Neko-Con - Author's Notes

The author apologizes for not being able to attend all three days of Neko-Con. A previous commitment to work back in the Midwest on Sunday led to an early departure from the new convention.

(In the interest of full disclosure: the author made a major mistake and wasted considerable time and effort by leaving Neko-Con early. After catching two planes on Sunday morning and driving 45 minutes, the author arrived at the track in Ohio - only to find the gates locked and the track empty. The race had been postponed for three weeks while the author was en route to Ohio.)

After attending big conventions during the summer, Neko-Con was a different experience.

Neko-Con was not a big convention. 587 people were on hand for the three days of the convention. One dealer said he was disappointed, and con chair Larry Drews said he wished there have been another hundred people on hand. However, Drews also said the turnout wasn't much less than he had expected for the first-time event. He also hoped for more volunteers to help run the next event, to be held at the same hotel on Nov. 5-7, 1999.

It wasn't the smallest con of the season, however. Voice actor and director Tristan MacAvery told the story of Def-Con in Texas, which he said drew fewer than 100 people. And, even though the Holiday Inn Executive has two pools, none of the Neko-Con guests of honor ended up taking a swim while fully clothed (several guests at September's Anime Iowa jumped into a pool with all of their clothes on).

Nostalgia for the recently-departed (to the Washington, D.C. area) Katsucon led to the creation of Neko-Con. Even the Holiday Inn Executive in Virginia Beach wanted another event, Drews said, and the deal was made. Despite Katsucon's move, no one was upset with that con. Katsucon flyers were seen at Neko-Con, and the radios used by con staff had Katsucon labels on them.

Neko-Con drew mostly hard-core convention fans and guests, people who hit nearly every anime con in the country. The numbers may have been small, but that also may have contributed to a laid-back, relaxed atmosphere (so laid-back that a couple of Friday panels seemed to vanish). With no crowds to battle, people took their time to enjoy the event. Small groups were the pattern of the weekend: outside of the costume contest, the largest crowds seemed to gather around artist Fred Perry's table in the artists' alley. As usual, Perry seemed never to leave the table on Saturday.

This author's web site seems to have gotten a reputation as a cosplay page. The costumers were the highlight of the new convention. It looked as if Neko-Con had a higher proportion of cosplayers to attendees than any of the conventions visited in the last 12 months. At least three groups of cosplayers brought two or three different costumes for the weekend. There were two Lums, two Ayekas, one of the best Nadias ever seen (from a novice!) and nearly-complete Tenchi-Muyo and Neon Genesis Evangelion casts (the Eva group had been looking for a Misato by E-mail, but couldn't find one).

Nearly matching the sights of the costumers at Neko-Con were the views from the air of an aircraft carrier and Iowa-class battleship in the Newport, Va. harbor.

Oh, by the way: on that "who killed Steve Bennett" contest, Chad "fanboy" Diederichs was found to be the "murderer."