Back in 2019, there was once a convention called IFF; known as the “International Fan Festival” that happened on the Easter weekend of April 19-21, 2019. After many years of ruin due to the Covid19 pandemic, IFF finally returned after a long 4 years of hiatus with the event renamed to “Anime Toronto”, which I personally don’t really like. Either way, Anime Toronto 2023 was held during the end of summer labor day weekend, September 1-3, exactly one week after Fan Expo happened and during the last weekend of the CNE. Well then, let’s see how this convention went down.

Coming in from Union station, Anime Toronto’s main dealer/artists/stage event space was held in the North building of the Toronto Metro Convention Center, just a fraction of what is used for Fan Expo just a week prior.

For all three days from Friday to Sunday the main exhibit hall only opens at a very chill lazy 11am, which is kind of unheard of in my opinion and even then you could tell that most vendors and artists weren’t fully set up yet.

I can’t remember the time while passing here but I think it must have been like just past 10am or something. Still very empty and setting up.

The line to pick up our badges is pretty dead too. Noice I guess.

The mascots and art for Anime Toronto are pretty nice, I mean, it’s the same ones from the original event when it was IFF which is good.

The badges itself are nice and the lanyard suitable as well as the convention schedule written on the back, more events should do this.

Being it pretty chill and lazy, we went across the street into the underground food court to get some McDonalds breakfast. Basically everyone here in this space is for the convention.

Here we see some nice Holostars Gavis Bettel cosplay ordering some food and what I can only assume is some Genshin cosplayer on the left. Noice.

Breakfast of champions, sausage mcmuffin combo with hash browns and coffee yea boi. This shis was so expensive tho, I think it was like 7-8 dollars or something? Wow, fast food ain’t cheap like it used to be, I could have sworn this combo was like 4 or 5 dollars a number of years ago.

The entire food court was under construction/reno but I just had to take a pic of this Mr Souvlaki sign, I mean, look at that profile logo? lol.

Must taste gud. I mean either having orange juice or a smoothly early in the morning.

One of the minimum wage security people just standing around doing nothing at the MTCC; all of these folks most likely immigrated here during the past 2-3 years; you can kinda tell.

They had this popup wall to take photos and selfies for cosplay or whatnot. Nice.

Walking to get in line to get into the main hall I see this nice Hololive Mumei cosplay. Very nice indeed. Considering that Hololive’s Kiara and Reines will make a guest appearance at a panel on Sunday, this is to be expected and honestly probably a good majority of the event’s attendees are here for that as well.

After a brief wait, we get into the main hall area and we take our time. We see this official hololive merch table/IFF event merch and want to buy that shit already lol.

They even had merch from before branded as IFF since well, even last time the merch didn’t arrive on time, kinda jokes. The person manning the booth seemed like she just got there as well, and didn’t even know the prices of the hololive shirts. She had to call on her walkie talkie to confirm the prices. At the time of asking her they didn’t even have paper print outs of the prices of the goods.

After a few more minutes after opening, a small line formed to buy stuff from them, mainly hololive shirts.

Here I am proudly being quite literally the first customer of the day to buy those hololive shirts, both of them. I brought the IFF hat because it was so cheap, only $15 dollars; I guess they made it years ago and just wanted to get rid of it. You can’t even buy a decent cap like that today that’s blank for that price.

Walking away from the official merch table and lo and behold, here we are again with the crane games again. They are everywhere, you can’t escape the wannabe faux Japan experience.

Cute bin filled with squish mallows. I know things now.

Oh boy, here is the “Polar Stage” where they are to hold a whole bunch of events and shows/performances.

I question however it’s location being so close to vendors and artists however. It would be very loud for them and people just browsing. Not the best choice I would say.

Some gay rug. I mean, rugs with anime faces and stuff on them are fine, but would any really want THIS specific anime rug? Probably not.

Most of the vendors were at the very front, not seen however is the misplaced 420 weed booth that has been a plague at every convention during the post covid era. These guys however had pretty alright stuff and shirts.

A very wide array of displays selling a wide array of merch, oftentimes seemingly out of place given the cons anime theme. I mean, stainless steel straw sets?

Vendor selling pink stuff and cute stuff. If I didn’t know any better this could be at the CNE and I wouldn’t know the difference to be honest.

Wow, Sakimichan had a booth here too huh. Certainly one of the bigger and jam packed artists booths for sure.

Vendor selling dakimura pillows and new type ones that have stuffing on their chests/breasts. Wow.

The person manning Sakimichans booth wasn’t even here yet, most likely her proxy/friend/slave; I don’t think she goes to any con in person anymore other than Anime Expo, I mean, the main money maker of all cons in the western world.

A closer view of the new innovation of pillow boobs and the man selling them.

Unless it wasn’t evident enough, here is a the pillow with boob stuffing up close. What innovation!

Passing by on the side we see some nice hololive artworks. Noice. I am pretty sure I’ve seen this artist before at Anime North.

The Gavis Bettel cosplayer gazes upon the land and is not particularly impressed. Although honestly the artisst at this event in general seem to be pretty high quality.

A cosplay girl with the pink green hair from Demon Slayers does her shopping too.

I mean, for a Friday late morning what would you expect to see here? I wouldn’t have expected so many blank empty tables however.

Pretty bad. Either the artists totally forgot that they had booked tables or they just didn’t show up or couldn’t make it in time for whatever reason.

Nice art, pretty sure I’ve seen this artist at AN as well I think.

This artist was also at AN but their setup is considerably better with nice walls and table cloth and such. I was tempted to buy but then again, I will more likely than no see this guy again at another con. We’ll see.

Navito world was also here but with a very small vendors booth. Like it’s pretty small indeed, guess they put all their cards at AN, which for all intensive purposes makes the most sense.

Nice wide selection of hololive/vtubers, bocchi the rock and other gacha game stuff including miku on the bottom right.

The rando figure merch vendor where my sister brought a long sought after miku prize figure. Grail obtained for her. Noice.

These cactus cats are pretty cute and well made. The seller seemed to be pretty amused as well.

Nice art but not really my thing, kind of everywhere in style to be honest.

Wow, tempura tiger shrimp, very cute. My sister brought it to be my gift for some undisclosed ocassion like birthday or Christmas gift. Noice and pretty cheap too.

The seller’s name and such. Noice.

Their arrangement of stuff is pretty varied, seemed to have like key-chains/charms and other stuff as well. Good plushie stuff tho.

A nice arrangement of clothing stuff and on the right a heavy hololive suisei/aqua/towa (start end group) fan with pretty damn good art.

These three keychains were just too good to ignore, brought the whole set.

The general sentiment I guess that this artists really likes blue hololive vtubers, while primarily suisei, she also had acrylic stands of gura and pekora. Pretty good shit. She also had a fanart book and prints which I brought in a combo. I spent quite a bit here, more than I thought I would.

Same artist night sky whatever.

I think I seen this artist in the past, like a number of years ago pre covid times, good to see that they are back I think with heavy focus on the hottest shit for the times like hololive, vtubers and all the latest shows like oshinoko, bocchi the rock etc. They even had the latest hololive advent generation girls as prints, gud shit. However, despite how on point they were, I ended up not buying anything from this artist, probably because I expect to see them elsewhere, maybe next time.

Nice keychains and ones from fighting game stuff too like Guilty Gear, blazblue, street fighter. Ended up picking up 3 myself.

A more focused view of the guilty gear keychains, she did a really good job. The artist said the she especially tried her best to find key-holder parts that match the character for the ones at the top.

The artist in question also cosplayed each day as well, not sure what this one was tho. Her prints are pretty decent too, although I am not sure if it’s a single artist or shared with others.

I mean, at least this artist is honest that they totally forget that they had a table to attend and forgot to take Friday off.

When I went to the washrooms at the back there was this sticker stuck on the top of the ceiling. Lol what the fuck is this? So jokes even if I have no idea what this guy is or who he is.

No autograph sessions for anybody on Friday which pretty makes coming to today pretty nothing to be honest.

Heading our way out to get some lunch and we see these military cosplayers which I assume is some kind of WWII pacific solider for Japan or Asia etc. Since the con is so small, you end up seeing the same people and cosplayers multiple times throughout the 3 days here, these guys being the most noticeable/evident.

We walked all the way to my work office downtown to go across the street and eat at PAI, the Thai restaurant that I had semi-hyped about and visited previously.

Ordered app of Thai chicken wings, pretty good, nice sweet and sour sauce with it.

Another app, the Grabong, fried shreds of butternut squash, gud shit.

My order, Khao Soi, egg noodles with beef a coconut curry like broth/sauce with fried noodles as a topping. Pretty good shit, one of the recommended dishes says the menu.

My sister’s order, chicken pad thai. Standard stuff but a bit fancier than normal she says. Still good “it’s it’s own thing”.

After a fairly large lunch we headed back to the convention center to scope out more things and see cosplayers, like this FGO King Hassan cosplay, gud shit. He had a whole crew of other dudes cosplaying like Arjuna and Hijikata but I forgot to take a picture of them, ah well.

Part of me thinks this DMC5 Vergil would look a lot better if he didn’t do this particular pose. It just seems kinda awkward just facing forward like this. I’d honest rather him just stand there facing forward with him holding the sword instead of this, I can hardly tell if his costume is accurate or not.

After no waiting, we strolled into this Vtuber 101 panel with a relatively new vtuber that just started this year named Kilia Kurayami. These nice fine gentleman obviously know what’s it’s all about with the vtuber hapi and t shirts.

Her very nice slide basically summing up that if you get girl streams and anime girls combined you get vtubers, which is about right. Her choice of examples is pretty shots fired but you know all about dat rite.

After about a half hour of her explaining what a vtuber was to an audience that already knows what a vtuber was and is more likely not here only for hololive, myself included, she took audience questions in a Q and A session for the remainder of the hour. The questions range from insightful, fun to just kinda retarded as you might expect it. This lad here might need to have a bit more awareness when it would be benefical for himself to start wearing a hat.

The main thing about her that was interesting was that she was British, which is something of a rarity for vtubers. Even in hololive, they have still yet to get a British one yet, which is kinda baffling, y kno Brit-sh m8? She was overall pretty good and her panel was a nice introduction for those who don’t know, the best event/panel of the day. I mean, one of the only panels of the day for that matter.

Oh look, it’s the artist that I brought the hololive Bae snapshot from at AN. She even got the nice new hololive advent gen up, nice! I didn’t buy from her this time since I think it was too close since her favorite vtuber died/graduated/retired Magi, RIP, that bitch. Maybe next time, we’ll see.

Very nice assorted art of vtubers hololive, FGO and other gacha games. I ended up buying a few prints from this artists yea, noice.

Snapshot of the artists social for good measure.

After a final walk-through of the main hall we left the MTCC and headed to the Toronto sign to check out what’s there cause I know they always have shit going on there in one way or another. Looks like we got some dragon boat festival shit going on I guess.

Am I at the Lucky Lion street food festival again? I mean, most of the food vendors seem to be the same as the ones in Markham in June? Even this lamb skewer place seemed familiar.

Giant dragon blow up thing besides city hall, cool.

More rando bullshit Chinese food cooking stall. Like this was was basically just cooking anything along with meat skewers.

Nice fabric dragon behind City Hall too.

Some kids doing some dumb shit with a dragon. After this we just went home, I didn’t eat anything downtown for dinner since we were still kinda full from PAI. I ended up going out to buy some sushi once when I got back to my condo. Nice way to end a Friday convention day maybe? Not really, pretty mid.

Today I arrived a bit earlier on Day 2 Saturday because this is the day when voice actress Yukana and other guests would do autographs. For some reason the main hall looks like it’s in an even worst state than yesterday.

I decided to have the same noice morning breakfast early, hoping to repeat yesterday’s meal, but was surprised to find that McDonald’s was closed for the weekend. I should have known better when I encountered closed doors and had to use the underpasses main entrance. Ahwell.

When I got back to the North building at the MTCC there was a line up to get into the main hall, no doubt most of these folks were here to try and get into line for autographs for Yukana.

On the other side of the corridor was a line up for a QA panel with the other voice actor main guest, Atsushi Abe.

I think I was waiting in line for about an hour or so. When you stand in line for so long, you begin to recognize the same faces, this is especially so for such a small convention like Anime Toronto.

Right beside me was this nice Hololive Mumei cosplayer, pretty good shit. Too bad he didn’t take off his mask, which is maybe somewhat intentional.

From far away a shot and blurry of Yukana just before she began signing autographs. I would technically get in trouble for this picture since they weren’t allowing photos but whatever, they didn’t see. Nice hololive Ina takodachi shirt in front bro.

Unlike IFF in 2019, they did not allow you to get your own personal items signed, you had to buy a blank shikishi board from them for $35 or only have your convention badge signed for free. It also has to be personalized with your name on it, hence the post it note and a name written. Kinda lame but I suppose this was bound to happen after the controversy that happened at previous conventions where vendors hired people to sign funko pops and shit and have them on sale immediately. Pretty bad.

I was luckily in line in the first batch/group so I didn’t have to worry about not getting a chance to get an autograph. This line pictured I suppose was the wait-list I guess you can call it. Even after being in line, we still had to wait like an hour or so because everyone just rushed the line when the main hall opened up, I believe the actual signing was at like 12pm or 12:30pm. It was a long wait but I had a nice conversation with a artists who was also lining up in front of us; we ended up talking about FGO since it came up that she played and even brought out her phone to show me her servants/account. She wanted to add me as a friend but of course I play on my tablet and it was at home so yea, too bad. I took a photo of her account ID and said I’d add her later, which I did do by the way but I don’t think she accepted the invite lol; maybe she forgot who I was or changed her mind. Ah well.

Tada, the fruit of my labor of basically the entire morning and noon waiting in line, a personalized autograph from Yukana. Nice autograph and face.

Now with my primary mission accomplished I decided to take a quick walk around to that official merch table where they sold Hololive shirts and low and behold one of the volunteers/ shopkeepers was cosplaying as Kiara herself lol. Very nice cosplay indeed. A+. I mean, this is so appropriate and on brand. More of this please.

After walking around a bit more we decided to go to the Yukana QA panel, where we also waited in line a bit but yea, not as bad. Nice FGO Morgan and I think Alexander cosplayer? Noice, too bad I didn’t get a chance to take a proper photo of them however.

Clearing out that nice panel. The attendance was ‘ok’ not jam packed, I would say that it was around less than half the capacity maybe 40%. Yukana herself has had a bad experience coming to Toronto however which is unfortunate as she lost her luggage coming here and caught a cold/felt ill during her time so far here, but yea, shit happens and it’s sad.

Walking the halls, I see this nice Bridget cosplay. Pretty good shit. Always good to see more guilty gear cosplay. Roger needs to be bigger tho.

Walking the main ‘cosplay’ hall or rather the same place for registration/line up to go into a main panel I see this nice Hololive Suisei and Aqua cosplay. Noice, guess it’s true that to be best girl, you gotta be a brave boi to do it.

A far downgrade from the fancy and expensive lunch that I had previously the day before, I was largely left to myself as my sister and bros did their own thing, namely camping for about 3 hours in line to get Yukana’s autograph in her second session and or line up for other panels. The time I think was already like past 1pm or almost 2pm i think, guess a hotdog will do.

$6 hotdog isn’t the best of deals but it will do I guess.

With a lack of other things to do I decided to walk into a early episode 1 showing of ‘Fire Fighter Daigo’ with the sound director providing some insight on the matter and doing promotional QA and such. By being there at the start they were handing out these free clear files, noice I guess. I didn’t take any photos once inside the panel since they obviously requested no photos and such but it was good, the episode and the panel. The guest himself was cool as well as the mc, which did very well to have a conversation like panel, not that formal. They had a give away of some signed posters of the anime with some of the staff/voice actors where everyone had to play rock paper scissors with the audience, kinda jokes but it was nice.

After the panel I returned back to the main hall to check up on my sister and bro to see how they were in the line. Not seen here but they were in good position, still had to wait for like half an hour or so till the actual sign time but it looked like they were for sure to get an autograph. Noice.

There was technically two lines going on, one for Yukana and the other for Abe but Abe did his shit so quick, there was like no more line left. The big line was actually for Yukana.

Decided to do a quick run around and take photos of artists again. Not for me but yea, it’s a thing.

Hmm, wood cut outs huh. I suppose it’s a slight spin on acrylic stands but you know what, I like plastic more.

I might have took a picture of this already but it’s worth taking a photo again. Right beside the Hololive Suisei artists booth, got some nice shirts. Thought about buying that work from home shirt but then again I have too many graphic t shirts already, gotta hold it sometimes. Nice tho.

Nice art, not sure if I’ve seen before at AN or another convention but not quite what I am looking for.

Wow, looks like someone showed up to those empty tables that were here on Friday. Crazy drip and clothes design. Nice but not really my thing.

Nice assortment of art and appropriately lots of Hololive art. Nice but not my thing.

I am not entirely sure what this means when the booth has this tarp covering the table and the artists not around. I mean this is Saturday, isn’t this supposed to be one of the busy days? The art looks good enough so what’s up? Maybe the artists is in line for an autograph as well, yea, that’s probably the thing I am guessing.

This art is decent but not amazing. I appreciate that the artist recognizes this and only prices at $10 while most others are selling a single print for at least $15 or even $20 each it’s still kinda sad that they do this. Competition is tough.

Not bad, the style is pretty good, especially the Bocchi the rock one at the top. I didn’t buy any prints today because I didn’t bring my tube, which was intentional really.

I don’t recall if this table was here or not yesterday but either way nice sailor moon vintage gear.

Artist prints is on point with the Hololive Reines and Kiara print. Nice keychains and even ghetto gacha machine. That women seems to agree too.

Really nice table filled with charms and other keychain stuff. Display is on point.

I decided to sit down and watch some bullshit that happened on stage. Forgettable, I can’t even remember what I watched. Nice Oshi no Ko Ai cosplay tho.

The stage is basically just an unofficial resting area which is probably intended, whether organizers admit to it or not.

Kind of out of place vendor selling dice and shit. What is this about? No anime? DnD uhh.. not sure if this is the right convention for this.

Another vendor selling nice boob mousepads and shylily merch which I am pretty sure is the same table/vendors at AN. I am like 99% sure these are the same guys and goods. Noice tho.

So they had some local idol group perform on stage which apparently are based all across Canada in various cities. They had these nice hype penlight guys doing their thing. The Oshi no Ko Aqua cosplayer adds to the effect, on point.

Our cast of local idols line up to introduce themselves. One one on the far left is the best because she cosplayed the most different clothes and shit and wig.

Midway doing their dances and shit, once again, the one of the right with the wig and colorful cosplay is the best one cause effort.

Once we had enough we walked out to the ‘cosplay’ area and saw this nice Akira group full with binged out styled bike and Tetsuo. Gud shit.

After having our fill of the convention, we decided to go to Holy Cow Steak House on Queen street west. I had always seen in when walking by during lunch when I go downtown to the office, now is as good a time as ever to give it a try.

They had a variety of cuts and kinds of beef for selection. The menu had these flip things with more info, ok.

They had a bunch of other sides you can order like salad and apps. We decided to share an okonomiyaki.

I appreciate the visual guide of the doneness of steak. Anything beyond medium is heathen ruin territory.

Our okonomiyaki, a bit lacking on the tare sauce and no bonito flakes but the idea is there. Pretty standard, nothing out of the ordinary of what can be done homemade.

Our steak/meat began to arrive, this is a mixed cut plate will a bunch of cuts from all the other cuts, nice for variety and cheaper than just having one kind of beef/cut.

A plate of beef tenderloin, tender circular chunks of beef that prioritizes tenderness over all else.

My order of Australian ‘Wagyu’ 8 oz steak. Pretty good but it’s not really real Wagyu beef, not from Japan at least. It doesn’t have the fine melt in your mouth fat and tenderness of real Wagyu, it’s just like a more tender beef with a bit more fat. Which is to be expected I guess, but now I know. Having had real Wagyu A5 in Japan, I know that this doesn’t really deserve to be called Wagyu, not even close but it is better than average, although honestly I would still prefer a steak from the Keg since they are aged well for maximum flavor and umami, these steak I don’t think are aged, at least not to the level as Keg steaks.

The same Australian ‘Wagyu’ but 5oz I think. I think the minimum size is 4-5oz when ordering the Australian Wagyu. Since mine was 8oz, it’s roughly double the size and also the price. My steak was around 60 dollars if I can remember right.

The outside of the joint. Overall I would say this is a pretty good restaurant, worth going again. They have a whole bunch of cheaper options for lunch like beef fried rice and beef dons which are all under $20 each, pretty good and affordable for lunch/beef option. All of the steak dinners we had on hotplate were like $30-50ish each which is roughly a bit cheaper in my opinion to let’s say other steakhouses like the Keg. If I were to go again, I would probably try another type of steak or lunch meal, while Australian Wagyu is good, it’s not real Wagyu, so keep that in mind, it’s just marketing; a name.

Heading over to the Toronto sign again and the dragon boat festival thing was still going on it seems. Noice.

They had some beauty pageant or contest going on I think? Not sure.

Ah yea, nice Toronto sign being put into use by the people as a rest area. Seriously, how did we not have something like this before the pan Am games? It’s become a landmark and it’s own tourist attraction itself, gud shit.

Decided to try some jelly dessert shit from a stall for some sweetness. Not sure what the hell to order so I ordered “I don’t know” lol

“I don’t know” in all of it’s glory. I was alright, but not cold enough. I ate about 75% of it but once it was left with the tasteless jelly I dumped it. Could have been better, maybe should have had the mango one instead. Ahwell.

Dem dragon is lit.

I had no idea that they had chess boards and players in the evening on Saturday. Wow.

Are we at the CNE or what? They had this make shift ghetto game where you had to hang on to the bars for like a minute and forty. Wow, definitely not authorized.

See them. Save them. The face of the orangutan is not particularly amused.

Even tho it’s not the end of the convention I decided to roll out and document the prints and merch I brought, placed into my art portflio book to try and flaten them out. Nice FGO Nero print and free IFF poster, outdated no less but still nice art, for history purposes.

More from the same artist, FGO caster of midrash/Sheba and Summer Musashi. Noice.

Print on the left of Hololive IRYS from our boi pidjun. On the right, one of the prints from that great Hololive Suisei artist. Gud shit.

I don’t play Arkknights but these prints are pretty good shit, I think one of the was named Texas? I’ll figure it out lol. Also from pidjun. I like the bold red background and the contrasting designs. If I were to put them up on a wall, I’d have to put them up side by side. Noice.

The prize of the day, the labor of camping and morning gone. Yukana’s autograph board.

Top row is a book of arts from the Suisei artist along with 3 keychains of Hololive Towa, Aqua and Suisei, known as the “Start End” crew from their Apex group collab. Bottom row from the booth sellling fighting game stuff and keychains, very nice Guilty Gear Strive May, Ramlethal and Bridget. Gud shit.

These keychains were pretty expensive, that’s because you are basically paying for two keychains in one with the additional hanging thing below them. Worth tho.

The two official Hololive shirts I brought of Reines and Kiara lol. I mean, this is something I would only wear at a convention with Hololive guests, but even then we’ll see. Maybe i’ll just become a merch clothing collector since it seems like I’m getting a growing collection of hats too, similar to how HYPEBEASTS used to collect and hoard SUPREME branded things. Is that even a thing anymore? Either way, regardless if I actually wear these is besides the point, gotta get that merch yo. $60 each, pricy for sure.

Same view but on the left the IFF hat that I brought for $15 dollars, so cheap, why not. Top left is a a nice shirt I brought near the end of the day from a clothing vendor called Bibi Sama, which is pretty nice with a anime girl on it that says “Kawaii as f*ck” once again another convention or home shirt only lol. With that said, that’s all the merch I brought.

With Sunday remaining and also being the day for Reines and Kiara Hololive panel appearence, I decided to come a bit later than usual. There was really nothing more else for me to buy. Looking down from the overpass on the North building I see people lining up for autographs again, not entirely sure who tho, probably Abe.

Going back to the main cosplay/registration hall a line has formed waiting to get into the Hololive panel. Yep, that’s about right I guess.

I think the same Suisei cosplayer I took a photo of yesterday was standing behind me too. I didn’t say anything to him this time tho. lol.

As the line gradually grew a really good Gura cosplayer lined just behind the Suisei cospalyer. Wow really good. It seems like she was really Japanese and here for work/vacation. For some reason, maybe because of the guests or something this event seemed to attract alot more Japanese people than normal as attendees.

KFP bros in their nice orange shirts and merch ready to support. Nice plushie there too.

Some units in front and Pekora cosplayer sitting down in the back.

The line grows. A few people came to the Suisei and Gura cosplayer for photos together thinking they were friends/together but they were not, a bit awkward but yea, it’s unavoidable.

Our Bettel from the previous day is also here again, waiting for what truly is the main event of this convention for many, including myself.

Line grows and now you see those army military uniform bros on the side lineing up aswell. Same faces everywhere.

I’d like to think this guy was explaining what a vtuber or a hololive was to this guy in armor and he’s just along for the ride since there isn’t any other event you can line up to really.

Yea, line got kinda big for sure. Why this guy so angry for looking at me? lol.

Finally inside after like waiting for an hour and a half I think? The room was ultimately packed to the max, but not super max, there were still seats in between people and whatnot, if they really wanted to, they could have forced people to take all seats but no, that’s ok. They allowed people to stand on the side as well. Nice Pekora and Gura cosplayer, nice IRYS jacket too.

The panel itself was great, Kiara and Reine video streamed and called in on the big screen and played a prepared game where they had to answer and fill in the blank lyrics for their own songs that they sung, pretty jokes. They did that for about half an hour with audience help/participation and then switched to some karoke where they sang some of their original songs and Kiara promoted their new album. They didn’t really do free QA session but they did off hand respond to the mad lad penlight guys who were here again and a few people in the audience which was nice and interactive.

More people in the audience slowly heading out, being that the main event of the convention was over.

One last run of the hall to see if there was anything else to buy, not much but cute plushies tho.

As requested by my sister who wasn’t able to come today, she saw online some artist selling this Katamari Damacy Prince Bag that she wanted so I got it. The funny part was that the artist was the same girl who I lined up behind yesterday or the Yukana autograph. Wow, I knew she mentioned she had some Katamari stuff but I didn’t’ think it would be the same person, lol. I don’t think she even remembered me but that’s ok. Noice bag. After having had enough of the convention I made my way out. I literally only came today for Hololive and now that it was done, my convention was over.

I ended up going to the German Doner Kabab place that I had mentioned repeatedly every time we made our way to the Toronto sign. Doesn’t this shit look good? Mixed chicken and beef doner kebab German style. Good shit.

After finishing up my late lunch I went back to the TTC and headed back home. For some reason I think this picture is very interesting, a brown security guard on the TTC with the poster behind about the Toronto Ukrainian Festival. A very ‘of the times’ photo I would think for the history books. You can even see my reflection on the left window as well lol.

All in all I enjoyed Anime Toronto 2023 but it’s hard to ignore the comparisons to it’s 2019 predecessor IFF and it’s inherent flaws of having a convention a week after FanExpo with very poor and rushed planning/preparation. While the two main voice acting guests and anime staff were good, it’s a far cry from the full voice cast of the Fate series coming to Toronto in 2019 at IFF and the strict rules about having only paid shikishi boards be for autographs. I am quite impressed that they even manged to get Hololive guests to come to this convention and their very presence basically made it a soft unofficial Hololive convention, similar to a degree what happened in the first IFF as it became an unofficial FGO/Fate convention. More of this please.

The planning and lead up to Anime Toronto however was pretty bad, with almost no communication on the live in person guests until the week of leading up to the actual convention date. The marketing and promotional aspect of this convention were also abysmal, basically non-existent. How are you going to get people to come to a convention if people don’t even know it’s going on? No website updates? Social media posts? It is of my opinion that the convention attendance would have been much lower if they didn’t have Hololive as a guest; as Reine and Kiara were quite literally the only guests on the Anime Toronto website for a month, while all the other in person guests were hastily added to the site the week off. And honestly, I wouldn’t have gone to this thing either if it wasn’t for Hololive; once I saw that they were going to be here, I brought my tickets.

The quality of the vendors are quite lacking this convention but then again, even at IFF that was a problem, since it was basically a FGO convention then. The quality of the artists however were pretty good, much better than average I would say and maybe it’s because of the lack of crowds and good AC, I was able to browse better and see more artists merch than at like AN or other conventions. For these reasons, despite seemingly having a faction the amount of artists and sellers compared to AN for example, I brought a lot more stuff than I expected, far more than I had imagined I would. There was apparently a lot of problems from the artists and vendors side of things based on the Anime Toronto discord regarding noise complaints due to the stage, poor vendor/artist locations, people moving to empty tables and other chaos but yea, I have no stake in that experience.

To sum it up, yea, Anime Toronto was alright, it has a lot of problems especially it’s ill-chosen date of labor day weekend and a week after FanExpo in the exact same location but it’s mainly it’s poor planning and lack of communication/promotion which majorly held this convention back. While the guests themselves are great, they need to do more in advance and tell people that this event even exists and improve their marketing considerably. Being an off-shot of AniRevo, the biggest convention in Vancouver, I would have expected better but that was unfortunately not the case. They had like 4 years to do better and they still rushed it, they should have chosen the spring or even autumn/fall, not the end of Summer for the convention, quite possibly the worst possible date.

But the burning question remains: Would I go to future Anime Toronto events? Maybe. We’ll see, I guess once again it depends on the guests ultimately and if Hololive will return. Not bad Anime Toronto, but you could have done so much better, a wasted opportunity.