After the formal merger of New York Comic-Con and New York Anime Festival into one event (which happened last year), the organization of the anime-themed events themselves has been a little strange. Most of the “interactive” events—the contests, the cosplay skits—took place in their own segment of the show floor. But the panels, vendors and screenings were intermixed freely with and took place in the same room as the other events that dominated the show. Here’s a rundown of the major anime-themed activities I attended during NYCC.
Junko Takeuchi and Naruto
Junko Takeuchi, the Japanese voice of Naruto himself, wasn’t expecting as massive a turnout as she got when she appeared on a panel dedicated to her courtesy of Naruto’s U.S. distributor VIZ. All the seats were occupied; the entire back and side walls of the room were lined with fans, and most anyone who wanted a photo had to wait in front, then rush in, snap their pictures and get out of the way.
Apart from the usual “say that line!” audience-prodding and answering some pre-screened questions sampled from the audience, Takeuchi also served as one-person judge for an impromptu cosplay contest, where among the winners were a couple portraying Naruto’s parents.
Another big highlight of the panel was the English voice of Naruto, Maile Flanagan, sending in a few questions of her own via a pre-recorded video clip. When asked what Takeuchi thought of Flanagan’s performance, Takeuchi put it this way: any comparison between the two was an apples-and-oranges issue. But she did think Flanagan’s Naruto was excellent regardless.
FUNimation
The biggest anime distributor in the U.S., and maybe outside of Japan entirely, never have any shortage of goodies to show off. The biggest news out of FUNimation’s (typically rowdy) panel was the announcement of a major partnership between FUNimation and Japanese streaming-video providers NicoNico. The latter have started offering many anime in simulcasted streams—some available through other venues, some not—but FUNimation has built a stronger working relationship with them to get shows streamed from Japan in HD. Among the biggest offerings: Guilty Crown, the latest offering from the Noitamina programming block (Princess Jellyfish was a previous one), the first episodes of which are live right now. (Watch them here.)
ANN’s Christopher McDonald weighed in on what it all meant, and concluded that FUNimation would come out way ahead of much of the competition—not just streaming outfits like Crunchyroll but other licensors like Bandai and Media Blasters—because of this, thanks to FUNimation getting that much more of a first look at new top-caliber shows.
Also intriguing was news of a forthcoming release named Chäos;Head, created by the same team behind the tragic assassin’s story Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~ and the currently-streaming time-travel mystery STEINS;GATE (also licensed by FUNimation for a 2012 release). Those two shows have nothing to do with each other—their tone, conceits and execution are totally dissimilar—but Chäos;Head is closest to STEINS;GATE on first glance. It concerns a reclusive young man dragged out of hiding when a serial killer’s grisly work begins to hit a little too close to home, and the teaser shown by FUNimation makes it look like one to snap up when it comes out.
Bandai/Sunrise
Sunrise creates Gundam, one of the most consistently successful anime franchises of all time; Bandai distributes it (along with many other shows of distinction) in the U.S. Where one has a panel, so does the other, but this was the first time Sunrise had their own New York Comic-Con panel.
Most of the Bandai announcements this time around were duplicates of what was revealed at Otakon 2011, but there were some fun tidbits courtesy of the localization team for Gundam Unicorn, the fourth episode of which is to be released shortly. Mike Sinterniklaas and Stephanie Sheh talked about the sheer amount of overtime they pulled to get the English audio done in time for the release, which included more than a few consecutive days without sleep.
When asked about the casting process, they mentioned how some thought had been given to re-casting the same voice actors who had portrayed the same roles in the original Gundam, but it proved unlikely for a variety of reasons: it wasn’t logistically feasible to work with the actors in question, some of them had aged quite a bit, and in some cases Sunrise just didn’t feel it was needed.
Masayuki Ozaki—Sunrise’s General Manager of Overseas Development—took a moment to poll the audience about their favorite Sunrise property. Gundam was predictably near the top, but Tiger and Bunny—their new series about future superhero crimefighters with commercial sponsorship—was also, deservedly, near the top.
