The author had just finished breakfast on the convention's Saturday and had called up the St. Petersburg Times web site when he saw the stark, cold headline: "Space shuttle feared lost." A glance at the TV set in the author's room showed several channels airing the same tapes of what appeared to be shattered debris sailing across the sky. The shuttle Columbia was thought to have broken up over Dallas, a couple of hundred miles from Austin and the convention. By aviation standards, that's just around the corner. The great national tragedy had happened early on the second morning of the convention, virtually over the heads of anime fans.

So what did this tragic news do to Ushicon? There were comments on the tragedy in soft tones as the convention Saturday started. Small numbers of people gathered around the lobby bar TV sets to watch the same video of falling debris that was repeated for hours. Otherwise, the convention's busiest day went on without interruption.

It's safe to guess that many of the fans at the convention had not been born when the Challenger exploded in 1986.

Dr. Susan Napier commented that anime fans tend to be forward-looking, liberal-minded people. Certainly those fans have grown up with the idea of manned spaceflight in a way that no previous generation has been raised. They've come to appreciate the romance of space travel through the fictional dramas of anime, but those stories also have plainly spelled out the risks. From Gunbuster to Royal Space Force, anime films have shown like few other forms of entertainment that the achievements of a spacefaring world are accompanied by the risks - and the losses.

Within plain sight of Ushicon's hotel is the landmark tower of the University of Texas. In 1966, Charles Whitman went to the top of that tower and shot dozens of people before he was stopped. The tower stayed closed to the public until the late 1990's. That was the pain of a previous generation, but the generation of anime fans at Ushicon is more resilient and ready to deal with hard times. That explains why the convention continued after the Columbia tragedy, just a little more subdued than usual.

Ushicon had more of a road show feeling than previous conventions attended by this author. There were a couple of dozen people on hand that had been at Ohayocon three weeks earlier, including five voice actors - Doug Smith, Vic Mignogna, Tiffany Grant, Stephanie Nadolny and Monica Rial. Two other actors would have been at both conventions, but Amy Howard Wilson reportedly had to bow out when bad weather stopped a flight from Virginia and Scott McNeil stayed in Canada to work on new shows. McNeil had also called off an Ohayocon appearance, which disappointed a cosplay group that had written a Saturday night skit based on his animated characters.

Having so many of the same guests and personalities on hand for two conventions so far apart made it seem like this was a traveling circus that had pulled into a fresh town for a weekend show. And that feeling probably will continue when some of the same people who were at Ushicon hit the road in two weeks for Katsucon in Virginia (including this site).

2003 was the year that Ushicon moved from being a first-year curiosity to a full-fledged convention, getting into a real hotel and drawing a larger crowd. As happens so often at never events, much of the crowd - maybe most of the crowd - was attending their first convention.

Austin is a grown-up city that doesn't have that frontier feeling. The Marriott hotel used by the convention sits next to sixteen lanes of interstate highway and expressway. What small buildings remain from the turn of the last century are dwarfed by skyscrapers and big office buildings, including one under construction just to the south. State capitols and university towns usually have a lot of construction money floating around, and Austin has both. Austin also has a colorful entertainment scene and night life, which the author never got a chance to sample because of the time spent at the convention.

The closest the weekend got to a cowboy feel was when a couple of rodeo cowboys, sporting Stetsons covered in advertising stickers, hauled cases of beer up to their rooms. Someone in the elevator shared by the cowboys and this author noted that the cowboys seemed out of place at an anime convention - a comment that turned typical logic on its head, since usually the anime fans seem out of place at fancy hotels.

Dr. Napier's look at anime fandom has shown that these supporters aren't a homogenous group. One of the fascinating signs of the appeal of the yaoi genre came on Saturday afternoon when there was a yaoi panel. That presentation looked to have drawn more people to its room than the AD Vision panel had gotten in the same room a short time earlier. And in the dealers' room, Elin Winkler of Radio Comix said she was surprised at the sales of her company's newest yaoi titles.

There's clearly a growing demand for anime and for conventions. The Anime Network started by ADV is drawing the attention of cable operators with its Comcast test in Pennsylvania. The Cartoon Network is turning to more anime shows in its attempt to draw an older audience that advertisers want, and to close the ratings gap to the kids' shows on Nickelodeon. In the convention scene, there are now plans for two October events in the Rosemont, Ill. area west of Chicago, and there's talk of two Houston conventions in 2004.