Blog #5: Youmacon Battle Opera

This past weekend, I went to Youmacon. Youmacon is an anime convention that starts on November 1 and continues straight to November 4. It's a 24-hour festival of panels, screening, merchants, and parties. In addition to this, there is also something called the Battle Opera, which is a fighting game tournament. It featured Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Super Smash Bros. Melee & Brawl, BlazBlue, and Soul Calibur IV. I actually played a few rounds of Tekken Tag 2 and Street Fighter IV. In total, I didn't suck as much as I expected. I didn't enter into the tournament, but  I won a total of 2 out of 5 free play matches in both games. Given that gender has been a hot topic of the class recently, I found it interesting that the audience watching these tournaments was almost entirely male. There were a few female viewers, but no female participants in the matches. A lot of the talk sounded like trash talk at a sports game and so it makes sense that it would not be a female-heavy crowd.