There’s a version of me that grew up going to things like this. My dad is the reason I love model kits, computers, and the sound of a jet engine - the nerd DNA runs deep on that side. But a convention? Thousands of people in a building, celebrating the things you love? That just wasn’t a thing in our world. We went to airshows because he worked them, and when his shift was done we’d go look at the planes together. That was our version of it.
So I’ve made a point of doing it differently. My daughter has done Fan Expo, a few cons around southwestern Ontario - and last year, we took the family to Japan. Akihabara specifically did something to all of us. We’ve been chasing that high ever since. A convention dedicated entirely to anime felt like the closest thing to scratching that itch without a fourteen-hour flight.
We drove down on Saturday morning, just the three of us - me, my daughter, and her friend, who between them could probably out-trivia any panel in that building. I’d done my homework. YouTube, previous years’ vlogs, the whole thing. I knew it was big. I knew there’d be walking. I came prepared.
I was not prepared.
The parking situation #
An hour. In the car. Stuck in traffic, the Congress Centre in sight.
We eventually found a pop-up lot about a five-minute walk from the venue for $40, which at that point felt like finding water in a desert. I handed over the cash without blinking. Word to the wise: if you’re not parked before the doors open, you are not parking near the venue. The surrounding streets were apparently functioning as an impromptu ticketing event for anyone who tried.
Get the passes mailed. Find a hotel room nearby. Do literally anything other than what we did.
The weather #
Toronto decided to have feelings that day.
Torrential rain, wind, the full production. The silver lining - and it was genuinely silver - was that we were stuck in the car for that parking hour watching an absolute parade of cosplayers making their way to the convention from the nearby hotels. Soaking wet, fully committed, completely unbothered. It set the tone nicely.
I felt genuinely terrible for the people who’d spent weeks on their costumes, only to have them drenched before they even reached the entrance. The dedication on display was something else.
The venue itself #
The Toronto Congress Centre proudly advertises one million square feet, and they are not kidding. It is enormous. There’s a lot to see - vendors, artists, panels, cosplayers, and a general sense that you could spend three days here and still miss things.
The bad news is that signage is apparently optional. We had no idea which doors were exit-only (several, it turned out), couldn’t find the washrooms without significant detective work, and were yelled at for not having our passes displayed correctly after approximately forty-five seconds inside. The staff experience was, to put it charitably, inconsistent - seemingly concentrated at key chokepoints to redirect traffic rather than, say, help anyone find anything.
The map they handed us at registration was immediately soaked, because immediately after registration they sent us outside to walk back to the entrance. On the other side of a million square feet. In the rain.
The debit situation #
Bring cash. Full stop.
By mid-afternoon, debit was essentially non-functional. I spotted one ATM. I felt genuinely bad for the artists - these are people who’ve paid for a table, made their work, shown up, and then watched a percentage of their sales walk away because the payment infrastructure collapsed under the crowd. Sort it out, Anime North.
The good stuff - and there’s a lot of it #
Here’s the thing: none of that is actually what the day was.
The day was my daughter and her friend losing their minds seeing cosplayers they recognized. It was them getting photos with people dressed as characters they love, and those people being genuinely warm and happy about it. It was watching them spend hours in the artist alley, deliberating over prints with the kind of seriousness usually reserved for major life decisions.
They also found - and I’m quoting here - “extremely rare stuffies and figures” in the vendor hall. The specifics were explained to me at length. I nodded along. The joy was extremely real.
The cosplay was legitimately impressive. Not just impressive-for-a-con impressive - just impressive, full stop. The effort, the craft, the commitment to the bit in the middle of a rainstorm. I have a lot of respect for it. My personal favorite cosplay (and admittedly, the only time I asked a stranger if I could take a photo of them), was of an individual who had dressed up as a 6ft tall potted plant. When not mobile, the illusion was fantastic - they totally looked like they were part of the scenery. Then, every so often, feet would pop out of the bottom of the pot and they’d scurry away to a new location.
A personal note on Macross #
I will say - and this is me being very specific - I was hoping for more Macross. Robotech. Anything in that universe.
When we were in Japan last year I walked past something I should have bought and didn’t, and I’ve been quietly furious about it ever since. Efforts to track it down online have been about as successful as you’d expect. So part of me was holding out hope that somewhere in a million square feet of anime convention, a vendor might have brought over something Japan-exclusive. Where else would it show up, if not here?
I warned my wife before we left that if I found what I was looking for, she might not love what I was willing to pay for it.
I saw Ultraman. I saw Astro Boy. Godzilla had an entire economy apparently. Gundam was very well represented, which I appreciate, but Gundam doesn’t scratch the same itch. Macross was essentially absent. I came home with a set of Godhand cutters instead, which I’m unreasonably excited about - assuming I can stop being afraid of breaking them long enough to actually use them.
The Macross hunt continues.
Would we go back? #
Already talking about it.
Next year: passes mailed in advance, or a hotel room nearby. Probably both. The kids want to go, and honestly, so do I - even the parts that were a bit of a mess had a certain charm to them in retrospect. There’s something genuinely good happening in that building, even when the building is conspiring against you.
Twelve-year-old me would have thought this was the greatest day of his life.
He wouldn’t have been entirely wrong.