First day of New York Anime Festival 2008 done! And what better way to end the day than to kick back with a 7-rainbow drink (yes that is corn in there)!

Overall the first day wasn’t great but also wasn’t horribly bad either. Of course got to meet the great JP, Hinano, and DS. JP and Hinano are pretty much how I imagined them to be while DS was all round a nice guy. And can’t forget Omo, whom I ended up chilling with throughout the whole day (thanks dude for leading me to the right subway station!).

Besides the cool kats I met, there really isn’t much else to talk about. There just isn’t much to do based on the panels available and unless you liked x or y guest, could only roam around the Javits center and/or spend money in Dealers/Artists’ areas…

… so thank god for me, Yoshitaka Amano was there to make it all worth while ^_^

The artbook I got Yoshitaka Amano to sign. Actually the only artbook I have of the god-knows-how-many out there, but a good sampler of his works for those just getting into his stuff. While I was looking through the book to see where I may get him to sign, I was vaguely thinking maybe I should have brought something more unique like Final Fantasy III for the NES which he did the artwork for (and basically any Final Fantasy game).

At the end, as one can see in the next photo it worked out fine but definitely would have been cool to do instead if I had more time to actually think about what to bring.

While I was guaranteed an autograph thanks to scoring one of the autograph tickets, was still towards the end of the line due to hanging out at Hideyuki Kikuchi’s panel beforehand. So it was a little surprising how fast Amano drew the sketch and autograph.

Checking out the people before me, seems like he did a quick sketch for everyone if there was room on whatever he was signing. Got to admit that was pretty cool and way above what he needed to do considering the autograph session was running behind…

… which made also getting a quick photo with us shaking hands even better I have to say, however, the staff (and guests) were pretty cool as a few other folks did the same. I did have to semi-ask/say we were going to take a photo which may have surprised/annoyed him a bit (couldn’t tell since it was getting late) but he was game nonetheless. Very cool and definitely made the night.

With the first day done I’ll be looking forward to tomorrow for the anime blogging panel, Yoshitaka Amano’s panel, and maybe the Cosplay Masquerade (mostly due that Rie Tanaka is suppose to make an appearance). Should be better than today’s rather slowish day and if anything, will have me out and about for a good part of the day.

Sunday, well that’s more or less been renamed to “Rie Tanaka Day”(TM). God I’m going to have to get up real early for this if I want a chance to get an autograph ticket for her. The things you have to do to meet your favorite seiyuus, oi oi ^^;;

1. DS Says:
   September 28th, 2008 at 9:08 pm

   A pic shaking a celebrity’s hand! What a cool idea. I’d do it with my favorite celebrities, but dangos don’t have hands. T_T

2. moyism Says:
   September 28th, 2008 at 11:51 pm

   Hehe MAKE hands for them!