AT THE STOA

We went to the mall in the middle of the day, not really expecting the number of people pressed along an extremely long line going from the venue entrance to the mall stairwell about fifty feet away. Having given up on the ridiculous queue, we wandered around to where, like pockets of colorful, geographically-misplaced surprises, some individuals were displaying their cosplay costumes.  According to the event  site , the Philippine ToyCon "is Asia's biggest and longest running convention for collectibles, toys, anime, comics, cosplay, gaming and anything and everything related to hobbies and collections."  It seems that anime costumes at a toy convention makes some sort of sense, to the convention-starved middle classes of the Philippines. The lower classes are just starving, and the upper classes hold toy conventions.  I did not have time to pursue this line of speculation, however, since I was busy trying to imagine myself in a Sephiroth costume.  I had to content my