Anime NYC has become an annual must-go for The Blerd Team. Anime NYC is thrown by Crunchyroll and is one of the largest conventions dedicated to anime, manga and Japanese pop culture. Anime NYC 2022 was the 5th-anniversary event and has now cemented itself as a blerd meetup spot. Headed right in the Big Apple, Anime NYC attracted a large outing of the blerd community. It’s always fun to see many of the familiar faces and catch up. Blerd also had our was a vendor at Anime NYC 2022 for the first time, so I will discuss the same talking points as normal without the numerical ratings. So how was Anime NYC 2022?

The Anime NYC 2022 venue

Anime NYC 2022 was held at The Javits Center in Manhattan near the Hudson River. The Venue is about the perfect size for hosting an event that houses about 30k attendees. It’s in NYC with the Anime NYC 2022 hotels being extremely welcoming to the city. After grabbing out badges, The Blerd Team took some time to explore the city before the event kicked off. It seemed like a few changes were made to the layout of the venue this year which made the flow of traffic much better, albeit a bit confusing at times. The new layout did cut off traffic to one side of the vendor hall though, which made trips back on your second go around take a bit longer.

The Anime NYC 2022 Event Schedule

Anime NYC 2022 panels were excellent this year! I will say that the team put together a great set of diversity panels including Hip Hop and Anime Soundtracks, King Vader’s Q and A, Fanboy Fighter Forum, Black Nerds in Geekspace, Classic Black Anime Characters 101, Creating Safe Spaces for Black / POC Women, Kinks and Curls: Ethnic Hair in The Cosplay Community, and Diversity in Manga: Why We Need More of It. Most of the diversity-focused panels were also held upstairs at the community stage which was especially nice as you could just walk by and enjoy a panel instead of having to go into a room.

A few of the more popular panels required reservations or tickets including Kodansha USA Presents Hajime Isayama and BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War which was honestly a bit annoying (especially since the press still had to have reservations and wait in line; which is why we skipped covering most of these). Excited fans should have just been able to wait in line on a first-come-first-serve basis. The Anime NYC App makes figuring out which panels you want to attend simple and has a very nice interface; two big pluses there! I would like to see the panel descriptions include panelists’ names and websites/social media in the future so that they can get all of the credit they deserve.

The Anime NYC 2022 Special Guests & Vendors

The Anime NYC vendor hall was even bigger in 2022 than in 2021. Anything and everything anime merch related was there! Many of your favorite Black-Owned Anime Streetwear Brands including Blerd were there! The additional size of the vendor hall this year did make finding some of the vendors more difficult, but you also got more options. New apparel options were especially notable this year which is nice being in such a fashionable city such as New York! Other than the badges, you could easily identify congoers in the city by their outfits even if they were not wearing a cosplay.

Special guests at Anime NYC 2022 included Hajime Isayama (Attack on Titan; with his first trip to the US!), Ayako Kawasumi (Fate), King Vader, RDCWorld, George Wada (Spy x Family), Adam Savage, Sir Julius Cosplay and many more!

Gundam pulled out no stops this year with the Gundam Expo! You know we had to stop by and get some pictures!

The Anime NYC 2022 Wait Times

The team at Anime NYC did it this year! The wait times went down significantly for attendees. Last year lines were wrapped around the block with attendees waiting hours in the cold around the river. This year wait times were dramatically reduced by streamlining entrances and pre-mailing out badges.

The Anime NYC 2022 Vibe

Anime NYC also gets additional points this year in the Vibe category; the intangible “feel” of a con. There was more fun happening, more energy, and just an overall higher feeling of excitement. I think a few parts that played into this are the building off of the hype from last year, better panels and special guests, lower wait times, and better after-parties.

Anime NYC 2022 Photos

We can not wait to go back and attend Anime NYC 2023! Did you get a chance to go to Anime NYC 2022? If so, let us know what you thought on our social media at @blerdofficial