Before you even reached the main hall at Paradise Event Arena, AniWeCon 2026 asked you a question: which path are you on?
At reception, alongside your ticket, you were handed a coloured wristband: purple, red, blue, or yellow. Ahead of you, the entrance split into four red carpets, each dyed to match: the Path of the Rift, chaos and conflict and the slow work of becoming something new; the Path of the Phoenix, pain turned to fire, loss turned to unstoppable will; the Path of the Roaring Wind, freedom and momentum, fury reshaped into forward motion; and the Path of the Sage, the stillness that comes after the storm, rage turned to clarity. Beyond Fury wasn’t just the name of the convention; it was the whole idea. Whatever brought you through the door, angry or restless or overjoyed, you were meant to walk out the other side of it changed.
We’ll admit it: we took the quiz too, out of curiosity, a few days before the event. We came out Sage. Make of that what you will.
But path aside, everyone who walked through those doors was carrying their own reason for being there, a ticket bought on a whim, a stage to perform on, a long bus ride from another state entirely. We asked a few of them what the day actually felt like on the other side of that carpet. Here’s what they told us.
Ayorinde Moody almost did not attend
AniWeCon had been on his radar since June, but as the date crept closer, he had more or less talked himself out of attending. Then came a small, low-stakes decision that changed everything: the ticket was still ₦3,000. Why not just buy it, he thought, even if I don’t end up going.
That single purchase set off a chain of events he had not planned for. In the weeks before the con, he started joining the pre-event games and activities online and started winning. Extra tickets. A kimono. Merch. At one point, a transport giveaway. “It felt crazy,” he said, “because I hadn’t even attended the convention yet, but I was already winning things from it.”
The extra tickets meant he no longer had to go alone. He invited his neighbour along, and what began as a solo plan became something shared.
On the day itself, he filmed the Uber ride there, wanting to capture the whole journey and not just the arrival. And when he did arrive, the scale of it hit him: the crowds, the cosplay, the sense that this was not an ordinary outing. He spent the day moving between booths and games, taking pictures with strangers who felt instantly familiar because of one shared interest, and losing track of time in the best way.
“There was always another activity, another person in an amazing cosplay, another part of the venue worth checking out,” he said. His only complaint was that there was not enough time to see it all.
By the time he left, tired in the way you only get after a genuinely good day, the ticket he had bought on a whim had turned into a full arc; anticipation, unexpected wins, a shared experience, and a day he says exceeded everything he had imagined.
Lola came to perform
For Lola, AniWeCon was not just something to attend, it was something to perform at.
The day almost did not go to plan before it even started. It took over an hour to find a ride, and with a set on the AniWe stage waiting for her, the delay was nerve-wracking. She made it in time, though the event was already well underway by the time she arrived.
At the entrance, she ran into familiar faces from the Nigerian anime and gaming community; online influencers and cosplayers she recognised immediately. She caught part of the award show before stepping up to perform her own song shortly after.
[Side note: Shao Dow had flown in from the UK to lift the mood with an electrifying performance earlier. Don’t tell Lola she missed it. It’s a secret.]
“The crowd was amazing,” she said. “I didn’t get nervous much, because they were very attentive despite not knowing my song that well.”
Between sets, she made her way through the booths — merch, comics, manga, food, games — before staying on for drinks and the after-party. “It was overall a fun day for me,” she said, “one I’d definitely like to repeat.”
Wisdom wanted it all
For Wisdom, the day was defined by two things: how much there was to do, and how good the cosplay was.
The gaming section alone kept him busy. Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, racing games, MHA, Bleach, Storm 4, and VR, all running at once. He also sat in on a panel about monetising games and moving from fan to entrepreneur, which he described as genuinely enlightening. Add a haul of anime-inspired chains from the merch booths, and it’s easy to see why he called the day amazing.
But cosplay was the clear highlight. “Everyone turned up,” he said. “I loved it.”
His one honest note was about timing. The published schedule did not quite match how the day unfolded. Still, that did not take away from the bigger picture: a room full of anime fans, sharing a moment together. “It was amazing meeting so many anime fans,” he said, “sharing a moment such as this.”
Eniola was on business
Eniola’s AniWeCon started a month early, and a city away.
Preparation began the moment the promotional posters dropped, with a small crew of friends in Ibadan deciding together that this was a convention worth the trip to Lagos. The road there wasn’t smooth; a friend’s transport broke down along the way, pushing their arrival to early afternoon. But once they got to the venue, it barely felt like they’d missed anything. “Everywhere was buzzing, everywhere was packed,” Eniola said.
Unlike some attendees, Eniola came with a clear goal beyond the atmosphere: business and networking. And on that front, the day delivered. Conversations with industry names, cosplayers, and a representative from the Japanese embassy turned into real contacts, more than ten, by Eniola’s count, spanning comics, gaming, and multimedia. Brand partnerships were visible everywhere, from wine sponsors to well-known snack brands. Eniola’s own comic character posters sold out on the day, and a handful of conversations turned into interviews and follow-up discussions with contacts from the Japanese embassy space.
[Side note: He came with Erivic to promote their upcoming Afroblot-themed comic book, AIKU: The Dead that Never Dies. You can learn more about his shenanigans in a previous story we published here.]
“It was a fruitful encounter,” Eniola said. “We will definitely attend again.”
The one friction point was getting there. Eniola, coming in from outside Lagos and unfamiliar with the Yaba area’s one-way streets, felt there was not enough clear guidance on how to navigate to the venue, a gap that made the journey harder than it needed to be for anyone travelling in from out of town.
Even so, the impression that stuck was the scale and polish of the event itself. “I understand how difficult it can be to set up a fun event,” Eniola said, reflecting on a background in logistics. “Kudos to the team.”
Mr K needed space
Mr K found out about AniWeCon the way a lot of people did, scrolling Instagram, and it hit a nerve he knew well. As an anime fan living in Ogbomosho, Oyo State, he is used to being misunderstood. “As an anime lover, people confuse us to be childish adults,” he said. “It’s really difficult to see a fun-loving anime person around, especially where I stay.” Between that and the general unrest and insecurity of the moment, he decided the opportunity to be around people like him wasn’t one to pass up. He registered the moment he saw the post.
Getting there was its own small journey. He had to look up the venue on Google Maps just to understand where he was heading, before travelling from Ogbomosho to his family’s house in Ikorodu on Thursday. Two days later, he took a BRT bus to Yaba and walked the rest of the way to the venue on foot.
Once he arrived, the day was simple and good: pictures, free noodles, energy drinks, snacks, and new people, including, by chance, meeting Mujeeb himself [Yes, that’s me, the writer of this story you are reading], all the way from Ibadan, and a lady visiting from Lekki. By 5pm, he was heading home. The next day, he was back on a bus to Oyo State.
“That’s how my journey went,” he said, “in 2026 AniWe Convention.”
The Collective Experience
Five different people. Five different reasons for showing up: a ticket bought on impulse, a stage to perform on, a schedule of games to play, a city to travel to for the sake of the culture and the connections, a bus ride taken just to be somewhere that finally made sense. Different wristbands, maybe. Different paths, certainly. And yet everyone we spoke to landed in the same place: already looking forward to the next one.
That’s the thing about a convention built around four paths. You never really know which one you are on until you look back at the day behind you. Some people found their fire. Some found their people. We found our stillness. That is the thing about AniWeCon: it is not really one event. It is however many stories the people in the room decide to carry home with them.
Were you at AniWeCon 2026? We want to hear your story too. You can join our private community to get featured. You can also send us a few lines or a voice note if writing is not your thing at contact@theafricancomicsempire.com, and you might just see your experience featured next.
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