It all starts with a single sighting.
A tweet that reads, “There are elves on the T today” flashes onto my Twitter homepage. Another pops up: “Nerd infestation this weekend!”
And suddenly, with the subtlety of a bull in a china shop, it hits me: The anime convention is in town!
Yes, it’s that time again, when the Hynes Convention Center transforms into an alternate universe for the crazy confab known as Anime Boston.
It’s where grown women dress as scantily clad versions of Little Bo Peep and men who spend their days in cubicles pounding out HTML don capes and armor in homage to their favorite characters. It’s Comic Con, but a little weirder.
If you’re unfamiliar with the phenomenon, anime is a blanket term for Japanese animation. Whether it’s TV shows, movies or manga (comic books) hoards of costume-happy Americans drop endless amounts of cash on the industry every year.
So in the name of, you know, journalism, I decided to crash the party.
Within the world of anime and manga, there is the phen-omenon many fans participate in known as “cosplay.”
Literally a combination of “costume” and “play,” cosplay brings together fans that dress up as their favorite anime characters and converge en masse at conventions like Anime Boston.
Oh, look, there’s a girl dressed in a blue costume fringed in white fur like an Eskimo.
“Who are you dressed up as?” I asked Charlotte Randall, a student at the University of Vermont. “I’m Katara, from ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender!’ ” she responded, shocked, just shocked, that I didn’t recognize her character.
So, what’s up with spending all your free time and money whipping up intricate costumes and spending the money to travel to these confabs?
“I like looking at everything,” said Katara’s alter ego. “I don’t know how many times we’ve been stopped and asked for pictures.”
So I had my answer: photo ops.
Casey Torrissi, a student at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, was outfitted as Panty of “Panty and Stocking” fame.
“This is one of my tamer costumes,” said Torrissi, who wore a low-cut, strapless red dress that would get any teenager tossed out of the prom.
“I do a lot of the scantily clad video game women. I do it competitively,” she told me. “You go in front of a panel of judges and talk about how you made it. My goal is to get recognized in the cosplay world.”
But why do people find pleasure in it?
“I think some people do it for shock value,” Torrissi said. “There are people like me who do it competitively, and people who do it to be their favorite character and meet people.”
As Torrissi and I spoke, we were interrupted by a teenage boy who, with a heavy lisp, asked Panty to pose for a photo.
“Can I have a hug?” he asked. She obliged, and the boy shuffled away looking very pleased with his score.
“Wait, what was that?” I asked, confused as to why a stranger asked her for a hug.
“You know how you go to Disney World and hug the characters? It’s like that,” she explained.
While I found it slightly uncomfortable to imagine a sexed-up Minnie Mouse, I kept my mouth shut.
For the anime-obsessed, the only downside of gathering at these conventions is that, at some point, they have to end. Suddenly, fans have to return home to the outside world, where the costumes come off and people are a lot less tolerant of those who get their kicks by dressing up like robots and stuffed animals.
Jessica Ellis is one of those anime lovers who finds a strange dichotomy between her reality and the cosplay world.
“I started by watching ‘Sailor Moon’ when I was 9. … I’m almost 23 now,” said Ellis, a student at the University of Rhode Island. “My dad says, ‘You’re 23, why do you still go to these conventions?’ I’m like, ‘You like to play golf!’ He thinks I’m 13 still.”
Jeremy Perlman of Newton agrees that the cosplay world is like a secret hideaway from reality for uber-fans.
“It’s a really nice atmosphere,” said Perlman, 19. “It’s a great social place for people of like mind and like interests. It’s people from all kinds of universes.”
Barbara Staples runs the Chicago-based online retailer lemonbrat.com, which sells clothing and accessories geared towards anime, video games and the sci-fi community. I found her behind the endless tables of anime-themed merchandise up for sale. Cha-ching.
She summed up Anime Boston and the rise in cosplay quite nicely, I thought.
“It’s nerd culture,” Barb said. “There’s a lot of nerdy people out there.”