Anime Weekend Atlanta feels like a frat party. Nan Desu Kan feels like a family reunion - and the family grew in 2000. Nearly as many people were on hand for the convention's opening day as had been on hand for all of the previous year's event.

Nan Desu Kan experienced one unquestionable sign of success on Saturday: there was a line to get into the dealers' room. In 1999, the room used to sell merchandise was large enough to hold everyone who wanted to get inside at any time. In 2000, the room was filled to overflowing on the convention's busiest day, and to keep the room from being too overstuffed, the convention decided to limit the number of people inside at any one time.

The Colorado convention had plenty of room to spare at the Sheraton Denver West in 1999, but the facility was pretty much filled in 2000. Part of that may have been because there was no fandom competition in 2000, while there was a sci-fi convention on the same weekend of 1999. A much larger factor was the appearance of Mari Iijima, who charmed a new group of fans in Colorado. Iijima was at her most intriguing over the weekend, chatting happily with fans from the stage and the autograph line.

Thanks to hard work by the convention staff, Nan Desu Kan has the reputation of being a child and family friendly event. That point was stressed when one of the most popular costumers of the weekend was a little girl in Sailor Moon outfits: her mother said she spent more time making her daughter's outfits than her own.

But the weekend had something of a Sailor Moon flair, from the large number of costumers to the announcement that ADV Films would start producing and selling Sailor Moon videos. If Sailor Moon can be seen as one of the "starter" anime series, that could be seen as a hint that there's plenty of room for anime fandom growth in the Rocky Mountains.

The big growth came in the costume contest. There were more than 100 entrants in the Saturday night event, around three times as many as entered the previous year's show. Costuming is a measurement of fan enthusiasm, and the Colorado event made a big step forward in that area. (Note to costumers: no, the Spawn costume wasn't really from an anime series, but no one cared - especially the audience, which voted Spawn as its favorite costume.)

Another measurement is the age of the conventioneers. The 1999 crowd was young, but the 2000 crowd seemed even younger, with a lot of kids being shadowed by their parents.

Of course, 2001 brings a new challenge to the Colorado convention. Due to hotel contracts, Nan Desu Kan will be held on the same September weekend as Anime Weekend Atlanta, half a continent away. This author noted what seemed like a couple of dozen people who attended both events in 2000. It's likely that there will be enough fans for both events on the same weekend. Getting enough dealers to fill both dealers' rooms might be more of a challenge, though. And will it be possible to go to both conventions next year? Could someone make the plane connections to travel to Colorado and Georgia on the same weekend, and enjoy the trip?

Of course, life brings its own challenges.

In meeting the delightful Scott Simpson and Juliet Cesario (who somehow came up with a well-earned shirt that said "Goddess") at the start of the weekend, we learned that Juliet's father had died a few weeks earlier. The couple told us about the painful experience of handling his death, since he had become unresponsive and had not left a "living will" that would easily let his family decide his fate.  Simpson and Cesario spoke about what it was like to head to their father's home in Arizona and go through the mementos of his life and his musical career.

And there was a moment at the closing ceremonies when Kevin Bennett started to get tears in his eyes when he spoke about raising money for the American Cancer Society through T-shirt sales, and you knew he was reflecting on the death of his (and Steve Bennett's) father a few weeks earlier, a death that unhappily happened a short time after Kevin Bennett was married to Sachiko Uchida.