Convention Tales #18: Anime North Idol 2022

It's the dawn of a new year, and barring any freak accidents of nature or of a biological kind, Anime North will make its return in 5 months. I'm especially looking forward to attending this year's edition for several reasons. On one hand, I've been told from multiple sources that the mask/vaccine mandates from last …

Convention Tales #17: Fan Expo 2022, Lite Edition

After my past two attendances at Fan Expo in Toronto, where I mainly spent it roaming around the extremely-crowded Dealers' Room, crunching against tightly-packed elevators and passageways filled with 100,000+ attendees of all ages, sizes, and cosplays, while subsequently failing to experience any type of extra-dope activity there, I decided to skip out on going …

Convention Tales #16: Anime North 2022

It's been a week since the first Anime North to happen in three years, and suffice to say it was one with a lot of feelings packed into it. Between the stringent preparations to make sure I don't catch Covfefe-19 before, during and after the weekend, the fun people I met with, the absence of …

Convention Tales #15: Short Stories From Anime North, Part #2

It dawned on me this week that, south of the Canadian border in the Big Apple itself, New York City, Anime NYC had recently transpired, as once more did 30,000+ anime fans of all ages descend upon the Jarvits Center for a weekend of weeb-filled fun. Not only did this event remind me of the …

Convention Tales #14: Short Stories From Anime North

It's hard to believe that this week marks about two years since the last time I officially travelled to a convention - I do not consider my short foray into Kimikon in 2019 as part of that, as I did not buy a ticket to that. The convention in question is Fan Expo in Toronto, …

Convention Tales #13: Con No Baka

This coming 26 November marks 15 years since Con No Baka, a short-lived anime convention that operated out of Toronto, kicked the bucket. It is to this city what Dashcon, an infamously ill-fated convention for Tumblr users, is to Chicago, and is a prime example of everything that could go wrong with starting a first-time …

Convention Tales #12: 20 Minutes At KimiKon

In late September of 2019, there was a small anime convention going on near the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto called KimiKon, and I decided against going there mainly because it failed to meet my guidelines of what constituted a dank anime convention; namely, fun events and large crowds to go about. …