Overview
I recently hosted a party where we all got together with a ton of food and watched Madoka Magica and Rebellion. It was a pretty fantastic time, so I thought I’d share how I set up the event, ran it, and how I think it turned out. Thought it would be interesting to share if nothing else, and it might even be useful for those of you looking to do something similar.
How I Planned This Thing
The idea for this little get together came from Dana herself. She’s one of my wonderful contributors, and as you may not be aware, she and I know each other through University. She thought it’d be fun to have a “gravy party” which is something I had never heard of. She explained it as a party where everybody eats a ton of food and has some kind of TV or movie marathon. Normally, we have our monthly board game night, so this took place of that for our group.
I then fielded this idea with my group of friends, and some how or another they all thought it would be fun. We settled on Madoka Magica because it was something everybody could enjoy in some form on another. This being said, we had a group that ranged from seeing an anime or two, to people like me who have seen easily 200 or so.
The next step was to make a Facebook event and decide on a day and time. We ended up settling on a Friday so people could come for the 6.9 hours of Madoka and not have to worry about course work on anything like that the next day. Originally, we had 6 people coming, but one person got sick and another only could come for about an hour.
On the Facebook page I was able to track attendance and who was bringing what food to the party. This was really important, so if you ever host an event like this, be sure to do something similar. The down side to this, is that my group doesn’t always check the Facebook thing, and confusions arise on occasion.
Once the day for the party came, we set up and started watching. I took a few pictures of Dana, another friend of mine, and myself setting up some of the food stuff before hand to show you guys. I was going to take more, but I forgot because we were having a lot of fun. After looking, only one of them turned out well too, oh well. We had potatoes, chicken, desserts, chips, and generally too much for our group. This was the goal though, so it was fine.
We had the party in a smaller study room on my campus which had a TV. I provided my laptop and DVD’s to watch the show, and from there we were ready once everybody showed up to watch.
How The Event Went
The event went pretty well, everybody got pretty into the show. A few of us had seen it already, but Madoka is the kind of show that has re-watch value. I don’t think I’ll be hosting an event like this very often, but they would be fun to do on occasion.
Rebellion was definitely a high point in the party for me personally. Less people had seen that (I still had), so it was fun to see everybody’s reactions. Additionally, the film is stunning in both visuals and sound. While I’m on the topic, I would highly recommend Madoka and Rebellion to anybody thinking of hosting a similar party or even for just watching on your own.
Despite having a smaller than expected group, we all managed to have fun. All the people who came enjoyed the show and the people newer to anime were pleasantly surprised to see what Madoka had to offer. There were a lot of jokes, moments of intrigue, and a ton of fun to be had for us as the evening went on. All-in-all a great experience.
Have you ever hosted a party similar to this one before (anime or otherwise)? If so, I would love to hear about your experience in the comments below! I know this one was a bit shorter, but I mostly just wanted to write something short about the event and how much fun it was. Hopefully, this was interesting and you enjoyed it. Let me know by leaving a like and consider following my site.
Jon Spencer Reviews 