Organising committee leader Celine Isaac is a first-timer to event production with Anime Expo being her virgin foray into anime-related event management. She is the only female on her team and its leader, guiding five young men into the fray with a vision for anime culture related events in T&T.
Anime Expo TT was held on March 26, at Centre of Excellence, Macoya, and joins a series of other local anime-subculture related events such as the largest local cosplay event AEX Convention, the free Animarket event and a host of other cosplay, anime and gaming-related events in the region, such as Barbados' Animekon and Saucekon in St Lucia.
"It's been stressful and a bit overwhelming in good and bad ways. We did not expect this big a crowd, we're really happy with the turnout. The only downside is we don't really have a large committee so in order to get things done we have to multiply ourselves about the place."
Isaac got her interest in anime from a club at her secondary school Holy Name Convent, Port-of-Spain. Later she was introduced to cosplay (costume play) which is what motivated her to start attending anime/cosplay conventions, where she was inspired to launch her own.
Isaac intends to make Anime Expo TT an annual gathering.
"People are always looking (for new events), so (her event) being in March makes it easy. It's also a developing subculture. We have a lot of events but it's mostly congested to one spot in the year: June, July, August. I would say that we could probably have two or three more events in Trinidad. It's very much a growing audience."