MY THOUGHTS ABOUT: Anime Festival Asia 2025
My thoughts on going to Singapore’s biggest anime convention once more
If you prefer a video to hear in the background instead of reading, you can watch the video variant here:
Hello, it’s Noah here.
It definitely has been some time since I’ve posted anything related to MY THOUGHTS ABOUT, or in fact any voiced video about my thoughts on a certain topic. The last time I did this was almost a whole year ago, when I expressed how I’ve felt about Anime Festival Asia 2024.
That is very similar to what I’m gonna be talking about today. Because it is the same thing, just a different year. Wow, maybe I should change this publication name to “AFA Experiences”, but who knows? Anyways, back to the main point, I’m going to be talking about an anime convention that everyone surely knows.
Anime Festival Asia.
I have written about my experiences of attending this same event for the past 2 years, and this year would be no different. Both of these articles on Medium are doing pretty decent, I’d say, and the video is doing not too bad either…at least compared to the videos that don’t get a lot of views, which is most of them.
I just thought of sharing how I’ve felt about AFA again, because why not? It has sort of become a tradition every year to do this, and I’ll probably do this for every AFA in the near future, until somehow I feel that it might not be worth talking about anymore.
For those who have not read my past two experiences before, or have not heard of the event (which at this point, who hasn’t?), I’m going to give a brief introduction. AFA is an anime convention held in Southeast Asia countries, with its main and core one held in Singapore annually ever since 2008. It has been ongoing for 17 years, which is honestly astounding at this point, because there are still a lot of anime fans as times change, which is a good thing.
Recently, AFA has started to venture into other countries too. I mean, of course, they have done this in other countries in the previous years, such as Indonesia, Thailand, and Hong Kong. However, it has been pretty inconsistent, like it happens maybe once every few years. Nonetheless, since 2024, it has started to go back to Indonesia. Next year, in 2026, they have also planned for Hong Kong and Thailand too. They somewhat haven’t announced another Singapore one like they did last year, but AFA should still be around next year, I hope.
AFA is known to have several musicians and seiyuus come over each year as guests, as well as renowned cosplayers having stalls all around the exhibition. Attendees are also allowed to come in their normal clothes or their cosplays.
And that’s it for the brief history. With that, let’s get to talking about my experience in this year’s AFA.
Pre-Event
I bought tickets for all 3 days. Now, the first question to mind is, “Noah, why did you buy 3 days of tickets again?”
As usual, I will explain my reasons. Firstly, I do want to attend at least one day of the convention. Friday was the most convenient, as my friends from university were able to attend it with me. Secondly, I want to see my favorite cosplayer.
I’ve talked about her last AFA video, but I’ll just reintroduce her again.
Ely is my favorite cosplayer of all time, and no one else would probably come to her. I have been supporting her since my very first AFA event in 2022. I’ve discovered her way earlier, but I didn’t attend previous AFA conventions, and I couldn’t fly to other countries where she held her booths in conventions overseas.
Let me be real honest here. She is a major reason why I’m going all three days of AFA. I just want to support her as a fan of hers and buy her merchandise too. Because she was coming for all three days, I had just decided to buy all three days.
“Wait, Noah, don’t you usually go all three days, especially Friday, to buy anime merch so it doesn’t sell out?” I got news for you. What anime merch am I looking out for specifically in this year’s AFA?
Nothing.
When the announcement for the stalls coming to AFA was posted by the official account, I was combing through what could potentially interest me…and none of them come to mind. Number one, there was no Bushiroad Expo. Granted, Bushiroad came over to Singapore during TableCon Quest in August, and that event was pretty interesting for me, but as usual, I lost my chances on the seiyuu tickets. I’m never fated to get an autograph from AiAi (Aina Aiba), am I?
No Bushiroad Expo in AFA means I won’t need to be queuing to buy BanG Dream or seiyuu merch, and that is kinda the major part of my spending in AFA besides Ely’s merch.
Secondly, there isn’t anything that interests me. Sure, all of these stalls like Aniplus, Muse Asia, and La Tendo are selling anime-related stuff, which I could potentially be interested in, but they’re more or less selling the stuff from the shows that came out recently, which I don’t have a particular interest for, so that goes my interest for these stalls. I guess the good thing to come out of this is that I can spend lesser money on merch buying.
“But Noah, you said you bought all three days of tickets. Isn’t that really expensive?” Let me show you the prices for this year.
Here’s the third reason. The prices of the tickets are cheaper than last year, which pleasantly surprised me, because I was expecting to pay 30 bucks per exhibition ticket. I thought it was the norm going forward, so I was glad to see I was paying lesser.
You might think that I might have bought 2 days of exhibition and 1 day of Day Stage, since that was what I have done in the past 2 years. That is not the case for this AFA. I only bought 3 days of exhibition this year, so I only had to pay 62 bucks for it.
The guests for Day Stage this year weren’t enough to move me to buy a ticket for it. I mean, Akari Kito was coming over for Day 2, and not gonna lie, I was a bit tempted to buy the Saturday Day Stage for her, but I decided against it at the last minute. She is a seiyuu I do follow, but not really a priority for me.
Also, I just want to mention that I have indeed thought about buying concert for Day 2, because fhana would be performing. I’m not a very huge fan of fhana, but I do love their music, and I kinda wanted to try out the concert for once, but I didn’t buy it at all because I needed to save money for my Japan trip that is coming soon.
Additionally, a few days before AFA started, they offered a viewing of the Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid movie, the one that recently came out in Japan. I wanted to watch it because I know the anime series, and I do love it, so I bought the 4pm ticket.
The entry flow is the same as last year’s, and it is still really smooth, so that’s a relief. I really love this queue system, and I do have to thank the AFA committee for this wonderful idea.
That’s all for pre-event, and now onto the main course: the three days of AFA.
Day 1
I woke up at 7am this time, and got ready by 735am. I reached Esplanade MRT around 822am and waited for one of my friends to arrive before we joined the queue at 840am.
There was, of course, a lot of people in the line before us. However, because of the new entry flow, the queue moved relatively fast, which I am grateful for. Around 930am, we have gotten up to the third floor to collect our wristbands. The collection area is similar to last year’s with minor changes.
After that, we went straight to the bag check line, and I have to say it was pretty fast. I remembered getting up to the hall around 10am, and I was trying to find Ely’s booth for a good 5 minutes. The layout of the convention has changed a bit, because usually, all the cosplayer booths would be clumped together, and it is usually at the right side of the hall.
Turns out, this year was a bit different. There are still cosplayer booths at the right of the hall, but none of them were Ely’s. Where was her stall, you ask? At the left. I had to do a u-turn and quickly rush there.
And guess what? There was already a queue formed, although it wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated. I joined in and waited for 1.5 hours, while my friend went to the entrance of the hall to wait for two more of our friends. I’ve bought like 6 photos, 2 chekis (or polaroids), and a card (I kinda don’t know what to call it). I wanted to get her polaroid album, but it was out of stock because there was no stock to begin with. Welp.
Once I was done with that, I went to meet my friends, and we took our lunch at Sukiya in Suntec City before going back to the convention centre and walking around the exhibition, seeing what stalls there are. I don’t know if it is just me or if anyone else feels the same way, but it kinda feels…empty. I don’t think there was a single stall that caught my attention on first glance. Not even the Uma Musume booth was interesting. In fact, it’s only like two staff standing there, handing out fans and stickers. Not a single sight of merch.
Maybe because none of the stalls were having or selling stuff that were of my interests, that was why I kinda felt like there was nothing to look at. To be fair, it’s only the first day, and I’m spending most of my time with my friends instead of looking closely at each stall. That was what I chalked it up to.
Anyways, I was just walking around when I saw this stall that said I could get a signature and a picture just by buying this seiyuu’s photobook. I was like ‘wow, that’s interesting’. Because you don’t usually get autographs from seiyuus unless AFA had special sessions for it, so this one seemed out of the blue. Still, temptation got me, and I bought the photobook. I met this seiyuu called Yurie Kozakai, who acted in a few anime I have heard of but never watched, like My Hero Academia, Edens Zero, Horimiya, and “Science Fell In Love, So I Tried To Prove It”. Long anime name, I know.
She even had a cameo role in the first season of Quintessential Quintuplets, and is a ring announcer for the World Wonder Ring Stardom. Yes, the wrestling promotion AiAi used to be a wrestler in. I talked to her a bit, and she signed my name on the book. Pretty cool. We took a picture together too. I guess I’ll be watching her works in my free time.
Then, me and my friends went for the “Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid: A lonely dragon wants to be loved” movie screening at 4pm. I loved the movie. It does try to be serious with its topics, as well as its emotional scenes, and it is comedic at times, but I felt that this film is really amazing. It is worth my 30 bucks, at the very least. At last, we had dinner after the movie.
That marked the end of the first day. Overall, the day didn’t go too bad because my friends were there. The stalls were kinda meh, but I was going to explore the place in full detail on day 2, since there would be no one joining me.
These are the things I’ve bought or gotten throughout the day.
Day 2
I woke up way later than any of the days I went for AFA the past 3 years. 9.30am. I got ready by 1030am, and I moved out to Esplanade MRT. It was almost 11am when I got to the station’s exit, and usually, even on a weekend, the queue wouldn’t be too bad because of the new entry flow…HOLY SHIT.
Quite the queue on the first floor. It started from halfway of the Uniqlo front. I was like ‘damn, there is way too many people.” Still, it moved relatively fast, so not much complains. The wristband queue wasn’t that long either, and I thought, ‘hey, maybe the day wouldn’t be that bad after all.’ After collecting my wristband, the queue really started to form.
The guards were slowly letting people go to the bag check area so that overcrowding doesn’t happen, which is a good thing that they’re doing so. Once the bag check queue was full, they’d stop the rest of the wristband queue from moving on to the next section.
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Not only was the bag check queue full, the wristband queue was starting to pile up more and more because they weren’t able to go to the bag check area. As a result, there were lots of people in the wristband queue. I’m going to show you how it looks like.
Just imagine this is level 3 of Suntec Convention Centre. The dark red line represents the wristband collection area. The black line besides it represents the snake-like queue after the wristband collection towards the bag check. The green line is the bag check queue. The lighter red line represents the bag check area. The guards are situated between the end of the black line and the start of the green line, and finally, the blue X is where I was in the queue after I first collected my wristband.
To say there were lots of people is an understatement. It was like if I went to a wet market. I know you’re gonna probably ask me, ‘Noah, this is an anime convention, and it’s on a weekend. Why are you surprised that it is THAT busy?”
Well, let’s take a look at last year’s Day 2. It was also about this long of a queue, but at that time, Hololive was going to have a concert, so I would understand why Day 2 of 2024 would have lots of people. However, I don’t think there would be lots of people who care for the Day 2 concert this year (probably me cuz I do care), and I don’t remember the Day Stage having that much of hype, unless it could be the Apothecary Diaries Day Stage featuring Aoi Yuki and Asami Seto, or Akari Kito with her Chibi Godzilla, or Frieren…Okay, yeah, I kinda take my words back. I understood why it might be busy, but still, I thought only Hololive could make the place really full.
After some time, I managed to get into the halls, and on my way to the cosplayer area, I saw this male trainer cosplay holding up a board. It was filled with pictures of Umas, and stickers below the pictures. The guy was going around, asking people to vote on which Uma will ‘win the AFA 2025 Derby’. I have to give him props for that. It was pretty creative.
I then went to Ely’s booth and joined the queue. Took me about 1 hour and 40 minutes to get to her, which was quite long honestly, and bought some merch of hers, as well as took pictures with her. I then met up with a friend to eat lunch.
Afterwards, we went to this Uma Musume cosplayer gathering nearby, where I pulled for Halloween Rice Shower in the game. 40 pulls, and the notable Umas I got were Wedding Mayano Top Gun and Halloween Super Creek. No new Umas, sigh, as usual.
Around 330pm, I returned back up to the hall. Since I had time, I used this opportunity to explore around the area. I took a closer look at each of the stalls, and truth be told, I wasn’t that impressed. Sure, there are like Aniplus Cafe, Muse Asia, and some other figurines stalls, and exhibition booths like Toho Animation, the Makoto Shinkai one, as well as the Japan tourism ones, but none of them really made me stay there for more than 30 seconds. Like I say earlier, it’s not because the stalls are shit. It’s more of them not selling what I want to buy, and thus I was able to save money.
At around 5pm, after finishing Ely’s favorite activity called rock-paper-scissors and not winning the shikishi she drew and signed, as well as getting out in the very first round (normal for me), another friend of mine arrived, and we decided to go around, taking selfies with random cosplayers. It was pretty fun. I even bought things from a new cosplayer named Sushiicosplayer. After me and my friend parted ways, I went back to Ely’s booth to buy another cheiki yet again, and took a few more pictures with her. Thankfully, I was the last customer before they closed shop, so I guess that was lucky.
This marked the end of the second day, and let me tell you, to me, AFA was looking pretty grim. It had nothing very interesting, and the only times I was sort of entertained or had fun were when I was with my friends. Also, during the whole time I was in AFA in Day 2, I felt like I was being squeezed everywhere I go. The place was so packed I had to stop at a corner to catch my breath. Man, that did not felt good.
Also, here are the stuff I bought. Not much honestly, most of it came from Ely.
Day 3
I woke up a bit earlier, around 8am, because I was tasked to buy something for my friend, and I didn’t want to wait a long time to queue at the stall. I reached the level 1 queue at 922am, which surprised me because it was almost empty. I was not expecting it to be this empty at this timing.
I got into the halls at 10am sharp, and I went straight to see Ely, but saw that her queue was pretty long, but shockingly not as long as Day 1 or Day 2. I decided to queue up for her later.
To pass some time, I proceeded to the Hatsune Miku Colorful Stage booth. The past 2 days, I couldn’t try out this booth as there were too many people queuing up for it. However, for Day 3, I was only faced with…one person playing the iPad. I was not expecting that, but I’ll take it.
I tried out their challenge, which is to FC Neppuu on any difficulty. I did it after the second time on Expert. Forgive me, I couldn’t do it the first time. I’m not an index finger player, I’m a thumbs player. Anyways, the prize is 300 crystals, which I’ll gladly accept it since it was free.
There was also a board to show off your IGN (in-game-nickname) or name should you full-combo a song and show it to the person-in-charge. He gave me a sticker to paste on the big board and I wrote my name there. Very interesting, considering I placed it on the last day and no one would really see it since it would be taken down when AFA ends, but oh well, at least my name was up on there.
I went to this store named Kuu, which was ran by kuhlnotes on Instagram. It looked like a cafe selling food, and that was what I had thought it was in the first place, but it looked very nice. The people there will bring you to a seat, pass you the ‘menu’, which is just the products they are selling, and tell you to order when you are ready. I thought it was very creative, and I loved it.
I was there to buy stickers for my friend, as well as see what I could buy. I copped a Nice Nature acrylic because I am a very big Neicha fan, and a Tazuna shaker acrylic, which I had seen around in social media. I saw people using it to determine what stat they were going to train in their gameplay, and I wanted to do the same, so I guess expect a video on that in the near future.
After I was done with that, I went to queue for Ely. It was a relatively short queue, as I was able to get to her in about 50 minutes, which was very surprising as I don’t think her queue went this fast before, and there were only just a few people queuing up. I bought more of her stuff as usual, including the cheki album that was supposedly out of stock and appeared on the last day, and took pictures with her. Itsumo dori.
After that was done, I went to buy my lunch in the hall itself this time instead of Suntec City. And what food would my mouth water over other than braised pork rice? I think it is the same brand as the one I ate two years ago, but I’m not too sure myself. Still, it tasted really good, along with the drink I got: the Lychee White Peach Soda. The chili the food stall provided was the shit. It hit all the right spots of my mouth. It was pretty spicy, yet it blended really well with the taste of the pork meat and it left a very satisfying aftertaste.
I walked around the exhibition for a bit more and saw this artist named Nowlu performing on the Next Stage. I didn’t know she had an appearance here. After her performance, I went back to strolling, and saw that she had a free meet-and-greet happening soon. I went to queue for it, and I had the opportunity to speak to her. By speaking, I mean me screaming how to spell my name while fighting against the loud noise from the stage, and she was trying her hardest to hear how to write my name. I didn’t really speak to her as I kinda didn’t know what to speak about, as I literally didn’t know her until 30 minutes ago.
She wrote my name wrong, spelled it Haky Ryu instead of Haku Ryu. I mean, the place was really too loud, so I don’t blame her for it. She knew how to pronounce my name, and that was enough. We took a picture again, and I somehow fumbled by not showing the card at the camera. I was trying to, but apparently it wasn’t facing the camera. Oh well, at least I have a new artist to hear.
Following that, I checked my social media and saw that another bunch of friends were also around. They accompanied me during last year’s AFA, so I thought of joining them that day. We went out of the convention to take lunch at some beef restaurant while catching up, then I followed Haikal to Aniplus Cafe to collect some pre-order stuff, and we all went back into AFA. I went to Ely’s rock-paper-scissors event once again, and guessed what? Story shocker, I managed to get pass the first round for the first time in my life. Absolute cinema. I wondered if it was finally time for me to win.
And then I failed at the second round. Crazy, I know. However, I expected not to win in the first place, so all was good. Then there was the wall scroll auction, which only three people took part in. I guess the rest of us were either broke (including me) or just didn’t want to spend a lot on a single thing.
The first one went for 550 dollars, while the second one went for 650 dollars. My jaw dropped when I heard 650. I’ve never heard someone pay 650 for a wall scroll before. Are these people printing money or something? Yet again, who am I to talk? I bought an Itsuki Nakano signed card for 700 USD.
Afterwards, I joined the same bunch of friends mentioned earlier in collecting stamps for a stamp rally. We posed for some pictures and got stamps. All of these were for a big bag and a sticker set. They weren’t much, but they were free, after all.
Before I left the venue, I went to queue for Ely one more time, took a picture and cheki with her, and bid my farewell, hoping to see her again next year in AFA 2026.
With that, that marked the end of the third and final day of AFA. Half of it was just exploration, and the other half was with friends. Here were the stuff I’ve bought for the day.
Highlights
There are a few, but not too much. Let’s get on with it.
Cosplayer Meet-Up
Of course I’m going to be talking about this. Ely was here all three days, and I was definitely glad I was able to meet her and support her. She took more selfies of herself with my phone this year, and I would take that any day of the week. I conversed with her quite a bit too, more than last year.
I told her last year about my name, which she kinda forgot this year, so I did remind her again, and she said it was super cool. Déjà vu, I guess, but hey, at least I got complimented by her once again, so I was cool with that. I have been supporting her for 3 years, and I will definitely continue to do so as long as I can.
Meeting of new artists
I’ve talked about meeting a new seiyuu and singer, namely Yurie Kozakai and Nowlu respectively. I’m definitely open to seeing and hearing new content, so I’ll be checking their stuff in the next few days. I do want to expand my knowledge in the seiyuu and Jpop scenes, and these two fit right into my agenda.
Company of friends
I think a convention can be fun or boring if one goes by themselves, but having friends to accompany you can be great. For 2023, 2024, and this year’s AFA, I had friends accompany me, and I am grateful for their company, especially for this year, because without them, it might not be as fun. They think of stuff and activities you can’t think of doing alone, which makes it all the more fun. Thanks to everyone who was with me during 2025 AFA.
Final Thoughts
Man, this year’s AFA was hella boring for me compared any of the years I have attended. It wasn’t just slightly boring anymore. Most of these stalls didn’t stand out to me at all, and as I have said earlier, it’s not that they’re horrible. They’re just not my interests, which is unfortunate, but different people have different likes. It just so happens this year did not have any of my favorite stuff, except for the cosplay. In fact, the cosplays I’ve seen, from my favorite cosplayer, those having booths, or just random attendees, are some of the best I’ve seen in my years of attending AFA. People are getting better and better in cosplay, and that’s good, honestly. Entry flow though? Amazing. Glad they introduced it last year.
I really wanted to enjoy this year’s AFA, but it kinda isn’t hitting for me. The only stall that I liked from this is the Kuu cafe, and the Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid movie was one of the best things to come out from this AFA. As I have mentioned earlier, I have bought 3-day tickets solely to support Ely, and the rest can be add-ons to the itinerary.
Overall, this year’s AFA isn’t like downright horrible. It is still decent. I’m just a tad disappointed by it, but I still enjoyed myself these past three days thanks to my friends, Ely, the movie, and the new people I’ve met from this event. There is always something to rave about AFA every year, and I’m relieved to say this year still has some saving grace for me from the things I’ve said above.
Here’s to hoping 2026 AFA would happen and be a better exhibition than this year.
And as always, thank you to the wonderful people who host Anime Festival Asia every year without fail. I look forward to what you plan for AFA next year.
Here is a cute child Ganyu pre-order figure to conclude Anime Festival Asia 2025.
