Youmacon is the annual anime convention held right here in Detroit! Anime fans come from all over to meet the stars who make their favorite shows, strut through the convention as they show off their costumes, and see what's coming next in the world of Japanese animation. Here's 4 things a newcomer to the world of anime might need to know.
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Yeah, I'm not new to anime, and that was still news to me. You'd think it would be U-mah-khan, right? Nope. Yo-mah-khan is correct, and it's from the word "Youma", a Japanese word for "monster". Although there were indeed lots of monster cosplayers at the convention, mostly people were dressed as the heroes from these tales. In honor of the origin of the con, however, I'm picking my favorite monster pic!
And that has to go to the "pocket monsters" AKA pokemon girls at the coffee beanery. Maybe I liked them because it was cool to see the businesses get in on the fun, maybe it was because they saved me with caffeine, but I got a kick out of their pokemon inspired take on their work uniforms.
You remember the concept of "adult swim" at public pools? All kids out of the pool for 15 minutes so adults can have a dip and not worry about bumping in to rough housing children? Well, Youmacon does, and they ran with the concept.
During the day, there's activities for everyone. We had a blast seeing panels on how to get your Instagram art noticed, what's coming out in anime next, and so on. After about 9, however, there's a whole lot of 18&up activities.
No, it's not so crazy as you think, but anime covers with all sorts of topics, and Youmacon is happy to explore them all. Case in point: "Berserk" wouldn't be much fun if you took out the copious blood and guts, ditto for Helsing, so rather than ban those awesome animes from the convention they are moved to later.
Also, sometimes your favorite voice actors just want to make a raunchy joke without traumatizing their younger audience members. They have an event for that, too.
They call them Otaku. People who love anime enough to spends lots of money and time to recreate costumes from their favorite shows. People who come from all over, in some cases cases, even other countries. They are a different kind of fan.
And they are wonderful. I saw total strangers yell in glee, run across the room, and hug each other when they recognized another person dressed in a way that synched with them.
People took time to pose for our cameras, and then literally a hundred others. If you want to go somewhere where you can watch great anime and be accepted with no strings attached, head to Youmacon. With that in mind, I'm tossing in a picture of Belle, meeting also-Belle.
I'm delighted to say that the giddy meeting in that picture was not an uncommon occurrence.
You can see Jake and other adventurers every week @7:00PM on Channel 1D4.