Download the Animation Liberation Magazine - Winter '07 edition

cosplay parties and we’d have miniature cosplay contests. [We would even] give away
little manga books and lame prizes from our houses that we didn’t want anymore.
Would you say that your con contributed to the popularity of anime in your area?
Or was anime already a popular hobby there?
Anime was already popular in our area. It wasn't like there was an anime scene, I would
say. It was more that individual people watched “Adult Swim” and they wanted to dress
up as their favorite character and they wanted to wear their Naruto headbands. There
wasn’t an anime club in our college until I started one, I believe.
Then when we started bringing people together, the anime scene started to grow. And
more people had a reason to play. There was a reason to cosplay, they didn't have to
travel out of state anymore.
Being in Alaska, we realize that it is cold. How big does the igloo have to be in order
for you to hold your con?
Well we don’t have igloos, I can tell everyone that right away. The only issue with the
cold was getting people out of bed. Our con was only one day. And it was a noon until
nine con. Then people froze from walking to their car to the convention center. You
know, People froze it gets hot in the convention center with all the bodies and the Otaku
Funk. It wasn't at the convention center actually. It was moved to the student union of
our university. So it was very far from the convention. But we had two floors.
You might be familiar with Aurora-con. Could you talk about them?
We started a year and six months before Aurora-con began. They wanted to go off and do
their own thing. The two cons were not related at all. I'd say we were more fan-orientated.
They were aiming for more of the Sakura-con and Anime Expo, whereas we were one of
the cons where we were run by fans.
Is your con mainly filled with Pen-pen, Chilly Willy, and Chiyo-chan played as a
penguin cosplays?
No, we had none of that. Mainly Naruto cosplay.
Earlier we talked about Aurora-con, which is an industry driven and sponsored con.
What are the major advantages and differences between the two?
The main advantage to any con which is run more in a business sense is that they’re
going to have more things. There will be more vendors and more merchandise because
the vendors will be interested. They'll say "Hey, these people are serious. They know
what they're doing. There is money in it for us." Most major companies don't seem to
want to go to fan-run conventions. At least we’ve experienced that. Because I think they
thought “this is just a bunch of kids”
Another advantage for a business run convention is that there will be more people and
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