STORY AND PHOTO BY JASON GREEN, STAFF WRITER
The Japanese Culture Club, also known as JCC, hosted its monthly movie event with Japanese Legendary Anime “AKIRA” & Cultural Night at Cypress College Complex in the CCCPLX-216 Lecture Hall with a delay.
The event was initially set to start at 4:00 p.m., but it was delayed by 30 minutes because the hosts of the event were locked out from the CCCPLX-216 Lecture Hall.
Participants were able to enter the CCCPLX-216 Lecture Hall after someone from Campus Safety arrived to unlock the doors.
To start the event, Japanese funk music was played by Cypress College’s student band, “Funk Family”, which is part of the jazz band on campus.
Food and drinks including pasta, Waterloo Sparkling Water, pizza, rice and salad were provided at the event.
In collaboration with JCC, the Art Visionary Club exhibited several pieces of drawings and some sketchbooks. For the event, AVC Treasurer Fernando Lizarraga drew the iconic bike from “AKIRA”, which was JCC’s selection for this month’s movie night.
A cosplay show was also presented and five participants showed off their costumes, as it was encouraged to cosplay for the event. The cosplays were from various anime and movies such as “Demon Slayer; Kimetsu Yaiba”; “One Piece” ; “Attack On Titan”; and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”.
Mihoko Terada Luther, a Japanese professor and advisor for the Japanese Culture Club persuaded participants to sing and dance to the classic Japanese song, “Mayonaka no Door (Stay with Me)” by Miki Matsubara. Dozens of participants cheered once the performance was over.
Before the screening of “AKIRA”, JCC President Lauren Rodriguez-Perkins provided some facts about the movie such as “Its animation was so ahead of its time that the animators created 50 unique colors out of 327 just to make the film.”
Once the movie ended, attendees clapped for the movie and the event ended at approximately 8:00 p.m.
Perkins said “I think the event went really well. We started a little late unfortunately, but still we did really, really good,” she said.
Lizarraga expressed “I recommend everyone to go to the next [JCC monthly movie event].”
Perkins mentioned that for this month’s movie event, the club was supposed to watch “Suzume no Tojimari”, but it did not come out in the United States yet.
The next JCC movie night will be in Feb. of next year.
JCC also plans to go to Little Tokyo next week on Nov. 25.
