Keyed-up on Red Bull, Kira Buckland rose from her chair to welcome a crowd of young men to the Super Smash Bros. Brawl competition, a round-robin tournament for video gamers on Saturday at UAA.
She was dressed as Princess Peach, the sought-after heroine of the Super Mario Bros. games, a costume consisting of a bubble-gum pink dress, blond wig, and tiny cardboard crown decked with plastic jewels. It lent her a candy-colored elegance against the crowd of gamers who showed up to play, with their baggy sweatshirts and nascent mustaches, their bed hair, Gothic T-shirts and collective pallor cultivated over hours spent indoors, game controllers in hand.
Buckland ran tournaments in California, she told them, yelling to be heard. She could assure them, this would go smoothly. She directed the first pairs of competitors to their televisions, and took a seat herself, staring at a computerized lineup.
Not every one of the 500 or so people who turned out for Saturday's Japanese animation or "anime" conference, called Senshi-Con, knew Buckland, but they should have. She was the founder of the gathering, which lures scores of gamers and animation enthusiasts from all corners of the city to forge connections with each other out of a shared love for Japanese cartoons and video games. She started it while she was still at West High five years ago, and it has grown every year since.
UAA's student union was crowded, as people milled about the booths selling wares from worlds of Japanese animation that span from medieval to space age, with story lines from fairy tales to murder mysteries, and stylized characters that go from hyper-cute animals with oversized eyes, to hyper-sexualized heroines with oversized bustlines. There were comics and artwork, plastic swords, trading cards, stuffed animals and Japanese soda pop. Popular costumes included micro-mini schoolgirl skirts, animal ears and tails, black capes and combat boots, and fairy wings of various sizes.
At 21, Buckland has devoted herself to the genre, landing gigs as a voice actress in several anime productions. She's practiced at the breathless helium-high dialog and ebullient giggles of anime girl characters. She graduated from UAA, where she studied Japanese, and moved outside of LA to pursue her career after winning an American Idol-like voice-acting competition, AX Idol, in 2007. She also works as a barista.
Buckland got into anime as a teen because of a boy, she said. She liked him, he liked anime and video games. The crush never panned out, but she got hooked on the games and characters. Anime often attracts people who feel like outsiders, she said. Its vast, detailed fantasy worlds are a way to escape. People get drawn in, which some see as nerdy.
"I was made fun of every single day in high school," she said. "But, then I founded a convention and got into voice acting. I got something out of it."
Dating in the anime scene is still a trial, she said, even in a subculture where the gender ratio is skewed toward men. Boys who play video games are not the best communicators. There's the shyness factor and the social awkwardness. On top of that, they look at buxom Amazonian cartoon ladies all day, which messes up their expectations about real girls. She squinted out at a sea of gamer boys controlling their battling avatars and recalled a recent attempt at dating that failed, in part, she suspected, because she wasn't "hot" enough.
"You're an anime geek, you are not going to get a model or a porn star," she said, and would have gone on except one of them interrupted her to see how long it would be before it was his turn to play.
Nearby stood Ian Keen, 22, who is in charge of all the gaming for this year's conference. He was dressed as the character "Solid Snake," protagonist of the game series Metal Gear. His costume involved a number of buckles and ties. He is 22, and part of the college anime club. Meeting girls is hard because people in the gaming world are shy and reserved, and because there aren't many girls who play.
"I've never had a girlfriend in my life," he said.
But then, that's what's cool about Senshi-Con. It gives people who have a somewhat solitary hobby a chance to socialize with other people who share their interest, he said. And in that way, it creates its own quirky, costumed social scene. Meeting the right woman, he theorized, was "kind of about luck." And it could be his lucky day.
Nearby were Regina Fetrow and David Haynes, with their 10-month-old, Victor, in a stroller. The infant has been able to hold his own game controller since he was 4 months, they said. The baby was dressed like Naruto, a character that has a nine-tailed demon sealed inside him.
"That's why we put the (demon) seal mark on the baby's onesie," Fetrow explained.
Fetrow and Haynes met in the aisles of Wal-Mart, where Haynes works. They clicked quickly over their love for gaming. Other relationships didn't work out, they said, because partners who weren't into it didn't understand why they wanted to play all the time. Sometimes games and the fantasy worlds around them do distance people from each other -- they have at least one friend who doesn't leave the house for weeks at the a time -- but in their case, it became a bridge.
"Probably video games is what kept us together," Fetrow said. "When we have an evening at home, we're both holding controllers."
Downstairs, April Hayes, 18, one of this year's organizers, was busy with a costume change for an anime-based skit, or "cosplay," to be performed on a stage in the lower portion of the hall. The skits, based loosely on characters and plots from games and cartoons, went on all day, often using prerecorded dialogue to give the effect of Japanese cartoons with dubbed-in English.
Anime might have been uncool in high school, but at least people who are playing games aren't out doing drugs, Hayes said, trading a blue wig for a brown one before her next act. She loves anime culture and the wild, engaging story lines, she said. She never had trouble dating. In fact, she's engaged to her gamer boyfriend. It can be a little hard to yank their attention away from their fantasy worlds, but it's possible. "How do you get their attention?" she asked. " You walk up and turn it off."
Find Julia O'Malley online at adn.com/contact/jomalley or call 257-4591.
By JULIA O'MALLEY
jomalley@adn.com