Danmei Dreams at Otakon 2025
This past weekend I spent a few days at Otakon 2025. It was my first time attending an anime convention, and it was a delightful experience overall. It was an absolute delight to meet danmei artists, fan translators, cosplayers, and other fans in-person. At the same time, it was a stark reminder of how small the danmei fandom is in relation to the broader anime fandom.
Art
There were a couple of artists I knew were going to be in the artist alley that I was excited to visit: Rsenic Rin, tsuchronicl. Their tables and offerings definitely did not disappoint! In addition to a few pickups for folks who couldn’t attend, I bought this gorgeous MDZS bookmark from Rsenic, and this hilarious TGCF eating pin and some washi tape from tsuchronicl. Being able to see these works of art in-person and say hi to the creators was so much fun!
One of the real joys of being in a busy hall filled to the brim with amazing artists was discovering artists who are new to me. Danmei art was still a small sliver of what was available, but there was enough representation among the artists to make it feel like a fun treasure hunt. I ended up bringing home danmei art from ginkohs, noino, and frog_well_, three incredible artists who absolutely wowed me with their work. And after spending a few hours there, I still hadn’t seen everything—there were likely incredible artists I missed because I ran out of time and stamina.
Panels
There weren’t any dedicated danmei panels at Otakon this year, and I do think that is a shame. There was a BL trivia game that explicitly included danmei among other forms of BL, just no panel discussions.
I did attend a couple of interesting panels that were somewhat adjacent to the fandom in different ways. One was an interview with the artists of the Apothecary Diaries manga illustrator. She answered questions through a translator while also doing a live drawing of Maomao, which was fun to watch. It was also fun to hear some similar sentiments from her to those of danmei artist spotlight interviews I’ve done in the past. She talked about the gorgeous clothing of the historical Chinese setting, along with her appreciation for kung fu films and the elegant flow of cloth and long hair in martial arts.
I also attended a panel on slang and profanity in Chinese. It was funny, but relatively high-level and simple. I’ll admit that I was hoping for more creative profanity that draws on Chinese culture and history to level some truly epic insults, but the panel was mostly focused on direct, pithy, and commonly used profanity. Still fun, though!
Cosplay
Appreciation for danmei cosplay at Otakon came in two forms for me: seeing incredible costumes as people wandered around the convention center, and getting together for the danmei cosplay meetup that Eowinth organized on Friday. There was also an MXTX cosplay meetup on Saturday that I was unfortunately unable to attend.
Check out all of the cool photos that were taken during that meetup! There were too many amazing costumes to call them all out, but some of my favorites were Apple, the donkey from MDZS, Yushi Huang, the rainmaster from TGCF (who appreciated the opportunity to use the Danmei Dreams Pei Ming sticker and pin as a prop to boo), and an absolutely stunning He Xuan complete with fishing net, bones, and shells.
Community
Luckily the cosplay meetup wasn’t just limited to cosplayers. I was not in costume–just bedecked in danmei enamel pins. Instead it was a chance for danmei fans of all sorts to get together. We got to compliment each other on amazing work, have some laughs trying to stuff people or dolls into the coffin prop.
While I was there, I also had the chance to say hi to an incredible fan translator, Yan, who is working with a partner on the incredible fan translation for Panguan. Yan was super cool, as were so many of the people I had a chance to meet across the con. It was amazing to be in a space that was so warm and welcoming, and spend some time in mutual fandom appreciation.
