It's a routine trip in 1999, hours of travel on smooth, wide roads in good weather. But, go back a few generations to the days of twisting two lane roads through hills and imagine the struggle ahead. It would have been a rough trip in those day, probably impossible for the author.

And, of course, there would have been no trip to an anime convention in these parts a few years ago, because there were no anime conventions, period. Everything about this trip, from the wide interstates to the collection of hotels and the existence of the conventions, is a modern miracle.

Okay. Maybe the Waffle Houses aren't that miraculous - except for the I-65 interchange with U.S. 231 outside Bowling Green, Kentucky, which has two Waffle Houses, one on each side of the highway, about a quarter-mile apart.

Anime Weekend Atlanta had more people register in advance in 1999 than attended the entire convention in 1997. It's probably no coincidence that registrations jumped after the August announcement that Mari Iijima was adding AWA to her comeback tour of anime conventions. For all of the new fans drawn by Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z, there are still a lot of people who remember Robotech and Macross from 15 years earlier.

Of course, AWA maintains its status as the unofficial Star Blazers convention with the annual Dessloktoberfest. Those fans will tell you that Star Blazers came a long time before that upstart Macross stuff.

This author has been keeping track of the change in anime fandom: a younger audience, driven by the popularity of Pokemon. Was that the case at AWA?

Well, one person was overheard asking "Is this a Pokemon convention?" His friend answered, "No, it's an anime convention." Then there was the sight of the girl in the Sailor Moon outfit, dashing down a hall with her mother in two, with mom asking "How do you know where you're going" as her daughter rushed toward a video room.

The convention organizers noted that there were a lot more children at AWA in 1999 than in 1998. There were a lot more people overall, probably around 2,000. Nearly all went home happy, although three nearly didn't get home at all when they were caught shoplifting from the dealers' room (did one of them really wet his pants when he was handcuffed?).

This con wasn't perfectly organized and it was crowded, but fun. The crowding came from the increase in attendance and the move to a new hotel, which had more rooms for fans than the 1998 hotel but less room for events. AWA was a non-stop rush hour in the halls, always with people trying to squeeze through narrow openings.

The Saturday night costume contest, which went fairly well in 1998, was all messed up this year. The organizers tried to divide the event into separate walk-on and skit contest, but somehow the distinction was lost on the entrants or the organizers - or both. In any case, the show ran nearly an hour late (as if that was something new for an anime convention), and it proceeded in fits and starts, like trying to drive from the hotel to the airport during rush hour.

Still, the author can't complain about AWA. The convention treats him more than fairly, and convention time in Georgia has become down-home, we're-all-family time. And events like AWA give this page its reputation as a costuming page. This was one of the five best costuming events of 1999, for the number of people in costume (for a while, it seemed on Saturday that you were out of place if you didn't wear a costume) and the quality of construction.

Any quirks about schedules and crowds were offset by the remarkable group of guests of honor, led by the amazing Peter Fernandez. Anyone who can tell stories about Ethel Barrymore on one breath, then talk about dubbing Ultraman and Speed Racer a minute later, has to be considered a national treasure. It's amazing that Fernandez had spent little time with anime fandom before this event, just as it's now hard to imagine a convention season without Iijima on hand. The singer and songwriter had to leave on Saturday afternoon, but her presence was again appreciated. 

The cadre of ADV Films voice actors seemed to enjoy the convention more than the fans. They were surprisingly frank in saying that they're amazed that people follow their dubbing work and buy tapes just because they have a role.

One of the ironies of Anime Weekend Atlanta is that it's no longer held in Atlanta. The first two conventions were held in Fulton County, where Atlanta is located, but the third and fourth events were in DeKalb County, the first county east of Fulton. The 1999 AWA was held even further from the big city, in Gwinnett County, yet another county east of Atlanta. At this rate you might expect AWA to keep traveling up I-85 and end up in Greenville, S.C., but we understand it'll stay in the Atlanta area - although it might keep switching hotels as it grows.

Those suburbs are the fastest-growing parts of the Atlanta metropolitan area and its 2.5 million people. They're growing so fast that Atlanta officials have to fight to keep people coming back downtown, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the Georgia Dome for the NFL Falcons, the Phillips Center for the NHL Thrashers and NBA Hawks, Turner Field for the Braves of the National League, and the facilities for the Olympics in 1996. Sadly, the suburbs are no panacea for the problems of humanity. Remember the day trader who shot up the Buckhead suburb, killing himself and several other people? That shooting was only a few miles northwest of the hotel that housed AWA in 1997 and 1998.

Finally, a couple of the author's old-school heroes - vibraphonist Milt Jackson and basketball player Wilt Chamberlain - died around the time of AWA.