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For those who are wondering why this site's July reports did not include Anime Expo: not enough cash to pay for the hotel room. The author had a perfect discount plane ticket in hand, along with shuttle and hotel reservations in Anaheim. He would have had no trouble getting from home to Anime Expo's location, then would have spent four days begging and borrowing to have a place to stay and food to eat. That might have worked, but there was too much risk that it would have failed, so the author stayed home. It was the first time he'd missed Anime Expo since his first California trip in 1998. To make up for that disappointment, the author undertook another ridiculous two-convention weekend. This time, the goal was two conventions on the same day, the first Gen Con Game Fair to be held in Indianapolis, and IkasuCon, the inaugural convention held 110 miles south of Indianapolis in Cincinnati. Damned if it didn't work, too. At least it was a cheap trip - a couple of tanks of gasoline, weekend convention passes, meals and no hotel rooms. The trip cost more time than money, with eight hours spent on I-74 for two round trips between the conventions. The only rough spot during the weekend came on the author's Saturday night return home, when his car didn't want to run after pausing at a stoplight. For a moment, the specter of huge repair bills chilled the author's heart (because he's had the car break down before on a run to Cincinnati). Then he went to a convenience store and bought a few gallons of gasoline, and the car ran fine. Fuel starvation because the car was almost out of gas and the fuel gauge is out of calibration. Duh. All of the time on the road was worth the effort. The author can brag that he was probably the only person to have gone to Gen Con and IkasuCon on the same weekend. The strategy was born when the author checked each convention's Saturday costume contest schedule. Gen Con's contest was set for 2 p.m. Saturday EST with a 12:45 p.m. costume parade through the halls, while the IkasuCon contest was planned for 6 p.m. EDT. Counting on his fingers and taking the different time zones into account, the author figured that he could get pictures of the Gen Con costumers, rush for his car, jump on I-74 and get from Indianapolis to Cincinnati in time for the IkasuCon event. The plan worked with time to spare. The author arrived at Gen Con early, found lots of hall costumers, then hung outside the room where the costumers gathered for the contest. The entrants conveniently emerged from their staging room so the author could get pictures of them. Then the author broke down his camera gear, stuffed everything in the bag and found his car. Two hours later, he was pulling into the garage next to the Cincinnati Convention Center, where he had enough time to process the Gen Con images and get them online before the IkasuCon contest started. Credit that to the author's 3G Sprint cell phone and its wireless Internet access. The author prefers the bright colors of anime costumes to the more realistic, monochromatic tones of sci-fi and fantasy outfits, so he also preferred the IkasuCon costumes to those at Gen Con. The two contests had one thing in common; neither filled its hall with fans. But there were still many differences between the two events and the people who attended them. Walk through Gen Con, and you get the impression that the gaming world is more obsessive than the anime fandom world. Maybe smarter, too, because it takes a lot of reasoning power to win the games featured at the convention. "Game" is the wrong word to describe some of the contests, and even the high-sounding "simulation" comes up short. One of the Gen Con games was a recreation of a national security emergency, featuring dozens of players representing every nation that would be involved in a real crisis. The "short" version of the game lasted for four hours, and the players got national security briefings that seemed like the real thing...because they were. Anime fans would have felt at home at Gen Con. ADV Films, Bandai and Central Park Media had booths. The biggest displays were for Yu-Gi-Oh and Dragon Ball Z card games. There were Slayers, Final Fantasy, Evangelion and Dragon Ball costumers in the halls. One costume that has been a best of show winner at an anime convention, the nine-foot No Face from Spirited Away, made an appearance at Gen Con. The costumer delighted gamers with her head-bopping performances. And there certainly were more fans at Gen Con than at IkasuCon. Check through the previous reports page, and you'll find stories and pictures from the Tranquility Base convention in 1999, a sci-fi convention held at the Cincinnati Convention Center. The small turnout ensured there was only one Tranquility Base. IkasuCon used the same convention center rooms as Tranquility Base, and the anime convention's attendance seemed to be even smaller than the 1999 event's. So few people showed up for IkasuCon that, after a very slow Friday, one of the vendors in the dealers' room packed up and left. That departure helped illustrate why there aren't any really small anime conventions; the dealers won't be interested in events with small crowds. IkasuCon probably had fewer people than 2002's C-Kon or the Middle Tennessee Anime Convention in 2001, the previously smallest anime conventions attended by this site. On the other hand, Gen Con was huge. The attendance - around 25,000 - was as big as the Star Wars Celebration II that also had been held at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis. The streets around the Indiana Convention Center were filled with badge-wearing gamers, and the at-con registration line stretched for hundreds of feet. Only a handful of annual U.S. fandom events, including Comic-Con International, Wizard World Chicago and Dragon-Con, are larger than Gen Con. Indianapolis and Cincinnati both have rebuilt downtown areas, but the cities took radically different approaches to their reconstruction. Indianapolis has one of the nation's largest convention centers, while Cincinnati spent $800 million on stadiums for the Reds (who fired their field manager and general manager on the Monday after the convention) and (chronically losing) Bengals. Indianapolis built a big downtown shopping mall which has attracted several shops and restaurants, so convention attendees can find fun and food within a couple of blocks of their event. Cincinnati has a couple of downtown restaurants, but all of the fun and food is across the Ohio River in Newport, Kentucky. It was in Newport that the author found himself on IkasuCon's Friday night, hanging around with the convention's guests of honor and a few other familiar hangers-on. The rush from Ohio to Kentucky came in a van commanded by costumer Dave Zyn, who was hard pressed to keep up with a VW Jetta driven by another fan who rushed around for party supplies, then searched for a decent parking space at the Newport river plaza. (Steve Bennett of IC Entertainment had to sit on boxes in the back of the van, and wound up with a moaning case of motion sickness.) When the author attended Tranquility Base, he stayed at a cheap motel in Newport, where the big attractions were a Hooter's and an aquarium. All of the empty space between the two places has been filled by an amazing pleasure palace, anchored by an AMC movie multiplex and stuffed with restaurants, including the Irish pub where the author's group piled in. Bennett's motion sickness was erased by a huge plate of corned beef and cabbage. Actor Monica Rial never finished her fish sandwich because she kept getting notes with little figures on them, drawn by Emily DeJesus at the next table over. After the pub trip, the group somehow found its way back to the Cincinnati side of the river, where everyone went to the hotel where animator Jan Scott Frazier started to set up a "blue party" in his room. The author can't tell you what happened at the party, because the practical need to get back to Indianapolis for the next day's Gen Con events took over, along with concern that the parking garage where he left his car might be closed. Fortunately, the garage had an automatic cash-taker, and the author got his car pointed back toward Indianapolis with time to spare. Gen Con was packed with enthusiastic gamers. There were hundreds of individual gaming sessions during the four-day weekend. Yet, when The Indianapolis Star ran a story about Gen Con during the convention, they ignored the gamers and concentrated on the costumers. The same thing happened when the Orange County Register ran a story on Anime Expo, when the Baltimore Sun covered Otakon, and when CNN covered Anime Expo New York. Regardless of the artists, animators, writers and personalities that populate these fandom events, the mainstream press can't see beyond the costumers. That demonstrates that costumers are the most accessible part of fandom conventions to the general public (and to the people who visit this site). On the morning after the July convention weekend, word got out that Bob Hope had died at 100. Comedian, singer, movie star, one of the first radio stars, best known for endless USO holiday season trips to entertain the troops (and dub actor Tiffany Grant's hero), Hope's death truly draws a curtain over the conclusion of the 20th century. |
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| July 2003 Cosplay |