On March 23 and 24, I experienced the wonder of Anime Japan, where 146,500 people flocked to Tokyo Big Sight to celebrate an industry loved the world over. A four-day event, Anime Japan is geared towards professionals as well as fans. The first days of the convention (Thursday and Friday) are reserved for attendees who work in the business, then it opens to the public for the weekend. This year’s theme was “Rock,” a play on the word “roku,” meaning six — all to celebrate the convention’s sixth year in Japan. This was my first convention outside of the US, as well as my first since moving here in 2016. I’m excited to share my experience with all of you!
Map from the official Anime Japan website.
Saturday, March 23
As you can see from the map above, this is a big event! When my friend Melissa and I stepped inside, the number and scale of the displays overwhelmed us. It hit me that Anime Japan isn’t so much a convention, but more like a trade show promoting all of the new TV series, movies, games, and music coming out this spring and into the summer. There were also booths showcasing Figma sculptures, and life-sized replicas of costumes, weapons, and props used in anime such as Sword Art Online, the Fate franchise (specifically Fate Grand Order, which sponsored this year’s event), and Attack on Titan. On top of that, there were booths devoted only to selling merchandise (T-shirts, acrylic figures, keychains, and more), much of it limited-edition and only available at Anime Japan. The biggest item was auctioned for charity — a custom Gibson guitar (because roku ‘n roll, kids!) featuring Kirito from Sword Art Online.
Given the enormity of the event, we only made it to the Cosplayer’s World section (because we cosplayed!) and about 3/4 of the main entrance area; basically only the far left side of the map before we had to return to Cosplayer’s World to participate in the parade. So, our highlights of the day consisted of some of the most visually interesting booths I’ve ever seen!
The four seasons greet you as soon as you enter Tokyo Big Sight.
The four seasons display tied in to different series; unfortunately I can’t recognize all of them above. I can point out autumn as The Saga of Tanya the Evil, and the summer display is Overlord. Of the four above, my favorite is the winter display because of the beautiful snow-covered trees against the bright vermillion torii.
We also visited the Bandai Namco Animation Airport booth, which, as it sounds, was an enormous, maze-like display of galleries modeled after an airport. At the check-in counter, we collected a passport, and each section was themed around a specific show, including Gundam, One-Punch Man, among others. For every room you visited, you received a stamp in your passport. This place was so crowded that there wasn’t a lot of space to walk or time to take decent pictures, so you can look at ANN’s coverage of the booth here.
Most of the entry hall was split between art displays or merchandise sales, but I held off on shopping and instead went on a crusade to collect all the free swag and promotional material as possible. This was my mission until it was time to do the Cosplay Parade, and after that we only had enough time to change out of our clothes before the convention closed for the day. My cosplay experience at Anime Japan is big enough to merit its own post, so stay tuned!
Sunday, March 24
This day was bigger for us — given the time it took to assemble my cosplay, which ate up my convention exploration, I opted not to dress up the second day. This was a wise decision, because there was so much we missed out on the first go-around, and we were able to sweep the remaining rooms in the convention hall.
Civilization has been frozen in stone.
There are two brand-new series that caught my eye mostly because their displays were so fascinating. First off is Dr. Stone, based off the manga of the same name (available in the US from Viz Media). Premiering in Japan July 2019 (and I’m sure it will be picked up for US streaming), the story centers on Taiju, a boy who wakes up several millennia after a mysterious, devastating incident: a giant flash of light appeared and all of humanity was turned to stone. As Taiju and a rare few start to wake from this terrible event, Taiju vows to save the rest of humanity.
The dramatic incident of Dr. Stone certainly catches my attention (along with the pretty stone characters from its display), so I’ll patiently wait for it in July. I know I can read it now in English, but I tend to hold off on reading source material until after I complete a series to avoid spoiling my viewing experience. From what I can tell, the manga has been nominated for awards and a good team is helming the series, so I hope it lives up to its potential this summer.
This character design pretty much sold me on Fairy Gone.
The next giant display that intrigued me was for Fairy Gone, largely because some of the visuals reminded me of the games Dark Souls and Bloodborne. This is a unique series made for television, so there is no manga available (although lucky attendees received a free manga prequel setting up the story for the show!). The 24-episode anime already premiered in Japan April 7, and comes stateside through Funimation and Hulu (the English dub premiered April 28).
The basic premise: fairies reside in animals and give them special powers. Humans want those powers to create Fairy Soldiers to fight in battle, so they transplant the organs of the fairy-possessed into people, and in doing so they gain the power to summon and weaponize the fairies. After the end a long war, Fairy Soldiers are no longer needed, and reintegration into society is difficult. Many are listless and turn to crime. Of course, there are also Fairy Soldiers tapped to fight those criminals in organizations like “Dorothea,” and the series follows new recruit Maria and her adventures with the organization.
To be honest, I’ve got mixed feelings on this premise (militarized fairies = does not compute), but nonetheless I will give it a go just because I love its dark fantasy aesthetic. The trope of the “decommissioned super-soldier struggling in the normal world” is something that comes up in both anime and speculative genre, and almost always makes for some fascinating observations on society and the human condition. I don’t know how deep into this Fairy Gone will dive, so at the moment I’m a bit more hyped up on the idea of how they’ll play with creatures of fey, folklore, and fantasy.
Another eye-catching design from Fairy Gone.
In my case, because I live in Japan, series are almost never given English subtitles (for Netflix Japan, as long as it is a Netflix Original, I can get anime with subs or dubs, but Crunchyroll and Funimation are region-locked, so no English for me!). It’ll probably be months before I can give Fairy Gone and Dr. Stone a try, but I’ll wait patiently!
I have so many other things I can write about from Anime Japan, and hundreds of pictures from the event, so it’s quite difficult for me to narrow this post down to a managable bite. But I’d be remiss to not bring up Fate Grand Order in more detail, or share in a couple cosplay photos, so I’ll wrap the post with both!
I mentioned above that Fate Grand Order sponsored Anime Japan this year. Fate Grand Order is a mobile game-turned-anime that has recently exceeded 6 million downloads and $3 billion in revenue. What started out as a little eroge visual novel (Fate Stay Night) turned into a sprawling series with multiple games, TV series, and films (Fate Zero, Unlimited Blade Works, Heaven’s Feel, etc.).
Gilgamesh fights as Caster in FGO.
It’s because the premise is irresistible: heroic spirits from history and myth reanimate at the command of mages as proxy warriors fighting in the Holy Grail War. Arthurian myth serves as the backbone of the series, but all sorts of characters from different legends come into play — imagine Gilgamesh, Heracles, or Cú Chulainn fighting on your behalf to win the Grail (an object which grants the winner any single wish, regardless of horrific costs). Each heroic spirit takes on a specific fighting role — Archer, Lancer, Caster, Rider, Assassin, Saber, and Berserker — and the series is brutal with how it dispatches their characters. I’ve been a fan for years and the shows give me feelings, so it was a great pleasure to see all the displays for Fate Grand Order. It was also popular with Japanese cosplayers this year, too!
Cosplay by @11hero35, @lyric_sos, @mi_2ba, and @tatuki_03
Which leads me to the last bit of this post: cosplay! I opted not to dress up Saturday so I could devote time to doing cosplay photography (it is nigh impossible to take photos with satin gloves on). While I took a ton of pictures, I wasn’t able to track down most of the cosplayers to get permission to post. So…you get two.
But they happen to be two of my favorites and the best of the best! And I think they’re a good indication of how hardcore Japanese cosplayers go when it comes to costuming and taking photos. Not only were these costumes excellent, but the cosplayers were great at keeping in-character, and knew how to pose. I could tell this was more than a hobby for them — they did this for a living. I’m so happy I got permission to share their work with you. If you’re hungry for more photos of cosplayers, check out some great galleries here and here.
Cosplay by @rinamiso0921
Seeing such talented and professional cosplayers inspired my friend Melissa and I to return to Anime Japan for 2020. This is the year the Olympics will come to Tokyo, so the convention has to be downsized because part of Tokyo Big Sight is being commandeered for the Games. Nonetheless, Mel and I have already booked our hotel and are already planning what we’ll do next year.
My goal is to cosplay from Hellsing Ultimate and The Dragon Prince — so you can bet I’ll be writing about this in the future. And stay tuned for my forthcoming final Cosplay Resolution post, which tells the story of what it’s like to cosplay in Japan, and the wild, wacky times I had sewing in the hotel at the last second. I’ll leave you with a cosplay selfie to whet your whistle until then. Thanks for reading!
My cosplay – a femme version of Edmond Dantes from Gankutsuou.
Photos are by Kristina Elyse Butke under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
[…] March of 2019 I attended my first convention in Japan, and it was a whopper: Anime Japan in Tokyo! It was my hastily decided resolution for 2019 to do some ambitious cosplay because I felt like […]