Introduction

Whenever I wonder what being or becoming a fan means, I think about the first time that I attended a convention for Japanese popular culture. I had been a fan for years and subscribed to online forums to discuss manga (Japanese comics) and anime (Japanese cartoons). Still, I only had a handful of off-line friends who understood how much this fiction actually meant to me. When I was eighteen, I travelled across the country to a weekend-long event where fans met up to enjoy Japanese popular culture. This convention, Animecon (2005), was held in a hotel, and nearly one thousand people supposedly attended as visitors and volunteers.

My best friend had sewn me an outfit as Aerith, a fictional character from a game that I liked (Final Fantasy VII) and had told me that many other attendees would also be dressed up. I knew that many fans engaged in different creative hobbies, such as sewing or writing, and I showcased my own drawings of Final Fantasy characters on different Internet sites as well. Japanese popular culture inspired young fans like me to engage in arts and crafts. I heard that these practices were motivated at the convention through costume competitions, workshops, and much more. Still, wearing a costume of one of my favorite characters seemed somehow odd; then again, the whole convention seemed odd. My friend described it as a type of Disneyland where fiction would be all around you. We had made a little group of Final Fantasy characters with whom we would compete in the costume competition and had practiced weeks before.