By Jenny Neyman
Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Jean Kudyba attaches a pin onto the costume of her daughter, Madeline, while Madeline attaches a pin to sister, Anne, at an anime convention.
Redoubt Reporter
The Peninsula Center Mall in Soldotna was the site of an elaborate invasion Saturday. Storm Troopers, ninjas and cardboard ax-wielding warriors roamed the common areas, ate burgers at Ginger’s restaurant and browsed in stores, peppered with Japanese schoolgirls toting “Pokemon” creatures, a white-faced geisha and a rainbow-hued troupe of dance girls, each in ribbon-draped, monochromatic dresses with Day-Glo hair in matching shades.
Though not yet October, it looked as though Halloween had broken out early. In a way it had, since many of Saturday’s mall visitors were in costume. But it wasn’t costumes for the sake of trick-or-treating, it was costumes to pay homage to favorite characters, styles or genres of one of their favorite pastimes — anime.
The mall was the site of the Kenai Peninsula Anime Convention, the first held on the peninsula, according to organizer Josh Rutten, who attends Kenai Peninsula College with the intention of being an anime voice actor himself one day. Anime, broadly, is Japanese animation, and refers to the animated TV shows produced in that style, including the widely popular “Dragon Ball Z,” “Naruto,” and “Pokemon.” But the genre’s umbrella encompasses much more than just that, including comic books — called manga — video games, role-playing games and an entire style of artwork, with the characteristic large eyes; lean, angular features; and, typically, bright colors used in anime.
Though originating in Japan, anime and its associated forms of entertainment are a worldwide cultural phenomenon. Saturday’s convention, which drew a respectable-sized crowd of central peninsula fans and visitors from Anchorage and beyond, mostly in the middle-school through college-age demographic, showed the anime revolution has firmly planted roots in Alaska.
“We’re just here to have fun, just to show that we like anime and to show people around the peninsula that there’s a group of people that like anime,” Rutten said.
Anime often gets a negative reputation amongst those not familiar with it, Rutten said. To the uninitiated, it can seem either violent or silly, or containing too much adult imagery to be appropriate for younger viewers. There are those corners of the anime universe, but it’s a much larger box than just that.
Kenai Peninsula Anime Convention attendees tried their hands at the genre in an art contest Saturday at the Peninsula Center Mall in Soldotna.
“People who like anime here on the peninsula, they’re kind of shied away from. People don’t know about them, don’t talk about them. I think it’s because of kind of the bad rap that anime gets, because there’s some anime that’s more adult-themed,” Rutten said. “But I want to show people here on the peninsula that, there is that stuff, but it’s not all of it. There’s so much wonderful stuff in anime. There’s a lot of heroics, there’s a lot of love stories. And most every single anime, good triumphs over evil. Just like there’s so many different genres in books, there’s so many different genres for anime.”
Jean Kudyba brought her triplet, 14-year-old girls to the convention, each elaborately dressed as characters from their favorite shows and books. Madeline came complete with spiked blond hair and ninja attire as Naruto Uzumaki, the main character from “Naruto,” and Claire also represented a character from the popular manga series. Anne, meanwhile, was Goku from “Dragon Ball Z,” with another ninja suit and darker hair similarly spiked into large chunks as Madeline.
Kudyba, who home-schools the kids, said she initially was leery of her daughters’ interest in anime and manga books.
“I didn’t know enough about it. It just seemed dark,” she said.
But the girls were clearly enthralled. Anime had their noses constantly stuck in books and it fed their artistic nature.
“I saw they really enjoyed it and I couldn’t see any harm in it, and I do support it now,” she said. “I don’t really know that much about it, it’s just they enjoy it so much. They’re fantastic artists and they love to draw.”
Ali Jones, a freshman at Kenai Central High School, dressed as blond-haired, flag-waving America from “Hetalia Axis Powers,” is an avid anime artist,
Ali Jones, a freshman at Kenai Central High School, dressed as America from “Hetalia Axis Powers” for the conven-tion. Jones is an avid anime artist.
as well, and helped create the convention badges worn by attendees and the convention posters. She and her twin sister, Josie, also gave a musical performance at the convention.
“I started anime when I was in third grade. I basically grew up on it and it’s just been part of my childhood. In fifth grade I really got into it, so then I started getting involved more, like going to conventions, and everything worked out,” she said.
Anime fans tend to be a devoted subculture, networking with other fans, attending conventions and voraciously consuming books, DVDs, video games and other anime-related media. Part of the purpose of the convention was to draw business to the central peninsula’s outlet for anime-related retail, Cornerstone Books and Supplies in the Peninsula Center Mall.
“The real driving force is the lady who owns the manga store, Leona Oberts, is thinking about shutting her doors because sales are down, and I thought, ‘What if for one day we had like an anime conference? If we got fans together and they saw the store and let them know that there is a manga store here on the peninsula,’” Rutten said.
Watching anime, playing the video games, reading the manga and drawing the characters tend to be solitary pursuits, so having a convention was an opportunity to call fans out of the woodwork for a day of sharing their interests.
“There were some people that we didn’t know that came, and a good chunk of our base came from Anchorage, actually,” Rutten said. “They have a big convention in Anchorage, Senshi-Con, but there’s nothing to do throughout the year. We thought, ‘Why don’t we have something for people into anime to do? They can just come down here to the peninsula.’”
Tabetha Aldridge, a Kenai Peninsula College student from Sterling, said Saturday was a great chance to hang out with her fellow fans.
Tabetha Aldridge, a Kenai Peninsula College student from Sterling, said Saturday was a great chance to hang out with her fellow fans.
“I like it because when you go to other conventions, you run into those, like, snooty characters. A lot of people that are into anime are people that are really relaxed and easygoing and like to have fun and act like idiots just because they can. So it’s just mostly a lot of people who are having fun,” she said.
Besides, when else does she get a chance to wear the Japanese kimono she bought on a trip to Epcot Center at Disney World? On Saturday she was working alongside Brittany Weston, of Soldotna, dressed as a “gypsy cat lady,” and Weston’s sister, Cortney, at “HQ” — headquarters. Organizers had set up a kiosk in the main mall hallway as an anime bazaar, where convention-goers could bring in old manga they’ve already read and sell it to new audiences. Aldridge said she’s practically got her own manga store at her house, with 300 books, and a video game collection to go with it.
“I hide in my room a lot,” she said.
She wasn’t initially interested in anime when first exposed to it.
“I just thought it was one of those fad things. I just didn’t like all the art and storylines in all the ones I had seen. But when I further got into it and listened to some of the different ones I noticed that there was variation in the storylines. They have ones that are kidish and then they have ones that are more for adults,” Aldridge said.
Now, she gravitates more toward older book series, ones that tend to be lesser known, she said. Anything that’s fantasy-based with some romance and a little action draws her attention. Her favorite is “Red River,” which goes a little something like this:
Photo courtesy of Chris Jenness. A Storm Trooper and Rorschach from “The Watchman” patrol Triumvirate Theatre and Bookstore in the mall during the convention.
“This girl somehow gets dragged from the future to the Hittite Empire, when they’re in their prime, to be sacrificed by some lady that apparently asked her gods — she’s like, ‘I need a sacrifice. Give me one.’ And so she gets dragged there and has no idea what’s going on. And she gets saved by this one guy that’s the prince. And he’s just like, ‘OK, I will save you, purely because I hate my stepmother. It’s a really, really good story,” Aldridge said.
The convention was spread throughout the mall and included a game-playing room, an anime screening room, an art contest, the manga bazaar, several vendors, a round of Time Shock — a Japanese game show — raffles and a cos-play (costume) contest. But really, it was more about celebrating the similar threads that draw such a diverse group of characters together, be they ninja, ax warrior or pigtailed schoolgirl.
“We’ve got Storm Troopers. We’ve got Ash from ‘Pokemon.’ We’ve got so many people it’s, like, utterly ridiculous,” Rutten said. “This has been a lot more than I expected when we originally started with this. It was like, words do not describe it for me.”
