up walking a while before finding a nice Italian place called Mercato, on the corner of West 39th and 9th. I spent $47 on a lasagna and 2 mixed drinks. The first drink I had was called the Singapore Sling, and it was absolutely wonderful. And Mercato itself is great if you don’t mind paying the premium. Check it out sometime if you’re ever in the area.

A more interesting thing happened during my initial walkabout. I had my phone out, search on Google Maps for a place nearby that might be open, when a limo driver (he was standing next to an open limo) came up to me and asked me to use my phone. His phone battery was dead, you see. I’m usually very skeptical in situations like this, but I was feeling pretty good – probably a high from having just watched Disappearance and the sleep deprivation – so I offered to dial the number for him and to put him on speaker. There was a brief scuffle when he tried to grab the phone, but I held a firm grip and insisted that I’d be more comfortable holding it. Everything went smoothly, the dude made his call, and I walked away feeling a bit weird but good about myself, too.

It was about 1AM by the time I got back to my hotel room, and I probably fell asleep at around 1:30.

So that was the first day of New York Anime Festival for me. To be honest, I could’ve gone home happy at this point. But there were 2 more days, so stay tuned. And if you were also there, please leave a comment! Especially if you saw an Asian dude with glasses, a grey FLCL cap and a large camera bag slung over his shoulder.

If you’ve been following my Twitter feed at all, you know that I was at New York Anime Festival (combined with New York Comic Convention) this past weekend. I’m working on a proper writeup of the convention overall, but in the meanwhile, enjoy some photos of the great cosplayers I took over the weekend. You can find all the cosplay photos I took in my Picasa web albums: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3. The resolutions have been reduced from their original 12MP so that they don’t take up insane amounts of space, but if you’d like the full-res version of any of them, just ask. And to all the cosplayers during the convention, thank you!

Day 1

Friday was a short day, starting from 1PM. I also wanted to attend a lot of panels that day, so I didn’t manage to take a lot of pictures. Still, I got some good ones, including Alex Leavitt and his girlfriend as the pair from Toradora! – if you’ll recall, Leavitt is the guy who ran panels at both PAX East and Anime Boston earlier this year. He ran a discussion panel called “Anime in Academia” which I attended most of.

Day 2

Saturday was absolutely insane. I wish I had taken more, but most of the time, the area was so packed that a good photo just wasn’t possible. It was on this day that I noticed that Durarara!! seemed to be one of the more popular shows to cosplay. Makes sense, I guess, since it’s mostly pretty easy, there are some unique designs, and the guys are perfect yaoi material. Some good Shizuos that I unfortunately couldn’t get pictures of.

Also, there were a lot of Vocaloid cosplayers, just like at Anime Boston, somewhat expected because there was a Miku “concert” that day with a couple of the creators of Vocaloid, including the CEO of Crypton (the company that produces the software). Among those, Kagamine Rin seemed to be a close 2nd to Miku.

Day 3

Sunday might have been a short day just like Friday, but it was almost as busy as on Saturday. Again, not a lot of chances to snap pictures, but two really stood out to me. One was Tissue-hime, the Nico Nico Douga celebrity known for dressing up as Yuki Nagato, wearing a cough mask to cover his face, and playing the guitar. The other was a near-perfect replica of the Old Spice guy.

There was also a K-On cosplay event at the Bandai booth, to which I arrived too late to get any good pictures.

Well, those are some of the highlights. Again, plenty more in my Picasa albums, links to which I have at the top or as the headers for each section. I probably didn’t get even half the pictures I would’ve liked to just due to how crowded and busy it was, but, well, there’s always next year.