But then came Sept. 11.

The freedom of travel that the author enjoyed for four years of attending anime conventions seemed to have been blown away with the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon. Instead of looking ahead to four flights in three days, the author was faced with the tough decision of whether it was possible - or appropriate - to head to the conventions.

The convention organizers helped make the author's decision easier.

First came this declaration from Anime Weekend Atlanta: "Our duty as Americans is to continue being free and thinking free and acting free and doing all we can to show these people that we cannot be caged and imprisoned by fear and terror. We will always be free as long as we think and do free. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. In that light, AWA will go on as scheduled. We will not be turned into cowards by cowards."

Then Becca Norman of Nan Desu Kan announced that the Colorado event would not be stopped. "The convention stands for a number of things that terrorists would love to crush: Freedom, for one, the ability to learn, to hear, be, do and see things that are new and wondrous; Safety, for another, a place we strive to make that is a good and safe place for young people to reach out and reach toward their potential; and Friendship, in a place where we believe that every individual who tries to build a bridge to another in this world makes a difference."

So the author decided to head to the airport and hope that his flights would take place. Amazingly, despite the airline industry's woes and tight security, the author breezed through his trips with no problems. Delta Air Lines deserves a lot of credit for keeping their planes in service, and running their flights so they arrived ahead of schedule - the author's red-eye flight from Denver to Atlanta arrived 30 minutes early.

The two-flight Friday trip to Denver went without a hitch. The only problem came when the author walked outside the Denver terminal, caught his huge feet on the sidewalk and fell on his face. Luckily, the author landed face down, an impact that preserved the web page equipment he was toting on his back in a backpack.

The author had only 12 brief hours at Nan Desu Kan, although he left a backup camera behind in the hopes that someone with the convention could get pictures of Saturday night costumers.

By the way, the Holiday Inn located nine miles south of the Denver International Airport turned out to be a good place to hold Nan Desu Kan. The attached convention center had more than enough room for all of the convention's events. It required a long, circuitous walk to get from the hotels lobby to the main events hall, but one fan noted that was nothing compared to the quarter-mile treks at Anime Expo.

The author's Friday night return to the Denver airport for a red-eye flight to Atlanta produced some oddities. Major airports usually stay busy at all hours, but the Denver terminal was all but deserted. Part of that might be the Denver curfews on late-night operations, but part also might be peoples' reluctance to fly after the terrorist attacks.

And the author learned another valuable lesson about human tendencies when he passed through the Denver security checkpoint. Since the hijackings that led to the attacks were apparently staged by men wielding knives, the federal government banned passengers from carrying sharp objects onboard planes. Even though the restrictions had been heavily publicized for a week before the author's flight, the Denver security station still had two plastic tubs half-filled with scissors, files and clippers taken from passengers - and those tubs were surrounded with dozens of seized Swiss army knives.

Late at night, the loudest noises in Concourse C at Denver were vacuum cleaners, but there was a plane sitting at the gate and the author headed to Atlanta, for a convention that would not give up.

Anime Weekend Atlanta had the largest facility in its seven-year history, and packed it with a big and enthusiastic crowd on Saturday. A friend who operates a booth in the dealers' room said his did more business through mid-day Saturday than he had done at an entire convention earlier in the year. Another friend observed that, after the previous week's trauma and the spate of event cancellation, that people had cabin fever and were looking for something else to do.

Ironically, AWA faces another search for a home after 2002, as the adjacent Hartsfield International Airport is going to expand a south runway and the hotel and convention center AWA used is going to be torn down to make room for airplanes.

The convention organizers were fortunate that their events came a week and a half after the attacks. Had the conventions been scheduled immediately after the devastation, travel would have been so difficult, and the emotional wounds so raw, that it would have been hard to justify moving on.

Many convention web sites, including the two events held in late September, acknowledged the disaster with messages of sympathy and links to pages that offered assistance and chances to donate funds for that assistance. Nan Desu Kan acknowledged the tragedy by staging a moving opening ceremony, under an American flag, that mourned the nation's losses and celebrated the free and enthusiastic spirit of anime conventions. On Saturday at AWA, costumer Elly wore an outfit that she had made from American flag material bought at a Wal-Mart, created as her response to the previous week's events.

The attacks brutally captured the attention of the nation, and the author couldn't help but note the connections to his life as a convention fan and to the people he has met.

Studio Ironcat, located in Virginia, had an office volunteer whose relatives worked at the Pentagon. Immediately after the attack, those relatives had not been found, but they surfaced shortly afterwards, unhurt. The Pentagon is a couple of miles from the 2001 sites of Katsucon and Anime USA. And the airliner that hit the Pentagon took off from Dulles International Airport in Virginia, from which the author had traveled during his Animazement trips. Another flight had been reprogrammed to fly from Cleveland to Washington National Airport, where the author had stopped six times on trips to Katsucon and Otakon.

The attacks in New York struck Manhattan, not far from the locations that had been planned for the Big Apple Anime Fest. Several of the author's actor friends - Crispin Freeman, Lisa Ortiz, Rachael Lillis, Jessica Calvello - live or work in New York. Thankfully, all were unhurt - although one of those actors had been in the World Trade Center on the day before the attack.

The Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, where Anime Express is held, may unknowingly have trained one of the hijackers.

And there was the film, "Arlington Road," in which actor Tiffany Grant appeared as an extra. In that movie, actor Jeff Bridges played a college professor who was duped into being the fall guy for a terrorist bombing in Washington, D.C. Consider the bitterly cruel irony that a piece fiction would turn into prophecy. Now compound that with another brand of cruelty, the assaults on people in America who happened to be considered Arab or Islamic and were attacked because they some frustrated people thought they were too close to being like those said to be responsible for the attacks.

But for those who would condemn Islam, consider a story about that faith's true power, tempered by the American attitude toward fairness and justice and an individual's ability to change.

The story is about a man who, near the end of his life, preferred to be known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. He was born Malcolm Little and was best known to Americans as Malcolm X. During his days as a fiery spokesman for the Black Muslims, El-Shabazz was as hated as today's faceless terrorists. And Malcolm X once carried as much hatred of whites in the United States as those terrorists.

But El-Shabazz had a sense of justice that went far beyond anything shown by those who chose to destroy unknown lives. He wanted to reform, not to kill. And his hated of whites, driven by the lynching of his father, disappeared once El-Shabazz made a pilgrimage to Mecca, Islam's holy city.

The sight of thousands of Muslims of all colors and nationalities, peacefully circling the Kaaba, convinced El-Shabazz that his disdain of whites was wrong, but his sense of justice was right. He returned to the U.S. a changed man, still calling for an end to racial prejudice but not longer demanding the death of the white race. His move away from pure radicalism cost El-Shabazz his life when he was shot down in a Harlem ballroom that was located a few miles from the site of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

El-Shabazz' epiphany was driven by Islam, but it was the sort of moral change that America seems to generate, the moral change that ended Jim Crow in the 1960's. That same American morality rebuilt Japan from a warlike nation into a peaceful country, making anime conventions possible.

The miracle of anime conventions is the way they have shown that people can overcome hate and the terrors of war.

It's true that Americans hated the Japanese after the attack on Pearl Harbor 60 years ago, a time period that is barely a tick on the longer clock of world history. But consider that there are still bitter feuds around the world that continue from battles that happened hundreds of years ago.

Other countries might still condemn Japan for the 1941 attack, but not anime fans. Japanese artists and their work are welcome in the U.S., a few generations after the war. There's no hatred of the Japanese at conventions, just an appreciation of the mix of American and Japanese cultures that makes the vibrant anime, manga, J-pop, J-rock and video game art forms possible.

At Otakon, one month before the terrorist attacks, we saw the amazing experience of a room packed with fans who hung on every word of Hikaru Midorikawa. He appeared before that delighted roomful of people just a couple of days after the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No one at Otakon noted those anniversaries. They were too busy celebrating the talent of a man who came from the culture of war that had been transformed into a culture of peace.

And a profound statement about the aftermath of the war and anime fandom came at Otakon in 2000 from Yasuyuki Ueda, creator of Serial Experiments Lain. "For many countries, World War II left a lot of scars. As for Japan, this generation has forgotten about the war - they really don't look back. My grandparents died in the atomic bombing, but I don't feel any hatred or regret. Basically, I want to keep going forward."