Mangafest Sevilla 2025 – No hablo español and hotel hell

 Hello everyone!

A week has passed since I got home from my trip to Spain and what a trip it was! Jeebus! I spent almost two weeks at my old friend erikavonmars's home in Rota, on the western coast. Last time I visited her was way back in 2020 during my sailing adventures when she still lived in Barcelona so yeah, it's been a while. :'D Aside from getting to see her new apartment and cat we had also planned to go and check out Mangafest Sevilla together, which was to be held on 6-8 December. It's been over a decade since we last went to an anime convention together so we might have, very intentionally, planned the dates of my trip to align with the con. xD

It took me a few days to catch up with my everyday life, decompress and go through all photos after getting home so yeah, that's why I didn't immediately start to work on the summary. I will warn you though that this summary is very long (of course it is, it's a new experience!) and extremely photo-heavy on top– so grab a cup of your favorite beverage before you sit down for the read. ;) Fun fact: I originally had well over 160 photos of the con alone and, even after culling more than half, this summary is still massive. :-DD Oh and I will try to keep this post mostly about the con weekend but there will be some pre-con ramblings and post-con events interspersed to make it a more complete read~

Let's gooo!

Obligatory airplane window photo. 

My trip towards Spain started on 1st December. I traveled with lowfare tickets that I compared online and bought well in advance to make the trip as inexpensive as possible; I really recommend this if you're on a small budget. My whole trip was cheaper than the average train prices alone from my hometown in the far north to Stockholm and back lol. All my flights were with Norwegian airlines and it should be noted here that if you travel with lowfare (not all airlines have this option!) you usually can't bring anything but one small bag with you and you need to pay extra for check-in luggage since it's not included in the ticket price. Obviously, as a cosplayer going to a con, I very much needed a suitcase for all my shit and so I kindly paid this fee. Almost all airlines have weight and measure limits on checked-in items and it's usually around 23 kg so yeah, there's a reason why I left my SLR camera home (yes, all photos are taken with my cellphone, hence the quality not being as good as usual) and didn't go for a third cosplay since my suitcase was only a few kilos off the limit already. :D The luggage limit also affected what cosplays I could even consider bringing and that meant nothing with props that can't fit into my suitcase. 

I had a flight from Luleå to Arlanda (Stockholm) and then from Arlanda to Malaga airport where erikavonmars would come pick me up. My Luleå flight was supposed to leave 10:30 but it got delayed due to bad weather and a need to defrost the plane. No joke, the weather was pretty awful – snowing, cold and massive fog. I was worried about missing my next flight since the stop-over was only about one hour in Arlanda. Somehow I was struck by some godtier luck and the gate my plane arrived in was the exact same gate I would depart from so I literally didn't have to move anywhere. xD
I arrived at Malaga airport roughly around 17:50 local time (it takes roughly 4 hours to fly from Stockholm) and I gotta say I was absolutely stunned by how mountainous the landscape was! It's a rather beautiful area, I liked it. Technically there would have been airports closer to Rota but Malaga was by far the most accessible choice (most flights/availability, best prices by a landslide) and the other airports like the one in Jerez would have involved massive waiting times and overnight stays due to the scarcity of flights and, uhh, I find the idea of sleeping at the terminal unsafe and a 'last resort' type of thing.
Having driven down already from Rota on the same day erikavonmars suggested we stay the night at Fuengirola and drive back up on the morning, which I happily obliged to since I wanted to see Fuengirola anyway and maybe understand why it's so immensely popular with Finns lol. I can admit now that I kinda understand and I would definitely return someday; it's so cozy and beautiful and it smells really nice too! Fuengirola is only a roughly 20 minutes drive away from the airport so it was very convenient to get there too. We checked in at some cheap 2-star hotel near the Christmas market area (there was a metrilaku and Fazer chocolate seller in the market omfg) that had a square-shaped toilet that had me in stitches lmao! 
I gotta admit though that I found it weird how my passport wasn't checked even once during my flights but the hotel stay required it – apparently all accommodation providers in Spain are legally required to register your ID details with the local police or something. I thought it was suspicious at first that the clerk scanned my passport behind the desk where I couldn't see it but erikavonmars said it's normal and a law thing so yeah, nothing fraudulent.

On the next morning we left the hotel and started our journey back up to Rota after first visiting Kauppa for giggles, aka the Finnish general store in Fuengirola. For those unaware the word 'kauppa' literally means store in Finnish lol. It was a rather small store but they had most things you can imagine needing as a Finnish tourist or expat missing the taste of home.
It was a roughly 250 km drive to Rota and we stopped by some 18th century castle ruins along the way for some sightseeing (Castillo de la Duquesa if anyone's interested to look it up) and somehow Google Maps also led us through some behind-God's-back forsaken foresty mountain road that had no phone signal and crazy sharp turns!
Once we arrived at Rota we spent the days leading up to the con by doing what friends do – catching up with each other, just chilling, sightseeing, going for long evening beach walks and playing lots of Mario Kart World since erikavonmars had quite recently got the new Nintendo Switch 2. We've known each other for close to two decades now and I think she was my very first real online friend. We actually met at the old cosplay.com forums and from there we bounced over to several Swedish forums like the Pokémon forum (it's long since dead) and the unofficial tiny Zelda forum (it's dead too) when I was an early teenager and yeah, we happened to have a lot of things and interests in common. :)

My con morning breakfast was... healthy. Kookos pärr!

Eventually the con morning came. We had planned to drive to Seville on the same day the con started to avoid the costs of an additional hotel night. After all, driving from Rota to Seville only takes about 1 and a half hour so it didn't feel all that necessary to arrive the day before. Neither of us felt a need to be at the con immediately when it started (we're old so comfy stress-free mornings take priority lol) so we allowed ourselves a decent night's sleep and a calm breakfast before we left the apartment. Hävikki Dubai chocolate donut for 0,90 € was worth it.

We had picked a hotel in Seville that was on the opposite side of the road from the con building so yeah, you couldn't get much closer than that! We figured it would be hella convenient whenever we wanted to take a break, change out of cosplay or just to drop off stuff and such. The clock was around 14:00 when we arrived at the hotel and the first impression was good; it was one of those congress style hotels with a big white lobby and aptly called Sevilla Congresos. Spoiler alert: I strongly recommend avoiding this hotel. We had major issues with the room and customer service, which I will detail lower down.

Our first hotel room (room number 622).

Almost immediately upon entering the room we noticed a large washed-out reddish stain on the floor near the entrance that seemed weird to us both. A similarly colored stain was on the lower board of the nearby closet as well, which I noticed later. I tried to dismiss the floor stain in my head as "probably from some kind of cleaning chemical" but it did bother me because of the odd color. Oh well, we unpacked some of our stuff and then we laughed at how the balcony view of the city looked like if Kuopio had a Spanish counterpart lol. There was also the stain of some kind of half-sticky dried hygiene product (soap?) near the sink in the bathroom that struck me as odd, especially considering we had just entered the room.

We almost immediately started putting on our cosplays since the clock was already quite much. It took us roughly one hour to get ready which wasn't too bad. I had chosen Kisuke Urahara from Bleach for the first day since it's such a breezy and quick cosplay to put on. One might think that because it's December wearing a summery cosplay might not seem the greatest idea but Spanish winters are like late spring in Finland, meaning around 15 to 18 degrees celsius outside – which is basically summer weather for northdwellers like me. xD I did pick Urahara with this in mind, and also because he has no props aside from a green folding fan (which is useful to ward off heat!) so it's a great cosplay to explore in as well. To match the theme of green weird guys erikavonmars reused her Tingle costume from the The Legend of Zelda video game franchise. It was crazy nostalgic to see this cosplay again because erikavonmars wore Tingle at Uppcon in 2010, aka where I cosplayed for the very first time! And now I feel old...

Grönt är skönt. <3 

It only took like 2 minutes in theory to walk to the con, although in reality it was more like 5 minutes since you had to cross the road (wait for green pedestrian light) and I couldn't walk very fast with geta clogs on uneven ground. :'D 
In case anyone wonders where we left the car we left it parked at the side of a road about one kilometer behind the hotel, because we figured that it would be hard to find a parking spot closer to the central area with the ongoing event. Yes, we did try to check the con's websites etc before our arrival to see if they had guest parkings anywhere but there was zero information whatsoever – there was only descriptions for people arriving by foot or by public transport on how to reach the con area, nothing for those arriving with their own cars? Maybe this is normal for Spanish cons, what do I know, but in Finland/Sweden it's common that free parking next to the con is available and informed about. There's a small possibility we might have missed it (or you needed to buy parking separately or something) because the con's official website and socials are only in Spanish and, although Erika can understand and speak Spanish, she's not a native and still studying/learning the language.

It felt so weird to see orange trees everywhere!

The con building is called Fibes, it's a large conference and exhibition center and it was in this fenced-in area with tons of orange trees growing around it. I had been in Spain for a week at this point and I still hadn't gotten used to how there could be wild lemon, orange and other citrus trees just casually existing everywhere and how come no one seemed to pick the fruits? There were tons of fallen oranges under the trees and whenever I saw some particularly low-hanging fruits dangling in front of me I got bombarded by my neurodivergent intrusive thoughts telling me to grab one. xD Eventually my curiosity got the better of me and I took one hopefully not a criminal now lmao and while it looked and smelled perfectly normal it was bitter as all fuck! It didn't taste at all like you'd expect an orange to taste (more like a really sour, unpleasant lemon) and, after looking it up afterwards, it seems like they aren't meant to be eaten at all except some grannies make marmalade out of them? and it's actually a hybrid tree so not even true oranges. Well, now my curiosity is laid to rest at least!

The main entrance to Fibes, the con building.

The photo above is actually taken on the second day (I forgot to take one on the first day because I was too excited, oops!) but it was this massive building with all these pillars running along it and it looked kinda magnificent, not gonna lie. I hadn't actually looked up the building before the con at all so I was expecting some basic ordinary-looking white congress building and when I realized it was this tall fancy-ass golden globe thing that looked imposing and important I was like "???" for a second. xD

Before we went to exchange our tickets we took some quick photos of our cosplays near the entrance. There were quite a lot of people outside but since the area in front of the building was so large it didn't feel crammed at all. It was a nice sunny day and the overall atmosphere was relaxed despite the size of the event. The clock was roughly 15:40.

Urahara taking in the sights.
(photo: erikavonmars)

Once we were done snapping photos we headed towards the entrance where there were a couple or so workers directing people to form at least two lines to make the ticket exchange run smoothly, I presume. Since erikavonmars had both of our tickets as files on her phone I just tagged along and in no time our QR-codes where scanned and then we could walk past one of those rotating metallic thingies to meet up with another worker who put a wide paper ticket on our wrists. The same type you often get on concerts, zoos and theme parks. Saturday's ticket, aka the first day, was silver in color. Apparently you would get a new ticket every day.

The view immediately after getting your ticket exchanged.

The ticket exchange happened in this kind of round area with lots of doors and there were security personnel in black uniforms watching and making sure that all incoming visitors went through a predetermined door and path to the actual main hall. It seemed like you weren't allowed to just explore on your own and I think these controls were put in place to avoid having visitors going to parts of the building that weren't in use by the convention. Yes, the building was that massive and I got the impression that the con had perhaps only hired and made use out of the two pavilions, aka the large exhibition halls – because I saw a lot of empty corridors and places that seemed off-limits/empty, including a cafeteria along a different path.

Entrance to Pabellón 2, one of the two exhibition halls.

Immediate view of the exhibition hall upon entering the previous door.

We knew already before arriving that the con had sold out all tickets for the first day but I don't know if I was still prepared for how many people there were! It's impossible to gauge the amount (and we couldn't find any official sources stating the amount of visitors either, which is a bummer) but let's just say it was definitely a lot! I'm not sure what I was even expecting since I had only seen like some short video snippets prior of a Mangafest event in another Spanish city (there's several Mangafests, not just the one in Seville) and I guess, based on that video, that it looked like it could be on the big side but I also actively avoided searching for content on social media etc because I didn't want to spoil the surprise of my first time.

Oh and yeah, you could buy single-day tickets as well as combo tickets for all days and I don't know if this is Spain's usual system, a Mangafest thing or something else entirely but there was this system in place that the earlier you ordered your tickets the cheaper they were – the prices slowly went up when the dates got closer, especially for the single-day tickets. The 3-day tickets cost 30 €.

General view.

I gotta say that my first feeling when entering was overwhelm – like that kind of "kid in a candy store" feeling where everything's bombarding you with excitement! Wherever I looked there were merch sellers, artists, shops, shops and more shops. I didn't even know where to start looking!

The hall itself was absolutely massive; it was rectangle-shaped and filled to the brim with all kinds of sellers and activities for all flavors of nerd and I mean it – the range of activities and catering to all different subtypes of geek culture was immense. I think that this variety might have been the reason why the (presumed) gender ratio appeared to be so balanced among the visitors. There was also a lot of activities specifically aimed at children running everyday so yeah, you can really say that there was something for all ages!

Cosplay photoshoot competition, looks like.

I think the first hour or so we were just wandering around like two dumbfounded chickens trying to get our heads attuned to everything around us. I was trying to browse some sellers but since there were so many both in front of me and behind me at all times I couldn't focus my gaze at all and I just like.. hovered around aimlessly while probably looking like my brain was stuck in mid-freeze trying to download the latest system update. xD

Here's artem_ignotus, one of many unique artists!

Laser cut wood decorations were popular sellables!

It's really hard for me to differentiate what and who were merchandise sellers, who were Artist Alley sellers, who were independent business sellers akin to what we in Finland call artisans and so on. I felt like most on one half were artists/artisans and the other half were merchants but I can't be sure at all lol. I apologize if I'm wrong about something and well, I know for sure that I have no memory of what was in which of the two pavilions so my photos will be mixed. They both had roughly the same layout and since there were multiple entrances to both exhibition halls (think like east, west and south entrance) it massively added to my confusion due to my sense of direction being lowkey ass. xD Spare me the Zoro jokes thanks lol!

One of the stages to the right and, uhh, food area?

Of course there were boba tea shops! (yes, more than one)

Of course when you've been exploring for a while you get hungry and just like most conventions Mangafest Sevilla conveniently had food stands inside so you didn't even have to leave the building. The assortment of edibles was rather large because there were pizza slices, Japanese street foods (takoyaki etc), sushi and more that I don't remember. There were also a lot of sweet and savory snacks to choose from like mochi, dried fruits, doughnuts, slush, popcorn, cotton candy, chips, ice cream and much more! If you craved it then someone probably sold it – let's just put it that way. Obviously Mangafest Sevilla, just like cons in general, have a zero tolerance policy for alcohol, drugs and other harmful substances.

Son Goku shop got your sweet tooth covered!

Shame there wasn't an actual obachan selling. :'c

I'd say that prices on edibles were roughly in the same range as in Finland and Sweden but some might have been slightly cheaper, maybe? Bubble tea at least had pretty much the same price ranging from 5-8€ when compared to the boba places I've been to in Finland (outside cons though).

Candy and dried fruits booth.

I was tempted to buy one of those massive foam candy bananas (it was the size of an actual banana omg) but it was a bit scummy since the prices weren't listed anywhere for anything that was being sold? You'd think transparency of prices would be the bare minimum and required but nope, apparently no biggie. I just found it weird and yeah, having to ask for prices just makes me not want to buy in case it's a lot more expensive than what I'm willing to pay and then it's just a really awkward situation to escape lol. #cripplinganxiety

Japanese culture area. I didn't check it properly but I saw kimonos etc.

If there's something I noticed it's that it felt like many Spanish people didn't actually speak English or, if they did, it wasn't up to par with what you'd perhaps expect in this day and age. I'm not saying this to shame anyone or anything (love and appreciation to those who tried to talk to me despite struggling to find the words! I see your efforts!) but what I'm trying to convey is that there was a bit of a language barrier at times which, regrettably, made it a bit hard to socialize with new people. Urahara is a recognizable character so I of course was approached by fellow Bleach cosplayers and I felt so bad about not being able to talk with some of them because they shied away when I said "English please". ;_; Some tried to communicate with basic English but it definitely felt like it cut conversations short that could have been much more enriching if I spoke Spanish. I regret picking French in school back in the days because it's been useless for me thus far; should have chosen German or Spanish. #hindsight Everyone seemed so excited and genuine, I even met another Urahara cosplayer who shook hands with me and we posed together and everything, he was so chill and friendly and had the biggest smile – bless his heart!

Geek shirts. Geek shirts everywhere.

At some point I was walking near the artist/artisan alley area when suddenly a vendor at one of the booths (I think he sold 3D printed stuff) comes up to me from his table and I can make out that he asked if I'm cosplaying Urahara from Bleach, to which I let out a confident 'sí' – and then his floodgates opened and what felt like years worth of fandom gushing poured out from him, help! xD His eyes had that really passionate look like when someone lits up when talking about their special interest. He just kept talking and talking, in Spanish of course, and because he was so excited I just didn't have the heart to interrupt him (he talked like a machine gun so it's not like I had a chance to even say anything anyway lmao) or even say that I actually don't understand much at all of what you're saying. :'D I just couldn't disappoint a grown man like that I was worried of making him awkward if he was one of those who didn't speak English and so I just genuinely smiled (because his eagerness was infectious) and nodded where it seemed appropriate. Thankfully some Spanish words are similar to English so I could make out, in very broad strokes, that he at least fangasmed over how Ichigo turned into a Hollow and grew horns (he did the horn imitations with his hands and everything!) and yeah, when he eventually gave himself time to breathe I spread out my arms indicating a hug and I got like a big bear hug from him before he let me continue roaming the con! Adorable fellow, that one. I just wish I understood more than like 10% of what he said hahah.

General view of what I assume is part of Artist's Alley.

Dioramas, plushies and more from artist luna_cosasfrikis.

I don't know exactly how many sellers there were in total but my rough estimate would be near 200 – you weren't able to explore all of them in one day, that's for sure! Heck, even now when I'm home from the con I still have that gnawing feeling telling me that I probably missed something I would have been interested in buying lol. There just was so much stuff for sale that you'd be guaranteed to not notice everything.

Outdoors area between Pabellón 2 and Pabellón 1.

To get from Pabellón 2 to Pabellón 1 you passed through this outdoor area separating the two buildings. There wasn't any parks or greenery between, just a rather large asphalted open space. A lot of people hung around here and took photos etc in the sun (or basked in the shadow of the buildings) and it felt like some cosplayers were idling here to get interactions? :D Or at least it seemed to me like this was the preferred area to approach cosplayers as they weren't busy shopping or eating something inside.

Boffer area for LARP fans.

The outdoors area had some activities though, it wasn't entirely barren! There was this designated area for boffer fights, aka soft combat. For those not in the know it's essentially foam or otherwise padded weapons used to simulate handheld combat situations for fun – so basically roleplaying medieval battles safely. The tent on the photo above seemed to be the information/entrance spot and there looked to be a 1 € fee to play, although it was supervised and I got the impression that the guys standing around the tent in armors were there to give you tips and pointers if you needed help. It seemed fun and I would like to try someday but yeah, I didn't want to get sweaty and/or accidentally mess up my cosplay lmao!

Artist KOWAH's table. I was so impressed I got shivers, no joke.

Bro was casually painting a whole Balrog.

The table above, oh my god!? When I saw this one for the first time I felt my jaw drop to the ground because the framed ones to the right were real paintings! I had been a bit cautious when browsing artist tables because I wasn't sure what policies Spanish cons have on AI generated art in general but seeing that guy standing there, literally painting on canvas in real-time, was the biggest proof that at least this table was legit. I am extremely against AI in almost all fields and refuse to even use ChatGPT. Needless to say I walked away with a few prints that I will hang up on the wal, including the green Lord of the Rings themed one. I gotta say props to the lady as well as she spoke very good English and I could actually have a proper conversation with her about the arts, which felt refreshing!

Speaking of LotR, when I was idling near one of the many anime t-shirt sellers I saw a guy dressed up as Aragorn and I went to ask his picture because you don't see Aragorn cosplayers every day. :D He seemed really happy to have his cosplay recognized (and to pose with the sword) and it was just so wholesome because he tried his best to speak English but he kept apologizing over how bad he was when he stumbled on finding the right words but I was like it's okay mate because I could still understand what he meant! He was so polite and friendly and I got the impression that he had had previous interactions with younger attendants who didn't know his character and, maybe, he was a bit let down by those interactions and that's perhaps why he lit up when I knew who he was. ;;__;; Ye younglings need to know thy classics! *insert old man waving fist in the air here*

Anime replica swords for sale.

If there's something I noticed it's that regulation of cosplay props seemed very... lax? There literally was a seller inside the con selling those fandom replica swords from like Bleach, One Piece and stuff – the metallic, unsharpened ones. I saw several people carrying these metal swords around the con and the security workers patrolling the area didn't seem to pay it no mind. I remember how, when I started going to cons in 2009 and the years after that, how you would often see people with these replica swords back then but, at some point, cons in both Sweden and Finland got a lot stricter with prop rules and these metallic swords were among the first to get banned due to how realistic they can look to the unaware. I also saw at least one person walking around with a shinai (bamboo training sword for kendo) and yeah, it just seemed that the prop rules weren't as strictly enforced because one can definitely do damage with a shinai – it would be considered a blunt weapon in Finnish cons. I don't think I saw any prop inspectors anywhere upon entering, even though the prop rules on the website says not to bring real weapons (duh), realistic replicas, airsoft guns, blunt materials like baseball bats etc. I just find it kinda questionable that replica weapons are forbidden by event rules but somehow it's okay to sell them at the con? xD Just doesn't make much sense to me lol. Although I understand why you'd argue it's allowed because most people will treat metallic props in a safe and respectful manner and I mean, it's fandom merchandise after all. Cons are where you make sales.

There were numerous fantasy authors promoting their books!

There were numerous special guests and content creators at the con, although I of course wasn't familiar with any of them. :') Most were Spanish dubbing actors and actresses but there were also music groups (bands and idols) and at least one known cosplayer and artist. But despite my zero knowledge position there was one guest of honor whom I wanted to check out and it was for a very simple reason – Donald Duck. Or Aku Ankka, as we Finns call him.

Señor Aku says hello. :DD

San Pito Pato is a very popular Spanish content creator (over 6 million followers on Youtube) who does comedy sketches, try not to laugh challenges, parodies etc featuring a large Donald Duck hand puppet whom he voices. He had a fan meeting booth at the con that you could line up for, free of charge, during specific hours each day to get handwritten greeting cards or buy merchandise etc from. As a Donald Duck enjoyer who doesn't like Donald? I had to go check him out and oh man does he do the voices perfectly and yes, even the raging. xD I recommend checking out his videos even if you don't understand Spanish, some of the jokes are universal/self-explanatory and the production value is high! :'D He even did some English voices for us, 10/10 felt appreciated.

Not long after having our Donald Duck moment we left for the day, roughly around 20:00 when the con was closing anyway. Once we got back to our hotel room we quickly took off our cosplays and then headed for the nearest foodstore, a Mercadona, to buy some breakfast and snacks for the next day. You see, we didn't have hotel breakfast (you had to pay extra for it) so we needed to substitute our own breakfasts lol. After that we checked what restaurants were still open at this hour and we settled on Seoul Restaurante Coreano, which was nearby. I can't remember having ever been to a Korean restaurant before so this was also a new experience to me. I ordered bibimbap as I had heard people saying online that it's good and a classic dish. Because I have nothing to compare the dish too I can't utter myself about the authenticity but eyy, the food was good!

After dining we went back to the hotel room to get ready to sleep. We noticed that the air conditioner was set on 25 degrees and tried to lower it before going to bed but yeah, it didn't seem like it did any difference..? We opted to keep the balcony door slightly open overnight because the heat made it really hard to sleep. Despite that I struggled to fall asleep and I woke up around 2:30 due to suffocating heat and an uneasy feeling; erikavonmars was also struggling to sleep and when she went to check the air conditioner again we came to the conclusion that it was probably broken. We opened the balcony door wider and draped the curtains over it to keep out any insects etc. We were on the sixth floor so the odds of any Spiderman-powered burglar coming in was remarkably low lol.

Sunday came no it's not the third day and honestly, I slept like shit. Not because of back pains but because all the noises from outdoors could be heard all night, including obnoxiously loud and drunk bargoers heading home and shouting at their friends across the street at 4 AM. So while I had a dog's sleep erikavonmars didn't fare much better – she had had a minor flu earlier during the week and needed a bit of extra rest to feel ready. We decided that I go to the con alone in casual clothes for some shopping first and then she'd come join me in a couple hours.

Sunday morning was weirdly empty.

I left for the con at 10:00 when it opened and I was surprised by how there was almost no one in sight near the main entrance. There was this zigzagging fence to the right put in place to make the ticket exchanging smoother. I had gotten my ticket file sent to my phone from erikavonmars just before leaving so I could enter without her needing to accompany me. 
I passed through the same entrance as the day before and got a new paper ticket on my wrist – this time a gold color. And now my neurospicy brain was immensely bothered because if we got silver the first day and gold now then there was no "correct" color left for the third day because bronze wasn't on the first day fffuuu fffuuu--!

Lucky bags everywhere.

I was led through a different entrance than yesterday, passing through corridors to the left instead of heading to the door right in front of the main entrance. This, my friends, of course screwed with my sense of direction cue Zoro jokes because suddenly my entry door wasn't the same I had become used to the day before. xD It took me way too long to recalibrate my inner compass and, truthfully, I was still constantly mixing up who or what was in Pabellón 2 versus in Pabellón 1.

A map showing the layout of Pabellón 1.

It was actually a great idea to go shopping this early because now there wasn't a wall of people everywhere I went! I had plenty of room to browse all artists and vendors and didn't have to elbow my way through lol. In fact it was surprisingly quiet for the first few hours – maybe Spanish people like to take it slow on the mornings? :D Only the first day had all tickets sold out so Sunday and Monday wouldn't be as full as Saturday was, regardless.

General view. 

Some kind of virtual Ghostbusters experience?

I have no idea what's on the photo above but I saw a big Ghostbusters cosplay group just outside this activity posing for the general public, maybe even promoting said activity? This was one of those moments when I wish I wasn't so socially anxious and would have gone up to the guy and asked about it because, frankly, I've never seen anything like it at a con before and whatever it was it seemed hella novel! There was some kind of laser beams inside the tunnel contraption thingy.

Here you could sit and draw freely... or play chess. :D

There was also a bouncy castle for the kids!

Every time I see a bouncy castle I want to go and jump in it but then I remember that yeah, I'm an adult, regrettably so, and I'm self-aware too so I shouldn't indulge in these unfiltered whims of mine unless it's clearly marked that said bouncy castle is for adults.

How about a duck pond? #thingsididntexpect

I was supposed to go check out some Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 themed concert at noon but I completely forgot about it because time just flew away and I wasn't sure of which pavilion I was in at any given time lmao. Well, I did manage to at least handle most of my shopping priorities by the time erikavonmars informed me that she had arrived at the con at around 12:30. 

While browsing the shops I walked past the massive Bleach fan guy's booth and he actually recognized me out of cosplay because of my ita bag oh lord! He of course started talking again (probably from where he left off yesterday) and I was like dumbfounded for a few seconds that he actually recognized me. xD I'm so used to people specifically not recognizing me out of cosplay lol. Well, he was still adorable and I still didn't have the courage to tell him that I don't understand squat and so I was stuck in this charade of pretending to understand for a good minute or two. :'DD Oh boy. Well, eventually he had to attend to his table again and I could slink away into the shadows lmao. I felt like an undercover agent getting his cover blown haha! Bless this guy for real though, he really made this experience memorable for sure. x)

The amount of times I passed by this statue and thought it was real omg.

There were several large pop culture statues displayed around the exhibition hall, most of them Dragon Ball characters but also a handful of others like Totoro and a giant inflatable Princess Peach. Yes, it was lowkey towering above everyone. I hope no one had a giantess kink lmao. Some of these statues had backdrops so that visitors could take photos with them that looked like they were in the respective anime franchise's world. I honestly really like these kind of decorations because they really add to the overall atmosphere and bring out a lot of geek joy!

Super Saiyan Vegeta you could take photos with!

At 13:00 it was time for a Hoyoverse concert at the Escenario Live Music stage. Anyone who knows me personally knows that I love Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail and other gacha games like Wuthering Waves so yeah, when I saw that there was a Hoyoverse concert in a live music stage I was super interested to go check it out. I'll admit that due to the name of the stage and the word 'concert' being in the description that I was expecting actual live music with live instruments, which isn't unreasonable to expect right? So you can probably guess my astronomical disappointment when the actual concert was just three people (two in cosplay, one without) essentially dancing casually and singing anime karaoke style to Youtube clips from Hoyoverse games. That's it. I was just... baffled. I really don't want to hurt anyone's feelings here but it's not like they were good singers either – you'd expect a certain level of talent and this just wasn't it. Screeching into the mics, monotone flat voice etc and honestly it was rather embarrassing myötähäpeä is real. I don't know if I'm spoiled by the quality of live concerts in events like Tracon or what but this was so disappointing and amateurish that I ended up leaving early and yes, I felt bad for it because there were many empty seats already. 
Another thing that gave a bad first impression was how delayed the whole thing was – it took 10 minutes past the starting time before anyone even came up on stage and only after that did the sound-checks etc start. Shouldn't that kind of things be done well in advance? So it was almost 20 minutes behind schedule and the first 10 minutes you stared at an empty stage wondering if it would even start at all. 

General view.

Me and erikavonmars decided that now was a good time to get back to the hotel and put on our cosplays for the day – after all the clock was 14:00 at this point. Or well, first we tried to go to Mercadona to buy some quick lunch but then we realized half-way through that we're being big dumb-dumbs and totally forgetting that most stores are closed in Spain on Sundays. :'D Well, we then tried to go to the nearest McDonald's because erikavonmars was a bit hungry but we quickly noped out of there when we saw that the queue to order went all the way outside the restaurant omfg. It was chaos.

We had a bit of chocolate left and I had half a kilo of dried figs that we munched on before putting on our cosplays. We both had extreme hipster deluxe cosplay choices – we both debuted new cosplays of characters that no one has, in all likelihood, ever cosplayed. Or well, there might be a very slight chance that someone has done Pinkle before from Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland (a rather obscure The Legend of Zelda spin-off Nintendo DS game) but we tried to search it online and nothing came up so yeah, odds are that erikavonmars is first. :D I helped to draw Pinkle's arm tattoo on erikavonmars's arm because it's easier than trying to draw on yourself with the help of a mirror lol.

While putting our costumes on we had a hilarious misunderstanding come up – you see, erikavonmars's mother tongue is Swedish (Swedish-speaking Finns linguistic minority) and while we talk we tend to mix both Swedish and Finnish. For clarification I have both Finnish and Swedish as mother tongues so I just say the word in the language that comes up first. :D Throughout my time in Spain I've been saying the Finnish slang word 'orkkis' quite a lot, which means original, whenever I spoke about something where said word was applicable to use, usually when referring to a standard flavor of something (energy drinks, cookies etc). This slang not being in her vocabulary had completely passed under the radar for me I assumed she knew because it's common slang and she understands and speaks Finnish as well until now when erikavonmars suddenly asked me what 'orkkis' actually means because, apparently, all this time she had been really confused and thought I was randomly talking about like the orcs from Lord of the Rings or something. xDD We had a good laugh about it and it kinda stayed as a mini joke after that lmao!

Orkkis flavor energy drink. :-DD

We were ready and left for the con again at roughly 16:30. I kept my long wig braided to avoid it tangling during the day and especially because I didn't plan to have any kind of photoshoot now that I didn't have my usual camera nor gear with me. We kinda forgot to take a friend selfie this day but erikavonmars did upload her Pinkle cosplay to cosplay.com's galleries so you can see it there. :)
Before heading inside I tried to take some selfies but they were all, quite frankly, awful. I probably should have readjusted the wig because on those photos my forehead looked so massive I could have rented advertisement space on it. I hadn't worn a wig this long and heavy before so I didn't register at first why the photos looked so off lol.

Back to the con we go!
(photo: erikavonmars)

Yes, I'm wearing my ugly spare shoes because my back was killing me from all the non-stop standing and walking yesterday. I might have a high pain tolerance but yeah, living with chronic pain conditions suck and I'd rather pick comfort over accuracy any day of the week.

We both wanted to go check out the upcoming video game music concert at 17:00, especially because it had the word guitars in it's description – it had to feature real instruments at that point, right? I was keeping my expectations low after the disappointing Hoyoverse concert. You can probably guess my relief when a whole slew of guitar performers took up the stage!

Orquesta de Guitarras de Sevilla.

The concert lasted for an hour and they played well known video game songs like the Final Fantasy 7 battle theme, Gerudo Valley from Ocarina of Time, Terra's Theme and even the Mii Channel Theme. xD There was even this wonderful retro medley at the end with popular tunes from Tetris, Super Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog and Monkey Island. I really enjoyed this fully acoustic concert experience and it was great how they utilized that screen to the right to show video clips of the game that the current song was from, adding to the nostalgy. Everything was timed well and there were no technical difficulties (unlike the Hoyoverse one that started very late, had flickering and disappearing screens that were synced poorly etc) and yeah, it was a nice experience. Yeah I know, I'm kinda dragging the Hoyoverse concert here but honestly, I heard from one of the vendors that Mangafest is one of the largest Spanish conventions and that the only bigger one is something that's held in Barcelona (at this same time?) so yeah, from a convention that's presumed to be in the top 3 –or at least top 5– largest in the whole country you'd kinda expect a certain baseline of quality from. At least this guitar show was well above that baseline. 
The only thing I feel that hampered its impact was that, due to it being in the same exhibition hall as everything else and not in a separate room, that there was this constant hustle and bustle in the background from the rest of the con. It wasn't detrimental enough to be an annoyance but it did affect immersion to some degree – although I understand there's not much to be done about it, especially if only the exhibition halls were in use by the con and not the other facilities, which seemed to be the case.

Merchandise galore. Nice to see Digimon getting some love too.

3D printed merch was extremely common, almost every other vendor had some.

In case anyone wonders if the Bleach fan vendor recognized me now that I had a different cosplay on –the answer is that I don't know. xD I did pass by the area where his table was but I think he either didn't notice me because of there being other people around or he didn't recognize me. One thing's for sure and that's that I didn't get a third chatterbox moment. :'D 

Handmade carpets! Notice the Homer Simpsons meme one. xD

This was the time when we made sure to comb through the sellers and mentally map out the layout to make sure that we had seen them all at least once. There were of course more than just the ordinary merch sellers and by that I mean that there was actually this one wall that had several different drop-in tattoo shop inside the convention like what?! I was so surprised to see that but apparently there's a demand for it because whenever we walked by there was always at least someone getting tattooed lol. We didn't check prices or anything but the shops seemed clean and proper enough to our uneducated eyes; they're probably nearby local tattoo shops who set up pop-ups inside the con. 

Animal shelter charity shop.

Another surprising sight was the different charity shops – they sold popular culture related items but also items for animal lovers like socks with cat and dog imagery on them, including some with cute puffy ballsacks. xD I asked erikavonmars about it and she said that anything you buy goes towards helping abandoned and otherwise mistreated animals. There were at least two of these animal charity shops and this Megacan one seemed to be a shelter local to Seville. I loved seeing this, I wish all cons did this (aka collaborated with local shelters) because geeks in general tend to care deeply for the wellbeing of animals.

Cat-themed coffee shop, nya!

There was roughly the same amount of cosplayers on Sunday as there was on Saturday, or at least it felt that way. I'm still not sure which day was supposed to be the so-called main day because all days were open 10-20 and were packed with activities but, if we go purely based on the standard metric of "cosplay competition day is the main day" then the main day was Saturday. But according to the programs list there was a children's cosplay competition on both Saturday and Sunday? Adults cosplay competition was only on Saturday though, along with the cosplay walkway thing, which I assume was some kind of parade or something like that; it was so early on Saturday that we were still on the road driving to Seville when it was going on. There were a lot of different contests overall – fanfic contests, drawing contests and possibly even some kind of karaoke contest? xD
We didn't really prioritize going on activities though, mainly due to the language barrier. In case anyone wonders then yes, everything was in Spanish on-site – there were no English signs or translations anywhere so yeah, if you don't speak Spanish yourself but want to visit then you do want to bring a friend along who speaks the language to have a smoother experience. 

General view.

We never had a boring moment because there was so much to see and yeah, it took so many hours of con time to even get your shopping needs done. Only on the later half of Sunday did that initial FOMO calm down and I started to feel like I had seen enough of all shops and bought the things I prioritized/wanted most. I mean, going through like 180 shops is no small task!

Unique "church window" style prints etc by Catterine Art.

At around 19:00 we left the con because we were getting hungry and we wanted to change out of cosplay. I'm surprised I didn't get a headache after all that neck strain lmao. We had joked throughout the day about needing to ration our snacks as if we were in the army and how I had been better prepared from the beginning because I brought more edibles with me on the trip, completely unaware of the struggle we'd be in later. xD I mean I don't have any clairvoyance skills but it was all just silly fun banter!

Korean noodle dish.

We ended up going to the Korean restaurant again and after that we waddled over to some random open gasoline station because erikavonmars had chocolate cravings and we had no choco left. xD I saw some weird plum-colored Monster can there that I had never seen before but my dumbass didn't buy it back then because I assumed I'd find it cheaper at some other store but of course I never saw it again after that. :C Should have just bought it lol, 2,90 € isn't bad for a new flavor experience. Heck, the imported flavors in Finland usually cost 7 € a can. *screeches into the void*

Oh well, we went back to the hotel to prepare to get ready for sleep, the usual. But while I was in the shower scrubbing my upper body I noticed a strong itchy sensation along with bumps on my right upper arm. Once I got out of the shower and looked in the mirror I saw these weird triangle bite marks that I've never had before, what the fuck? I immediately showed them to erikavonmars who gave me some antihistamines she had with her. I tend to get larger than average insect bites that swell and itch a lot, possibly allergic.

Photo proof of (agitated) bites and shook.

So I immediately dropped a message to Firith because I was in shock and yeah, the bites just didn't make much sense to me because I had been fully clothed and worn layers at all times when I had been outside (like t-shirt and hoodie combos) and my two cosplays both had my arms fully covered. And while I am a mosquito magnet the zigzag patterning of the bites was completely alien to me! I also had an identically sized single bite on the same height on my back, by the way. It didn't take long before Firith sent me a message "don't tell me it's fucking bed bugs" and a screenshot of an article with someone having similar bites to mine. And that's when I felt the first penny drop – the only time I was without a shirt was when I was sleeping. Oh no. Oh. Fucking. No.
I started searching for information about bed bugs. Everything I found made the fear pile up like recent articles warning Brits to check for bed bugs in Spanish hotels since they've become more common etc. After extensive research I took my phone's flashlight and looked at the mattresses and the canopy and on the underside of my bed were these dark red, rustic small spots. I'm gonna refrain from posting photos in this blog regarding the condition of the hotel room in case some readers are sensitive to that kind of stuff. But let's just say the bed didn't feel fresh to sleep in after I had noticed that!
It was late night (as you can see on the time stamp of the messages) and we went down to the reception to report what had happened. The young man at the desk spoke English thankfully and he seemed to take our concerns relatively seriously because he offered us a room change for the night. Regretfully not on a different floor (bed bugs can travel between rooms if there's cracks and crevices in the walls) but there were several rooms between our old room and the new room we got, at least. The new room number was 602 and it was in the end of the corridor while the previous one was roughly in the middle. I still didn't feel much safer and immediately put my suitcase on higher ground and checked the new bed. No weird red spots on the underside but underneath the large mattress were some oblong yellowish-white flattened things that looked like... molts? When I put it through Google's image identification it said possible bed bug molts ewww. There were also some reddish streaks on that thin shiny bedding that covers the bed that I couldn't discern if it was from makeup or blood. I also couldn't help but notice the substandard level of cleanliness – I could see dust and dirt on the floor with my naked eye; it looked like no one had cleaned the corners in a week or something, or if they had then it was really sloppily. It was definitely not what you'd expect from a 4-star hotel, that's for sure.
Needless to say I was paranoid to sleep at this point. I couldn't even get myself to use the pillow nor blankets because I was terrified of some creepy crawlers coming in where I couldn't immediately see them! I woke up constantly, probably every half an hour, and checked for bugs with my flashlight – I hardly slept at all, to put it mildly. I was freezing all night too and it felt like it took an eternity to become morning. I wanted nothing more than to just get the fuck out of this whole hotel at this point, the emotional distress was immense because anyone who knows anything about bed bugs knows what an absolute nightmare it is to get rid off the pests. And to make the guilt worse I had been borrowing my mom's suitcase for the trip since my own is barely kept alive with duct tape and god forbid I got it infected and brought the bed bugs home! During my childhood mom would quite often tell me that bed bugs would come if I didn't clean my room properly. :') #childhoodfearunlocked

We had been instructed to go the info desk on the morning to hear the results from their thorough search of our previous hotel room. When we got downstairs to the lobby there were two women at the desk, not the man we had previously spoken to. They proceeded to tell us that the cleaners/inspectors had carefully checked the room and found nothing out of the ordinary – that everything was clean and in good order. I was like wtf. How is that even possible unless they either clearly have an agenda or are blind as bats? I saw several signs pointing towards lacking cleaning standards within 5 minutes of entering the room. We immediately showed them the photo evidence of the spots under the bed, the weird stains on the floor and the thin dark streak behind the curtain etc and I even removed my hoodie to show the fresh bite marks. This lady's face looked like she was buffering like Windows XP and after a bit of dismissive back-and-forthing they told us we could go eat breakfast for free. We did go eat breakfast but I was getting annoyed at this point because of how it seemed like they were playing us and trying to bribe us to forget about the severity of the issue – I mean, the breakfast was soon closing anyway and anyone with any insight knows that hotels have massive food waste and giving two guests "free breakfast" doesn't cost them anything tangible, we just lessened their waste of the day by two people – it's not a sufficient compensation at all. It's basically a bandaid and a cheap evasion maneuver. And besides, I couldn't shake the fact that they claimed a "professional inspector" had been to the room and somehow, conveniently for them perchance, had not found a single damn thing wrong? I didn't know if I should have laughed or cried at how much they wriggled the moment a customer wasn't so easy to sway with good-sounding words. One of the two ladies tried very hard to suggest it wasn't bed bugs because "the inspectors didn't see any live bugs" (of course you don't see them during day time, they hide and you should know that duhh) and said it could be mosquitos or spider bites but spider bites usually have fang marks in the middle and well, I've been extensively bitten by mosquitos hello Lapland and I've never had such a distinct cluster shape – mosquitos bite randomly and oftentimes the actual bite bumps aren't perfectly round. All the signs still pointed at bed bugs. 
At this point I was getting really infuriated by this whole belittling treatment combined with the appalling lack of any accountability – mind you, they hadn't even suggested a refund or asked what they could do to make things right during this whole mess. When I asked what the weird stains under the bed were if not from bed bugs the lady had the audacity to suggest, with a straight face, that it was probably some kid who put snot boogers there? I said I'm not stupid, that was the most ridiculous excuse I've ever heard. Jesus Christ on a motorbike for real. They just kept repeating this whole nonsense of how they can't call bug experts/exterminators unless a live bug has been seen yada yada and all I could think of was "oh so you'd rather save money and have a full-blown infestation before you do anything, instead of being responsible and acting preventively when there's a good reason to?". It was obviously not really about if they could, it was about expenses they weren't willing to take and that, my friends, tells me everything I need to know about how much they care for the safety and wellbeing of their guests.
Eventually two guys came up with us to the first room we had and we pointed out all the weird spots and turned the bed upside down to show the stains. They ripped the bedding and checked the mattress seams etc and these two guys I have no complaints about, they seemed to take us seriously enough but they insisted that the marks were not bed bugs because there should have been more signs like black droppings and eggs in the bed or nearby too. I should note here that the potential molts under the mattress were in the other room we got and we didn't check that one. The thing is that I still find it very hard to believe that there wasn't bed bugs – the location, pattern and time of appearance of my bite marks (and also how long they lasted/were visible, it's been almost two weeks and I can still faintly see where the bites were) still makes bed bugs the most likely culprit. And yes I googled all other options extensively like fleas, mites and so on. 
I feel like you can't dismiss the possibility unless all the rooms on the same floor are checked and especially because I did notice dusty crevices and gaps in the walls that looked like perfect hiding places for bugs to travel through rooms. I'm so relieved we didn't have another night in this hotel and also that we didn't arrive the day before the con. I just... yeah, this was an absolutely horrendous hotel experience and we both felt like we were dismissed and our concerns and distress were severely downplayed. I even said how I couldn't sleep at all the last night and all we got were half-baked sorries with blank faces. And when I finally got the courage to suggest a refund, even a partial one, because I was so sick of this bullshit they pulled the whole "we can't do decisions without asking the boss" card when they had, quite literally might I add, been in contact (through phone) with the boss before?? *eyeroll of the century* So yeah, the only thing we got when we left was a truckload of avoidance and excuses and they even did the most obvious textbook example of skirting responsibility and getting rid of "difficult customers" aka handing us a contact card and telling us to write to the email address on the card for further assistance. LMAOOOO that wasn't very smooth, we all know they either will never answer or it's gonna be some generic copypaste reply. It's just to give a false sense of trust. Oldest trick in the book of shittery. :)) Fun fact: erikavonmars actually sent a wall of text with photos and everything to the attached email on 12th December and, to this day, still has not received a reply. Am I surprised? Not at all. 
Oh, and we got some trash bags to put our suitcases in to protect the car during our return trip. Oh, and did I mention that they also tried some weird guilt-trip about how "tourists bring in bed bugs to hotels" like gurrrl what? While that might be true, in some cases, that's very tactless to say to a paying customer and definitely wasn't true in our case. I mean, erikavonmars takes cleanliness seriously and her apartment is very neat and tidy and besides, we had no bites or suspicious bug activity until getting into the hotel. I've never had bed bugs at home (or ever) either. Oh and yeah, I don't know if it was because of language barriers or different receptionists having different views on "accepted things to say" or whatnot but the amount of contradicting information we got was staggering – like one of the ladies said they haven't had bed bugs while the other one looked away awkwardly and said that they had? There were several of this kind of discrepancies also regarding the inspectors and everything; I really got the impression that everyone was dishonest (or clueless) to some degree and that no one was truly on the customer's side. It felt like whatever you tried to prove there was an excuse and gaslighting ready and the whole ordeal was as useless as fighting against windmills. 
Avoid Hotel M.A. Sevilla Congresos like the plague, it's not worth the risk!! Especially if you get a bad experience because they don't give two shits about resolving any issues properly.

I can say that we were not happy with the treatment and "resolution" when we left. I legit hate conflicts, I'm extremely anxious and averse to arguing but this whole shitfest really pressed my buttons and made some inner Karen activate thanks dad lol. I've had my share of poor hotel experiences (including a scam hotel that didn't even exist on the address it said it would lol) but this was a true rock-bottom experience. I'm still thinking back on it in disbelief – so many red flags. I'm looking at the reviews of others on Tripadvisor etc and wondering if we were even on the same hotel? I can't with the best of intentions call it a 4-star... and at this point I can afford to be extra petty too and say that there wasn't even a goddamn kettle and tea/coffee in the room lmao. Not gonna lie, the 2-star stay in Fuengirola was so much better.

The tree had decided it was a good weekend to do an autumn simulator lol.

We walked all the way back to our car, wrapped our suitcases in the trash bags, threw them in the trunk and then we walked back to the con to cheer up. Neither of us had cosplays planned for this last day and that's for the better since we were tired and achy. :D I don't want to think about how sleep-deprived I probably looked lol.

The ticket for Monday was huomioväri. Not platinum.

The clock was approximately 12:50 when we got back to the con. There seemed to be fewer congoers than on Sunday but not by any large amounts. All the shops and everything seemed open so it didn't seem like a half-day type of thing either. I'm kinda used to the last day being slower but here it felt like it was roughly the same – I didn't really notice any big drop in cosplayers either.

General view inbetween the Artist's Alley.

General view, also Artist's Alley.

We decided to go one last round to check the AA tables (sometimes there's final day discounts hehe) and surprisingly enough one of the artists actually recognized erikavonmars outside of cosplay as the Tingle cosplayer. xD We weren't really expecting that!

I was trying to find and buy some final gifts for friends at home and luckily I did find the tables I was searching for, after some help of erikavonmars's superior memory and navigation skills. Yes, even on the third day of the con I still kept getting lost.

Fulcagay's table. Keep slaying, king!

Two of many prints by Juapi Coffee Art. Yes, made with coffee.

While waddling around we saw this "Guess that Pokémon" interactive activity for kids near one of the entrances. There was this screen showing a Pokémon and a timer and if you knew the name of the mon on screen you had to say it out loud. There were a group of people participating and it looked like some light-hearted fun! No idea if there were any prizes or anything but it seemed to be just for entertainment.

Jokainen Chansey on mahdollisuus.

We didn't attend any scheduled activities on the last day – of course there would have been a couple that were lowkey interesting like Nacho Ojeda's concert; I don't know who he is but apparently he was some contest winner so the show probably would have been good. But that concert was so early during the day that we missed it because we were embroiled in the hotel hell. 

I heard you like mecha figures...

.. but of course there were alt fashion accessories too.

Luckily our moods quickly recovered after having been at the con for a while and we could enjoy the rest of our day. Our hotel disaster had nothing to do with Mangafest Seville itself (it wasn't one of those con hotel deals or anything of the sort), it was just really bad luck and in hindsight it's always easy to think that we should have picked another hotel but honestly, who expects mysterious bug issues from a weekend stay in a nice-looking area? It wasn't on my watch-out-for-this bucket list.

Cosplay repair zone.

I was surprised to learn that there was this emergency cosplay repair booth were you could go and fix your costume if it malfunctioned or self-destructed during the con. Every con should have this! I didn't go to get a closer look though because I wasn't in cosplay when I saw it if I had noticed it the day before I could maybe have repaired my haori himo, which I accidentally broke when trying to show the lining to a curious kimono-wearing vendor because yeah, I forgot I had it on because I'm not used to wearing one. They seemed to have most things you'd need to patch up a cosplay so it survives the rest of the day – sewing machines, got2b hairspray, hot glue guns and so on. It's like a stationary spiritual successor to the Captain Patch-It idea!

One of the main stages.

If there's something I feel that was a bit of a... questionable aesthetics choice... it was the chairs for all the stages. For real, it was those really basic plain white outdoorsy plastic chairs you know? xD The first time I saw them I was like bewildered and humored for a good second because it just looked so, err, cheap? Like literally almost anything else would have given a much more polished impression lmao. I mean yeah, they work for their intended purposes, which is to be sat on, but they aren't very professional-looking. :'DD

General view and Ouroboros's booth, an association for tabletops and card games.

You could play board games and stuff at these tables.

When I walked past these activity tables I was reminded of Cryo because it seemed to be the same type of organization and concept. It was very nice to see that these kind of clubs exist in other countries too!

Game tournament area.

Indie game demos and developers!

One of the last things we did was to check out the indie game corner. There were like five or so tables with different unfinished indie games that you could try. We went up to the table with the quirky squirrel mascot, a game called Arthur Loves Watermelon. Both me and erikavonmars tried the game, assisted by the support and cheer of the developer sitting next to us. The game is a 2D platformer where you jump automatically every few seconds, making progression all about timing and precision. It was surprisingly challenging but not unfair – we played like the first two levels of the demo and I'd say it was very skill-based. We learned from the guy that all the available games were from Spanish developers and I think he said all of them were unfinished at this date except for perhaps one? I can't recall the names of the other ones but they were all on PC. I gotta give props to the developer guy, he was very passionate and good at explaining the game (yes, in English) and he laughed with us and cheered us on every time we died or almost made it. He even had a backstory for the weird premise of why a squirrel was so infatuated by watermelons lol. I wish him all the best with the game, great guy!

You could also learn to make your own games?? This was so extra, whatever it was.

I'm not sure what the photo above is but I got the impression it was some kind of promotion and hands-on for perhaps local IT and coding studies? Maybe for aspiring game developers? Something like that. It seemed cool and professional but when a woman approached me to check for my interest and I said "no hablo español" and shook my hands in front of me she just smiled a big awkward smile, turned around and left. xD Curse of English lol.

You could also play normal games, normally.

Me and erikavonmars actually played a round on these game consoles. I'm not sure what game it was exactly but it was some kind of kart racer that had Spongebob characters and more. I sucked surprisingly much at it because my muscle memory wanted to play it like Disney Speedstorm and the controls just weren't the same lmao.

General view.

I don't remember what the clock was by the time we were getting ready to leave but it was probably somewhere between like 14:30 and 15:00. At this point we were feeling satisfied and ready to move on to see what else Seville had to offer, especially because there weren't any must-sees left for us. 

But in case someone is now thinking if there was anything Christmas-y at the con, because it was held at December, I do have a reply and the reply is that yes, there was. There was this, uhh, lounging tent I suppose? It had a large inflatable snowman decoration and a Santa Claus that was inspired by Kingdom Hearts shoe sizes lol.

Merry Christmas ho ho ho.

For me personally the Christmas decos felt soooo out of place because when you look outside it's full-blown summer to my Scandinavian brain. Like no it's not December, although I know it is, but it just doesn't look the part to me. Mindfucks. How can you have a Christmas mood when there's palm trees, sandy beaches and parrots outside and t-shirt weather? I know I can't uphold winter magic at that point even if my life depended on it. xD

On the way out from the con through one of the corridors.

With Mangafest Sevilla behind us we walked back to our car and drove to Plaza de España in the María Luisa park. I'm not gonna spoil the experience for anyone who hasn't been there (and it's not the point of this blog post anyway) but it's basically this extremely lavish and beautiful castle-like building with towers, fountains and everything that's mixing renaissance and baroque revival styles among others. There's also this large park area surrounding the plaza that's fit for royalty, basically. I've traveled a decent amount and seen some beautiful places and this definitely makes the list as one of the most impressive buildings I've ever seen. I'm so happy I went there even though my back was hurting real bad after the con weekend and you had to walk a bit to get to the plaza itself. Not gonna lie, it would be a dream location to return to for cosplay photoshoots; I'm gonna have to remember this one. 

Have you ever seen a fountain rainbow? Now you have.

After gawking at the plaza for a good couple hours we finally left Seville behind us and headed back to Rota (where we spent over an hour outside inspecting our luggages before even entering the home), where I stayed a few more days and we hardcore grinded Mario Kart World to unlock all racer outfits before we drove down to Malaga on the 11th. The last day in Rota we had a feast and bought 100 € worth of pizza, cookies and ice cream from Domino's Pizza. No regerts! We had a 50% discount though hehe..

At Malaga we had a tiny windowless room that we stayed the night in yes I checked the bed for bed bugs lol and near midnight we went for a quick Pokémon Go walk. This wouldn't have been noteworthy otherwise but in the middle of the walk it started pouring rain like crazy! I didn't have an umbrella but erikavonmars had one and so we somehow, clumsily, tried to get back to our room while it was raining so hard that the rain was pooling on the streets. Maybe not the best timing. xD 

True gamers rig their console to the room's TV to finish grinding.

My flight back home was on the following morning and Erika kindly dropped me off at the airport before she went to run some other errands she needed to do in Malaga including buying the dark syrup from the Swedish store outside Malaga because she forgot to buy it from the Finnish store we went to in Fuengirola. 

All in all I'm very happy that I took this chance and went abroad. I know the title maybe comes off as negative but it really wasn't! It was just the first punchy line I came up with! This was a great adventure overall, only weighed down by the crappy hotel experience. But at least now we know what hotel not to book for next time lol. But yeah, it was such a blast to spend quality time with erikavonmars in person again and to find new dimensions of friendship, thank youuu! 
I would absolutely consider visiting either Mangafest Sevilla or any other convention in Spain again, if only the stars align correctly to make it possible. There were several things that were new to me but also several others that were familiar and yeah, it was that perfect blend. :D I really enjoyed the overall easy-going and relaxed atmosphere despite the size of the event! I wouldn't say that one country has better or worse cons (and it would be unfair to judge based on only one experience), just different! I feel like Mangafest Sevilla is a jackpot for anyone who favors shopping but there was definitely something for everyone to get enticed by. I would totally recommend visiting cons in other countries if it's something you're curious about, it's quite an enriching experience and gives perspective!

Thanks for reading this took like 20 hours to write omg and have a great holiday!

~ Shiro Samurai out.