UChi-Con attendees on the staircase in Ida Noyes. There were so many events and activities this year, the convention filled Ida Noyes and spilled over into the Rubenstein Forum. (All photography by John Zich)
Highlights of the 21st annual UChi-Con, organized by the University of Chicago Japanese Animation Society.
Attendees: 1,200—many in costume
How-to workshops: Gore Makeup for Cosplay (costume play), Photography Basics, How to Break into the Anime Industry as a Freelancer!
Anime and game music from unlikely sources: Rockefeller Chapel carillon, UChicago Pep Band
Anime-adjacent fun: neXus Dance Collective (K-pop dance performance), Kojo Daiko (Japanese drumming), karaoke, escape room
A talk by computer scientist Ben Zhao, cocreator of Nightshade, on how anti-AI tools protect visual artists: “AI models have no idea what reality looks like. Nightshade allows every single artist across the globe to concentrate their work into a collective poison attack against AI models.”
A cosplay contest: In an initial round, each contestant explained their costume to the judges: which character they chose, which parts are handmade, what materials and techniques they used.
The judges—Kyra Pan and Weiwei, both prominent members of Chicago’s cosplay community—chose the three contestants with the most creative, skillfully made costumes. Then the audience came in, and each contestant walked across the stage (in one case, on all fours).
