When the North Carolina convention was announced for the Memorial Day weekend, the author wondered is he could split his time between Durham and Indianapolis. He managed to pull it off, but just barely, and the plans meant leaving Animazement early Sunday morning, missing the convention's final day. The author walked onto a race day connecting flight at the last minute, and managed to survive some bizarre traffic detours to get to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in time for "Gentlemen, Start Your Engines."

The author watched the first half of the race from the inside of the first turn. It's a great place to take pictures of the cars with a telephoto lens, but it's not a great place from which to watch the race. The author didn't realize until after he left the track and reviewed his pictures that he had an image of the reason Scott Sharp wrecked on the first lap; Sharp put his left front tire in the grass and threw himself out of control.

Why didn't the author stay for the end of the 500? He chickened out when the rain arrived around halfway through the race and ran for his car. As the author was walking through the main tunnel exit from the speedway, Jon Herb was crashing with above him - so the author managed to miss as much of the 500 as he missed of Animazement.

Animazement took a big chance in 2001. They moved to a larger facility, but switched dates - going from their original mid-March time frame to the end of May. Did that change the convention?

Things certainly didn't get smaller or quieter. The longer and wider halls in Animazement's new Durham home seemed about as crowded as the previous year's hotel, probably because more people showed up. There was one odd point on Saturday afternoon when the dealers' room didn't seem as crowded as usual. The author strolled down a hall and found that all of those people were in the main ballroom watching "Dormitory Iron Chef," a junk-food parody of the cult TV hit.

If anything distinguishes Animazement from other anime conventions, it's the mutual love affair between Yu Watase and her fans. It wouldn't be surprising if Watase generates more enthusiasm in North Carolina than in Japan. One way to see the affection is the number of people who make costumes of Watase characters just to see her reaction and get their picture taken with her. That's happened in all of the three consecutive years that Watase has been an Animazement, but the costumes have gone beyond Fushigi Yuugi outfits to Ayashi no Ceres costumes - and very elaborate costumes, at that.

If you want to know the point where the author completely humiliated himself over the Animazement weekend, but was too embarassed to admit it to anyone: he had planned to attend a couple of panel discussions on Saturday morning but was jolted awake at 5 a.m. by an alarm clock that hadn't been turned off by the hotel room's previous occupant. The author figured he'd get a few more winks of shut-eye and rolled back into bed...and it was 11 a.m. when he woke back up. Maybe that was the author's body telling him that two hours of sleep on commuter planes isn't enough to start a convention weekend.

A major assist on this trip goes to United Airlines; here's a story that proves how things that could go wrong can be turned into big advantages.

While waiting to board the plane for the last leg of the author's trip home from Sakura Con, United announced that the flight was overbooked. The ticket counter rep said that anyone who volunteered to wait for the next flight would get $400 in travel vouchers...and the author grabbed his bags and rushed to the counter. He was fifth in line, and long minutes passed while the plane was boarded, minutes when the author feared the plane might not be full and he might have to take his scheduled flight.

Fortunately, all of the important and impatient travelers filled the plane, and the author got his vouchers; the flight delay was worth $100 an hour. And the vouchers paid for all but a couple of dollars toward the plane fare to the author's next two convention trips.

The inexpensive tickets - and the desire to get to Indianapolis in time for the race - were the main reason that the author went to North Carolina for Animazement instead of traveling north to Ontario for Anime North in Toronto. There was no practical way on this weekend to get to two events in two countries, unfortunately.

The author continues to be a big fan (apologist, really) of anime conventions, planning to attend events months in advance and always looking ahead to the next show. One of the reasons is that, despite their many flaws, the conventions show a great quality of American life; how successive generations overcome the previous generations' experiences while learning from those experiences.

The same weekend that saw the paired anime conventions saw the release of the Pearl Harbor movie from Touchstone Pictures. The film was fiction to the current generation, but the Japanese air attack on the U.S. base in Hawaii was a brutally traumatic tragedy to Americans in 1941. The words "Remember Pearl Harbor" weren't empty to the people of that day. The attack drove the Allied prosecution of the war.

In his book Deadly Sky - The American Combat Airman in World War II, author John c. McManus wrote that "During the war years, most Americans had nothing but outright hatred for the Japanese...most Americans thirsted for revenge against Japan. they reasoned that Japan had (treacherously, in their view) started the war and now must pay the consequences."

And yet, nearly 60 years after the attack, on a weekend dedicated to the memory of war dead, the youth of two nations gathered in two cities to celebrate an art form that was generated by a former enemy. The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of men who strove to kill each other met to enjoy each others' company and culture. The war was forgotten and all that counted was the fun of the festivals.

The author thinks that the popularity of Japanese animation in the wake of the war is something that never should be taken for granted. There are too many places in the world - Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Kashmir, central Africa - where wars and affronts from centuries ago still drive modern hatred and bloodshed. By comparison, the 60 years since the U.S. entered World War II is a few ticks on the clock of world history, but the emotions that drove that war are lost on the generations of fans that gathered at Animazement and Anime North. Anime fans never learned to hate, and that's a miracle in these times.