Cosplay Girl

Every year, the Sunday night party invites club-goers to dress as their favorite manga or anime character. American comic book characters are also welcome. Alternatively, those who don’t have an anime or comic-related costume can dress as a schoolgirl.

“There are a lot of cosplayers in the scene,” said co-promoter and DJ Xian Vox, herself an anime fan. “You would expect that, but no one really fesses up to it as much as they readily fess up to be being involved in Ren Faire or Pirate Faire. When you see so many people come out in these costumes, you go, wow, you didn’t put that together in one weekend.”

Otaku Society has become a popular event for the club, not just for the cosplayers in the club scene, but for those of us who love anime but don’t necessarily dress the part. Several people I met confessed that this was their first cosplay experience. As for myself, I never attempted cosplay before, but happened to be Ai Enma/Hell Girl for Halloween and had intended to repeat that for the party until my wig turned into a hideous, shedding beast and I was forced to go as Girl in Japanese Winter School Uniform.

Kingdom Hearts!

Dressing up is an automatic conversation starter. Within five minutes at the club, I met local artist Jettila Lewis of the manga-influenced graphic novel Motor City, and proceeded to strike conversations with a handful of others throughout the night. We talked about the depression that sets in after watching Gunslinger Girl, how being inside a 21+ nightclub means no Naruto cosplay and how everyone excluding yours truly managed to get a picture of an apparently fantastic Alphonse Elric cosplayer at Anime Expo last summer.

At midnight, prizes were awarded for the best costumes (the Kingdom Hearts Halloween Town cosplayer seen here took second place), but it seemed like many of the people were unconcerned with contests. The real highlight of the night was having the chance to unleash our inner otaku.

Check out ladead.com for the club’s photos from Otaku Society. This event took place on November 23, 2008.

Editor’s Note: The Anime Blog’s Guest Contributor Liz Ohanesian is a Los Angeles-based journalist covering music, media and club culture. She is a staff writer for Club World and her work regularly appears in such publications as the L.A. Weekly, Razorcake and Outburn. She has written for such publications as Punk Planet, PopMatters, Santa Monica Mirror and others.

MikomiCon is an interesting convention. It’s presented by CSUN’s anime club, but it isn’t necessarily a student event. In fact, from what I’ve been told by event organizers, the bulk of the attendees have no affiliation with the school. However, it is held on a college campus where the nearest hotel is roughly two miles away.

Because of that, there are no 3 a.m. screenings and the convention tends to draw mostly L.A.-area otaku. But, in the three years that MikomiCon has existed, the convention has become a small and fun event that focuses on anime, but features so much more than just that.

Day One:

CSUN's Jishin Taiko Ensemble performing at Mikomicon.

The cool thing about a university-based convention is that there are many on-campus organizations at the event’s disposal. For example, the CSUN Jishin Taiko Ensemble was on hand for both a performance and a workshop. The student musicians performed kumi-daiko (group drumming) in the center of the university student union in the midst of a blazing afternoon. Afterwards, the drummers taught attendees the basics of kumi-daiko, which proved to be a popular (and fun to watch) workshop. View video of the taiko performance!

The drawback of holding a convention at CSUN is that the design of the student union is convoluted, with conference rooms and theaters buried in corners of several buildings. Plus, the maps are virtually useless. Case in point, it took twenty minutes for me, a former student at the institution, to find the USU Theater.

These Trinity Blood cosplayers were my favorites at Mikomicon. They rightfully won the craftsmanship award.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who got lost as there were only three people who eventually found the venue for a lecture entitled “Mars: What a Beautiful and Imaginative Place.” The talk was given by Roger Gibbs, the project manager for the 2001 Odyssey mission to Mars (the one where water was found). The talk was immensely interesting, focusing on both the failures and triumphs of NASA’s Mars missions, and featured photos of the planet displayed on a full-sized movie screen. For fans of sci-fi anime, this was a treat. It’s just too bad that more people didn’t get to witness it.

Day Two:

Oh, there were panels and screenings galore, but this was Saturday and Saturday means cosplay. As might be expected, much of the crowd spent the afternoon and early evening posing for photos in the quad.

Naturally, Naruto was the most heavily represented anime amongst cosplayers, closely followed by Death Note and Kingdom Hearts. There was a smattering of characters from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Ouran High School Host Club and Trigun as well. Oddly enough, I only saw one person in Bleach cosplay and no one dressed as the usually popular Alucard.

A group of Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya cosplayers in formation.

I don’t cosplay, mostly because I tend to prefer outfits far too elaborate for someone who can only sew a hem, (ideally, I would cosplay Haydee from Gankutsuou). That said, I was in awe of the group that arrived dressed as the art book versions of Trinity Blood characters. Appropriately, this was the group that won the craftsmanship award at Masquerade.

Saturday night’s Masquerade was the highlight of the weekend, not so much because of the actual cosplay skits, but because of the intermission entertainment. The event was hosted by Kyle Hebert. The L.A.-based voice actor has appeared in Naruto, Bleach, Gurren Lagann, Fullmetal Alchemist, Devil May Cry IV and Ouran High School Host Club. His biggest claim to fame, though, is his work on Dragon Ball Z. At MikomiCon, Hebert is best known as not only a regular guest but as the guy who created the Kame Hame Ha contest, which is now a tradition during the intermission of the convention’s Masquerade.

The contest was extremely popular, with probably 100 or so people lined up to try to put their spin on the Dragon Ball scream.

The intermission also featured a great demonstration from martial arts group Monkeys Flying High and a para para performance featuring members of Kiwi Project alongside folks who took part in the group’s workshop that afternoon.

Day 3:

The sumo wrestling events were a highlight of Mikomicon. I would have tried it myself, but I was being lazy.

One of the most popular features at MikomiCon is sumo wrestling. I don’t mean actual demonstrations or workshops. Instead, anyone can climb into one of two inflatable sumo suits and challenge a friend to three rounds on the mat. From what I saw, it actually takes a lot of time to get in and out of the suit, and if you happen to fall over while wearing the suit, it can be almost impossible to get back on your feet. Feeling kind of lazy myself, I was content to just watch others push each other in and out of the ring. Combined with a screening of four episodes of Fate/stay Night (I have to watch the whole series now), this was a nice way to end the convention.

MikomiCon took place on September 19-21, 2008 in Northridge, California. For more MikomiCon coverage, be sure to check out Liz’s photos from MikomiCon.

Editor’s Note: The Anime Blog’s Guest Contributor Liz Ohanesian is a Los Angeles-based journalist covering music, media and club culture. She is a staff writer for Club World and her work regularly appears in such publications as the L.A. Weekly, Razorcake and Outburn. She has written for such publications as Punk Planet, PopMatters, Santa Monica Mirror and others.