Anime Festival Wichita
A while back we went to our local anime festival, Anime Festival Wichita!
For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been a huge weeb since I was a kid. I’ve been watching anime since elementary school (Sailor Moon and Ranma 1/2 are my oldest favorites!) and have always enjoyed going to our local anime convention. It’s not a huge convention by any means and has gotten smaller as the years have gone on, but I still love it. I love the shopping experience and getting to see everyone in their cosplays, and sometimes it’s the one time of year that I get to see certain friends.
In the last few years we haven’t gotten to go. For a couple of years I just didn’t feel like it, then COVID hit and conventions were impossible. Honestly, because they didn’t have it last year either I thought that it was going to close down for good. Then I realized they were having it this year!
I’ve been looking forward to going for months and had been planning it since Mandi and I decided to go together. I wanted to do a cosplay and needed one that would work with my glasses. I’ve done cosplays before where I couldn’t wear my glasses and while I did have fun things tend to be a lot more fun when you can, ya know.
See.
So I decided to go as Toko Fukawa from the anime horror video game Danganronpa!
My theory is that happy people can only write happy, shallow novels. But the downtrodden can vividly imagine their ideal world, perfectly envisioned in true beauty... And that's the spirit I put into my novels.
— Toko, Danganronpa Another Episode
Her glasses look similar to mine, and though the wig I bought is more purple than brown (a fact that irritated me, but not enough to try buying another wig. I’m just annoyed that the amazon listing said “brown” but its definitely purple. That being said, that’s what you get for buying cheap cosplay stuff off amazon!) I made it work!
In the game, Toko is called the “ultimate writer,” so you can guess why she was what my brain immediately conjured up when I was trying to think of a cosplay I could do with my glasses! Plus, she’s one of my favorite characters in the series, next to Ibuki Mioda!
I had no idea until I got to her house that Mandi was going to cosplay too! She told me it was a last minute decision, and I’m so glad she did! She went as a character from Bleach, but we ended up leaving her mask in the car because it was flimsy and she didn’t want to accidentally break it. That makes perfect sense to me, personally, because during the course of the con I wanted to take off my stupid wig lol. Especially when it decided it was done cooperating and started to fall off no matter how much I pinned it back with my bobby pins.
From left to right: Mandi, Me, and Courtney!
Last night Courtney messaged me on Facebook and asked if I was going to AFW. When I told her we were, we decided to meet up! Courtney went as Misty from Pokemon and she looked so good! It was so fun getting to hang out with her and Mandi together!
raise your hand if you know the pain of seeing cute phone cases that you want, but none of them fit your phone. Raise both hands if a case came CLOSE to fitting but your phone was either just slightly too big or too small. Raises both hands
Mandi hadn’t planned on doing a lot of shopping, but she ended up getting a stuffed Kirara from Inuyasha and a Dragonball Z poster, because I’m a bad influence and I convinced her that she works hard and deserves nice things!
I never noticed before that the Inosuke plush was peeking out and that’s so adorable I could die lol
Before we arrived at the con, I told Mandi and Courtney that I was on the hunt for Todoroki (My Hero Academia) and/or Inosuke (Demon Slayer) stuff. They are my current top-tier husbandos and I desperately needed merch of them! More specifically, I was looking for plushies but really anything was up for grabs when it comes to them specifically. That being said, I got pretty much every Inosuke keychain I found and am planning a new ita-bag panel featuring our favorite boar-head demon slayer!
I was actually taken aback by how much merch there was of them. Usually when I try to find something related to a husbando, it’s nowhere to be found (especially Todoroki for some reason. C’mon guys, how is he not the most popular one?!) but here I found more than I could handle. I did end up finding 2 Inosuke plushes (one with the boar head and one without) and one Todoroki one that’s exactly what I wanted. I saw several art pieces that I now wish I had gotten but ended up passing on simply because I didn’t know what I would do with them once I got them home. I found a Danganronpa Monokuma keychain and wallet, and a Monomi keychain! I also got a glass Demon Slayer group standee thing that I put on my shelf above my desk.
I also got a stuffed Luna that is actually a tissue box holder! Now when I get the sniffles I can snuggle my tissues like the sick goblin I would inevitably be~
The bag I bought A) because I loved it (Shinobu and Nezuko are, like, two of my favorite ladies from Demon Slayer) and B ) because I needed a secondary way to carry all the stuff I got. I was dead set on having a good time and being able to shop for a lot of cool stuff really helps for that <3
Also there was a shop selling these adorable teapot terrariums, and I just had to get one. I love terrariums, especially ones that are just art pieces with nothing I have to then subsequently take care of. I couldn’t pass up the lagoon teapot one because the lady running the shop said the water glows in the dark (and it does!) and as an avid Alice in Wonderland fan, I couldn’t pass up its teapot shape! (and lets be cool here, you don’t see all that cat hair on my endtable, right? Right? Of course not, cause we’re all friends and anyone with pets knows how this life is)
And the cosplays!
Look how cute Courtney is as Misty!
Battle of the Horror Icons!
I got a lot of these pictures off the AFW facebook page because I either didn’t see them when I was there myself or the cosplayers came after we were gone / any of the other days we didn’t go, and I wanted to show you guys everyone’s great cosplays!
Seeing the hard work and dedication everyone puts into their outfits are part of the con experience, and one of my favorite parts! It’s so fun seeing what fandoms everyone loves and which characters they want to represent from that fandom! I was actually really surprised that I didn’t see any Todorokis or Inosukes! I saw a couple Nezukos and Zinetsus, and the latter was kind of surprising considering how Inosuke in his boar head is practically the mascot of Demon Slayer, but hey, that kind of surprise is half the fun!
Sorry that this post was so big but I had so much I wanted to put in it! It was a fantastically fun Saturday and I can’t wait for next year. I’m already thinking about what I want to cosplay as, and at this point I’m trying to decide between Sailor Moon or a ghost-type pokemon trainer (so I can take my gengar backpack!) but by next year I’ll have decided and tossed aside probably a thousand different ideas so we’ll just have to wait and see!
See you in the next post!
