Some internet users think Neo Anime Oasis Chairman Jeremy Lopett is in the wrong after announcing plans to enforce a hallway dress code prohibiting costumes that don’t fit the convention’s limited scope.

Fandom has become an increasingly wide umbrella in recent years, and that’s not always a bad thing when it comes to including fans of the same media.

However, this broadening definition has slowly changed conventions with a narrow focus into a big tent where some attendees might have little to nothing in common.

Mr. Lopett’s has clear goals in mind for Neo Anime Oasis though, and that’s to keep the focus on anime and offer a traditional “hotel” based anime convention experience (as opposed to a convention center).

Other features of the convention include no 1-day passes. Attendees will have to pick up their passes on Friday and can spend all weekend immersing themselves in Japanese media with fans.

In the face of backlash, the provision enforcing a dress code was removed. However Neo Anime Oasis is sticking to its guns and reaffirming that their anime convention is for:

“Attendees who want to attend a convention for only Japanese Animation and directly related content, such as manga, Japanese video games, Japanese culture, Japanese music. It IS NOT a general pop culture convention. It’s for anime people who want to do anime things.”

The convention recognizes it offers a limited scope compared to other more generalized conventions and encourages fans of other media to instead attend another anime convention.

Most modern anime conventions have forgone their narrow focus and spread out to include comic books, movies, western video games, and cartoons.

Sure there’s plenty of overlap with fandoms, but is there really anything wrong with wanting to focus on a specific thing?

This is Niche Culture. In this column, we regularly cover anime, movies, geek culture, and things related to video games.