The Time I Got To Be A Guest of Honor At An Anime Convention
Dearest reader, I had the absolutely amazing opportunity to be a guest of honor at Sin City Anime, an anime convention in Las Vegas, at the beginning of November! This was my first time ever having an opportunity like this and it was truly an honor. This experience not only changed my life but also changed my future ambitions and goals for the better. I'd love to tell you all about it.
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| 📸 Hx Seven Photography |
When Sin City Anime reached out to me at the beginning of 2023 to be a guest the first thing I mentioned was wanting to do something for the Kawaii Black Girls movement. Because of imposter syndrome I didn't really feel like I deserved to have an opportunity like this and didn't really feel like my content was worth promoting by itself. I decided I wanted to do something that could help/encourage others and give back to the community. At the time I hadn't engaged in a lot of community building activity for a while. I was locked out of the Kawaii Black Girls Facebook page for a long time because of losing access to the original account I made it on. However, after having a lovely conversation with a member of my discord community who told me how much the page inspired their journey into alternative fashion I decided to try my best to gain access to the page again and I was successful! Gaining access to the page again and hearing from someone who was genuinely helped by the effort I put into it gave me the courage to try and continue to put effort into helping more people.
The Preparation
Now that I had been given the opportunity to bring Kawaii Black Girls to the real world I decided to start putting in the work to make it more a more established movement. I spent a lot of time creating a website, creating new social media pages, and creating graphics for the movement entirely by myself. It felt extremely amazing to dedicate my time and energy to doing these things for KBG entirely of my own free will and making the choice to do so made me feel very proud of myself. There were so many different things I could've chosen to do events for and so much negativity that exists online but *I* made the choice to use my time and energy to help Black people who enjoy cuteness. Sometimes just this thinking about this would make me start to tear up, especially when I was making the website or writing down ideas for my panel. There's so many people out there who choose to be rude, gross, mean, and weird. It felt so good to take part in something that I felt could really help my community for the better.
Putting together the KBG website took some time, but it was so much fun. The layout and color palette of it is inspired by the websites that are created for magical girl anime. Finding and watching different videos and sources to add to the front page and about section also helped motivate me and reaffirm my motives to. Over time KBG no longer felt like something I just wanted to do, but something I needed to do. Not only to heal my inner child, but I saw it as something that could help the younger generation too.
My First Merch Table and Meet and Greet
Definitely not something to brag or write home about (´･ω･｀) but take it easy on me, okay, it was my first time and I didn't wanna bring a bunch of fancy set up stuff to travel with! Definitely trial and error type of thing that was a huge learning experience. It was an incredibly fun time getting to sell my merch and meet with people who enjoy my content and who were enjoying the convention, though.
This was my first time making and selling merch! My first ever makeup palette and buttons! I ordered some of the buttons online, but got nervous they wouldn't come in time so I got a button maker and started making my own (spoiler alert the other buttons still came in time, phew)! I really love making buttons and can't wait to make more in the future.
Having this opportunity at Sin City Anime helped me discover how much I love making and crafting things and how I want to try to continue to make and sell my own creations in the future. I am doing the final touches to my online store and just took some better product photos, so my merch will finally be available online soon! I appreciate patience and understanding for the delays, but I'm so excited to sell more cute crafts and makeup products in 2024.
I literally spend time day dreaming about all the amazing interactions I got the privilege of having and all the incredible people I got to meet and talk to. There were so many sweet cosplayers, adorable fashion enthusiasts, and just straight up lovely and charming people who enjoy my social media content and community efforts and wanted to chat with me.
I got to talk to people about the need for intersectionality in our communities, about jfashion both old and new styles we love, and had several very lengthy conversations about vocaloid which I was more than willing to participate in because I have loved it for a long time and have a lot to say about it. After having to indulge in a lot of extremely boring small talk at my previous job that involved a lot of customer service it felt extremely good to be able to have passionate conversations about things I really enjoy and care about with people who were genuinely receptive and considerate of my feelings and opinions. It just felt......sooo good for my soul.
This experience was the epitome of why I love the idea of anime conventions as a whole and I feel like I can't even fully express how grateful I am to have had it.
My Panel and Events
Part of being a guest of honor was agreeing to hosting multiple events throughout the weekend of the convention! I decided to host two for the Kawaii Black Girls Movement and one centered around my favorite game of all time Animal Crossing! So happy I got to me the flyers for the events and I really love how they turned out.
Getting to host the KBG panel literally meant the world to me. I spent a lot of time writing down and planning different things I wanted to say in a cute notebook and took it around everywhere with me for months so I could write down a new idea as soon as I had it.
It was also incredible getting to host a Kawaii Black Girls meet up! The theme was "pink cosplay" but I said in my promo video and announcement during the opening ceremonies that any black girls who want to stop by and hangout, take pics/videos, and meet new people are more than welcome to come regardless of what they were wearing. I will admit that when I got on stage at the opening ceremonies I could tell the turn out for my KBG events would probably small because I did not see many Black people in that crowd. It was interesting to see in comparison to what the population of conventions look like back in Michigan. This was my first time ever being in Vegas so I didn't really know what to expect or know much about the size of the black population there (and still don't know much tbh). However I hope that these events I hosted will inspire more black people in Nevada who love anime, jfashion, and cuteness to see that Sin City Anime is a welcoming and safe place for them to have fun and be themselves. ♡
I got some great video testimonials from some of the girls who came to the meet up as well as a cute tik tok we made together! So sorry for taking so long to edit and post everything.
I can't even truly put into words how much it means to me to be able to speak out about Colorism, Texturism, and Cyber Bullying SPECIFICALLY at an anime convention with many jfashion booths and events. These are things that have plagued communities for years and years and I've seen it happen over and over since I was a child. These are important conversations that black people in the anime community and in the jfashion/alt fashion communities DESERVE to have. I really appreciate all the Sin City Anime staff who were there to help get the panel up and running, HX Seven Productions for taking great pictures of me speaking during the panel, Afrococoapuffs for letting me use her laptop and for giving me amazing support and encouragement the whole weekend, and everyone who attended and listened to what I had to say including the non black people too.
It's hard to even type this without tearing up and thinking about it. This was such an amazing opportunity to me and I'm so glad to been able to do it. I really really hope I can do more panels like this in the future. Maybe some day.
Shout out to all the super cute girls who were able to stick around towards the end of the meetup to take cute pictures and videos with me!!! And to all the girls who came even if they didn't want their picture taken. Thank you so much for helping me make history with the first ever Kawaii Black Girls Meetup hosted and sponsored by an anime convention. Thank you so much to Sin City Anime for helping provide a safe environment for black girls who love anime and cute aesthetics to gather, meet, and have fun together. I truly appreciate it from the bottom of my heart.
I wish I could go back in time and tell my younger self all about this amazing day. I hope that this event can inspire other people to start more events at other conventions too. Thanks to social media it has become much easier for black people with similar aesthetics and interests to find community online and make friends. Unfortunately, though, it is still hard for some to find community and friends irl. I think having more healthy and safe real life community engagement is a very important part of growing and making these communities better. I really hope I can see more of that in my life time and I can't wait to do my part to make it more wide spread.
I am soooo sorry I didn't get to take photos or videos during my animal crossing event, but to be honest there was a lot of technical difficulties and some scheduling errors so it didn't really go over as planned. (´；ω；`)
Hey, sometimes it do be like that though. I'm still glad I got to meet other cute animal crossing enjoyers and play with them a bit. I also got to give away a bunch of animal crossing stickers I bought that were originally gonna be prizes for the design challenge, but since there were so many technical issues I just gave them to anyone who wanted them and said take as many as you want!! It felt good to be able to do that at least. I will practice doing more animal crossing design challenges on my twitch live streams before I try doing it irl again. I really appreciate all the cuties who came to cross animals with me!!!
Also there were a few people in the audience that didn't have a switch to play with, so they drew cute animal crossing characters on their phones which I absolutely loved. There were even some people who drew ME which made me so happy and delighted I wanted to cry. I wish I would've taken a picture of their phones or something to show but I think my phone was about to die at that point 😭
Amazing Cosplays That I Saw
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I wish I could've taken even more pictures because there were just so many amazing cosplays at this convention. As you can see most of these pictures were taken in front of my booth because that's where I was most of the time. There were some great ones I saw from far away that I wasn't able to capture but still glad I got to see them.
Amazing Outfits That I Saw
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Huge shout out to all the amazing designers and models who were part of this fashion show. I actually want to do a separate blog post about the fashion show soon, so I can go more in depth with my personal feelings about different looks that I loved.
Until then, though, I wanna highlight some the incredible black models I saw in the fashion show.
I have never seen black people celebrated in jfashion in person in this way before, so it was truly an emotional event for me. Especially as someone who has faced as well as and consoled other people who have faced anti black discrimination in the jfashion community.
So sorry if I missed anyone. There was a point where I had to run across the hall to grab my selfie stick because my arm was getting tired from holding my for so long! I am grateful that I got to observe this absolutely awe inspiring event. Everyone, and I mean everyone, looked so great.
In Conclusion
Thank you so much again to Sin City Anime for giving me this amazing opportunity, to everyone who bought merch from my booth, everyone who let me take pictures of their incredible cosplays and outfits, to all the staff who helped me with my events, and to everyone who was super kind and respectful to me and my boundaries during this experience. This opportunity truly changed my future goals, ambitions, and hobbies. I feel so inspired by so many amazing people I got to meet and buy art from as well. I can't wait to keep creating and keep putting positivity out into this world in some form or another.
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