Amin Abbas

DUBAI: The 8^th edition of EGYcon, which is the biggest anime & pop culture event in Egypt is coming back this weekend on Oct. 8, in Cairo.

The event is a one-day festival where anime fans, manga and comic book readers, cosplayers, artists, photographers and everyone with a geek side gathers to celebrate their passion with similar people.

EGYcon’s founder Islam Risha exclusively spoke to Arab News Japan, saying: “The biggest challenge would be Covid-19 precautions. We had to find a bigger -open air- venue, distribute masks and measure 5000 attendees’ temperature without holding the queue.”

“The new venue is in the outskirts of Cairo far from local transportation, with a ticket price jump & Covid-19. All of these are factors that made it very hard to calculate the attendees hence hard to calculate for the operation,” he added.

About distinguishing this year’s edition of EGYcon from the previous years, Risha said: “After two years of lockdown set backs, people would think that we had plenty of time to come up with cool ideas to implement. However, EGYcon is cool to begin with.”

The founder said they had focused on perfecting the existing program and made use of previous feedback from older events.

About his recommendations for the visitors who are looking forward to attend this year’s edition of Egycon, Risha said: “Bring someone along with you to have 10 times more the fun. Document everything with photos, don’t stick to one place all day, walk around and experience everything EGYcon has to offer.”

EGYcon event launched in 2013 with the support of the Japanese Foundation, the first edition of the event featured various activities for anime and manga fans such as: cosplay, workshops, Q & A discussion panels as well special performance by famous Japanese musician and singer Hironobu Kageyama.