My First Trip to AFA by Sarah Kloer

On Saturday, 17th August - just a day before Musyawarah Ambalan, I went to my first Anime Festival Asia. This is an anime convention held anually that has been talked about for years, earning sponsors from big names and what not. This is not my first anime convention, fortunately, as my first one was a small one held in Gandaria City on my first year of middle school.

My mom hadn’t wanted for me to come alone, so I was fortunate to know that Aretha was coming too and bought my wristband for me in the morning because I had usually had wushu lessons on 10 AM - the time the event had started.

When I woke up, pretty late on 8 AM, it turned out that my teacher was away for an event so I didn’t have lessons. Regardless, I went out from home with my car on 11.30 PM. It took me about an hour and a half to reach there because it was at North Jakarta and the traffic in front of my house was pretty bad. I had to pray at the car because I know I had to conserve my time to be efficient there.

I met Aretha at the mosque near the building for the convention. It turns out she brought her family along for the ride fpr the first few hours she was here. I’m glad it was like that, to be honest, because I would feel guilty if I had left her alone since this morning.

As Aretha had knowledge from her first few hours at the convention, she easily led me to the places we went. It was really big, even if I had the picture of the map on my phone.

The first booth I went to was an official merchendise booth of Assassination Classroom and One Punch Man. Both are famous anime that has aired last year, with Assassination Classroom airing its last season just this summer. I wanted to buy the Saitama pillow and Koro-sensei bag but my money could only buy the bag since I underestimated how much it would cost.

In the end, the two of us went to the ATM Center to take our money after I bought one of the bags. It didn’t take long for the queue to shorten and I bought the pillow the moment I got my money.

I wanted to eat lunch because I forgot to have it when I left home, but the queue for all of the food booths were really long so I decided to eat after we finished looking around.

We went to the RE:ON booth after that, Aretha wanted to buy a keychain of her favorite character to hang it at her wallet.

The part I had waited all day has finally come, the artist booths. It offered a lot of good art with a price that was affordable with a highschooler’s wallet and by buying the artists’ merchandise, we were supporting their growth so they could afford better art equipments.

The main thing I wanted to buy are keychains, and there were a lot of them being sold. I also bought two One Piece Zines (art magazine) that featured good art and a cute comic.

One of the first few booths that I went to offered commissions to draw us with a starter pokemon of our choosing. I wanted to be drawn with Chimchar because it was my first starter. When I exclaimed that to Aretha, I didn’t expect that one of the persons who was on shift at the booth would chime in. I was very happy that most of the stand owners were very friendly and inviting, even if there are foreign people who only spoke English. It showed that a lot of us are united with the same feeling of loving the many fandoms we are in.

Other than games and anime, there were also merchandise for cartoons and comic books. The most famous fandom that was being sold everywhere is this mobile game called Mystic Messenger. Aretha, even though she had bought things before, bought a lot of merchandise related to her favorite character from that series.

One of the last stands that I went to had really good art, I even purchased a tote bag that had the artist’s original art. The problem was that they didn’t have any spare change and I could tell that the artist was panicking because of the many people who wanted to buy from her. I ended up buying a lot from her to even the money out and because I stayed at her stand the longest.

By the time me and Aretha were out of the artist booths, it was already 4.30 PM. We went around the sponsored parts of the convention. I wanted to hang around because I wanted to get a picture with a cosplayer, and I did get it in the end.

When we went out of the building, the sun was starting to set and I was getting hungry. Aretha told me that she could lead me to the building where she ate lunch - which turned out to be near my car. I ate my very late lunch while getting chewed off by my dad because I forgot to tell him that I was going to take money from my bank account but all’s well ends well.

When we were parting ways, Aretha’s family was already parked beside my car to pick her up. We said our good byes, though we were going to meet later that night at Tari’s house for a sleepover with all the other Scouts.

I went home feeling really satisfied by the things I had bought while I organized them at the car. I hope I would be able to go to another big convention again next year.