I haven’t written a full con report in years. That’s because a con needs to be super special in order for me to write about it. As a non-cosplay eventer, ANYC 23 was one of the best cons I have ever attended. That’s quite a statement as I’ve attended 53 conventions in 21 years, and I’ve been to ANYC every year since its second year in 2018. But it wasn’t just the con; it was the entire experience from beginning to end. This was a very packed schedule: I spared no expense and went to all 7 concerts, as well as 6 screenings!
THURSDAY
09:00: Arrive NYC from Toronto
11:00: Round1 in Hicksville
A new adventure, as I hadn’t done this the previous times I went to ANYC. There are no Round1 arcades in Canada, so I immediately traveled east out of NYC via the LIRR to the nearest one. Round1 is known for its superior selection of Japanese rhythm games. I was able to try out the games I couldn’t play in Toronto: DDR A3, Gitadora, Dancerush Stardom, Wacca, Music Diver, Sound Voltex, Chunithm, and Tetote Connect. But the two that stood out were Chrono Circle and Dance Around. Chrono Circle is the most hardcore washing machine rhythm game, and has familiar songs to me, as it’s from the same creator of Pump It Up. Dance Around is the successor of Dance Evolution, and is a fantastic casual game, fixing most of the issues of its predecessor. I vastly preferred it over Dancerush Stardom. I enjoyed Round1 for about 5 hours before I had to go back to NYC.
17:30: Hotel check-in
20:00: CONCERT: Cowboy Bebop 25th Anniversary
This was in an external venue the day before Anime NYC, but promoted by the con, so it counts. Very unexpected format. 4 dubbed episodes (1, 5, 25, 26) were shown with a band of about 20 performing the music as the episodes played. While I personally think Cowboy Bebop itself is overrated and nothing special, the band did a good job with the music. However, they didn’t take too many creative liberties and just played the OST verbatim. It was like watching the anime, only with the music considerably louder, which drowned out the dialogue at times. I paid $110 (all prices in $CAD) for a balcony ticket which was very good. The ground-level VIP ticket for $200 would’ve actually been less enjoyable because the screen was positioned way above the band.
FRIDAY
11:30: Lunch at Mario’s (2342 Arthur Av)
2nd time going here. They make the best pasta and lobster bisque in the city. To get there on time and back, I took the Metro North to Fordham. Yum yum! This would be my most expensive meal at $110 after tax and tip.
14:00: Convention ANYC+ check-in
Yes, I paid $600 for the ANYC+ VIP pass, which cost more than triple that of the $195 regular 3-day pass. I will have my overall thoughts about ANYC+ at the end. Quickly walked past the mixtape CD scammers that were just outside the subway station. Skipped the huge line, but the guards were clearly letting in some regular passholders at the special entrance.
15:00: SCREENING: Delicious in Dungeon Ep1–2
Fun show, though I can see the food preparation bits getting stale if done repeatedly. Will check it out when it airs.
16:00: PANEL: Panty and Stocking Create-a-Character
Disappointing. They asked the audience for suggestions. There’s a good reason why panels shouldn’t solicit the audience. It slows down the panel to a crawl, and most of the suggestions are awful. Instead, questions and suggestions should be curated. We’ll see this error again later. I walked out of this one after 25 minutes for…
16:30: SCREENING: Chained Soldier Ep1–2
Amusingly, the OP and ED were played, but over a still image. (Typically, the OP/ED animations are typically one of the last things to be animated.) Fun trashy show from the creator of Akame ga Kill. I don’t know if it’ll be better than that show, but it seemed promising.
17:30: PANEL: Lycoris Recoil
Very nice panel with a considerable amount of storyboard and production visuals shown and explained by the director and character designer.
18:30: Exhibit Hall
Roamed around for a while. Considered going to the Sengoku Youko screening but I needed to line up for…
20:30: CONCERT: Hololive Suisei and Calliope
I paid $145 for a VIP ticket. The first 6 rows were for VIP; I was able to sit in row 5 aisle after arriving just ten minutes before seating. This was… well, underwhelming. This was the lesser of the two Hololive concerts. Suisei… isn’t a poor singer. However, I think most of her songs have overly complex lyrics without many refrains, and unless you’re a super Suisei fan, the songs won’t really leave an impression. It also felt like Suisei rushed through the audience interaction bits, as she had to sing 11 songs in 1 hour. It probably wouldn’t have felt so exhausting and rushed if it were 1.5 hours.
My lowlight of the convention came after this concert. It ended at 21:30, but ANYC+ coat check closed at 21:00. It took 45 minutes for a staffer to show up and open the coat check doors. She advised me of Saturday and Sunday’s closing times, but I politely told her that regular coat check was still open, and that ANYC+ passholders paid a premium for this service, only for it to close before the final event of each day.
SATURDAY
10:30: PANEL: MindaRyn virtual panel @ Bandai Namco booth
This was a complete surprise, as it wasn’t advertised anywhere! After answering some questions, She performed an acoustic guitar version of Shiny Girl (SHY OP) which I actually liked more than the studio version. She should just come over again and do a complete acoustic/unplugged concert, like what Aimer did at ANYC 18. It’s a complete shame that only about 10 people were around for this: it was unadvertised, and people were still entering the con. A shame it was only 30 minutes long.
11:00: SCREENING: Ishura Ep1–2
What an edgy show! Unfortunately, this was the weakest premiere that I saw. Ep2 didn’t involve any of the characters in ep1, and introduced its worldbuilding with boring political talk. I’ll watch it, just because I don’t drop anything, but this doesn’t seem like it’ll get more than a 4/10 from me.
12:45: SCREENING + PANEL: Great Pretender Movie
The first 30 minutes of the movie were shown. Can’t say much because it’s a direct continuation of the TV show. However, the most cringey part of the weekend happened next: after the screening, the production staff on stage picked 3 people from the audience for questions. They specifically requested the questions to be about Great Pretender. If I had been chosen, I would’ve asked the director what prompted the controvesial ending in the final episode over what everyone expected, which was Edamame’s revenge. It would’ve been a challenging, thoughtful question. But instead, we got three terrible questions: one person asked how she could apply for a job at Wit Studio. The production staff looked confused and said to check the website for openings. The second question was how long it took for this show to move from concept to animation, which they answered 3 years. And the final question was about which theatres would be airing the movie. There you go. This is why audience questions need to be curated.
14:00: SCREENING + PANEL: Sasaki and Peeps
This didn’t seem very special, as it was just a slow isekai without much of a story. But then there was a cliffhanger. Guess I’ll need to check it out to see what happens…
15:45: PANEL: Oshi no Ko
Another great panel. It was interesting to see the director hesitate with some of the questions, especially those about idol culture. He admitted that he was obligated to give out politically correct answers in order to not cause any sort of drama. No audience Q&A. I would’ve liked to ask him if any of the experience from directing Selection Project, his previous work which also had a unique take on the idol industry, ended up influencing Oshi no Ko.
17:15: PANEL: Ancient Magus’ Bride Drawing
Could only attend the first 15 minutes of this. I had to rush back to ANYC+ coat check to grab all my belongings in order to avoid lockout. Then I lined up for…
18:30: CONCERT 3X: Crunchyroll Night of Live Music
My ANYC+ pass was useless here, as when I lined up at 17:30, one hour early, they had already declared the event to be at capacity. A mob filled up the entire corridor of the CR Pavilion. I was eventually able to get in at 18:45, but Cö Shu Nie had already begun their set, and I was in the standing-room-only section at the very back of the area. Cö Shu Nie might be a good band, but I couldn’t really feel it all the way at the back.
Once they were done, I moved. Because I had a CR Mega Fan membership, I was able to move up to the 4th row! Now this was much better! And just in time too, because Survive Said the Prophet was FIRE. The frontman worked the crowd so well and had endless energy. They delighted everyone with their set, which included all 5 of their anisongs. It almost made me regret missing them when they made their North American debut at Anime North in Toronto earlier this year, but I had my personal reasons for that.
The third and final act, Hiroyuki Sawano ft. SennaRin, was more subdued and melancholic, and they couldn’t have hoped to match the intensity of SSTP. It was partial karaoke, as there was only Hiroyuki Sawano on piano, plus someone else on bass guitar. Everything else including drums was backing tracked. But their setlist was great, as they chose to focus on the conclusion of Attack on Titan by performing 4 insert songs from it. I wondered what SennaRin would do as she didn’t have enough of her own anisongs for a full 1-hour set. But she covered aLIEz (Aldnoah.Zero ED2) and Avid (86 Part 1 ED) quite well. Hearing Melt (LOGH DNT S3/S4 ED) live was fantastic.
SUNDAY
10:15: Crunchyroll Pavilion
I was finally able to get all the CR swag and experience the Jujutsu Kaisen sphere before the lineups became too long. The JJK sphere was a 3-minute planetarium-like experience. It was cute, but I’m glad I didn’t wait too long for it as it was very short.
10:45: SCREENING: Tales of Wedding Rings Ep1
Good first episode. There were two other shows after this, but I had to go downstairs and line up for…
12:00: CONCERT: iRis
I used my ANYC+ single-event front-row reservation for this. It turned out that the first 2 rows would be for ANYC+ passholders. I elected to take the 2nd row aisle seat, which was just as good, and also so that I could follow and copy the wotagei by the superfans in the 1st row. iRis was incredible. They did numerous PriPara openings and were super energetic! As we all shouted for an encore, they came back and apologized that they couldn’t, as they were out of time.
13:00: Exhibit Hall
Roamed for an hour and played some StepmaniaX at the arcade. Played full mode: Gargoyle F22 and Energizer F23. People were amazed that someone could play on both pads.
14:30: CONCERT: Hololive viv:ID Cruise
This is when I learned that ANYC+ never enforced the single-event reservation for the whole weekend, and allowed ANYC+ passholders to sit in the front 2 rows for every main event. Incredible! This greatly increased the value of the ANYC+ pass. I got the exact same seat as in the iRis concert! Despite being free, I enjoyed this much more than the Suisei/Calliope concert. Same production value, but there was more variety, and the 4 Indonesian talents were super cheerful. Each one did 2 solo songs, and they also did several songs together. Compared against Suisei/Calliope, the viv:ID Cruise setlist had superior songs, full of catchy refrains such as “CLAP YOUR HANDS” in the song Blue Clapper, which really got the crowd into it.
16:00: Convention over
And that’s it for ANYC 23! On the way home, I secured 16 bottles of Just Ice Tea’s honey green tea at Whole Foods. God tier tea, and it isn’t sold in Canada. Mmmm.
21:00: Leave NYC for Toronto
Final damage was $1900 including passes, concert tickets, transit, travel bus, hotel, food, and merchandise. WORTH IT. One of the greatest convention experiences I’ve ever had.
ANYC+ PASS THOUGHTS:
The $600 VIP pass was worth it to me. It’s not for everyone. The main reason it was worth it was that I got VIP seating for two concerts. I spoke to several people in row 3 (the first row for regular pass holders) and they said they had lined up since 7AM to secure their seats. I only had to walk in 30 minutes before both concerts. That, along with a clean private washroom and free switchable coat/bag check for the whole weekend, made the con so much more comfortable. You can bet that I’ll try to get ANYC+ again for ANYC 24. The only negative was the coat check lockout on Friday night.
None of the ANYC+ passholders I spoke to regretted spending a premium for it over the 3-day pass. They all thought it was worth it.
CONCERT RANKING:
1. Survive Said the Prophet
2. iRis
3. Hololive viv:ID Cruise
4. Hiroyuki Sawano ft. SennaRin
5. Cowboy Bebop 25th Anniversary (PAID)
6. Hololive Suisei and Calliope (PAID)
7. Cö Shu Nie