Omnicon reveals the local rise of the female anime enthusiast

McALLEN -- Kristiana Cruz and Maythe Villarreal returned again and again to the alluring table piled high with anime accoutrement.

The Brownsville 12-year-olds, dressed alike in fuzzy yellow caps and schoolgirl skirts, couldn't resist the dolls and pins from their favorite animes. Their wallets came out again and again.

Females were in the minority at the Holidome on Thursday, the first day of the Omnicon anime and video game convention. But while groups of teen boys clustered around the competitive gaming tournaments and played deadly serious games of Yu-Gi-Oh cards, the girls were among the biggest spenders - and the best dressed.

Male and female fans alike attended the first afternoon of the two-day event attired like their favorite characters from Japanese cartoons.

Anime is a fast-growing part of youth culture in the Rio Grande Valley, the event's organizers said, and the male-dominated community of past generations is expanding to encompass an increasingly female market.

"When I bought my store, I had one woman customer," said Helgi Davis, the owner of McAllen's Myth Adventures comic shop. "Now, it's majority women,"

Since he started the store in the ‘80s, Davis has seen his customer base change. Never a comic book fan himself - he got into the market collecting and selling baseball cards and now finds himself trading Pokémon instead - he relies on employees like Hector De Leon, 22, to show him where the new niches in the subculture are forming.

"My job is to know what's going on, but he doesn't want me reading comic books," De Leon complained.

Their American comic books were nearly untouched Thursday, but Davis did a brisk trade in figurines, Japanese comic books and cards.

"It's a big community, a strong community," convention organizer Mark Del Bosque said of the gathered gamers and anime fans. "They give each other compliments and help each other out with their costumes."

Omnicon is believed to be the first convention for games and cartoons in the Upper Rio Grande Valley. South Padre Island hosts a larger annual anime fest.

Julio Hernandez, 23, who brought his vast collection of video game consoles and controllers for attendees to battle on, cheered even the sparse attendance on day one.

"I bet it's going to get bigger," the devoted gamer said. "There's people here I've never seen before."

Rachel Berger, 21, wore a Pokémon backpack and glitter to the event. She and friends Tisha Bruberg, 21, and Amanda Babineaux, 19, assembled costumes from their closets and planned to attend both days of the convention.

"We've been trying to get to a convention for a year or more, but there's work and school, so we're so glad there's one local," Berger said.

While busty cartoon heroines are a staple of anime, it also attracts female fans with heroes who are sleeker, less muscle-bound and more emotional than their counterparts in American-style animation.

"There are hot guys in anime," Bruberg explained with a laugh.

There's also a lot of plot to be found in the epic tales.

"Animes go more in-depth and guys go, ‘Uhhh, I don't want to go in depth,'" Babineaux said.

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Sara Perkins covers Mission, western Hidalgo County, Starr County and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach her at (956) 683-4472.