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AnimeIowa Author's Notes - 2003  It's late August and the author is in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He missed the Great Eastern Iowa Tractorcade by two months. He's six weeks too late to head down to the Walcott Truckers Jamboree at the big Iowa 80 truck stop. The Knoxville Nationals sprint car races, about a two-hour drive west, came on the previous weekend. The Taste of Cedar Rapids food and music festival is the following weekend. And the author missed the armored car that had the back door fly open and spill all sorts of cash on I-80 in Poweshiek County. Only two things for the author to do: go to Hawkeye Downs for the Friday night stock car races, or hang out at the hotel on Collins Road for the anime convention. Well, the stock car show seems like a good idea and Hawkeye Downs is the only paved track in the state...uh, you're saying that the guys who run AnimeIowa kind of paid for the author to show up and they'd rather have you stay at the convention as much as possible? Hey, at the Cincinnati anime convention a couple of months ago, the guests of honor escaped as often as they could and spent more time partying than at the convention center. Why can't the author get away with the same thing in Iowa? Oh. People are different in Iowa. Okay. Might as well stay around and take more pictures of costumers. That's what people want to see on the web site anyway...they aren't that interested in stock cars, even if there are some links to the old pro wrestling pictures. And there sure were a hell of a lot of people - lots of Japanese people - who wanted to see those TM Revolution pictures from Otakon. Too bad that guy isn't in Cedar Rapids this weekend. You'll just have to settle for a few hundred cosplay pictures and some shots of Max Allen Collins. Someone paid for the author to show up at a convention? Yes, it really happened. A couple of months before the convention, the author got an E-mail note from one of AnimeIowa's organizers, offering to make the author a fan guest of honor for the convention, and to pay his travel and lodging expenses for the weekend. It didn't take long for the thankful author to accept the offer. So, the author found himself riding over the rolling hills of eastern Iowa in an airline seat that was paid for by someone else. The author knew it was going to be a good trip when his flight landed at the Cedar Rapids airport and he spotted a B-17G, the bomber that won World War II for the Allies. When the author asked the airline pilot about the Flying Fortress, the pilot said "It's about ready to take off." So, the author hung around the airport just along enough to watch the bomber take off, to get some pictures and hear the roar of its Wright Cyclone radial engines. It's a rare privilege to see one of those vintage planes on the ground, and even rarer to see it airborne in the fashion that Boeing intended. So what was guest of honor life like? Not much different from what the author usually does at conventions, except that he had to present a couple of panels. One on the "A Fan's View" site, and one on cosplay with Catherine Schaff-Stump. Lots of talking and picture displays for an hour at a time, and the author was pleased to see that people showed up for each event. The fans even tolerated the long "link between Ray Charles and Lyn Minmay" story that the author wrote up for the Sugoi Con story which ran in Protoculture Addicts. Speaking of Lyn Minmay; there was a Minmay costumer at AnimeIowa. There were hundreds of costumers at the 2003 convention, more cosplayers in 2003 than the total number of fans who attended the first AnimeIowa. If there ever was a gap between the quality of cosplay in Iowa and at larger conventions, the gap was closed decisively in 2003. There were two Vampire Hunters D in the costume contest, and two Serases Victoria from Hellsing in the halls, each carrying their own Harconnen cannon. The best way to measure the growth of Iowa cosplay and Midwest anime fandom west of the Mississippi came in the number of organized cosplay groups.2003 was the first year that this site spotted enough of those groups to give them their own section on the site. There even were dot-Hack and Animal Magnetism groups. On the Otakon weekend, cosplayer Erica Door had worn a brand new Shiva costume from Final Fantasy in the Wizard World Chicago costume contest and gotten a top award, but was outpointed for the grand prize by an Optimus Prime. Three weeks later at AnimeIowa, the crowd roared when Erica appeared on stage for the Saturday night costume contest, wearing an improved version of the Shiva costume. She pirouetted and posed on stage, strolled away and was honored at the end of the night with the best of show award. It was a suitable prize, especially since she had to paint herself blue and white and walk to the AnimeIowa site from a hotel next door. Then there was the El-Hazard Ifurita costumer. The author spotted the nicely-done outfit, thought at first that it was a suit that had been made by Catherine Schaff-Stump, found Schaff-Stump (who was in her Valkyrie Profile suit at the time) and asked if she had sold that costume to someone else. When Catherine said she still owned her Ifurita outfit and hadn't sold it, the author tracked down the new Ifurita and made sure that she met Schaff-Stump. The new Ifurita was pleased to meet Catherine and learn that Schaff-Stump had made the earlier Ifurita suit; new Ifurita said that she had seen Catherine's outfit at the previous AnimeIowa and had been inspired to make her own Ifurita, going to the trouble to track down large Chirstmas ornaments to fabricate the elaborate staff that was taller then she was. That young costumer had three or four outfits during the weekend. The best impromptu cosplay of the event came after the annual piñata smash, where a cat from Sailor Moon was broken open. While most fans scrambled for the candy that filled the piñata, a few went for the scattered pieces of the smashed cat. One fan grabbed the ears, made a lanyard and wore the ears to the costume contest a couple of hours later. The convention has outgrown its Cedar Rapids hotel, and since they're not interested in moving to a larger facility in town that they once used (and the feeling seems to be mutual), AnimeIowa likely will need to find a larger home for 2004 and beyond. AnimeIowa tried something new to anime conventions that other organizers might want to consider, because it can clear up some problems before the start. Each membership badge was marked according to the fan's age - minor, age 18-20, and adult. Since some convention activities (yaoi panels, for example) aren't suitable for children, and since it's hard to tell a person's age just by looking at them, the age-marked badges let organizers know who to let into an event. The most intriguing guest at the convention was writer Max Allen Collins, one of the biggest names to attend any anime convention in 2003. After penning top-selling detective novels, writing the Dick Tracy comic strip and steering it back down to earth, and creating the story for the Road to Perdition, Collins has become one of the major storytellers in American popular culture. Yet there he was, sitting at a table with his son at the AnimeIowa dealers' room, as approachable as anyone you'll find at a convention. Collins has been a fan of Asian pop culture longer than most anime convention fans have been alive, and he was a natural choice as a guest of honor. Collins is up there with Nile Kinnick and Johnny Carson among native Iowans. One wonders if Collins will ever have a football stadium named after him like Kinnick, or a hospital named after him like Carson. The Cedar Rapids convention also had a surprisingly strong collection of voice actors from Texas. The author has seen Greg Ayres and his ever-changing hair color at conventions for most of 2003, but he doesn't recall seeing Rob Mungle or Jay Hickman before. Put the three together, and you got a panel full of great stories that never should have ended. Had fans known about their appearances in advance, that might have inspired more of the cosplayers who have portrayed Mungle's Pedro from Excel Saga, complete with cascades of tears and "No!" signs. If the author ever has had a cold, smug feeling of utter superiority, it happened on the first leg of the flight to Cedar Rapids. The author was scheduled to change plane at the Cincinnati airport (which isn't in Cincinnati or even in Ohio), but the flight was delayed because of a storm headed over the airport. While some guys in the next row back grumbled about weather delays and tried to figure what to do next, the author pulled out the notebook PC, hooked up the cell phone and called up the weather radar for Cincinnati. Sure enough, on the browser screen was the slow-moving storm mentioned by the pilot. The author may have been the only person on the MD-88 who could see the weather pattern. That radar showed that the bad weather had started passing over the Cincinnati airport even before the flight pushed back from the gate. (Really. I'm not kidding about that truckers jamboree. Got their own web site and all. Had more people than Anime Expo and Otakon put together. Lotsa trucks, too. They don't have a costume contest, but they got a Super Truck Beauty Contest.) AnimeIowa 2003 Page