What is Otakuthon?
Otakuthon is the largest anime festival in Quebec and the second largest is Canada, only behind Anime North in Toronto. The name Otakuthon is a combination of Japanese word “otaku” and marathon. It is held usually in the first weekend of August for 3 days inside the Palais des congres de Montreal in downtown Montreal.
The event is extremely popular with over 21,000 anime fans in attendance in 2016 from Montreal, Quebec, Ottawa Toronto, New York, and Northern United States.
So what exactly are inside Otakuthon? We visited the 2017 edition and here are what we found!
Cosplay
The most amazing things from Otakuthon is probably all the cosplay displays from all the attendees! All cosplayers put so much effort in dressing up to be exactly like the characters from their favourite anime or video games. A lot of the costumes and props are all handmade or custom made from stretch, and it is just worth the admission to just admire all the details and finishing on all the costumes.
This year there were a lot of cosplays from Legend of Zelda, Persona 5, Re:Zero. And of course popular series like Pokemon, Digimon, Dragon Ball, and Sailor Moon are always the cosplayers’ favorites.
Dealers’ Area
On the second floor of the Palais des congres is the Dealers’ Area, where you can find rows and rows or vendors selling anime merchandises! Here you can basically find anything you can thing of from your favourite anime series, from clothing, keychains, costumes, weapons, figures, toys, drawings, stuffed figures…There were just so much to see!
Look at all the Funko Pop available! There are some rare or out of stock funko on sales too!
Lots of figures from various anime. All of these were shipped directly from Japan! Price are very competitive too and it is approximately the same price as buying from eBay or Amazon, so no need to wait couple weeks for shipping! 
Official Good Smile Company booth with all the latest Nendoroids!
Some vendors carry some hard to find merchandises! We found this discontinued Revoltech Woody which is very popular due to his facial expressions.
There are lots of vendors selling costumes and tools for cosplay. This one sells keyblades from Kingdom Hearts.
The Artist’s Area carries all kind of one-of-a-kind anime inspired artwork! It is very cool that you can meet the artists there or can even commission them to create a special piece!
Panels & Workshop
Otakuthon holds over 100 panels and workshop over the 3 days weekends! Here you can attend a panel discussion and network yourself by meeting and sharing with like-minded friends.
One of the cool panels we saw was the Cosplay RPG classes, where participants dress up in cosplay and play an RPG game on stage!
Events
There are lots of events held during Otakuthon! The first we attended was the Gunpla Builders World Cup (GWBC). It is the is the official Gunpla global tournament presented by BANDAI where modelers around the world show off their completed Gundam models.
The Masquerade was held on Saturday night, where participants will show off their costumes on stage to the rest of the world and to our panel of experienced cosplayer judges who will decide the winners and present awards based on the quality of their costumes and presentations.
The Canada qualifier of the World Cosplay Summit (WCS) was held on Sunday afternoon. It is an annual cosplay event promoting friendly international exchange through Japanese pop culture. The winner of the Canadian qualifier will represent Canada in the final held in Japan in summer 2018!
Video Games Hall
For all gamers, the video games hall is a must visit! Here you can participate in various tournaments, demo for upcoming games, or events honoring some retro games!
The Montreal Pokemon League is hosting a competition at Otakuthon. All competitive Pokemon players are battling against each other on 3DS!
There is also a booth with this summer’s hottest game, Splatoon 2 on Nintendo Switch. The Otakuthon weekend was held on the same weekend as the first Splatfest, and team Mayo and team Ketchup were battling hard for supremacy! 
Demo for Gundam Versus on Playstation 4, which is coming in September 2017.
That is all from Otakuthon in 2017! We definitely enjoyed our time there and can’t wait to come again in 2018! For now we will need to catch up on all other animes we saw during Otakuthon!
Hope you enjoy this review of Otakuthon! In the meantime, be sure to visit my Instagram – Mizzmok for more fashion and lifestyle idea!
