Ironically, the author left the Holiday Inn O'Hare International around the same time the Japanese guests of honor departed. They also needed to leave early to maintain a heavy work schedule, and their final appearance at Anime Central was at the end of the costume contest. Speaking for the group, Kenichi Sonoda thanked the convention organizers and the fans for their great experience. 

That costume contest produced one of the most memorable moments of the four anime conventions attended by this author. 

The first cosplayer spotted by this author at Anime Central on Friday was a woman dressed as a girl-type Ranma. She showed me a picture of the second person in the act, a Genma-panda. The panda suit, made exactly to the proportions of Rumiko Takahashi's original drawings - was six feet tall! 

The man and the panda suit arrived on Saturday and were immediately overwhelmed by Anime Central fans. They couldn't move without being surrounded by camera-toting admirers, amazed that someone would turn a Takahashi panda - which isn't really shaped like a real panda - into a costume. 

However, no one could predict the sensation that was waiting at the Saturday night costume contest. 

At first, the Ranma and panda act looked like a conventional presentation, with the two doing a short martial arts act. Then all hell broke loose. The panda waddled to center stage and the PA system blasted "I'm Too Sexy" into the room. The crowd went wild and leapt to their feet as the panda gyrated to the throbbing music. The audience stood, cheered and clapped to the tune as the panda moved to the beat.

In the middle of the act, voice actor Amanda Winn Lee - who was one of the judges - dropped all pretenses of objectivity. Lee jumped from her table, waved a dollar bill in the air, ran to the stage and tucked the dollar into the panda costume, strip club-style. That whipped the cosplay crowd into a wilder frenzy. 

The cosplay contestants had been warned that they would be strictly limited to two minutes for their stage presentation, but no one dared stop this panda. He shimmied and squirmed for the full length of "I'm Too Sexy," and the crowd didn't want him to leave the stage when the song ended. The audience got an encore when the Ranma and panda act received the Best Presentation award.

The panda act set the stage for the Saturday night room parties which droned well into the morning. Anime Central attendees must have had the time of their life at those parties; when the author left the hotel at 7 on Sunday morning, things were very quiet. Only three convention fans were spotted in the lobby, and they weren't moving very well. 

There were no doubts in the author's mind that Anime Central was a complete success, showing that the Midwest was a perfect place for a major anime convention. The 1999 edition of the convention should be a bigger and better show that could fill the entire hotel. 

One final thought: this author was a child when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. I remember seeing the television reports on the shooting, and was taken by my parents to a church service where a TV set in the sanctuary showed King's funeral in Atlanta. 

I never dreamed that on the 30th anniversary of King's death, I would be at an anime convention. At first, it seems like an odd way to mark the anniversary, but consider the mix of races and nationalities at Anime Central. People of all colors planned, ran and attended the convention. A few generations ago, many of those people were at war, but they were at peace over the weekend, joined by anime - an art form that is a special blend of American and Japanese culture. Look closely at Anime Central and you get a positive feeling.