At this point, I’ve all but given up on reasonable amounts of sleep. It is for the weak after all.

On to the important stuff. According to what I’ve been told, Day 2 of NYAF is the busiest of all the NYAF days. I’ve also been told that Day 1 is just industry/media day yet I found myself consistently occupied shooting cosplayers the entire time I was there. So if Day 1 is “slow” then we might be woefully understaffed with only 8 people from the Ningin crew. There’s so many stories, so many different things we can cover. The doors open to the public at 10am, but we’ll probably be there at 8:30am giving us a chance to talk to the other exhibitionist there and making new partners/friends.

Also, if anyone is interested in contributing a story, then come find us at booth 138. We’re very happily right next to the T.M. Revolution booth. Let us know that you’re a fan of Ningin and we just might give you free t-shirts or some other free stuff (while supplies last).


Here are some noteworthy cosplayers from Day 1, taken from our NYAF Day 1 Gallery.
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Tags: anime, cosplay, event, festival, new york anime festival, ningin, nyaf, tm revolution

Making this super quick as I am super busy! NYAF day 1 was amazing! All the cosplayers were so cute and luckily I could who most of them were regardless of my lack of Anime knowledge.

Can’t wait to see what tomorrow will be like since Saturday will be the busiest day of the convention. Sweet! I will have blog posts about today up later on so please be patient. We are all very tired but so pleased with the turn out.

Be sure to check out the gallery from the Cosplay Photoshoot Contest Day 1. Voting process will start Monday so get all your friends to vote for you!
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Tags: bleach, escaflowne, final fantasy, gintama, kingdom hearts, nana, naruto, new york anime festival, soul eater, the world ends with you, to loveru, weekly music roundup

Hey just wanted to provide a super quick update on NYAF. We’re so busy here, so many great cosplayers. It’s pretty crazy. So far, about 5% of the photos are live. If the connection here was faster, we would have more photos. Check the gallery page for updates!

Tags: cosplay, nyaf

Earlier this month, I posted an entry about the scandal surrounding the official 2008 Miss Vietnam winner, Tran Thu Thuy Dung. Apparently the 18 year-old beauty queen did not complete her high school education and the government insisted that all contestants must be high school graduates. Now the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism’s (MCST) inspectors are calling for her to be stripped of her title because they found proof that she did not finish high school and therefore has breached the contest regulations. Apparently bitch faked her high school end of year exam results to enter the pageant. The inspectors also suggested a hefty fine for the organizer of the pageant since they did not enforce the regulations.

I don’t understand why the government officials are being such hard ass about this. Perhaps they have seen the youtube clip of Sarah Palin’s long lost cousin last year and want to make sure that any Miss Vietnam winner will have at least completed high school in an effort to spare the country of any stupidity induced embarrassment. Perhaps one of the inspectors is a family member of the first runner up and bitch wants the crown badly. I bet she tried dousing pepper spray on Tran Thu Thuy Dung’s dress during the final round but the beauty queen was so focused on winning that she probably did not feel a thing. So much drama surrounding beauty pageants.. which is exactly why I love them!

Tags: 2008 Miss Vietnam, Beauty Pageant Scandal, Tran Thu Thuy Dung

New York Anime Festival starts in less than 24 hours, hope you bought your tickets already!

As mentioned in several previous blog posts and emails, Ningin will have professional photographers come and take photos of as many cosplayers as we can with all photos being added live to our special NYAF gallery. First 500 cosplayers will get a one-of-a-kind Ningin/NYAF badge as a souvenir. What we didn’t mention was that we will also have a best photo/best cosplayer contest and Ningin users will have the power to decide the winner!

Sometime on Monday 9/29, the Ningin staff will narrow the choices a bit and select their top 20 cosplayers from the weekend for audience award voting. Audience voting will last until midnight Saturday 10/4 and announced on Sunday 10/5. The top three cosplayers will be profiled and interviewed by our Ningin bloggers. The overall best cosplayer will also receive two super exclusive tickets to the private premiere of the Megaman Movie and two tickets to Comic Con next February.

Special Thanks to, Shino, our award winning Japanese photographer friend; Eddie Lebron, Director & Producer of the Megaman Movie; and our friends at Reed Exhibitions.
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Tags: 2008, anime, audience award, best cosplayer, contest, cosplayer, eddie lebron, megaman movie, new york anime festival, ningin, nyaf, shino

You know, we often talk about the success stories of our heroes without talking about their pitfalls, their struggles, their hurdles.

Pat Morita,  better known as Mr. Miyagi, from the movie The Karate Kid, taught a generation of young people how to block a punch with  “wax on, wax off” while coaching “Daniel-san” karate and catching flies with chopstick.

Moving on to what you did not know.

Doctors told Pat Morita that he would not be able to walk when he was diagnosed with spinal tuberculosis at the age of two. He spent the next nine years, enduring long periods in full body casts, in various Californian hospitals.

It took fusing four vertebrae in Pat’s spine for him to finally learn how to walk again at the age of 11. By this time, in the middle of WWII, his family had been sent to a Japanese internment camp in Arizona .
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Tags: Pat Morita, Wax off: Overcoming spinal tuberculosis, Wax on

So you’re an hardcore Anime fan… you collect the shows freshly from fansubbers anyway you can. You go out of your way to set your dvdr and tape your favorites, that are released in English dub. Oh! but whats this catchy J-pop song or J-rock song that you find yourself singing uncontrollably. You don’t understand the Japanese words but search for romanjithe lyrics anyway, than on top of that you’ll try your best karaoke pronunciation as perfectly as possible. You find yourself doing this more than once and now you ipod is mostly artists like Koda Kumi, Orange Range, Asian Kung Fu Generation, Tommy Heavenly6, L’arc~en~Ceil and Ayumi Hamasaki. Well! Congratulations you are now officially part of the theme song phenomenon. Don’t worry you are not alone, there are countless others that are just like you and use Animeas a likes to find new music. Just think the whole country of Japan has these infectious Anime themes as beloved radio tunes that top the charts. These opening and ending credit companions have reached the number one spot countless times. Even Europe has taken these Anime themes and have remixed them techno style and rerecorded them in thier own languages. If you ever go to France, Germany, Italy or Spain you will see what I mean.
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Tags: Anime Theme, asian kung fu generation, Ayumi Hamasaki, bleach, Blood Plus, Koda Kumi, L'arc~en~Ceil, Maaya Sakamoto, Mari Iijima, orange range, OST, Tommy Heavenly6, Yoko Kanno

At first glance, Takanori Nishikawa looks like a short pretty boy. Don’t judge his talent by his looks! Takanori’s music career started in 1990 where he was the lead singer for the band, Luis-Mary. At the time, his stage name was Haine but little did he know, he would eventually be the famous Japanese music artist known as T.M.Revolution.

With New York Anime Festival coming up, why would someone introduce a singer? Isn’t this supposed to be about anime? Well, for the past twelve years, Takanori Nishikawa has brought more than just music. Whether it’s anime, music, or acting, Takanori has brought a revolution.
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Tags: 8 days of anime, abingdon boys school, anime, gundam, heart of sword, music, new york anime festival, nyaf, takanori, tm revolution

You probably knew about Tiger Woods, Steve Byrne, and Kimora Lee Simmons. Yeah, they’ve got Asian in ‘em. But did you know that funny man Rob Schneider is half Filipino? Or that model Naomi Campbell had Chinese blood? Vladimir Lenin, the father of Communist Russia, was part Mongolian, and Bruce Lee had German ancestry. Here’s more from Frank Agostinelli and asiansofmixedrace.com.

Plenty of famous, and talented people have partial Asian ancestry. And good-looking people….well, maybe not Rob Schneider. Ann Curry of NBC News is Japanese and Irish. Eddie Van Halen is Indonesian and German. New York Yankee Johnny Damon is half Thai, and singer KT Tunstall is a quarter Chinese. But the tag line on asiansofmixedrace.com is, “Percentages Don’t Matter!” Even if you have only a tiny fraction of Asian in you, be proud of who you are.
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Tags: asian, celebrity, Frank Agostinelli, Jason Tobin, Kelly Hu, Kimora Lee Simmons, mixed Asian, race, Russell Wong, tiger woods

What do the moon; a magical tambourine, havoc-reeking tarot cards, and an alien makeup compact have in common? Well they all belong to magical girls that are main characters in Anime. Not many people realize that Magical girls or Mahōe shōjoh, are an actual sub-genre of fantasy when it comes to Anime/Manga… but without them Anime would not be the same. Your basic magical girl is about 12-16 years old; she’s fun, optimistic, creative, and misunderstood. There is usually a supernatural object like a wand, ribbon or pendant that she finds or is fated to be gifted that puts her on some miraculous path. Along with an incantation the charm helps the young heroine transform and harness her power. Most of the time her lineage has something to do with her new found superhuman abilities.
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Tags: anime, Card Captor Sakura, Clamp, Lala, Magical Girl, Majokko, manga, new york anime festival, nyaf, Shojo, Smap