Project A-Kon proved that the attraction of anime conventions is people, not just animated films or merchandise in the dealers' room. It was great to be able to meet the relatives of the friends this author has met - Jessica Calvello's parents, Lisa Ortiz' brother, Rachael Lillis' sister, Lionel Lum's sister and Amy and Doc Fraga's baby girl. That baby, by the way, may have set a record for youngest costumer of all time when her delighted parents dressed her in a Power Puff Girls shirt.

The people who complained about the length of the 1999 A-Kon masquerade had nothing to say in 2000. Limiting the entries to 50 made for a fast show, and there was nearly more time taken up with the "halftime" show (a illusionist, a sword dojo demonstration and a weird skit) as with the masquerade presentations.

The best cultural clash of the weekend could be seen in the audience at the Saturday night masquerade. There was Tiffany Grant, a actor from Texas, wearing the costume of Soryuu Asuka Langley, a half-Japanese, half-American girl from Germany, sitting next to Japanese artist Takada Akemi, who was wearing a cowboy hat after spending part of the convention weekend on horseback.

The oddest sight of the weekend was the group of black-robed acolytes who paraded through the halls on Friday night with a large green Cuthulu. (One can only imagine the kind of person who might have stumbled upon this and took it seriously.)

A-Kon followed the pattern set three weeks earlier by Anime Central. There was so much going on that it was impossible to attend all of the interesting events, even though the author tried. Sadly, several scheduled events never took place. And, since a business used some of the convention-area rooms next to A-Kon's territory, some events were on upper floors, four floors above the convention halls. 

The weekend promised to be hot, but it was wet. This part of Texas was washed clean by rain that started on Saturday evening and didn't let up until Sunday afternoon. It could have been far worse: counties north of the convention were drenched, and flash floods were feared in a wide area.

For some fans, this Project: A-Kon will be remembered for the elevators. The Hyatt hotel where the convention was staged has six elevator cars for a 12-story building, but the crowds overwhelmed the system all weekend. There appeared to be a bug in the control system; often a car would get to a floor and refuse to move for several minutes. And the only real intense fan unhappiness seen by this author during the weekend was during the interminable delay (as long as one hour) to get into the hall for the celebrity banquet. For the second year in a row, there was confusion over how to seat people, and fans had to stew in line until the problem was cleared up.

(Note that while the author had a banquet ticket, the delay worked in his favor since it allowed him to attend parts of two other panels held at the same time, and still get into the hall for lunch. Great chicken, by the way.)

The author would be remiss without mentioning the names of two anime fans who passed away in the last year. There is Noemi Dominguez, the Houston school teacher who was murdered just before the 1999 convention. The man who admitted killing her faces a death sentence from another murder. And there is Roger O'Connor, the co-founder of the Anime Radio online program, who was killed in a car crash three weeks before the convention. The driver who caused the crash had not been found at this writing.

Both people loved the anime convention scene. Their deaths bring into sharper focus the love, joy and celebration that conventions offer - and make the weekend's flaws seem much smaller by comparison.

(One additional note of sadness: Larry Nuber, an old racing friend of the author, died a few days after the convention.)