[Con Report] Zot Con ’25

Zot Con 2025 took place on March 1, 2025 at UC Irvine’s Student Center. This event took place during the public university’s homecoming festivities. For the sake of disclosure, I have ties to UC Irvine. I’m very happy to support a convention at a university that I call my home. The namesake, Zot Con, is based off the school mascot, Peter the Anteater. The university decided that anteaters go “zot.” You can even find a taxidermied anteater in the student center lobby.

Zot Con is held by a collective of UC Irvine alumni and students. This one day convention in the heart of Orange County is small, but also affordable for students and otaku on a budget. While Zot Con was taking place during homecoming at UC Irvine, the student center side of the campus was mostly otaku in their early 20’s hanging out in cosplay, friends playing tournaments in the gaming room, shoppers, perusing through artist alley, and strangers singing their hearts out to Kendrick Lamar in the karaoke room.

It wouldn’t be a convention without cosplay. We had a sizeable amount of costumed folks roaming around the UC Irvine student center.

And it wouldn’t be a convention without a cosplay contest. We had about a dozen of cosplayers enter the short and sweet cosplay show. Cosplayers walked on the stage, performed a few poses, and were judged on craftsmanship and showmanship.

Shopping is a huge staple at conventions, even for small university events. I was on a mission to buy stickers featuring anteaters. A few of my colleagues requested for said stickers. I didn’t spend too much considering I had Emerald City Comic Con the following weekend. Artist Alley was definitely a lively place to shop and find fan made wares such as pins, stickers, and keychains.

There were a few interactive events – the gaming room featured e-gaming tournaments and board games.

If you’re into singing in front of people, there was the dedicated karaoke room. The con had YouTube connected to a projector so people can pick out songs if they were on the platform. I ended up singing “Pink Pony Club” and “Tv Off.”

There wasn’t many panels in the programming department. However, we did have a guest – Kenny of Anteater Artists discussed what it is like to be a freelancer in the anime industry. He discussed the animation process while working from home and various anime projects he has worked on. He also discussed his work on various League of Legends music videos.

There were other events happening during the convention. I knew I had to make a reservation for the maid cafe – believe it or not, UC Irvine has a maid cafe club apart from their anime and J-fashion club. Because I also had duties for homecoming, I wasn’t sure what would have been the best time slot for me to attend.

Overall, I might have my bias because UC Irvine is the best of the 9 UC’s in the state, but Zot Con is a nice, one day “for fans by fans” event. There’s a lot of love that goes into Zot Con and it shows. The parking situation wasn’t as bad as I anticipated given that it was homecoming. Ticket prices definitely help small events like this keep going. During Zot Con, Southern California had two other events going on – an artist alley event in Anaheim and a celebrity zoo event in Los Angeles. Zot Con really keeps the spirit of organic otaku events alive. Remember, many of our long running anime conventions were founded by anime clubs. It’s just nice to see that anime organizations are still doing this in 2025.

Many thanks to Zot Con for the complimentary badge! I look forward to what next year brings. If I were to pick something Zot Con can improve upon, it would be having our beloved school mascot, Peter the Anteater, show up in a maid outfit.