The author stayed in the halls to get more pictures.

There's no costume convention for anime characters only, but Otakon came as close as you're going to get. As intense a costuming experience as Anime Expo was, Otakon was even more engrossing. This site posted around 1,000 costuming pictures from the halls and the Saturday night masquerade, more costume pictures from one event than the total number of pictures from any other convention in the last three years.

There were still panels and other events to attend, and the highlights of what the author thought were the most interesting panels have been posted on this page.

The number of costumers at a convention is the best measure of youthful enthusiasm at an event. People don't go to the trouble of making those costumes unless they really want to do that. There's no way that the costumers can justify the time and effort unless they like the work, and enjoy the reaction of the fans. There's also no doubt that fans love the costumes: the most popular parts of this site after every convention are the costuming pictures.

In 1999, Yoko Kanno and Mari Iijima were the biggest stars of Otakon. Despite the appearance of boa and the key figures of the Lain and Utena series, the biggest stars of Otakon in 2000 were the costumers - and by extension, the 7,500 fans who packed the convention center for three days.

The author loves these conventions and considers it a delightful duty to share the joy with the world. If only everything had been done properly all weekend by the author...

There's nothing worse than when it's late at night after a long day and you think you've accomplished something special - only to learn you've only accomplished something stupid.

That's what happened to the author of this site on Saturday of Otakon weekend. He spent the day uploading hundreds of pictures of fans in costume and stories on artists, but no one who accessed the site could see those pictures and stories.

It was the author's fault and a major mistake that frustrated the people who depend on this site to learn about conventions. And the error would have continued much longer if it wasn't for two visitors who sent messages that called attention to the blunder.

In short: many of the aspects of this site are designed long in advance, including the weekly index pages. Those pages were set up to link visitors to the Otakon reports, of course. However, the author made some changes to the site's directory structure after those index pages were designed. And the author never updated the hyperlinks on the index page.

So for all of Saturday, people who wanted to see the sights of Otakon reached an old template page instead...and the page led nowhere. It was frustrating and unhappy for visitors who had their hearts set on seeing the hundreds of costumes and learning more about the series highlighted at Otakon.

Around midnight Saturday, returning to his hotel room after taking 800 pictures at the costume contests, the author checked his e-mail, read the warning messages about the problem and thought the messages must have been wrong. Sadly, they weren't.

The author deeply apologizes for the error. He'll have to take extra care in the future to make sure it is not repeated.

Besides, the author probably was paying his penance for the error during the weekend, and didn't know it. Several people E-mailed the author over the weekend and asked him to pass along messages to friends at the convention. One husband wanted his wife to know he missed her, a second person wanted a friend to know where his costume was, and a third person was worried because a friend had not called home (she was located safe and sound at the convention, but late because of a delayed flight). The author was glad that these people trusted him enough to pass along the messages.

Much post-convention talk dealt with the length of the lines for the dealers' room and the size of that room. The lines were too long and the room was too small, the comments went. Ironically, from the author's observation, the dealers room was larger in 2000 than in 1999, but it wasn't large enough for some fans.

To explain: the east wing of the Baltimore Convention Center has four large ground-level halls. Three of those halls were used by Otakon in 1999, and all four were in use in 2000. One hall was a video room; the second hall was a theater for the boa concert, the Mystery Anime Theater 3000 parody and the costume contest; and the other two halls, which were connected, were split roughly 55% for the dealers' room and the rest for the art show and the main artists' alley.

Why was the artists' alley so large and placed next to the dealers' room? That probably had to do with the 1999 complaints from the artists that they were in a poor location away from foot traffic. The artists got a prime location in 2000, at the entrance to the dealers' room area. So, of course, there were new complaints in 2000 from fans, more interested in shopping with dealers than commissions from artists, that the artists got too much space. You can't make everyone happy.

Even though the dealers' room was larger than the previous year, the crowd was dramatically larger - from 4,400 in 1999 to 7,500 in 2000. Convention officials said that crowd overwhelmed the available space to the point they had to limit access. Fans who went down to the dealers' room level had to gather in a line, formed by dividers, that must have been at least 100 yards long. We were told that there were no complaints from the convention center or from the fire marshal about the number of people in the dealers' room, that Otakon staff decided to impose the limits for safety's sake.

The growth of Otakon's attendance, around a 70% increase from year to year, meant more than one long line. Registration lines on Friday morning were huge: they would have extended from one end of the convention center to the other end and across the street if they hadn't been folded back upon each other by the convention staff.

Those lines are part of the price you pay for a popular, successful event. Otakon's attendance has increased twentyfold since it started as a weekend gathering of anime fans in Pennsylvania. 

On the same weekend as Otakon, the World Boardgaming Championships were held in the Baltimore area. There's a triple irony here.

It was the second time in the last three years that a "world" fandom event was staged on the Otakon weekend and in the same vicinity (the 1998 World Science Fiction Convention was in Baltimore when Otakon was outside Washington, D.C.). The gaming tournament was held at the Hunt Valley Inn where Otakon was staged in 1996 and 1997. And it continued the "Otakon curse" where there's always another fandom convention on the same weekend as the anime event.

It's interesting to note the organizations that also used the Baltimore Convention Center around the first of August. One week before Otakon, the convention hosted a crusade by Rev. David Paul, whose Miracle Revival Hour is a mainstay of religious radio stations. What would the crusade worshippers have thought of the Nicholas Wolfwood costumers from Trigun, portraying Yasuhiro Nightow's preacher who carries a black-strapped white cross - which is supposed to be loaded with a machine gun?

Then, hard on the heels of the anime convention came the conference of the International Society of Arboriculture, "Celebrating 25 Years of Tree Research." Remember the charity auction that got so much attention at Anime Expo? The tree society had their own charity auction, "advancing the tree care profession," on the day after Otakon. And while anime fans were enjoying Otakon's final day, the society was staging the "much-anticipated International Tree Climbing Championship" on Sunday.

The arboriculture group started its conference at the convention center while Otakon still was underway, creating a classic culture clash.

For those who wanted Otakon to take place in Philadelphia, consider this: the Republican National Convention was in Philadelphia, and it ended the day before Otakon began. Regardless of what you think of the GOP, would you really want to head to Philadelphia on the day after 45,000 people had finished hanging around town? Would you want to be in one of the hotel rooms (and the GOP used 20,000 rooms, some of them in Delaware and New Jersey) that had just been vacated by a delegate? Or even worse, by a reporter?