The Anime club will be bringing 10 students to the only Anime convention in Vermont, Bakuretsu con, which will be held in the Hampton Inn in Colchester Nov.1-3.

For the club, this is the biggest event every year. “It takes a lot to put on..it takes a lot of planning,” says club member Mariah Howland. The entrance fee, not counting the cost of the hotel room, is $45 a person. Most of the fundraising has been done by a bottle drive, which helped to pay for the hotel room, but many students will end up paying their own way in the convention.

In addition to bringing students to the convention the JSC contingent will be holding its own panel, presenting anime weapons and their real world counterparts of lack-thereof.

Some of the featured weapons include ring blades, oversized guns, razor wires, zanpakutos, ninja stars, and spear-chain-whips…

As of now the people who are running the panel are JSC senior Rose Shatney, alumna Athena Sweney, and Troy Lamontagne, a former JSC student.

“This isn’t my first time on the panels,” said Shatney. “Last year, my anime club hosted a panel on weapons in anime, which we affectionately called ‘Bloodbath & Beyond,’ where we got to show off a bit of our weapons expertise. The room rapidly filled up, as we were quite popular.”

The Anime club is focused around the sharing, watching, and talking about anime, which is a Japanese style of hand or computer-drawn cartoon animation. Anime has a specific style that focuses on colorful graphics, vibrant colors, and in general more mature themes.

“The majority of anime is geared towards older teens and adults, and has really deep subject matter, really psychological,” said Howland. “There are horror shows, action packed shows with a lot of blood, and teenage dramas, going to college, falling in love. Anything you can find for a live action TV show in the U.S you can find as an anime.”

Another big part of the anime scene is cosplay (costume play) which involves people constructs (or buying) their own elaborate outfits to imitate or create their own anime characters. “People will stitch their own costumes, really intricate stuff, people will spend 20 hours at least on one costume, and a lot of money,” says Howland.

Cosplay comes in to play mainly at conventions like Bakuretsu con.

Shatney is looking forward to the upcoming event in Colchester, both for himself and for his club mates. “I’d have to say I’m most excited about introducing a new generation of nerds this year, the latest recruits to our anime club, to the wonder that is the only anime convention in Vermont, and getting them excited for the panels, camaraderie, and social possibilities for our community of lovable dorks.”