I attended AnimeNYC 2019! Some thoughts:

• This year, I didn’t really attend any panels; the topics didn’t seem interesting, and even ones that at first caught my attention were just industry advertisements. For instance, “Snacking through Japan” could have been an interesting look at the variety of Japanese treats, but was really an advertisement for a monthly subscription box company, as the full description revealed.
• Fragtime was rather a disappointment. Coming from many of the same staff as Asa-gao to Kase-san, I had high hopes, but the anime was mostly jokes in bad taste about underwear and public nudity, and featured what was basically an abusive relationship (where Murakami tells Moritani she has to do whatever she says). Also, none of the audience members could formulate a coherent question that didn’t sound like the topic sentence to an AP English essay.
• I am slightly disappointed that I didn’t manage to catch the screening of Birthday Wonderland, but it overlapped with Weathering With You, and there’s no contest there.
• The showroom was consolidated: both artists and industry booths were in the same event space. This was a little more convenient, but I do feel like it made things more cramped, compared to last year where all the artists had a separate space.
• As with last year, they had lots of arcade machines set up; they also had itasha (wrapped cars) with…questionable pictures.

• I apparently don’t follow popular series. Everything was covered in Fate/Grand Order, Love Live!!, other idol shows, and gatcha games. Weathering With You did get a few giant banners, though.

  

  There was a life-size wall print of Love Live!! characters (I think)—should’ve gotten a photo with them.

• Seems like America has already moved on from the KyoAni disaster…and in general, the studio wasn’t really represented, except by their distributor here, Eleven Arts.

  

• Animate was there with a 2-pack of Makoto Shinkai posters done by VOFAN, representing Voices of a Distant Star and 5 Centimeters Per Second (the latter poster was used as the cover of One More Side.)
• I got to watch Weathering With You early! I also managed to purchase the book ahead of schedule. I had to cancel my original ticket, re-buy a weekend ticket, and wait in line, but it was ALL WORTH IT.
• The food was better this year, and there were more vendors (especially Go! Go! Curry, which had a constant long line). Unfortunately, they were integrated into the main hall, so you tripped over people eating their lunches, AND the place smelled like popcorn the entire time.

Other reports:

• Okazu: part 1 and part 2.