UBC Anime Club Halloween Dance 2009
In North America, Halloween is one of the biggest events in the Fall.
For fellow anime/manga fans, it’s one of the rare opportunities, aside from related events, for them to cosplay (at the very least, it’s a valid excuse for them to cosplay), and it’s the time the UBC Anime Club hosts its annual Halloween Dance.
In addition to the club members, many anime/manga fans from outside the club attend this dance annually, making this event one of the biggest events hosted by the club.
The dance is usually held on the Saturday closest to Halloween, though since Halloween fell on a Friday this year, it was held a week before, on Saturday, October 24.
As usually, please click below for the rest of the entry.
The Anime Club adds their original twist to a dance party by putting an extensive focus on anime, manga, game, and other-Japanese related music, and aims to provide a rare opportunity for fans of the genre to dance to such music.
A special feature at this dance was the pre-registration booth for Anime Evolution, a local anime convention held in Vancouver. This was the very first opportunity, even earlier than their online registration, for potential attendees to register for the convention.
Due to the amount of advertisement for this dance on the AE forums, many people who attend this dance also attend AE, and thus a good number of people took advantage of this opportunity.
AE staff certainly looked very excited to be present at the dance.
Enterance to the dance floor. As expected, the dance staff were in cosplay.
Here’s the “DJ booth,” though the area was not particularly crowded with equipment.
Of course, there just had to be Gintama plush toys accompanying the staff and their equipment, given how the series have been one of the favorites of club members.
So from Gintama, we have Zurako and Ellie – sure enough, “Mr. Raindrop” was playing in the background.
People don’t just dance at the Anime Club dance – the staff plans some activities here and there, such as musical chairs.
Even such an ordinary, perhaps “kiddish” game will seem different when you play in cosplay.
The dance floor.
As with some of the previous Anime Club dances, DJ Arka and DJ Cruz, two of the DJs who have been with AE, were helping out at this dance. The music selections were generally done by these two DJs and the dance staff, though some request were taken prior to the dance.
In addition to the popular anime themes, a great variety of music including J-pop selections including music from Morning Musume and Shuuchishin, some not-as-well-known selections such as “Cirno’s Perfect Math Class”, and Halloween-y music like the “Monster Mash” were played during the dance.
The Cosplay Contest is another feature of the Anime Club dances – as selected by the club execs, the first place went to Sheryl at this year’s dance, and she happily posed for a photo with her prize, a figure of Sora in his Halloween Town costume.
Among the cosplayers, what caught my attention was the number of people in Vocaloid cosplay. It was quite a surprise to see how there were not only people who were dressed in the “default” costumes, but there were also a number of people in costumes specific to particular songs, such as “magnet”.
I do have some more photos of cosplayers, which I’m planning on posting later on.
Aside from large-scale events like a convention, there are not many events where this many cosplayers gather at one location. In that sense, I always look forward to the Anime Club dances, both from a participant and a staff’s perspective, and this particular dance was an opportunity for me to make some new discoveries.
Through NicoNico Douga and YouTube, people are now able to gather information about the most recent trends in Japanese – seeing the variety of cosplay made me realize that once again.
These little discoveries are, I would say, something a lot of us can look forward to as we attend medium to large-scale events.
Tags: AE, UBC Anime Club, bilingual