Convention Schedule Previous Reports Personality of the Week About this Site Search this Site Racing and More E-Mail the Author

Ani-Magic Author's Notes 2004 This site often writes that a convention got lucky with the weather. Ani-Magic needed a lot more than luck with the southern California climate; if the weekend had not been mild and dry, there's a good chance that the convention's largest events might not have happened. The convention had a shiny, clean new home in the Hyatt at Valencia, Calif., part of a complex of shops designed to look like an idealized small town main street. However, the hotel didn't have enough room to hold all of the convention's events indoors. Instead, Ani-Magic put their largest events outdoors, including the Saturday night costume contest. The Hyatt has two grassy garden areas, and the main events went in the largest of those areas, outside and across a brick driveway from a golf course. And just like a golf course, the outdoor garden would have been unplayable had it rained. The grass floor already was damp for most of Friday and Saturday, whether through dew or sprinkler watering, and the grass was starting to wear away in the heavily traveled areas by Saturday night. The author swiped an indoor chair for the Saturday night costume contest, and he had to pull the chair out of four holes in the ground when he got up to return it after the show was over. Any rain would have made the ground softer, and a shower during the major shows would have held them up like a baseball game rain delay. Rain on this parade would have created the largest fandom mess since the infamous 1999 Star Wars Celebration in Colorado, where a steady weekend rain leaked through the tents where the show was held. This writer wishes Ani-Magic luck with the weather, but his experience with outdoor racing events has taught him that everyone eventually loses their gambles with the the climate. Besides, the convention's location made it easier for this site to attend. The trip by air to the Los Angeles area isn't excessive, but previous Ani-Magics have been in Lancaster, Calif., about a 90-minute driver from the L.A. airport. One year, the trip from that airport to Lancaster would have cost more than the air fare to get to the airport. The shuttle trip from the airport to Valencia wasn't cheap, but it was reasonable enough to justify the trip. That was a  fascinating ride for a writer who sees only one or two hills a month in his regular travels. Even the hills of the Cincinnati and Atlanta areas can't match the ride between the mountains as you head north from Westwood on the 405 (and people in Los Angeles never call their interstate highways I-whatever, it's always "the 405"). In Denver, the Rocky Mountains are an ever-present backdrop, but the area north of Los Angeles is in the mountains, and this writer wonders if commuters ever notice that imposing presence of nature as they rush to get somewhere ahead of everyone else. Ani-Magic was a small convention by 21st-century standards, and the author will estimate there were fewer than 2,000 people on hand. What's notable was that a large proportion of those people seemed to be in costume, a larger number than in previous events seen in 2004. For southern California costumers, Ani-Magic seemed to be a smaller, low-pressure version of the huge Anime Expo and Comic-Con International events. One of the happiest people at the convention was Maiyu, the personable, friendly young Japanese singer who wants to be a star one day. The weekend's loudest scream came from Maiyu offstage on Saturday night, when she got a phone call telling her that her missing camera had been found. Maiyu lost the camera sometime on Friday after her concert at the opening ceremonies, and she announced at her Saturday night cosplay halftime show that she really wanted someone to find the camera and preserve her memories. That announcement did the job, because the camera was located and turned in to the convention operations office. This author needed to get back home at noon - two time zones away - on the convention's Sunday. That meant a 1:45 a.m. red-eye flight out of Los Angeles, and to get to the airport on time meant an 11 p.m. Saturday shuttle pickup at the Hyatt in Valencia. The author was worried that the ride reservation would have left him leaving the Saturday night costume contest before it was over, but things went exactly according to plan. The show started only a couple of minutes late and, including two halftime concerts, was over by 9:45 p.m., which left the author just enough time to assemble the contest picture and award pages and get the stuff uploaded through a wireless link. And it was a great moment when the shuttle driver showed up 15 minutes early. The Hyatt used Wi-Fi links for all of their high-speed internet connections. It worked very well in the lobby and the restaurant, but intermittently in the author's hotel room and failed to work outside of the building. So when the author needed to make one of his frequent site updates during the weekend, he retreated to the lobby, where he scrounged up a power outlet and went to work. While this writer was treated more than fairly by the convention staff, we heard some grumbling that the show was disorganized. A large reason for that was the apparent lack of a solid, printed event schedule at the convention. The best way to be able to tell in advance what was happening was to visit the BBS at the Ani-Magic web site, track down the preliminary advance schedule, print it and carry it to the convention - as this author did. Eventually, the major guest of honor proceedings boiled down to a two-hour Saturday afternoon panel that  featured ten dub actors - Daniel Kevin Harrison, Michael Coleman, Angora Deb, Travis Willingham, Debra Sale Butler, Bob Bergen, the previously unannounced Jason Palmer, Samantha Inoue-Harte, Tiffany Grant and Hillary Haag. There are a couple of obscure auto racing links to this trip that only the author could appreciate. The convention was a couple of miles from the site of the old Saugus Speedway, closed for nearly a decade. And, the flights in and out took the author over the top of the California Speedway, where the Indy Racing League was running on Ani-Magic weekend. Had the author had some extra time and money, it would have been very tempting to spend Sunday at the track, but he had to head home for work instead. Besides, the Ani-Magic trip brought the author within one convention of breaking his personal record of 22 events in one year, set in 2003. This trip also concludes a stretch of five convention trips in a 30-day period, also something not done before by this site. This writer is set for October trips to Anime Reactor and Anime USA, and hopes to get to another two or three conventions before the year is out. Ani-Magic Main Page