The Anime Club recently held its annual game tournament, allowing students to come together and participate in friendly competition involving anime games. The tournament took place on Nov. 13 and anyone affiliated with the Anime Club was invited to attend and compete in the tournament.
Mike LeNoir is the sponsor of Anime Club and hosted the tournament in his classroom.
“The game tournament was a chance for students to do a fun social activity that they normally would not have the space to do at somebody’s house,” said LeNoir.
The Anime Club is a club where students come together to watch their favorite anime episodes and have discussions about them.
“Anime Club is for students who are interested in Japanese animations, which are kind of like cartoons that have been dubbed in English that originate from Japan,” said LeNoir. “A lot of the shows are geared towards teens and adults.”
In the meetings, Mr. LeNoir shows students clips of anime videos of different genres. There are usually 4 to 5 clips shown per meeting, and students can win door prizes during club meetings.
“It’s kind of like a common interest group, but primarily at regular club meetings, they just come and watch different episodes of shows they voted on and like to watch,” said LeNoir.
Students then discuss the episodes. Junior Chris Williams is a member of Anime Club and enjoys these discussions.
“We all discuss what we like and topics we feel strongly about,” said Williams. “We make comments and all have fun with it.”
Lenoir explained the basic set-up of the game tournament, which included a variety of game choices.
“There were probably three or more game tournaments going on,” said LeNoir. “There were console games like PS4, XBOX 1, and Nintendo Switch.”
Brackets were drawn up to determine which players will battle each other.
“They drew up different brackets and then did a bracket tournament to see who the winner of the tournament was,” said LeNoir.
Junior Berit Mason is the Event Coordinator of the club and helped to plan the tournament.
“It was a competition amongst friends and anyone in the club to see who could play certain games the best,” said Mason. “We had Smash Bros Ultimate, Dragon Ball Games, My Hero One’s Justice, and a bunch of other games this year.”
The requirement for this year’s games was that they must be a fighter game, meaning the player picks a character and fights against other characters. Junior Tracy Camden attended the tournament for her second time.
“I had been looking forward to playing the new My Hero One’s Justice game, as well as the other fighting games we played at the tournament,” said Camden. “My favorite game was probably Mario Kart. It is kind of a regular old racing game, except you have power-ups, like the blue shell.”
The Anime Club Game Tournament was an opportunity for the club members to participate in activities they do not have in normal club meetings.
“I hung out with friends, played games, and had some fun honestly,” said Camden. “It was just something I could do without all of the stress from school. It was like two hours of just having fun without any stress.”
Senior Jalik Harris attended the game tournament and was successful, as he won two competitions.
“I won Dragon Ball Fighters and My Hero on PS4,” said Harris. “Jonathan won Smash tournament.”
Mason enjoyed being able to see his preparations come together in the successful tournament which he had helped to plan.
“Just being the coordinator and seeing everybody compete and have a fun time was probably my favorite part,” said Mason. “It was really just a bunch of friends having a fun time.”