TLDR here

If you want a TLDR of this event, simply visit this facebook post. Otherwise, enjoy my drivel of me recanting the horrors of this event.

Prelude

My last post was on the 22nd of July. The truth is that nothing of interest warranted me to create a blog post. My life only consisted of working on weekdays and resting on weekends, until one day an event caught my ears and eyes. Comifuro is back, after a 2 year hiatus due to covid restrictions! Ghosty’s comic, Kamvret comics, and many more were there! Sounds like a perfect event for me to enjoy, right? So I asked along two of my friends to come with me. Little did I know that…

Pre-event woes

There are a few things that raised a few questions/concerns before the event even begun.

Either way, we decided to meet up at around 10 AM. But the meeting time was rescheduled to 12:30 PM. This turned out to be very bad.

Ticket woes (12:30 PM)

Parking lot We had NO IDEA where to buy the on-site tickets. Apparently you needed to go down to the basement? But the queue was definitely crazy. The logical thing we did to enjoy the event as soon as possible is to purchase it from a ticket broker (turns out this was the right call because some people reported waiting for hours, only to be told that the tickets are sold out. Of course, the even more correct call was to NOT ATTEND IN THE FIRST PLACE, but hindsight is 20/20). This one hurts to do because the asking price was three times more expensive. Oh well, I just got my bonus so why not.

Hall 9 (1:00 PM)

Entrance 9 Then, entering the building came with other issues. Turns out you needed to enter through hall 9. Except that hall 9 is closed (some speculated that the place was full, others thought it was due to covid restrictions). Turns out it was closed for a long time, because the crowd kept yelling angrily. There was some banging on the glass door, which is not a good sign. Eventually, the door was opened at 1:30 PM. But, entering the building was also a hassle. EVERYONE pushed each other without any regards. I know it’s hot outside, but holy hell everyone was impatient.

Inside, yet outside (2:00 PM)

Outside hall 10 There was some additional waiting once we were inside. The committee were opening the entrance in batches, and would close the door again once at a certain threshold/interval. Nothing significant happened here, but one thing my friend noticed was we could not hear any sounds from the outside. So all the yelling at 1 PM was not even heard (I’m sure the banging was heard though).

Finally, the event (2:30 PM)

Inside hall 10 Once we were inside, the place was too crowded for my liking. This could have been my introvert personality speaking to me, but I really would like some space when checking out a stall. Some areas were very crowded, and people just passed each other without regard. One thing to note is that the mobile data was very bad, despite having a full signal. The theory here is that the combined force of weebs and K-pop stans caused the mobile providers to be overloaded. Looks like someone didn’t prescale their infrastructure this weekend 😏

My first impression of this event is that I hated it. Again, too much people, bad connection (thankfully I brought cash), no sense of purpose. Some people might want to take pictures with a cosplayer, but I’m not one of them. There are many cosplayers from many different fandoms (Genshin Impact, Spy X Family, Touhou, Valorant, Demon Slayer, JoJo, Naruto, Chainsaw Man, and probably many more that I forgot or didn’t see), However, content wise it was dominated by Genshin Impact and Hololive merch. Posters, stickers, keychains, fans, etc. I can’t see each stall for too long because I would be blocking some other passerby.

Eventually I got sick of the environment and called it quits after one hour. Rp. 150.000, for around 1 hour of being in the convention. This sucks.

Exodus (3:30 PM)

Exit gate So after deciding to leave, we decided to go to a nearby mall. Unfortunately, almost every single convention attendee had the exact same thought, and there was a pretty significant traffic jam. Once we were at the mall, almost every single restaurant was on a waiting list. My friends decided to go on a Brazillian BBQ all you can eat. Again, my bonus tanked the damage done to my bank account, but sheesh.

Home (8:30 PM)

loot Long story short, I arrived home at 8:30 PM and started typing this out. But as I was researching more about the event, there are a few other things that happened during the event:

  • Some people reportedly lost their wallets due to a pickpocket.
  • There was a long line for buying the on-site ticket, and they ran out of tickets.
  • During the 1 PM debacle, there are reports of people passing out due to heatstroke.

All in all, a very bad first impression. I would probably not attend future events. If I were to support a creator I like, I would probably just buy their stuff from an online shop. If any of you are reading this and still plan on going tomorrow, please tell me what it is like there.