The last Comic Con India event of the 2024-2025 convention season came to a close on Sunday evening, having been the biggest convention season for Comic Con India yet. The event closed out the season as the eighth Comic Con of 2024-2025, beginning with the Hyderabad Comic Con on November 15, followed by Delhi Comic Con on December 6-8, Bengaluru Comic Con on January 18-19, and Chennai Comic Con on February 8-9.
The highlight of the Mumbai Comic Con was Crunchyroll’s panel promoting the One Piece anime’s Wano arc. The voices of Usopp and Sanji, Kappei Yamaguchi and Hiroaki Hirata, attended the convention for a panel and put on a surprise performance.
Aside from the panel, Crunchyroll’s booth hosted photo ops featuring an Egghead Island laboratory and a Crunchyroll GlamBOT. The company hosted quizzes on the main stage where staff gave away tons of goodies throughout both days. Quiz questions ranged from trivia on the classics such “What is the name of the the third Hokage?” while still giving fans of newer titles a chance with questions from anime like Kaiju No. 8.
Comedians Rohan Joshi and Sahil Shah put on an improv performance titled “Unpopular Opinions” where they interacted with the audience, asking them their most controversial take on Bollywood, TV shows, comic books, and anime. Audience member Priksha shared the opinion that “Solo Leveling is overrated,” as the crowd roared in agreement. Meanwhile the comedians’ opinion was that anime series are too long these days, joking that they’re too old to wait around for “Season four, part two, clause B of Attack on Titan.” The set was followed by fan favorite, Biswa Kalyan Rath, who in between his completely Hindi set, stopped to troll the staff and volunteers. Usually performing in English and Hindi, the IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) graduate decided to play up his ignorance of foreign pop culture while in character, even startling a volunteer in a Chopper hat by stopping to ask him “What is a Tony Tony Chopper?”
The “Gaming Zone” at the Mumbai convention also hosted the Bushiroad Expo 2025. The section had everything from tabletop card games to demos of upcoming video games like the 2D 3v3 fighting game based on Yoshihiro Togashi’s Hunter X Hunter manga titled Hunter X Hunter Nen x Impact.
Yamaha’s booth hosted an experience zone that didn’t just feature its sports bikes but also a MotoGP gaming arena.
While hundreds of cosplayers gathered to show off their prop-making, make-up, and wig styling skills to compete in Comic Con India’s own cosplay competition, they also competed in the regional qualifiers of Indian Championship of Cosplay 2025. Cosplayers also took to the stage on Saturday to battle it out in pairs for the regional qualifiers of the World Cosplay Summit, the winners of which will represent India in Nagoya.
Bandai Namco also returned to Mumbai Comic Con with its massively popular booth this year, but without the ever-popular gachapon machines. The booth did, however, add a new arcade machine, the Funky Gator Kiddy Ride, along with Taiko no Tatsujin and its kiddy ride making a comeback from last year. Fans still queued up at the counter to get their fix of merch since Bandai Namco figures never seem to get less popular, with the brand hitting children’s toy stores and collectable stores over the past few years.
Comic Con India came to three new cities this convention season starting with the first-ever Kolkata Comic Con on February 22-23. While Pune had previously witnessed a “Comic Con Express” event a few years ago, it got its first ever full-fledged Comic Con on March 8-9. Ahmedabad Comic Con rounded up the slate of debut events on March 22-23. As has been the case for the last few years at Comic Con India, ‘powered by’ partner Crunchyroll brought special experiences for the anime fandom like a pirate ship installation where fans could dress up like that Straw Hat crew. While the debut events didn’t have as many big name guests, fans certainly brought big energy to the conventions, ensuring bigger and better Comic Con events to come.
Source: Mumbai Comic Con
