For this story, we go back to Anime USA 2019 and at this event, they held a family feud-style panel. Now I wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen but to my understanding, it was supposed to be volunteers versus each other and then the guests, but what actually happened was for one round a handful of attendees were selected to go up against some of the volunteers. I wound up being one of these volunteers and this is where I learned Family Feud is not an easy game.

So for those not familiar with the rules of Family Feud, a question is asked to 100 people and the top answers are used as potential answers in the game. A player from each team will go up and compete to answer the question and their goal is to try and guess the answer provided the most from the 100 people. The person who gets the best answer decides if they want their team to try and guess the remaining top answers or give it to the other team to try and steal later. The team team then provides answers to what those top answers might be one person at a time. If a team guessing the answers provides three wrong responses the other team can then provide one answer and possibly steal all the points for that round.

During the game, it eventually fell onto me to try and answer the starting question so our team could control the board and get some points. The question was to name a popular Isekai anime. Now for those who have read my website you know I am very familiar with this genre; however, this was the very first time I ever heard the word Isekai so I had no idea what it meant and I completely froze. The other team got the best answer and the game went on as normal.

However, turns out I would get a chance to redeem myself as we get to the very last round. The question was to name guests that were at Anime USA that year. Our team already had two wrong responses and all but one of the top answers had already been picked. It’s now my turn to provide an answer so I either have to get it right or risk loosing control to the other team which would allow them to sweep all the points. Plus one of them was a volunteer that worked the autograph lines so they undoubably knew the answer. Luckily guests are the main reason I’m motivated to go to an event so I was very familiar with the names and managed to provide the right answer to take all the points for that round ultimately winning the entire game. I did sadly get too nervous and said the name wrong but they accepted it anyways.

So that was how I learned what Isekai meant and then had an epic make or break moment that lead to victory.