Over the years of convention going I’ve realised that these events are as much about the people and the other fans you meet throughout the day as they are the special guests and the other exclusive content. That is all further heightened when you dress up in character and wander round the exhibition hall taking pictures with fellow cosplayers and basically just waiting to be asked to have your photo taken with others!

In the last post on Tokyo Fox I covered the convention in terms of the artists and the exhibits but this one is all about the cosplaying which saw Neil and myself team up for the first time since Halloween 2014 (same outfit for me!!) and on entering we discovered that we had to pay to cosplay. I was a bit shocked when one guy told me in English that it was 1500 yen but it appeared he messed up and it was only 500 yen which was very reasonable given that it included a changing room and a place to store our baggage.

The difference between Halloween and this kind of convention is that the majority of people in attendance actually know who you’re dressed as and there’s far less people asking what your costume is! One person who recognised me straight away was Robert (below) who came over to chat with me. He had a booth for his Tokyo Saber Guild club and I often meet him at these conventions albeit always in costume so have never actually seen him in everyday clothes!

At around 1:30pm we were approached by someone asking if we’d be part of a big Star Wars photo outside so we followed her through the smoking area to an area full of characters like Jabba, Chewie, Han, Leia, Boba, Kylo, Captain Phasma, Yoda and the ubiquitous stormtroopers to name just a few.

This proved to be a good opportunity to not just get a big photo of everyone but also to get some individual pictures too as seen below.

The girl below is a serious cosplayer and a regular at such events with two different costumes per day…..and she was there for both weekend days so that’s a lot of variety! As Neil and I were walking around late afternoon she noticed me and amazingly remembered me from last years event.

There were hundreds of fantastic costumes being sported all around the convention centre and of course I couldn’t photograph all of them but a few of them can be seen below.

By the time 5:30 pm came around (when the baggage area was closing ahead of the conventions 6pm finish) I was pretty exhausted as the day before had been a long, busy one full of lessons followed by a late night football match as well as an early start to get over to Chiba for this event.

Beforehand I had quite low expectations for this event due to the guests not really appealing to me so much but ultimately I was won over and had a great time which was certainly helped by getting involved and participating in the cosplay which is nowadays an integral part of such an event.

Click here to read ‘Tokyo ComicCon 2016’ 

Click here to read ‘Meeting Two Sith At Tokyo ComicCon 2015’

Click here to read ‘Cosplaying At Tokyo ComicCon 2015’