On March 4, hundreds of anime fans gathered in the West High cafeteria for Senshi-Con, Anchorage's first known convention for Japanese animation. The event served to educate people about Japanese culture, as well as provide a place where everyone could come in costume and meet other anime fans in the community. The convention was organized by the West High Anime Club, in which I am the president.
"Anime", short for "animation" in Japan, refers to the Japanese-style cartoons which have gained lots of popularity in America over the years. It has become so popular that every year across the US, conventions are organized purely for anime fans. However, anime fans in the Anchorage area have been missing out. That's why I decided that it's time for Alaska to have an anime convention of its own.
My job was to plan out and run the entire convention. It was a lot of work, but it was also a lot of fun. We had events such as contests, anime showings and manga and video game booths. We also had scheduled events, such as the costume contest, Anime Dating Game, and even a contest to see who could eat the most wasabi. Erik Ottosen, organizer of the Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) event, said working out all the details was hard at first.
"In short, really complex, because we had to use a PC-based software set instead of the normal versions for Sony's Playstation 2 system," commented Ottosen on the DDR event. "We had for legality reasons among other things, it actually took quite a lot of setup. But once we finally got it working, it was going nonstop. There were players all the time for the whole event."
DDR is an arcade game, which involves stepping on arrows that correspond with arrows scrolling up the screen. There were players of all levels. Ottosen said there were DDR players from the people you see going crazy at the arcades to the inexperienced.
"It was definitely a successful event which got a lot of people," said Ottosen, "And there were actually plenty of new people that were trying it for the first time which really interested me, personally."
A large part of any anime convention is cosplay. Short for "costume play", it means dressing up like a character from an anime or comic book. Angela Pusch was in charge of the costume contest.
"It was really fun. Kind of stressful but turned out to be easier than I thought," said Pusch. "Next time I'm getting better judges though."
One of the less organized events was the ramen eating contest, which we are determined to plan better next year. The piñata, however, was quite popular. Convention-goers were offered a chance to hit Yugi, a character from the anime and card game known as "Yu-Gi-Oh". A Yu-Gi-Oh card tournament was also held.
But is anime all Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon? No way. Part of our goal with Senshi-Con was to educate people that over in Japan, they have cartoons and comic books for all ages, adults included. It's not kids' stuff, and it's not just for nerds as some people think. In fact, most of the people who came to Senshi-Con were high school students. Jeremiah Linquist remembers how he got involved with anime.
"That's easy. I watched anime, and just liked it, that's all," said Linquist.
Although most of my time at the convention was spent hosting events or helping everyone know what to do, I had a lot of fun, and I still got to cosplay as Kagome from InuYasha, as well as meet a lot of cool anime fans from around the state. Senshi-Con provided a great opportunity for people who wanted to go to an anime convention but didn't have the money or transportation to attend one in the lower 48. And we are definitely planning to host it again next year.
Students organize anime expo
