With Anime NYC being a known convention for local publishers (Kodansha, Yen Press) and those outside of New York (Crunchyroll, J-Novel Club), this is the major place to make any big announcements before the year ends. So lots of panels took place involving anime, manga, and light novel companies, and there are thoughts to be had about (generally) all of them!
But first, one thought on a notable new thing ANYC tried this year: reserving panels.
…This did not get off to a great start!
If you’ve gone to conventions big or small, you’ve likely run into a panel that is at max capacity and can’t let anyone else in. Or knowing that it’s going to be a major panel, you line up maybe hour(s) before the panel actually starts…which isn’t always the best way to experience a convention! You should be able to have some time to explore a con without having to set up too early, though in some cases, it just can’t be helped. For ANYC though, there’s just a lot of enthusiasm for certain panels, and not everyone can be accommodated. So they decided to have certain events/panels be available through reservation. Once you’ve reserved, you’d be chosen at random if you got in or not. If you didn’t get picked, you would have a chance at standby tickets for any of the required reservation panels at the convention.
But on the first intended launch day it didn’t work out. So they had to go back to the drawing board and eventually things got fixed. I can’t say I know how the experience went for those who did reserve — none of the panels I went to required it. From that perspective at least, the convention staff definitely had a good idea of what would draw a huge crowd and what would draw a decent crowd of people. I thankfully didn’t have to rush or head to a panel early just to make it in. The rooms were right for the ones I went to, so I only hope that it stays that way in the future.
Now the only thing left is whether or not future ANYC cons will be as heavily industry focused as this one was, but that’s something I won’t be worrying about. Instead, I’m just going to give thoughts on a couple of the panels I did go to!
Anime Limited, HIDIVE, Crunchyroll, and Eleven Arts: These are all together because these are the ones I did not go to, generally because they lined up with a panel I wanted to go to instead. But have to shout out Anime Limited for not only licensing A Place Further than the Universe, but also dubbing it — I now have a great excuse to re-watch it whenever that Collector’s Edition gets released. Eleven Arts continuing to nab anime films is always cool.
Also have to shout out HIDIVE — nabbing more anticipated titles instead of Crunchyroll is what they should be trying to do, so not only getting works like Spy Classroom and Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible for the Winter 2023 season but also acquiring The Dangers in My Heart and Oshi no Ko is very good for them. They still have much to clean up (allowing more regions access to HIDIVE, fixing their apps, etc) but this should make them viable to start off 2023, and we’ll see how things shake out after that.
+ Denpa/KUMA: Not much licenses from Denpa, but that makes sense — they have a very small in-house staff, so their current priority is focusing on the titles they do have. Like March Comes in Like a Lion, which they hope they can start releasing this upcoming spring. But distribution issues are simply out of their control, so it’s more or less just playing the waiting game with them. Meanwhile KUMA does have some upcoming BL titles coming in print for 2023 that will certainly attract interest, so overall, alongside answering some questions, it was a pretty solid panel.
+ Yen Press: Well, their panel was crazy. How crazy? They announced maybe 12-15 titles at the convention…while also announcing 10-12 titles on their Twitter! One reason was indeed too many titles, and they probably didn’t want to drain their panelists so early in the day. The other reason was because they had TurtleMe, the Beginning After the End creator, stop by and chat for roughly 10-12 minutes after panelist introductions. Ultimately they had the right variety of guest, announcements, prize breaks, and announcements (Toilet-Bound Hanako-Kun: First Stall Box Set and Kaoru Mori’s Scribbles to name a few), so good stuff happened during their panel.
+ GKIDS: One of the rare anime panels I went to, and one I sadly had to leave midway since my portable charger turned out to not be charged properly! The GKIDS panelists seemed cool and it’s been neat to see the company be aggressive over the past couple years in bringing more anime, so it sucked I couldn’t stay for the whole thing. But they did enough from how long I stayed (even announced a title) that made it fairly fun.
+ Dark Horse: I’m sure the major announcement they made got the attention of manga enthusiasts, but low key I actually liked that Carl Horn made announcements on when certain manga would be returning to stores after being out of print or essentially hard to find for a good while. More companies should consider doing exactly this, but for various reasons, they don’t always make it public.
But yes, response to Dark Horse licensing Shin’ichi Sakamoto’s Innocent told me all I needed to know. Looks like they’ve picked up something special, so that does indeed make them a pretty good panel I went to.
– Bookwalker: I think I just missed out on introductions of the panelists, but did recognize Kurt Hassler from Yen Press with the team from Bookwalker. I don’t believe I was totally late, so I think they started slightly early since they had a crowd at the start.
Anyways, this was a fairly unmemorable panel — they were trying to advertise the new TATESC vertical scrolling manga they just launched on Bookwalker, and there are some cool titles to try out, but is the app (and website) really optimized for reading vertical comics? Guess we’ll soon find out, if we haven’t already. I don’t know if the general audience really walked away interested in trying it out though. I certainly wasn’t convinced.
+ J-Novel Club: More new announcements, 9 new titles for people to try, new partnerships…and maybe one question regarding JNC’s print future? As in, will J-Novel Club themselves now be printing any of their titles (excluding what they’re already printing) since they’re partnering up with Yen Press? It’s interesting how aside from a few works (The Faraway Paladin, Seirei Gensouki and Tearmoon Empire manga), they’ve been kind of silent on whether they’re printing anything else over the past few years. Now with this relationship with Yen Press, I find it hard to believe they themselves will continue doing it, maybe aside from the occasional title every year.
But in general that is a great announcement, and even surprised me with what was picked (never saw Instant Death getting a print release!) to kick things off. And combine that with their audiobook announcements (possibly 3 I’m interested in), it truly was a packed panel.
+ Azuki: Two knowledgeable panelists, one digital manga service, all in one panel room, and you get one exclusive announcement and more Star Fruit Books titles on Azuki. Overall as they’re still a new company they went into what they’re all about, what they’re updating on the app, and what’s upcoming next, and complete with a special guest (Matt Haasch, the Founder of Star Fruit Books showing up at the panel), the panel was pretty enjoyable.
~ Comikey: As a rule, I kind of bristle and get leery when someone mentions startup, lots of titles coming down the pipeline, and promises of partnerships, some beginning at an undetermined time frame. So this mostly is about me, but how Comikey’s founders explained who they are, what the service is all about, and the enormous amount of content they have upcoming managed to not click with me. Now, all of what I mentioned is true, which doesn’t really mean it’s bad they called themselves a startup…I’d just prefer they went out and simply explained who they are without that mentioned.
In the end, the amount of works — manga, manhwa, manhua, webtoons, even Western comics — does make it appealing to check out, and one of these days I will actually sit down and review a few of the works on Comikey since they have some interesting titles. But it feels overwhelming in a bad way, so I’m genuinely hoping they themselves are not overwhelmed with how much they’re trying to put out to the world.
+ Kodansha: Well, to complete Anime NYC, Kodansha also had to make a ton of announcements…and they sure made some announcements! So many in fact that Ivan, one of the panelists, essentially challenged his fellow panelists to only describe the newest title under or around two minutes. Too bad for Tomo (Marketing Director at Kodansha) that he immediately failed the challenge since he had to say the title for I’m Giving the Disgraced Noble Lady I Rescued a Crash Course in Naughtiness: I’ll Spoil Her With Delicacies and Style to Make Her the Happiest Woman in the World!.
All seriousness, there was a mix of announcements (From Fall 2023 titles to Deluxe to Box Set to digital-to-print) that didn’t make things stale, and there was even a time for Q&A so of course I had to ask them if the calendar will ever get out of maintenance. But overall there’s a good amount of works that I’m interested in trying out from them — even the long title since it is getting an anime, so if it comes out before then, I can see what’ll be in store ahead of time.