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After setting up quickly and without issue I still had an hour to spare, so I walked around chatting with people about their previous experiences with this con. Even ran into the vendors who helped me earlier. They asked if I had found my spot. I said, “No one has told me to move yet.”

Over the next hour or so I just wandered the con to get a sense of the vibe and see what I was in for. First, I checked out what kind of other vendors there were. I think there were around 75 vendors, and only 4 of them were reselling Japanese merch and collectibles – and only one of them had Amazon stickers.

There was also one booth selling exclusively Zelda merch. I later found out this was labeled “The Zelda Experience” in some places. But it was just a guy selling Zelda merch. I think it was a hardcore fan downsizing their personal collection. Mood.

I’m actually okay with a fandom con not being 100% artists. In fact, I would have been okay with a few more vendors selling official plushies, keychains, vintage toys, DVDs, and things like that. But it was still cool to see how many artists there were. And a decent amount of them had art from weird, old, and obscure stuff and quite a few with original work. It wasn’t just everyone chasing whatever’s popular. 

And even among the artists there were only a few selling low-effort stuff like tumblers and vinyl decals. And I only found exactly 1 instance of an AI artist using generated imagery. And even then it was only for their business logo, none of the art they were selling. 

Otherwise, maybe 95% of the vendors were artists selling real art of things they love.

I did another lap to confirm something else I had suspected: I think I was the only person there selling just books. A few artists had a zine or two, but primarily they were there selling prints and stickers and such. I was the only person there exclusively selling comics. There wasn’t even a booth selling official manga either. I wasn’t sure if that was going to work in my favor though. Maybe people just weren’t coming here for books?

Then, because I was bored and can only mentally collect one string of data at a time, I did another lap to see if anyone was selling tokusatsu stuff. I was really curious to see how big the fandom was here. I figure if artists are selling toku stuff, that would mean they expect toku fans to buy it. Additionally, if there’s artists here selling toku then that means fans may be coming here to buy toku.

Anyway, no. It’s just me. It’s just Hero Booster. But then I saw someone in a full, high-quality Power Ranger cosplay so that gave me hope.

At some point during this time I actually ran into the organizer. They seemed nice. We had a nice chat.

While I was doing my third lap, I began to pick up on something that I guess I had been to busy to notice before.

As anyone who was at Philly Otaku Fest 2025 will tell you. It was cold. It was so cold. Cosplayers were walking around with winter coats covering their fancy costumes like a kid on Halloween. Vendors started putting their coats back on. Some had scarves. Some had gloves. Some had blankets. I think someone had space heater. How did they know to bring that?

If you’re reading this in the future or like climate change is worse or whatever, let me remind you: Philly Otaku Fest was held in April. Indoors. And yet it felt like I was sitting out in the snow.

How? Why? What happened? I know it was raining and I was literally within 30 feet of a river. I know it’s a big old building that wasn’t designed with any of this in mind. I vended here in July during a heatwave and didn’t remember it being too hot.

The last time Cherry Street Pier opened artist in residence applications, I actually looked into it out of curiosity and because I’m ambitious enough to think Space Bunny will someday support me. The application did mention that the artist studios are air conditioned, but I didn’t realize that the warehouse itself isn’t. The website does say to dress in layers for winter events, but I didn’t think to check that.

I did check the weather before I left. I took a Lyft there but was planning to take the subway after. I figured I’d be fine with just a hoody but at the last second decided to grab my winter coat just in case. This probably saved my life. I would have had to DoorDash a coat from Target.

To say that I was uncomfortable the entire time is an understatement. I felt absolutely, completely frozen the entire time. Of course, it wasn’t a medical disaster waiting to happen. My coat and hoodie were enough to keep me alive. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t miserable on a sheer biological level. 

It wasn’t even really “cold” outside either? It was raining and windy but it was over 40 degrees. But it felt like half of that inside. The bathrooms were heated though so I kept going in there just to decompress.

After I sat down to wait for the con to properly open, I noticed something genuinely scary. My books – 100% of the stuff I sell – had started warping. I’ve never seen that before and it had me worried my entire inventory was going to be destroyed by the air. Within literally just the first hour I was contemplating packing it up early and just kissing the vendor fee goodbye.

Now, let me be clear. None of this was the fault of the organizers or the venue. The building is old. Weather is unpredictable. I’m not mad at at the organizers. I don’t think anyone expects it to get this cold in April. 

With that out of the way, it’s time to complain about something else.

In the middle of Cherry Street Pier, hanging from the ceiling, is a giant screen. I think it’s LEDs but I can’t be sure even though I was as close to it as you could possibly be. My table spot was one of a few that were directly underneath this thing.

Since the last time I was here was for a film festival, I distinctly remembered that there was a screen. But during set up I didn’t really really notice or mind because they were playing JRPG soundtracks. Chill instrumental tracks over simple clips of characters walking through 16-bit environments. It was cute. I liked it.

When the con officially opened, they switched to playing anime theme songs. I don’t mean AMVs. I don’t mean like the full versions of songs set to scenes from the shows. I mean they put on a playlist of the actual television OPs. That means there were chaotic lights flashing directly above me playing songs in a language I do not speak – and a new song started every 90 seconds.

The first song was the original Dragon Ball opening, which I love. But while I was jamming along to Mystic Adventure I also had orange lights shooting into my retinas. It got really, really old fast. Cons are loud enough, if you’re going to do music then at least do instrumentals and leave the screen off. I think they just used the big screen because it was there and they could. Which… I get that. But I think there was a better way to utilize it.

Either way, the combination of the cold and the flickering bright lights did not sit well with me. I ended up feeling absolutely uncomfortable the entire time. I could barely hear customers and I felt like I was not giving it my all because I was in such a bad way from the start.

At one point I noticed an empty spot in the next row over. I wasn’t that far away but it was facing away from the screen, so I actually emailed the organizers and asked if I could move. 20 minutes later I saw another guy in my row move to that spot and I was like… What the hell?

To be fair, he was actually closer to the screen and on the side that actually faced it. So while it was annoying to have it constantly flickering out of the corner of my eye, he had the blinding light in his face the whole time. He definitely deserved to move more than me. I’m not even mad about it.

I think what happened was the organizers got confused by my email and asked him if he wanted to switch thinking he was me and he just saw the opportunity and took it. (Update from the future: I talked to him on Sunday and this is exactly what happened.)

I say, if you’re going to use the screen, don’t put any tables there. Certainly not vendor tables where someone is expected to sit for extended periods of time. I was in the last row of vendors and right behind us they set up a J-Fashion booth inside of a tent. Just put the tent under the screen, they won’t even notice it.

Within the first couple of hours I had already eaten most of my snacks simply because digesting something warmed me up. The marshmallows in my rice krispie treat had frozen. The only food trucks in the warehouse were the bar and an ice cream place. There used to be… I don’t remember what it was but last time I was here there was this place that ran out of chicken and they weren’t there this time.

Despite all the food I bought to not have to order food, I needed something hot. So I ordered a whole pizza for myself from Pizza Hut. I didn’t want to take half a pizza home, nor did I want to spend that much money to stuff myself. But it was cold as hell so I needed something. I ordered a pan pizza and they sent me a hand-tossed pizza so I got a full refund from DoorDash. So yeah. It was worth it.

Oh. Right. Comics. I did decently for what was apparently a slow Friday. I figured if things picked up on Saturday and I kept selling at the same pace then I would technically make a profit. But I’ve done events before that were a financial success but decided not to do them again because of external forces. Things like… you know… The Snow Miser coming inside the venue on the first day of spring break.