Thursday, May 23, 2013
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Costumed Anime Enthusiasts Overtake UAA Student Union for Senshi-Con 2011
Halloween is more than a month away, but that didn’t stop roughly 800 anime and video game fans from dressing up in full costume for Senshi-Con 2011.
By Kirsten Swann
Halloween is more than a month away, but that didn’t stop roughly 800 anime and video game fans from dressing up in full costume for Senshi-Con 2011.
The event features everything anime – booths selling costumes, comic books, video games and other memorabilia filled both floors of the UAA student union Sunday, and event organizers said more than 80 percent of their vendors traveled from out of state for the convention.
But one of the biggest draws of the weekend-long event was the cosplay contest, where contestants dressed as their favorite characters modeled their costumes before a panel of judges.
"I figure, if you're going to do a costume, you're going to want to do it as accurately as possible,” said Devon Simpson, a South High School senior who has attended Senshi-Con for the past several years.
"I run the anime club at my school and so I got a group together to dress up with me,” Simpson said.
It’s a tight-knit world with hundreds of different characters, plus a language and culture all its own.
"Some of them are video games, some of them are Internet movies that people have watched,” Simpson said. “So there are a lot of inside jokes.”
The convention wasn’t limited to students: Anime fans young and old took in the sights throughout the day, and Simpson said it was her father who first introduced her to the world of online gaming and animation.
“He encourages this,” said Simpson, gesturing to her costume. “He bought this for me because he’s an awesome dad.”
And as Senshi-Con comes to an end tonight, every character in the room said they’re definitely coming back next year
