Anime has become a central pillar of pop culture. Its growing popularity has propelled the medium beyond its Japanese roots, reaching Western audiences and connecting fans around the world through a shared love for its captivating visual storytelling. Puerto Rico is no exception. While anime’s mainstream appeal on the island has surged in recent years, a dedicated community has long existed; its passion only amplified by the medium’s rise in popularity due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
After nearly two years without major events due to the pandemic, a small group of friends came together in 2022 to create an intimate gathering for fellow fans. What followed thereafter was nothing short of a meteoric rise in popularity that established the event as the Biggest Anime Convention in Puerto Rico and one of the most important pop-culture weekends for Puerto Rican and Latin American audiences: Puerto Rico Sekaiju Con.
The show, often held around Labor Day weekend, draws local and international audiences who look forward to interacting with incredibly talented cosplayers, world-renowned special guests, local vendors, and a celebration of community and hospitality that has become synonymous with Puerto Rican culture. Their last flagship show, held in September 2024, drew a sold-out crowd of over 8,000+ over the two-day weekend.
Last month, audiences experienced the show’s Winter Edition, bringing out a nearly sold-out show of 4,000+ audience members throughout the two-day weekend in Humacao, Puerto Rico. The show featured the participation of some incredible voice actors, including Bryce Papenbrook (Attack on Titan, Demon Slayer), AJ Beckles (DanDaDan, Tokyo Revengers), Anairis Quiñones (My Hero Academia, Genshin Impact), AJ LoCascio (“Gambit” X-Men ‘97), Lenore Zann (“Rogue” X-Men ‘97) & Matthew Waterson (“Magneto” X-Men ‘97).
The Cosmic Circus has been proud to support and sponsor these wonderful events the few years, and we recently had the chance to speak with the creators of the show about their experiences so far and discuss what the future holds in store for the Biggest Anime Convention in Puerto Rico.
Get to know more about Puerto Rico Sekaiju Con
First and foremost, congratulations on your recent success with Sekaiju Con: Winter Edition. The show was very well received by both the audience and the guests alike. Did the production meet your expectations?
Puerto Rico Sekaiju Con: Thank you! The show exceeded our expectations, and we are happy to know that our audience was pleased with the overall quality of the show. There were some minor adjustments that our audience wanted after our show in September, and we worked really hard on those details to improve the overall quality of the show.
For those unfamiliar, could you explain the origin of the name Sekaiju and where the concept for the tree iconography came from?
PRSC: Of course! The name Sekaiju means “World Tree” in Japanese. This is why our logo is a giant tree. The World Tree is a symbol across many different mediums and mythologies, often described as the pathway that connects multiple worlds together. In our case, the tree, Sekaiju, would be our show, and the different worlds it connects to would be the other fandoms often highlighted with the show’s theme.
You guys started this journey in July 2022, and your focus over the years has been creating an anime-centric convention. What inspired you to focus on anime as the main theme surrounding your convention instead of comics, video games, or other mediums of pop-culture entertainment?
PRSC: Anime has always been a very popular medium in Puerto Rico, but back then, the community was spread out and divided across different regions of the island. At the time, there was a lack of events that would allow us to be able to get together and have anime be the central theme.
This production has been going on for some time now, and with every show, you succeed in putting together an outstanding lineup of guests with engaging panels and activities. The energy and the passion from fans during your events show that Puerto Rico Sekaiju Con is, without a doubt, a must-attend event for anime fans in Puerto Rico and abroad. Has the consistent response from fans surprised you?
PRSC: It has. We prefer to call our audience a “community” as opposed to fans because we owe all of this to them. As Puerto Ricans, we are a very proud and passionate people, and they are the main driving force that keeps our show going and growing. Their passion and emotion sometimes surprise international guests and make them spread the word about what they experienced, which often leads to bigger and better experiences for our audience in the future. So, because of how much this event is based on our audience interacting with us and charting the course for what they would like to see next, this event is just as much theirs as it is ours.
One of the things that draws the attention of audiences and special guests alike is the high level of production and attention to detail in your promotions and the overall creative vision of the show. Speaking with some of the special guests and audience members over the weekend (January 11th-12th), there’s a general consensus that the event’s production value supersedes the standards of other similar events, both locally and internationally. What is the thought process of how the show produces these incredible promotions?
PRSC: It’s a lot of hard work and preparation. When we create our trailers or visuals, the idea is to capture the audience’s attention by presenting them with something that’s rarely ever seen in other events. And what we thought about was putting time and effort into promotional visuals and trailers that often are well above and beyond what most guests and general audiences expect. Sometimes, we work on the concepts for visuals and trailers for months, at most a year, before our shows, and we always ask how we can elevate ourselves each time. And it helps to have a dedicated team that works hard to perfect the vision of each show.
Puerto Rico Sekaiju Con: Winter Edition
Shifting gears now to the Winter Edition show, there were so many wonderful activities and moments during that show. Do you guys have any personal favorite memories you’d like to share?
PRSC: The Cosplay Contest is always a fun time because our audience always gives it their all with their cosplays and their presentations on stage. The Q&A panels are also fantastic because they’re always unpredictable and lead to some of the best unplanned moments of the show. For example, we had Bryce Papenbrook do his Q&A, and he enjoyed mofongo (a local Puerto Rican cuisine dish) while answering questions. And as always, the Event Update panel near the end of the Saturday show is always entertaining because it’s incredible to see everyone’s reactions to what announcements we have to reveal for them.
For your Winter Edition show, you scaled down from the large crowd size for a more intimate show and setting. Could you elaborate on this decision?
PRSC: The Winter Edition show is usually meant to be a scaled-down production from our main one. It harks back to our original roots of intimate interactions with friends that we’ve known for years and allows for more personal interactions than our flagship show.
There was a statement made during the show about how, leading up to the day of the event, the story behind the scenes “was a tale of fire and ice.” Could you explain how the L.A. fires and the Atlanta winter storms affected the production?
PRSC: “The Tale of Fire and Ice” was an inside joke amongst members of the staff and the guests because if their travel arrangements weren’t affected by the L.A. fires, they were affected by the winter storms in Atlanta. As a result, one of our scheduled guests, Cherami Leigh, had to cancel. However, all of our guests put in their time and effort to try and make it to our show amidst the natural disasters, and we are grateful to everyone for their efforts to make our show as successful as it was.
As you mentioned, Cherami Leigh could not attend your show in January. Are there any immediate plans to bring her to your show in the future?
PRSC: Our guests & their families’ health and safety are our number one priority. We hope that she and her family are doing well and can stay safe after all the fires’ effects in Los Angeles. Once we know they’re safe, there will be ample time to re-open talks to plan her appearance at one of our future shows, but know that having Ms. Leigh appear at our show in the future is right now the #1 priority for us as our commitment to her, to her agency and our audience.
Puerto Rico Sekaiju Con in 2025
Let’s discuss the next show you guys have on schedule, the August 2025 show. You’ve announced three special guests so far: Maile Flanagan (Naruto Uzumaki), Nadji Jeter (Miles Morales), and Yuri Lowenthal (Sasuke Uchiha/Peter Parker). It’s already shaping up to be a pretty impressive lineup. Are you planning to bring more guests for your Fall show? (If you are, would you mind cluing us in on the next guest and when we can expect an announcement?)
PRSC: We do have more guests planned for our Fall flagship show. We can’t elaborate on who we have planned yet, but we’ll be able to talk more about that in the coming months. We hope our audience will be as excited as we are when we announce them.
With the special guests you have in your lineup so far, it’s clear the main focus for this season’s show will be Naruto and Spider-Man. What are some of the things you guys are coordinating for the show that line up with the year’s theme?
PRSC: We are. We are currently preparing our Cosplay Meetups, which we can confirm two. One will focus on the Naruto franchise, and the other will focus on Spider-Man and his rich comic book/media lore. There will also be a couple of themed activities and amenities that will help immerse audiences into these particular franchises and worlds, and we are excited to share those with you as we approach the show.
With the inclusion of X-Men for Winter Edition and Spider-Man as a central theme for this year’s theme, could we see a shift in Sekaiju Con’s anime-centric focus to a more general focus on other pop-culture themes for future shows?
PRSC: We have always been an anime-centric pop culture event and while it is tailored mainly towards that particular audience, we recently started branching out to other fandoms outside the anime spectrum. And it works with our overall theme with Sekaiju, because there are so many different worlds (fandoms) outside of anime that our audience wants us to explore and if that’s the course they want to chart, that’s the direction we’ll follow.
Cosplayers have always been a very central part of your show, and Puerto Rico Sekaiju Con excels at making the cosplaying audience feel special during your shows. What are some of the dynamics you have planned for cosplayers who are attending the event?
PRSC: Cosplayers have always held a special place in our hearts because we ourselves are cosplayers, and some of these cosplayers are our closest friends. So, we do our best to provide them with experiences at our show that allow them to express their creativity to the maximum potential. As usual, we’ll have our annual cosplay contest and cosplay meetups, and our dedicated media team will also be in attendance to coordinate free photoshoots and videography for our audience to enjoy.
The Event Update panels never fail to impress fans at your shows, and they’ve become synonymous with significant reveals for the show’s future. For Winter Edition, you had the opportunity to shock audiences with the Netflix announcement and the promotion for Sakamoto Days. Can you talk to us a bit about how this partnership came about and if you would be open to more partnerships like this in the future?
PRSC: The Event Update panels are always a surprise, and the very recent approach to talk Sakamoto Days at our show was a surprise we ourselves had, since we were approached a few hours before the show was scheduled to start. So it was a lot of last-minute rearrangement, but we made it work. Thankfully, it was an enjoyable surprise for everyone, and we are thankful for the opportunity to do that for our audience. As to your other questions, we’ll reserve the right to elaborate further, but we hope that more partnerships like this are able to occur in the future so we can connect them with our audience in more ways than we could have ever done before.
Is there anything you’d like to share with your audience that people should look forward to?
PRSC: We hope our audience loves the work we’re putting out, and we can’t wait to show them what’s to come in the following months. And we look forward to welcoming everyone in August.
Find out more about this fantastic, fun event for cosplayers, fans and special guests alike!
Puerto Rico Sekaiju Con returns on August 30th-31st to San Juan, Puerto Rico. For more information about attending the event, visit sekaijuconpr.com and follow them on social media @SekaijuConPR.
Puerto Rico Sekaiju Con 2024 Event Preview!
