While the sun was shining this past weekend, thousands of costumed Otaku avoided the sunlight at the Washington State Convention Center for the annual Sakura-Con anime and manga convention. So let’s start with the obvious…it’s a convention for guys who live in their parents’ basements who dress like ninjas and who have an unhealthy fondness for Sailor Moon, right? Well, no. At least not entirely. Or even mostly.

What was shocking about this Con was how many women and girls were there–easily half of the attendees if not more were female, even when you account for the ones where it was hard to tell.

Karin from Portland drove up with daughter Emma (15) and her friends Amy (14) and Kira (16).  This is Emma’s second anime convention. At last year’s smaller Kumoricon convention in Portland, she came costumed (known as “cosplay”) as Lan Fan from the Full Metal Alchemist series. She went to Sakura-Con as a civilian this time, and explaining the difference she said, “When you’re in the costume, you can socialize more because you immediately have something in common with other attendees. Especially if you’re a ‘peripheral’ character like Lan Fan. They run up and hug you even though they don’t know you.” She and her mother even traveled to Tokyo to soak up the Otaku culture from the source. “There,” she says, “cosplay is a rebellious thing. Here in the States, it’s more a form of self-expression.”

16-year-old Katie Gandy and her parents traveled from Grant’s Pass Oregon to attend her second Sakura-Con. She’s identifies as a “Furry,” one of the a sub-genres of Otaku-dom. As she talks, the mouth in her fox costume cleverly moves along with her words. The head alone on her costume took 25 hours to make. Like many of the attendees, she connects with other furry cosplayers online and meets them once a year at Sakura-Con. Her parents had that patient “Well, she loves it” look on their faces.

Being an Otaku can also be a family thing. Jim and Leslie, both 23, came costumed as Ikkaku and Nanao from the Bleach series. They came to the Con with the ultimate accessory: their 9-month old daughter Ria. Jim is active duty Coast Guard, stationed at Port Orchard, and says he often finds Otaku in the military.

As you walk through the Convention center, you constantly see attendees complimenting each other on costumes. And the detail that goes into the costumes can sometimes be astonishing. 21-year-old Suresh, a restaurant cook from Vancouver, BC, is shirtless and painted red, which stains the inside of his sneakers as he takes them off for the official, iconic pose of his character (all cosplayers have them). He gets together with other cosplayers in BC and carpools down for Sakura-Con. “Costume maintenance is pretty important,” he says. He and his friends will even bring a sewing machine with to them to fix wardrobe malfunctions on the spot. “We procrastinate quite a bit–there is always something to finish up, so we’ll finish up on the day we arrive.”

It’s too easy to look at the stream of ninjas, gothic lolitas, sword-wielding school girls, and nine-tailed foxes, and dismiss them as misfit geeks. In reality, this group is essentially no different than a Convention Center full of gardeners, scrapbookers, classic car enthusiasts–or any group of people who share the love of something niche. These folks enjoy being in the company of others who know that Grimmjow Jaegerjaques is a prominent member in the Aizen-affiliated army of Arrancar, and the sexta (6th) Espada in the same way that another group craves to connect with others who know that Engine Code T for a 1966 Mustang meant a 200-cubic-inch I-6 engine at 120hp with 9.2:1 compression and a one-barrel carburetor. We’re all freaks about something. These folks just wear their freak flags on the outside.