The ultimate figure festival, Wonder Festival! 😃🎊

Do you guys know about an event called Wonder Festival, or "WonFes"? It's a huge figure convention where both pros and amateurs can display and sell their creations. There are also company booths where you can get figures that are only available at the event, so it's a big deal for figure collectors and also a place for amateur creators to connect with each other. People are even allowed to attend in cosplay.

I went to WonFes2025 for the first time last weekend on July 27th. My friend was exhibiting, so I wanted to go check out their booth and cheer them on, and I also wanted to get my hands on some garage kits—those are figures that aren’t available in the regular market, and you have to assemble and paint them yourself, kind of like model kits for figures. Right now, I live pretty far from Chiba prefecture, where the event was held, so I took the earliest train I could and got there just after the doors opened. Even then, there were already a ton of people waiting in line.

Apparently, popular items at both personal/circle and company booths sell out really fast—especially at the individual booths, since they usually don’t make that many to begin with, so it gets pretty competitive. By the time I made it inside, some of those hot items were already gone, but I still got to see many awesome display pieces, which was super inspiring. The venue was way bigger than I expected, and there were just endless rows of figures everywhere. I found a bunch of stuff I wanted, but most of it was already sold out. Luckily, I did manage to grab a few things that hadn’t sold out yet.

Everything I picked up was a garage kit, so I’ll need to find some time to build them, but I’m really looking forward to it! 😆🎉