“These are my people.”

I didn’t expect these words to come from the mouth of Li’l FDT, my 11-year-old daughter, but there they were. We were sitting outside of our local convention center, taking a break from the crowds inside and watching several people trying to survive the torrential winds of the day. A girl dressed like a warrior of unknown origin was desperately holding on to her headpiece as she hurried past, her cape whipping in the gusts. A crowd of people circled a large fountain outside, all dressed like one of the characters in the game Genshin Impact, lingering for an upcoming photo shoot. My daughter didn’t really fit at this event– the first anime convention for both of us.

On top of our newness at such an event, Li’l FDT doesn’t watch anime outside of Pokémon (which is a questionable example). And neither do I…at least not now. Oh, I had seen my share of anime in college as I joined “my people”…the group of nerds, science geeks, and social outcasts that quickly became my early friends. Anime hadn’t made it to my hometown in rural Iowa at that point, and it certainly wasn’t on TV yet. So this was my anime origin…I watched the entire run of Cowboy Bebop (for which I will be eternally thankful), and I recall seeing rental copies of titles such as Project A-Ko and Onegai Teacher (both of which I remember virtually nothing outside of the title and a few random snippets). But as a writer and Magic: The Gathering streamer on Twitch, my world overlaps with an awful lot of anime fans. I cannot think of a Reddit board of which I’m a member that doesn’t have an anime discussion section. Thus I’ve certainly been curious about the genre. I had decided a few years ago that it would be a bucket list event to attend a con. The past two years of “the unpleasant times” made this impossible for a while, but when I learned that the local con was going to be in-person I made it a point to get it on my calendar.

As we walked up to the front door in a packed parking lot, Li’l FDT looked nervous. She saw everyone in their elaborate cosplay, and her Mario tanuki hat on her head and her stuffed Umbreon tucked under her arm apparently wasn’t cutting it in her eyes. “I feel like we’re not going to fit in,” she said to me. I assured her that we were simply on a reconnaissance mission. We were going to check it out and see what we thought. If we were unhappy or uncomfortable, we were outta there.

As we entered the hall, I first thought that we wouldn’t be there long. The hall was PACKED, with every sort of cosplayer and teenaged (at least compared to me) anime fan enjoying the most crowded in-person event that I had attended post-pandemic. I’m an introvert, and my daughter hates both crowds and being overwhelmed and this was a heaping helping of both. But after about ten minutes, neither of us cared. My daughter was enamored with the cosplayers. Since giving gifts is her love language, she had drawn small pictures of each of the Eevee evolutions to give to people who she liked or did something that impressed her, and I had warned her that total strangers might not react to her gifts the way that her mother and I do.

It was unneeded. She ran after multiple people in cosplays that she liked, told them that she loved their cosplay, and offered them a drawing. Every—single—person smiled and seemed genuinely happy to take it. Every single person was kind to her. And I will admit that I was surprised how I was struck by the cosplay scene. There are so many cosplays that impressed me, whether from games or characters I recognized or even those that I didn’t. But what truly struck me was how happy they all were. Everyone seemed genuinely happy to be there and happy to be representing their character and their craft. Whether purchased or made, they were showing out. And I was there for it.

The number one motivator for attending this particular event, however, was Genshin Impact—my current guilty pleasure game. I don’t make much Genshin content, but I play way more than is probably healthy for me. When I had heard that a couple of voice actors from the game would be attending, I knew that this would be my first con. I had seen autograph sessions at other events before, and I was expecting the same…a frazzled, sleep-deprived person who mechanically went through the motions. That was not who Corina Boettger was…when we stopped at the table, we were face-to-face with the embodiment of Paemon (their voice’s character). Li’l FDT had painted a small canvas of Paemon for Corina to sign,and the gushing approval and encouragement that she received made both of us smile. I chatted with Corina for a minute, and it was a highlight of the day. I had never met the voice of a character that I had grown to love over my months with the game, and it was a wonderful experience personalized by the kindness of a wonderful person.

Other meetings were…unexpected. As I walked down one of the sales aisles, the crowds magically parted at the end, leaving just me and…Tiny Tina. Well, as close as I had ever been to the living embodiment of Tiny Tina. Tiny Tina, if you are unaware, is a beloved character in the Borderlands series. I had not played through Borderlands 2 to get to her expansion story, but I had seen her highlights on YouTube several times, and her breakdown at the end of the expansion pack is one of the most touching moments I have ever seen in video game history. So when I saw “Tiny Tina”, I thought it was her but didn’t want to make a mistake or expose myself as the noob that I was.

I looked at her. She looked playfully sideways at me. I smiled quizzically. She smiled back and seemed to encourage me. I approached, confirmed that she was in fact Tiny Tina, and proceeded to have a wonderful few minutes of conversation with Lauren Brandt, one half of Thousand Faces Cosplay. It was here that I learned what cosplay at the highest level of craftsmanship and commitment to excellent would look like, and unbeknownst to her, encouraged me. I was positive that I could never be accepted into such a community because (a) I’m older and (b) my prime hobby outside of the public eye is competition in Olympic weightlifting…which isn’t a thing that I expected to find much representation of at an anime convention. But both members of Thousand Faces are avid weightlifters and proved that I, yes even I belonged. Whether I believed it or not.

But there’s one particular moment that has stuck with me. I was browsing yet another artist table run by a charming artist dressed as Genshin’s Qiqi (BTW you should go check out her website at http://maiohmai.bigcartel.com so then you, too, might have a Sucrose charm attached to your leather work bag), and we discussed the game as I browsed her work. From outside of my peripheral vision, I heard a voice: “So you’re a Sucrose main? I really like her.” I turned and there was a masked teenager looking up at me. We spent the next couple of minutes talking about our favorite characters, where we were in the game, and what we think about the new additions to the game. The teenager quickly moved on, but I remember the conversation to this day. Under normal circumstances, my guess is that they would never speak to me in public without a definite reason. But there was something that we shared in a world that tries to divide us so desperately and uses high-tech algorithms to assist in that effort to divide. It was a random game, but it was something. And in 2022, something was enough.

I look forward to the next con, which will be in late August. I know that Li’L FDT is already thinking about what she wants to cosplay. And since I’ll be accompanying her, I should probably put something together for it, right? Yknow…just for the bucket list. I’ve also started nosing around Crunchyroll for shows to watch. I haven’t dedicated myself to anything yet, but I’m looking. It wasn’t the event that pulled me in…it was the community, the subculture surrounding the event. Academics talk about the danger of “bowling alone” on modern society, where the institutions of past years have lost their influence over creating “culture”, which is literally the creation of community and civilization against the pull of tribalism and barbarism. Yet institutions still exist that do just that…if you’ll only get involved. So it was more than a convention or a television show. It was a gathering of people with a shared love of something that created that bond that is difficult to artificially reproduce. And it’s a love that I want to explore. So until August…see you around, space cowboy. Because we may have found our people.