Adventure at Tosho-Con 2016

Hey guys! It's KpopTokki ^_^

This weekend I was able to experience my second anime convention, Tosho-con 2016 in New Jersey.

I went as an assistant for Batzy, who was one of the awesome artists in the convention's Artist Alley. Overall the convention was a good experience compared to my very little experience of anime conventions so far. There were so many nice people, especially some of the artists that I had conversations with and allowed me to video of beautiful artwork. I can see their excitement of being there and the love they shared for their amazing art!

Compared to other conventions like Otakon, Tosho-con is a fairly small and local convention. It was held inside of a library, so it was awesome to see many people who lived in the area, come and participate in the fun, even if they didn't like anime. But a good thing was that, Tosho-con prepared events and activities for all ages, so even little toddlers had a room to themselves to make awesome super hero costumes. It was nice to be in an atmosphere that was friendly towards everyone.

There were also some cool panels, unfortunately I only got to stay at one full panel, which was the Cosplay 101 panel. I've been into cosplay since Middle School, but I've never built the courage to actually do it until last year, where I cosplayed for the first time at Sakura Matsuri in Brooklyn. I was very cautious about the way I would look in certain cosplays, especially being of African-American descent, and most of the anime characters that we love are on the complete opposite skin tone spectrum from me, so that discouraged me even more. But this panel actually helped me build courage in cosplaying! Celsius was the one in control of the panel, and as an African-American, herself, she helped me build a lot of courage to cosplay whoever I want no matter the color of my skin. One thing she said that I found really inspirational was that she said to learn to cosplay for yourself and not anyone else. I felt like that built my self-esteem up to many levels (over 9000). So I want give a special thanks to Celsius for hosting an amazing panel and now I look forward to cosplaying more in the future!

Who knew you could can gain a new inspiration in life by going to such a small convention? :D

The cosplayers at the convention were just amazing! I can tell the loved what they're doing and had some true dedication to acting as their character. Shout out to the awesome Yato, who was carrying around a cardboard sign to grant any wish for 5 yen, he was hilarious (Watch Noragami if you don't know what I'm talking about). Here are some pictures of cosplayers:

I'll post more pictures on my Facebook page: KpopTokki

I think my highlight of the convention was the surprise appearance of some of my friends. Neither Batzy nor I were expecting them to come but it was great to see them and have a small reunion. And of course, once we're all together, we had to blast some K-pop at Batzy's booth and start dancing. I was surprised that when we played BTS's Fire, some people noticed and started dancing with us and started talking about KCON in New Jersey next week! Thanks to Ming, Jay, and Belle for coming to join the fun :)

The convention was amazing and I had a great time there! Thanks to the helpful staff, awesome cosplayers, and wonderful artists for making this convention enjoyable. Big thanks for Tosho-con for putting such an amazing convention together and I hope to come back have more fun next year! :)

I made a vlog of some of my experience at the convention, so be on the lookout for that!