An ominous sun spread its rays on the misty city where I’m living right now, probably warning me of terrible events that were going to happen more soon than later. . . but since I’m such a distracted fellow I didn’t mind much and proceeded to the anime reunion I was so eager to assist since 2 months back. . . 

Readers be aware that this will not be as intriguing and dramatic as my last experience; I just had to tell you guys about the contrasts there are between the two of them and why I liked this one better, ok? O.K., onward we go.

This anime reunion is aimed just to the actual members of the club/forum. From the almost 500 members signed in there were 100 expected to assist but to our surprise, due to the sudden intense heat wave and repercussions  from the worldwide economic crisis (another way of saying that most anime fans are cheap with a passion) reality was another one:

The scheduled time for the event was from 01:00 p.m. to 08:00 p.m. and it cost $60 pesos if I remember correctly (Hey, it even includes food and drinks! Talk about cheap. . .). It’s the price they’ve been charging since some reunions ago in exchange for hours of safe & fun entertainment with people sharing the same passion, along with good food and drinks. Besides, for $4 bucks what else would you want? Oh yeah, entertainment. . .

No RISK boards on the horizon I safely entered the main gaming area of the event and to my surprise they had a very wide and varied selection of good and entertaining videogames. Some examples:

Adventure: No More Heroes, Metal Slug 3 , Battletoads Vs. Double Dragon, Battletoads in Battlemaniacs (some guy took his SNES and the cartridges).

Music: Guitar Hero (by yours truly)

Fighting: MvC2, SFIV, SFII, KOFXII (buckets were spilled), Killer Instinct, and some Naruto game for the Wii.

As you can see, there were enough TV’s and consoles to feed a small town in Africa (yes, feed) and even if you didn’t like videogames, there were some powerful speakers circling through anime and videogame songs for you to sit back and relax.

On a side note, I think this is the main reason a lot of members didn’t assist. There is still a huge tendency towards videogames in this reunions, not that I’m complaining but I know that a lot of fans just do anime and might bore out after a few minutes if they were to assist. Don’t get me wrong, there have been other times where we’d hook up some TV’s and put a random anime episode or AMV but clearly this wasn’t the case. Time restrictions? Tight schedule, maybe? Only the Admins know. . .

Gaming continued until after we concluded a small KOFXII tourney in which I happened to be victor, winning an official T-shirt from said Anime Club (not too shabby). At around 5 O’clock the food came and everyone except two people in the picture above rushed in line for their ration of nutritious pizza and Horchata water.

Devouring everything in their plates in a time lapse of 1 minute (or less) the schedule continued making way to the main club activity: Otaku and Ladders (hey, I didn’t make that name up, don’t stare at me like that!).

There you have it! But hero beware: don’t let its papyrus simplicity fool you. As with normal Chutes and Ladders (in this case Snakes and Ladders) you throw a dice and advance the number of spaces. Now here’s the anime part: You get to choose between trivia or dare. Would you be able to win the trivia? Here are some questions I proposed (And please, no cheating! [it makes it more fun, you know?]):

1- How many spikes does Adult Goku have (Not super Saiyan)?

2- Mention 6 “Tales Of. . .” games from NAMCO.

3- Mention all the robots/cyborgs from Mortal Kombat (2d Mortal Kombat).

4- How many times does Krilin die in all of the Dragon Ball saga?

5- Mention 8 anime from 2009.

And the list goes on. . .

Sadly, due to the N00bness of most members, (remember that as in most cases, member knowledge doesn’t go farther than DBZ, Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, and the occasional Code Geass and Elfen Lied.) most of my questions had to be postponed for other day, thus most of the time the teams would choose Dare . Pity. In the end, the all-female team took us by surprise with a zergling rush and all that was left to do was to say GG.

 I wasn’t kidding!

The game took the second part of the event completely since those damn snakes returned everyone to the middle of the map, all the friggin’ time. Still I had some time to go and play some games again and eat some pizza.

Now, on to the actual review:

Take in mind that this is more of a fanservice event than a so-called convention. There aren’t any major contests like karaoke or card games and cosplay isn’t encouraged since it’s not a con, it’s a reunion. All of the TV’s and consoles are brought by members of the club, either Staff or normal forum users, with the only purpose of sharing our passion. *insert Soviet Union Hymn here* This is a way of showing the fans that we care and we’ll go the extra mile if needed, that we can play with ourselves and have a great time (Whoa! That didn’t sound very good). Let’s say we can play among ourselves and keep wanting more. . . (I’m not very good at this. . .)

. . .Ah, whatever. You know what I mean (or DO you?).

The Veredict:

A somewhat-balanced geek gathering that can be more if it introduces actual anime to the mix.

8 / 10 Diamonds