Harmony and I took the train from Long Beach into Penn Station. We woke up bright and early for the train. From Long Beach, it only takes an hour to get from point A into the city. While we were both in cosplay, we were consistently asked if New York Comic Con was happening this weekend. We also appreciated the compliments we received by commuter regulars. Harmony was dolled up as Eternal Sailor Mercury and I was Azusa Miura in her China Exotic DLC. Exiting Penn Station, I simply had to get a photo of myself as my favorite idol from 765 Productions in front of Madison Square Garden.

Cosplaying at NYCC

It's no denial that cosplay has been an evolving part of comic con culture. While cosplay at New York Comic Con is not as prevalent as anime cons, cosplay is still a huge part of New York Comic Con. It's not surprising to see Deadpool, Naruto, and Ichigo gallivant from 34th Street to Javits or to spot a Fiona and Cake as you exit out of Penn Station. No weird stares; New Yorkers were generally accepting of cosplayers.

What is probably going to get the most attention are the hero and heroine based comic book characters. If it's easily recognizable, you will have a mob of cameras at you. If you are cosplaying from a major anime series like Sailor Moon, Dragonball, or Pokemon, you are bound to be noticed. There were a ton of Sailor Senshi / Scouts at New York Comic Con. Adventure Time and My Little Pony cosplay also remained prevalent among younger attendees. Anime cosplay, particularly from current series, was also common among younger attendees. DC, Marvel, etc based costumes seemed to be well represented.
Some dealers hall booths were selling full costumes, but mostly from anime sources. There were even a few wig dealers present in case if you needed to grab a few things for upcoming cosplays. Of course, there were the model-esque cosplayers like Vampy, Yaya, Toni Darling, etc that had signings and photo ops at their respective booths. Some media booths even had cosplayers helping promote new anime series – Aniplex, Funimation, and Viz to name a few.

NYCC did have a cosplay contest hosted by Wikia on both Friday and Saturday nights. However, it was late into the evening where people were already heading home.

Photoshoots? Where?

The downside of New York Comic Con and any con that has tens of thousands attendees is that it's pretty hard to do a cosplay private photoshoot or a cosplay meet up. Compared to last year, the area outside the Empire Stage seemed much more crowded than previous years. This was where the Sailor Moon and Homestuck meet ups were. The area that hosted the My Little Pony meet up last year was now line holding space for main events. However, the best places to get a private shoot were outdoors. The inside was insanely crowded and always had ongoing foot traffic. While the lighting inside Javits made it nice for single hall shots of cosplayers, for the fancier private shoots, outside was much preferred. Even We Rise Magazine filmed their New York Comic Con cosplay lip sync outdoors.

When Harmony and I did my iDolm@ster shoot, we stuck to the area outside Empire Stage. If you could find an empty wall and angle it, you could get some really nice photos out of it.

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