JapanCulture•NYC’s Day 1 and Day 2 are New York Comic Con’s Day 2 and Day 4, respectively, but let’s not let semantics get in the way of a good story. After spending last Saturday at Mutual Trading’s Japanese Food and Restaurant Expo (stay tuned for a story on that), we returned to NYCC on Sunday, thinking it would be quieter than our Day 1. We were wrong.

The crowds were bigger on this final day of Comic Con, and at times it was difficult navigating from booth to booth.

 

Fighting our way like salmon swimming upstream, we managed to find a few interesting Japanese-related items, such as Dragon Ball Z action figures and the Funimation booth, where anime fans could sign up for a subscription to watch their favorite shows online.

 

The Power Rangers, adapted from the Japanese original live-action series Super Sentai, had a huge presence, from robots to live Rangers.

 

The Kinokuniya booth saw brisk business, due in part to fewer panels on the last day of NYCC and the 20% discount the bookstore applied to everything in its booth. According to store manager John Fuller, the hottest item that day was the Japanese manga Attack on Titan. Anime News Network likens Attack on Titan‘s popularity in the US to that of Sailor Moon.

 

Knowing that the New York Comic Con crowd loves Attack on Titan and other manga and anime, Japan National Tourism Organization had a presence at NYCC, offering information on how you can take an “Otaku Tour” in Japan.

 

Here is Tokyo Otaku Mode’s Daiki Nakata dressed as Mario as he stands at his booth. We interviewed Nakata about Tokyo Otaku Mode and why his company participated in Comic Con. (Watch here.)

Perhaps not everything at Comic Con was Japanese-related, but we certainly saw a lot of things that were influenced by Japanese pop culture. And that was enough to keep JapanCulture•NYC happy.