Take a tour at Metz Torii Geek Convention in France

Metz Torii has launched another Geek Convention this year after its successful event last year 2017. Garnering 13,000 visitors, this years’ event happened last May 26th-27th in Metz, France and tons of people came to celebrate and reunited again for another year.

Metz Torii 

Metz Torii is dedicated for people who love Pop Culture, Japanimation, Video games, Manga, Comics, Sci-fi & Fantasy. Like other Conventions that you have been to. Metz Torii offers a great program as well as invited big names, especially in the Hollywood industry.

It’s our first time to be here and it’s truly another convention to conquer for us. Let’s take a tour inside this Metz Torii event, their shops/boutiques, their guests, and the whole arrangement of the interior in general.

At the Entrance

We arrived at noon time in the area, the event is happening at the Parc des Expositions in Metz city, one of the popular places for expositions and other great events. We bought our tickets online and it was cheaper than buying your ticket on the spot.

Entering the first stage of this event, they call it the “Exposition of Tsume” where you can see gigantic statues of different popular Anime Series. Among them are the characters from Naruto, One Piece, Dragon Ball and many more.

Some of statues that I’ve seen are Sakura & Naruto from Naruto Shippuden and Edward Newgate or known as Captain of Whitebeard Pirates from One Piece.

After the statues expositions on the upper part of the hall there’s the booths of RagnaFall & Imperium Circus. Ragnafall is one of the promising manga series’ created by Shizuha/KTA which was released this year 2018.

On the other hand Imperium Circus a series created by Tsume. Featuring the scriptwriter Robin Dall Armellina who was there present at the event for autograph signing.

Boutiques

Entering the place of shops/boutiques I have seen a bunch of different sort of Anime & Manga Merchandise. From apparel, stuff toys, costumes, souvenirs, posters, and collector’s items. It was around 12:30 pm and the area was already filled with people.

Among the list of shops were Momie Manga, Mania Toys collector, Askew gaming, Akiba Station. There were also shops like Poster world, Kirakishou, Pandanime, Manga Dori, Manga Land, Bijoux japonais, Lens-addict, and many more.

The most typical shop that you’ll see in every Con, obviously one of the items that all geeks love it’s the samurai swords or samurai katana. These are very popular since a lot of Anime series use weapons that represent each character.

Personally, I would love to have one katana at home. I’ll surely choose the one that Brook’s from One Piece, he calls it “Soul Solid” it’s a Shikomizue which means a sword concealed inside a cane or walking stick.

Our first couple purchase was in a Funko Pop shop certainly. As collections of Overwatch Funko Pop characters, we’re still missing a bunch of exclusive items from Vinyl and new collections came out just that month.

Get to know your Japanese Name

Wandering around, I noticed this unique stall with an artist translating names in Japanese. I thought it’s really cool to see how our names translated into another language. The artist is really talented with adding some designs and his signature.

Apparently, my name would be different in Japanese. It’ll turn out to be “Arekusuin” but it sounds really cool.

Young Creators

On the left side of the boutiques are the various stalls/stands of young and brilliant creators. There are about 50 or more booths exposing their individual creations to the public.

From sketchers, painters, crocheters, jewelry makers, handmade accessories, designers, cartoonist, and other geeky stuff. Indeed, a wide range of young artists who love to show their passion.

According to the list of creators here are some of them: L’atelier de Gé, Nina dessinatrice, Alpa collection, Sabrina Kaufman, Atelier Uraeus, SanskullTime, L’encre séche, Le Jardin Secret, Lara-phénix création, Gonel Sci-fi Watercolor, Saphirya, Mago’crochet, Arwenn’s Art, Ayame workshop, My dreamer Shop, Geek’n’Art, Papelstorich and many more.

Authors & Publishers

In this area, you will find the Authors, Editors, Bloggers, Scriptwriter, and Designers of well-known series, comic books, manga, books and others.

Among the Authors featured are Sourya, cartoonist manga/comics of Doggybag, Girl of the Moon. Christophe Cointault, manga designer of Tinta Run (Glénat Editions). Vald, manga cartoonist of Catacombs, Aerinn another manga designer.

There’s Van Rah, manga designer of Stray Dog, Red, Ayakashi (Glénat Editions). Alexandre Arlène, cartoonist blog at Poudlard (Hogwarts). And there’s Gauthier Wendling the author of Escape Book The Cthulhu Brand at 404 Editions and many more.

Youtubers

At the Youtubers area are Youtubers that are quite known of their crafts. In the list are Starrysky, Donjon Legacy, Zone 42, Serial Gamer, Sa mère la pub, FFL production and Aigle Mécanique. 

I think these guys are pretty awesome, they don’t mind taking photos of them and all out smiling and being friendly. If you need some guides on gaming, and other knowledge about geeky kinds of stuff don’t forget to visit their respective YouTube Channels.

The Main Stage

Animation & Cosplay

On the extreme right side of the area, you will find the Animation and Cosplay zone. There’s a mini stage where at that time the host was doing a game with the audience. At that time I was busy following Cosplayers around to take some photos of them and I bumped into this place.

I captured the moment where they were playing a song (Anime song) and the audience should guess which Anime was it. It was truly fun to see it!

On the left side of the mini stage is the place where Cosplayer is getting ready. Fixing their costumes, props, gears, and other accessories to wear for the big event of that day.

As I go further, I found the booths of Cosplayers and their exposed photos/works. It’s inspiring to see them here.

Guests Area

As I glimpsed into the Guests’ Area, it was starting to get crowdy. People were starting to queue to wait for their beloved idols. I’m not so familiar with all the French guests but I’m absolutely sure they are famous in their field.

The list of the main guests were: Stanisval Inaveski, the Victor Krum of Harry Potter. Julian Glover the Grand Maester Pycelle of the series Game of Thrones.
Mamoru Yokota director of animation of Naruto Shippuden & Death Note. Junichi Hayama, Japanese Animator of Hokuto no Ken, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Gundam, Cobra, Drifters, Paranoïa Agent, and many more.

Patrick Borg is a French voice actor, best known as the voice of Adult Goku in Dragon Ball Z, he also plays Bardock in Dragon Ball Z: Bardock – The Father of Goku.

The TV version and in Dragon Ball Z: Cooler’s Revenge, and Future Gohan in Dragon Ball Z: The History of Trunks, using the same voice. He also plays the French voice of Soldier 76 of Overwatch.

And on the other part, there’s Philippe Ariotti who plays the voices of Piccolo and Freezer of Dragon Ball. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen Victor Krum that day I was waiting but we have to go back home after a while.

Helios Gaming Festival

I would call it the gamers zone, almost all kinds of geeky games are here especially video games, Game consoles, arcade kiosks, racing simulators, and other online games. This is also the place the event conducts their game competitions.

Other Games

Just beside is the other half of the hall filled with people playing board games, card games, puzzles, and other sorts of entertainment games. I was surprised at how many people were enthusiastic about this kind of games. As I looked at them, they were really having fun.

Pixel Museum 

If you love Lego this one is a perfect place for you. There were some enormous Lego creations, these small bricks combine together forms a bigger form of creation.

The museum features a bit more of Star Wars side, a variety of Star Wars characters and even aerospatial aircraft and many more.

Favorite Stall

I must admit, after a long tour here in Metz Torii I finally found my favorite shop. It is called Totoro Bowl Terrarium or “Totoro in a Bowl” a sealable glass container containing soil, plants, and added theme.

Overall it was a great first experience at Metz Torii. I hope to visit the next season! Watch out for my next post about all the Cosplayers that I’ve encountered. I would love to show all my photos but we don’t have enough space here.

I invite you all to visit Metz Torii next year, visit their Official Website and Facebook Page for more information.

I’ll give it a 9/10. I think they must add more of restaurants and small food stalls. It was too crowded to search for our lunch and we ate past 2:00 pm after searching for a place where there are not many people queueing.

Take a tour at Metz Torii Geek Convention in France