If you want creative Halloween costumes, then consider taking tips and inspiration from amazing anime and cosplay enthusiasts who are serious about dressing up all throughout the year. Anime NYC presented by Cruncyhroll, is a grand East Coast's anime convention, that returned to the Javits Center back in August 21–24, 2025 for its biggest celebration yet of Japanese pop culture. According to its press release by Sue Procko/Danielle Garnier and The Procko Group Team "There were over 148,000 in attendance! This is up from about 101,000 last year over the three days." There was an endless amount of fun loving Cosplayers that engaged in meet ups, attended workshops, posed for photos, met artists, bought merch, walked in fashion shows, watched film releases and ate specialty meals. The event also featured its second annual American Manga Awards.
This was my first time ever attending such a large Anime themed event. The atmosphere was extremely positive, fascinating, colorful and very welcoming. I was very fortunate to meet with representatives from NIUHI, and grab some cool NIUHI merch and other exclusive giveaways.
However, the highlight of my experience was meeting and photographing dozens of creative Cosplayers. It was very obvious they spent countless hours putting together outfits of characters dear to them. There were characters familiar to the masses such as Mario, Deadpool and Pikachu. There were also characters known to a smaller gamer audience such as Cloud Strife and Tifa Lockhart from the Final Fantasy video game series. Then there was a larger universe of characters well known a niche anime fandom such as Gold Ship from Umamusume: Pretty Derby, Yor Forger and Loid Forger from Spy x Family, the Dark Magician Girl from Yu-Gi-Oh!, Red Hunter from Warhammer and Raiden from the Metal Gear game series.
