Erica Binns dons a bright blue wig, fiery red contact lenses and a white form-fitting suit. The outfit cost $300 to make and took six months to construct. She didn’t make it for Halloween; she made it for an anime festival.

Binns, Olathe senior, modeled her latest costume on a character from “Neon Genesis Evangelion.” Her costume won a prize at Naka-Kon, an anime festival in Kansas City, Mo., where she competed with other fans who dressed up as various Japanese cartoon characters.

“I like the challenge of creating a character and pulling off the costume convincingly,” Binns said.

Binns is among a growing number of Japanese anime fans at the University of Kansas. Not many students dress up as anime characters, let alone create character costumes; however, Dee Hogan, Leavenworth junior and president of the KU Anime Club, said that more students are getting interested in anime and that the club had more than 40 members this year.

Hogan said many Americans still believed anime was only for children, but she said it could be instead accessible to a wider audience because of its solid plots and variety of genres, including comedy, fantasy and romance.

“To me, anime is another medium of sitcoms,” Hogan said.

William Tsutsui, professor of history who studies Japanese history and popular culture, said Japanese animation had spread across the world during the past 15 years.

“A lot of Americans, especially American youth, have really come to enjoy and really identify with anime and its sensibilities,” Tsutsui said. “The anime popularity is going to be a peak soon.”

Michiko Ito, Japanese studies librarian, said the success of the two children programs “Sailor Moon” and “Pokemon” was a turning point of the anime boom in the U.S. After the two programs became popular in the late 1990s, more Japanese anime programs were exported to the U.S., including series that older audience could enjoy.

Erik Buchholz, St. Louis senior, said he enjoyed the complexity of anime. He said while many anime series were set in imaginary and fantasy world, some of them portrayed the dark side of society and challenged what people took for granted, such as gender roles.

“It makes social norms visible by breaking them,” Buchholz said.

Tsutsui said anime was largely based on Japanese cultural and social backgrounds, and it could be hard for the American audience to understand all the contexts.

“In one way, that’s an appeal of anime,” he said. “It allows Americans to imagine things.”

He also said Japanese anime could be appealing to Americans who didn’t fit into the mainstream popular culture.

“Americans who like anime see themselves as being rebellious, opposing American pop cultures because anime is so different from Hollywood and traditional narratives Hollywood puts out,” Tsutsui said. “They see themselves as kind of an underground movement opposing American society.”

American fans also contributed to the creation of the anime subculture in the U.S.

Some devoted fans attend anime festivals, known as conventions, which take place in several major cities across the country and feature costume and video game contests and karaoke. Tim Howe, Mission junior, went to a convention in Tulsa, Okla,, last summer. He said he and his friends drove to Tulsa to see a guest speaker at the convention, who was one of his favorite voice actors. At the convention, Howe dressed up in a traditional Japanese warrior outfit that his friend made. He said many attendants dressed up as anime characters, and that he had a fun time socializing with them.

Some other fans publish fan fictions, in which anime fans rewrite stories using their favorite characters.

Tsutsui said some people were worried that the anime trend would negatively influence American youth because some anime programs contained violence. He said the anime boom should bring more benefits than harm, such as increasing young people’s interest in Japan. Tsutsui said 25 years ago, when he was studying Japanese at Harvard, more students were studying Japanese because they were interested in martial arts and Zen Buddhism. He said over time, American students’ interest in Japan shifted to business and now to popular culture.

For example, Tsutsui said some KU students, like Tim Howe, enrolled in Japanese classes because they were motivated by their interests in anime. Howe studied in Japan for three months in 2006. He said his interest in Japan branched out from anime to Japanese history.

Students on campus can also learn about anime in the classroom. Michiko Ito taught a Japanese course last year which combined language and anime for advanced level students. She said students watched anime and read comics in Japanese and discussed the background of those materials. The materials included “Cyborg 009,” which was created in the late 1960s and renounced war.

— - Edited by Arthur Hur