Minnesota celebrates its own version of Comicon
From left to right, Drew Maiers, Cole Funk, Emma Bliven, Joey DeWaele, Annie Pooler and Ben Reeves are in costume as some of their favorite characters for Anime Detour. The convention is for fans of certain tv shows, animes, comics, etc., to meet and interact.
May 4, 2014
In the past decade, conventions for popular culture have started popping up everywhere, for everything. While Comicon may be more widely know, here in Minn., Anime Detour is the bigger hit.
Anime Detour is an annual event held in the Twin Cities over March and April. This is the second year the annual anime/manga convention has been held at the Doubletree by Hilton Bloomington in Minneapolis. The conventions popularity has been growing exponentially since it was created in 2004, and this year a few students from Stillwater were lucky enough to attend.
With the growing popularity of the convention, tickets were sold out by the middle of January of the 2014 event. The hotel where the convention was hosted at was not nearly big enough to accommodate all of the attendees of the event, so many people had to stay in nearby hotels and take busses or walk to and from the convention.
“This year was amazing when it came to Detour, although we had to stay in satellite hotel, but it didn’t end up to be that big of a deal because we had a shuttle that we just ride back and forth from the satellite hotel to the hotel that the convention was at,” explained senior Preston Potthast.
There are also a variety of charity opportunities at Anime Detour Fundraisers for guest voice actors or other causes close to the heart of a beloved conventioneer often get a lot of attention from these events.
“There is always a cause we focus on. Like last year we helped a voice actress named Carrie Savage with a medical problem, and a year or so before that it was towards tsunami relief,” added junior Emma Bliven.
The convention itself consists of a variety of events, including gaming tournaments, a StarCraft competition, premieres of anime music videos and of course FanFiction contests. Another common and celebrated tradition of Anime Detour is cosplay. Cosplayer Competitions are arguably the biggest event of the convention, second only, and barely, the the masquerade ball.
“This was my second time attending Anime Detour and I really suggest to anyone who hasn’t done anything like that to try to make it to Anime Detour,” Junior Ben Reeves explained. “There is plenty to do there from the amazing panels to the just general hanging out of the people at the con. The first day I went as a the boulder from Avatar, and the second day I went as Equius from Homestuck.”
Alec Youngblood • Jun 1, 2014 at 8:31 pm
This article was very interesting and educated me on a topic i knew very little about. You were able to find a lot of information on a topic with limited resources and organize it very well. Good read.
Zack Campbell • Jun 1, 2014 at 6:48 pm
I like it, it brought to my attention something that I haven’t even heard about before. It is nice to know what is happening locally
Katelyn Weisbrod • May 23, 2014 at 8:29 am
I really liked to read this. It was short and sweet, and it helped me learn a lot about something I never really knew about. The convention actually sounds super cool, and I hope they had a good time!
Sydney Spreck • May 7, 2014 at 7:51 am
I really enjoyed this story, I’ve always wanted to know more about Anime Detour. You also did well in addressing many aspects of the story and included a lot of information. Great job.
Alex Eitzman • May 7, 2014 at 12:18 am
Very Solid article all around. You did a very good job of covering an out of school event, and got good quote from a variety of sources. You have a good lead, and do a nice job explaining something that most students and readers at Stillwater most likely know little about.
Erin Dickie • May 6, 2014 at 9:42 pm
This was a good article with a lot of prior knowledge and background information that helped me understand it. I think it was nicely written and also the quotes were effective. Great article and picture too!
Jasmine Amos • May 6, 2014 at 9:16 pm
Great article with clearly good info! Great quotes, and background information used to write the article!
Katie Wilmes • May 6, 2014 at 5:01 pm
I think this article had a very interesting premise, and also you included all of the major points about the convention. The background info was really thorough, but I thought it ended rather abruptly. Overall, a really great article with awesome quotes!
Drew Maiers • May 6, 2014 at 1:51 pm
The photo used was fantastic! It really appealed to the crowd in which the article is directed to. A++ for that photo. The person all the way on the left is a total awesome guy he looks super neat. The one thing missing from this article would be a conclusion paragraph.
Tim Press • May 5, 2014 at 10:14 pm
You have very effectively addressed the 5Ws of this story and have articulated all the details necessary to understanding Anime Detour. Quotes were good, commentary was good, great links … no major complaints. Overall, you did a great job.