Dayton’s Own Anime Convention & Festival Begins

Welcome! If you’ve found your way here, you’re probably just like us. Someone who believes anime is a community, a culture, a reason to gather.

We’re proud to introduce Tsukicon! A love letter to the city of Dayton, to the culture of fandom, and to the moments that bring people together. Tsukicon is not just another anime convention. It's an event that reflects the soul of our local community, while still delivering the scale and magic fans expect from a major convention.

Tsukicon was born from the heart of IZAKAYA, Dayton’s beloved anime bar, and powered by its bolder, nightlife-infused alter ego, ISEKAIYA. This moment didn’t appear overnight, It’s the result of years of planning, dreaming, and building trust with our community. You may have seen us partnering with SekaiGuild for Anime Day, or attending our Little Tokyo mini-convention; Both served as stepping stones toward this larger vision.

With every event we've run in the past, we asked: What kind of con do we want to exist in Ohio? What if it felt more like a festival? A creative showcase, a gathering of artists and fans, all sharing the same moonlight?

Why Tsukicon?

The name Tsukicon (月コン) is drawn from Tsukimi (月見), the traditional Japanese autumn festival of moon-viewing. It’s a time of reflection, togetherness, and celebration. Often accompanied by food, poetry, music, and offerings like dango, susuki grass, and seasonal harvests. It’s both a personal and collective experience, a moment to pause and take in something ephemeral. That’s the energy we’re aiming to deliver.

Rather than just another convention packed with back-to-back events and sensory overload, Tsukicon is curated to breathe. We want guests to flow between vibrant high-energy moments and slower intimate experiences. Whether that’s watching a cosplay exhibition in a theater setting, strolling through the artist alley under hanging lanterns, or gathering for live music beneath an open sky.

Tsukicon is designed like a seasonal festival, not just a convention. It’s rooted in presence and poetic pacing, with space for performance, discovery, and community connection. It’s not just about merch and panels; it’s about the feeling of belonging and the magic of seeing yourself reflected in the energy around you.

Just as Tsukimi invites people to gather and gaze upward together, Tsukicon invites us to gather and celebrate what we love; together, under the same symbolic moonlight.

What Makes Tsukicon Different?

We’ve been to cons. We’ve run events. We’ve learned from the best... and from the missteps. Tsukicon is our opportunity to craft something unique to Dayton, rooted in the culture we’ve helped cultivate through IZAKAYA and ISEKAIYA.

Here’s how we’re different:

• Truly Local: We’re Dayton-native. Not a touring brand, not a franchise, but a homegrown celebration built by the community that lives here.

• Day & Night Programming: During the day, the Dayton Convention Center will host vendors, artist alley, Itasha displays, panels, and performances. As the sun sets, we move outdoors.

• Festival Energy: Levitt Pavilion will transform into our outdoor stage for KYOSAI, a curated performance experience with music, dance, cosplay, and more. After 11PM, the energy shifts into the Dayton Vitality Hotel, connected to the convention center via skybridge, for an intimate late-night afterparty.

• Cosplay & Theater: Think beyond competitions, our cosplay exhibitions are runway-style showcases where the spotlight is the reward. No gatekeeping, no pressure, just expression.

• Itasha Culture: We’re bringing anime car culture to the forefront with curated local and regional vehicles as part of the experience.

• A Platform for Creators: We want Ohio’s artists, performers, and organizers to have a real voice. Tsukicon is a stage, a space to elevate each other.

Built for Dayton. Built with Love.

We started with anime cocktails in a suburban bar named IZAKAYA. A passion project that quickly became a community hub. We didn’t have corporate backing or national sponsors, but what we did have was a deep love for anime culture and the community around it. Trivia nights, cosplay exhibitions, curated watch parties... They were a way to bring people together.

From there, we started dreaming bigger. ISEKAIYA emerged as our bolder, late-night alter ego. A brand for the misfits, the ravers, the Itasha drivers, the ones who stay out late and feel most alive under lights. Together, IZAKAYA and ISEKAIYA laid the groundwork for something more ambitious: not just hosting events, but building experiences that could stand alongside the best conventions in the region, without leaving our roots behind.

We launched our first mini-convention with Little Tokyo in June of 2025, and started imagining what could happen if we had the freedom to scale our creativity across an entire weekend. Tsukicon is that next step... A full-scale anime convention designed from the ground up by the people who live here, love here, and never stopped believing Dayton could be a destination.

So come join us. Be part of the story, the celebration, and the spark. Tsukicon is just getting started, and we’d love nothing more than to share this journey with you.

🌙 Tsukicon. Under the moonlight, we gather.