My First Anime Convention - Nijifest 2026
Shocking to some who know how much of a nerd I am, but I have never attended a convention before. It has been on my side quest list for a while now and when I heard last year of a brand new anime convention, I knew I had to attend.
Nijifest is a queer anime convention run and made for the queer community. It is still on the small side, this being its second year running, but has grown so much from what I saw of their first year and I am so excited to see where they go from here. My wonderful Emotional Support Straight Husband went with me and while we had 3-day passes, we only went for part of Friday and part of Saturday. I am definitely not a full-con person, even a small convention got a bit overwhelming for me at times.
There were so many amazing vendors with incredible original art, including a few from Lord of the Rings and Let’s Go Karaoke!, though my favorite was @birdy_bomb who was the only person who had Wind Breaker merch, including these hand-drawn photo cards.
I was dressed in my first cosplay for this con which was Kaji Ren from Wind Breaker, hence my excitement and its one of my top three favorite animes. While there were many cosplay events and panels, we only attended one and didn’t get to attend any of the new 18+ ones because they were all after 6pm. I’m hoping next year they have an 18+ room so there can be panels/events throughout the day.
Something fun and unexpected that happened was that I bumped into the lovely people who ran the AFTG fan event I went to last month! It was so cool to see representation of my favorite book series at this con.
I would highly recommend Nijifest to anyone into BL/GL anime, part of the queer community, or want to attend your first anime convention. I am definitely going to be attending more after this experience.
Kyle and I are already planning to go for a day or two of AnimeExpo, though I am bracing myself as it is definitely a larger event.