Went to @coscafenyc‘s Boku No Hero Academia-themed cafe, or “My Hero Cafe” earlier today. After I had such a great time at their Yuri On Ice-themed pop-up cafe last month, I definitely wanted to attend another one. Tickets didn’t sell out like within 20 minutes this time around lol. Though, I still got mine the day it went on sale. I got a ticket for the third block again, and was seated at a table with two other people who also came alone (one person said that his friends were lame and couldn’t get tickets in time rofl), so I didn’t feel totally all in my sad lonesome~~ again hahaha.
The standard ticket price was $25 and included: a traditional ‘brown bag’ lunch (with a sandwich, small side, dessert, juice/milk), a postcard from the official art set made by the artist staff, school supply bonuses (a pen and cute stationary), entry into the fan raffle, and event admission of course. I got a ticket for the third block from 3:30 to 4:30 pm, and each block lasted an hour, with four blocks in total. After being seated, I opened my brown bag lunch. Previously they had the participants pick a lunch set before the event, and I got a ham and cheese sandwich with pringles, a fruit roll-up, a jolly rancher, and fruit punch. The other food options included a tuna sandwich mixed with mayonnaise, salt, and pepper, and a veggie option of a hummus sandwich with cucumbers, lettuce, and tomatoes. The other drink options included water, chocolate milk, apple juice, and fruit punch.
An event artist came around and made personal sketches of requested characters for each guest at a table, which I thought was really great and thoughtful. The event cosplayers rotated each table round-robin style, interacting with the guests in-character, playing games and so on. They had a good number of the Class 1-A cosplayers, including Midoriya, Todoroki, Uraraka, Iida, Bakugou, Kirishima, Asui, Yayorozu, Kaminari, Jirou, Present Mic, and Eraserhead. I thought that the Uraraka and Asui cosplayers were super cute, and the Bakugou and Kirishima cosplayers were hilarious - particularly when the Eraserhead cosplayer would occasionally chime in and tell the Bakugou cosplayer to watch his language whenever he cursed rofl. Though, my favorite moment was when the Yayorozu cosplayer (and one of the cafe’s organizers, Akiran) accidentally ripped off the Iida cosplayer’s clip-on tie *gasps* which led to him profusely apologizing to her and the entire table in-character lolol.
Somehow I won the fan raffle. AGAIN!!! (I really don’t know how that happened haha oops?) and the raffle prize set included a Todoroki poster, the entire postcard set, and a cute Asui keychain. Towards the end, each table was allowed to make a (reasonable) group request for the cosplayers. I don’t think I remember all of them but there were some pretty funny ones, like a table requesting the Bakugou and Kirishima cosplayers to sing Smash Mouth’s ‘All Star,’ and another table requesting that all the cosplayers partake in a group dab pfftt. Other requests included the Present Mic cosplayer kabedon’ing a guest, and the Bakugou cosplayer having to say something nice to the Midoriya cosplayer - his compliment ended up being something along the lines of ‘you’re not the worst hero ever,’ which everyone in the cafe awwed and cooed at. Also, I don’t think this was necessarily a request and I forgot when this exactly happened but at one point the Bakugou cosplayer handed a sign to the Todoroki cosplayer labeled ‘daddy issues’ which everyone screeched at and agreed that that was going a little too far omfg, though totally priceless. I’m a little sad that I couldn’t snap a picture in time for that moment lol. After the requests, the organizers left some time for guests to purchase fan merchandise, provided by the event artists.
Before I left, I actually got the chance to talk briefly with one of the organizers, Kou. I asked if it takes long for her and Akiran, the other organizer, to plan these kind of events. Kou said that since they’ve already run a bunch of these pop-up cafes before, they seem to have a fairly easy event blueprint to follow at this point (providing some kind of themed food plate, hiring the volunteer artist staff and cosplayers, timed block-formats, table group requests, etc). She also mentioned that pretty much all the money generated via tickets goes directly to the event (renting the venue space, food & utensils, Universe ticket service fees, art printing, etc), though they actually had a little money left over from their previous Yuri On Ice-themed event - which then went directly to the funds of this My Hero Cafe event.
If you’re ever in the NYC area, I highly recommend attending one of Cos Cafe NYC’s themed, pop-up cafes in the future (I would kill to see a Mystic Messenger-themed or Cardcaptor Sakura-themed one, and you betcha that I would drag my friends along in a heartbeat lol). You can really tell how much effort, enthusiasm, and thoughtfulness that the organizers and the entire volunteer staff (artists/cosplayers) really put into the event, and I’ve had a really great time at both themed, pop-up cafes that I’ve been to.