An Anime Convention Had to Ban Cosplayers From Selling ‘Feet Juice’

Two months ago, feet juice was a one-off problem. Now it’s an international incident.

In case you missed the original chapter: back in May, cosplay models at Parkon, an unofficial outdoor event running alongside FanimeCon in California, sold lemonade they’d soaked their feet in for $10 to $15 a cup. It sold out. The internet had a field day. Most saw it and thought “wow, weird things that happen at anime conventions” and moved on.

China did not move on. At the 39th Firefly Anime Game Carnival in Guangzhou from July 17 to 20, a group of female cosplayers set up an informal stall outside the official venue selling their own version — lemon water and cola, feet pre-soaked, 50 yuan ($7) a cup. According to the South China Morning Post, a sign near the stall read: “It is for entertainment only. We do not intend to guide in an inappropriate way.” The line to buy it stretched around the block.

China’s Anime Convention Scene Is Dealing With Its Own ‘Feet Juice’ Scandal

The videos did what videos do. Within days they were everywhere on Chinese social media—men scooping cups directly from the containers, others stretched out on the ground trying to catch drips in their mouths, some going straight to the source and licking liquid off the cosplayers’ feet. Firefly convention organizers moved quickly, insisting the stall had nothing to do with them, expelling the cosplayers involved, and putting a zero-tolerance policy on paper for future events.

That last part is hard to take seriously, given that the original San Jose operation also took place outside official convention grounds. The unofficial-outdoor-event loophole is apparently load-bearing infrastructure for the feet juice economy on two continents now.

The backlash in China was much louder than the American version. Online commenters condemned it as a corruption of Chinese values, and the cosplay community itself pushed back hard, arguing the stunt damaged the broader community’s reputation. That reaction makes more sense with some context—China’s anime convention scene has been under a microscope all year. A month before the Firefly incident, a convention in nearby Zhongshan drew criticism after a photography studio dressed underage girls in revealing outfits for social media traffic. The feet juice story didn’t land in a vacuum.

Whether the trend keeps spreading probably isn’t a question anymore. The attention this gets every time it surfaces is just more advertising.

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