Pictures: 2007 New York Anime Festival

The first annual New York Anime Festival took place in Manhattan this past weekend, and Geekanerd was on the scene. While our allegiances lie more on the Western side of comics and cartoons, I dare say you'd be hard pressed to find a serious geek who hasn't at least dabbled in anime's seductive fandom. And speaking of seductive, how about this Wolverine sketch, hmm? While you can find fanart like this by the pound on DeviantArt, this particular sketch is actual concept art by Anzu for the upcoming Del Ray/Marvel manga series starring the X-Men. They're obviously going for the highly-profitable teen girl market, although I don't know that anyone wants their Wolverine looking that pretty.

Crazy cosplayers and more after the jump...

So many kids were dressed as Naruto it hardly seemed worth documenting, and we quickly learned other Naruto-related characters could be spotted by their belt buckle head band thingies. At least 45 percent of the people at the festival had to bewearing them, and if they weren't they were wearing a hat with animal ears.

Many impromptu fights could be witnessed in the halls of the Javits Center, but thankfully no one was killed.
Most of the cosplay was obviously anime stuff, but video games were getting some love, too, as evidenced by this shockingly accurate Travis Touchdown (an otaku assassin from the unreleased No More Heroes) and a full on Smash Bros. Brawl:Also, those damn Star Wars nuts show up everywhere, but this one made a strong effort to be relevant to the Japanamaniacs:
Awesome!

Those expecting to fill their backpacks with free manga and swag were sorely disappointed, as almost all of the booths were occupied by sellers with nothing particularly exciting to promote, and hardly a freebie to be seen. In the last hour of the last day, however, the Central Park Media booth abruptly started throwing their books and DVDs at passerby, quickly attracting a massive, uncontrollable crowd that was probably still there by the time the Javits Center people turned the lights off. I managed to snag one book, and here it is:This is one them there sci-fi romantic comedy mangas, with a plotline that concerns a schoolgirl who is also an alien, and her light-hearted junior high adventures. My favorite story mostly involved the main characters chasing after a mouse.
I also enjoyed this disclaimer that came at the end of the book.
Way to stop those continuity hounds in their tracks!

Some shots from the the title sequence of the upcoming Domo stop-motion series, to be broadcast on Nicktoons Network....
A gang of Citibank vultures camped out in the middle of the sellers floor, presumably to prey on any desperate otaku who needed a quick credit card to buy another giant sword.