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Notes finished after dropping an overpriced turkey sandwich onto the dingy gray carpet of a L.A. International Airport terminal: In 2003, the author of this site suffered through the disappointment of missing Anime Expo. "Never again" was the silent, determined pledge. So, two weeks before the 2004 convention, the author had a plane ticket, motel reservation and shuttle ride set and ready to go. The big difference between the 2003 disappointment was having a few extra dollars on hand, and deciding to stay a couple of blocks away at an inexpensive Anaheim motel that cost half as much as the official convention hotels. The material you see on this site represents the author's best efforts to capture as much of the Anime Expo experience as possible, with an emphasis on costuming pictures and interview sessions. This convention is so large that it's not possible to get to everything, so there will be gaps. Sometimes the author was able to bridge the gaps, like the time when he rushed to the Anaheim Hilton's pool deck for a photo session with swimsuited cosplayers, and saw that only five females were on hand to pose for six times as many males with cameras. So the author got his pictures fast and rushed across Convention way to the Marriott for an interview session. The author wasn't on hand for another interview session with actor Tomokazu Seki but left a tape recorder behind, and that recording was used to write the feature on this site. Some major artists and creators were at Anime Expo, such as Fist of the North Star artist Buronson and Initial D's Ren Usami, but the author never got to their presentations. If only there had been more hours in the day... One question about the convention's Friday-through-Monday schedule, dictated by Independence Day turning Monday into a holiday, was how many people would show up for the unusual Monday conclusion. The answer: a lot. Open autograph sessions, which began at 10 a.m. Monday, had long lines. There still were plenty of costumers and camera-toting people on hand to watch them. And the dealers' room stayed busy until the 3 p.m. Monday closing time, and even then it was hard to get everyone out of the room. That room featured several major trade show-style displays, from Viz, ADV Films, Ragnarok Online, TokyoPop, Geneon, Bandai and even Media Blasters. As in previous years, the two-story ADV booth drew cheering fans when free stuff was tossed into the crowd. Geneon had long autograph lines for its stars, and the Ragnarok booth had a constant crowd of online players. Almost as impressive was the sight of the size and number of crates needed to pack up the TokyoPop stuff at the end of the show. According to one dealer, there were things happening behind the scenes of that dealers room. If you believe that dealer, 2004 was a year for extra attention toward bootlegs in what Anime Expo calls the "exhibit hall." We're told that a discreet examination of dealers' tables was followed by a directive to remove all suspicious items such as CD's and wall scrolls. The dealer also said that one of the companies with the previously mentioned large exhibits had representatives present cease-and-desist letters to certain dealers. That might have explained some of the gaps in the exhibit hall's booths during the weekend. This writer got in on a press pass, so he missed the painfully long waits in the registration lines. The convention blamed the waits on the number of people who showed up, a claimed 25,000, a big increase over the previous year's 17,000. One question posed to the author after Saturday night was "What did you think of the masquerade?" "Extremely competitive" was the answer. Among the fifty or so entrants, there were at least a couple of dozen that did not get Anime Expo awards that would have been more than good enough to get a best of show honor at any other costume contest held by the conventions attended by this author. Many more costumes that were just worn around the convention were just as good. The closest that an Anime Expo entrant came to being ordinary was a red Evangelion plug suit worn by a slender young man. It didn't look like much from a distance, but you had to look up close to see how it was made: the suit was constructed from red electrical tape that was wrapped around his entire body, then accented with black tape to make the plug suit pattern. It was something that couldn't be done in advance, couldn't be taken off in a conventional sense and probably couldn't be worn again. The Marie Antoinette court dress that was part of the best of show group was just one of the exceptionally obsessive outfits entered in the contest. The man who made and wore the outfit said he started construction on the outfit in 2001. While that group was the judges' preference, the audience loved the mecha, especially the Gundam that was imported from Japan, and the Optimus Prime that was so complex and heavy that it had to be elevated to stage level on a scissors lift and assembled in advance, with its occupant waiting more than an hour to go on stage. When the mecha were brought back on stage to receive their awards, fans with cameras rushed the stage for pictures as if the mecha were J-rock stars. The author really liked one outfit in yellow, a Dick Tracy costumer who made a yellow coat and hat from the Warren Beatty movie from a few years ago. There's a manga connection in that outfit; the Dick Tracy newspaper strip for years was written by Max Allan Collins, who went on to rewrite the story for the Batman manga drawn for DC Comics by Kia Asamiya. Naruto is still the big cosplay trend for 2004. The author got pictures of lots of those costumers, but he may have missed the really big Naruto group from the weekend. The other big question for the author was "How many pictures have you taken?" The answer: 5,864, with 1,776 (good number for the Independence Day weekend) posted on the site, and nearly all of those were cosplay pictures. And most of those pictures were taken in the concourse between the Anaheim Convention Center and the Anaheim Hilton, which for four days was the world cosplay headquarters. For one afternoon the Hilton lobby also was Super Dollfie headquarters, where a dozen owners of the expensive dolls (and their similar, slightly less-expensive knock-off cousins) gathered for a party and group session. The author was encouraged to attend the gathering, where he was fascinated to find that not all of the Dollfie owners are young female costumers - one of them was male. All of them make clothes for their dolls (one woman made lingerie for her well-endowed doll). The star of the doll show was a rare Chi from Chobits that was billed as the official doll from the series. For one day during the convention weekend, that doll feature was the most popular from Anime Expo. Three times this site broke file transfer records, with more than eight gigabytes accessed on July 4, over 16 gigabytes transferred on July 5 and over 21 gigabytes on July 6. From Friday through Tuesday of the Anime Expo weekend, more than 400,000 HTML pages were viewed. Anime Expo, which emphasizes Japanese artists and actors, for once was also a dub actors' playground. They weren't guests of honor, but they were on hand in big numbers. Wendee Lee and Carrie Savage were part of a Marmalade Boy gathering. Crispin Freeman presented the latest version of his seminars on mythology in anime storytelling, then was surprised by a fan who gave him a "Crispin never does anything bad" award. But the dub acting superlative of the weekend was a .hack gathering of voices from the anime and the game; 28 actors, directors and producers packed a meeting room stage. That broke the unofficial record of 11 actors who appeared at a Project: A-Kon panel a few years ago. None of this would have happened unless someone felt it was worth the effort to have all of those people on hand at the same place at the same time. The weekend's surprise star was a talented candy artist, who had the amazing ability to melt sugar and form it into delicate sculptures on the spot. That artist was hired by Anime Expo to entertain the Japanese guests of honor, who were thrilled by his skill. One of the artists who had worked on Small Snow Fairy Sugar sketched the series' lead character and presented the sketch to the artist. A few minutes later, the artist was presented with a perfect likeness of Sugar in sugar. That sugar sculpture was donated to the Anime Expo charity auction, where it was sold for $100 to raise money for the City of Hope. As large as Anime Expo has grown, it wasn't large enough to fill the entire Anaheim Convention Center. Taking up the facility's sports arena was the West Coast Believers' Convention of the Kenneth Copeland Ministries. It wasn't the first time that Anime Expo has shared a convention center with a religious group. And so it was time to prepare for the odd looks received by the cosplayers portraying Father Anderson from Hellsing and Nicholas Wolfwood from Trigun. Then there was the group from Princess House Products,the home-sale housewares company, that took up one of the big convention halls. Anime Expo fans were tucked between the two groups. The housewares people seemed amazed by the cosplayers, but the Princess House people had some fancy clothes of their own, including the group in the bright red hats. A few bible-toting members of the religious group walked through the cosplay concourse on their way to the arena and the revival, but they didn't mix much with the anime fans. However, if what we saw one morning is more than than a coincidence, someone is getting hip to the best way to reach young people with a religious message. Heading toward the revival was a young man in a long-sleeved shirt with an Iron Cross often identified with bikers. The shirt read "Jesus - now that's extreme." As Anime Expo week approached, the author made a motel reservation for Otakon, deciding to get a room near the airport. Inner Harbor hotels cost twice as much as outlying rooms, and even the added cost of commuting to the Baltimore Convention Center won't increase lodging expense to the level of the $160-$280-per-night rooms within walking distance. Attending both Anime Expo and Otakon puts you in the middle of the discussion over which convention is bigger. This writer is not going to get caught in that argument, because there's no way to judge a winner unless you're given audited numbers. Both conventions announced their 2003 attendance was around 17,000, but since Anime Expo rounded off their announced number to the nearest thousand and Otakon didn't, someone decided that Otakon was "bigger." And a surprising number of people believed that was true. Far more important than the largest convention is the number of conventions, which continues to grow. At the time of Anime Expo, barely halfway through 2004, there had been 33 anime conventions in the U.S., of which four were inaugural events. and there were seven more first-time conventions scheduled. Already, four new conventions have been scheduled for 2005. The author of this site really tries to avoid ending these notes pages with obituary listings, but sometimes there are ironies that can't be ignored. During the Anime Expo trip, two noted people died in the Los Angeles area where the convention was held. On Friday it was Marlon Brando, the actor who rode the post-war new wave of performing to create a distinguished career. On Sunday it was Rodger Ward, the two-time winner of the Indianapolis 500, who passed away in an Anaheim hospice not far from the convention. Years ago, this writer met Ward, and that meeting turned him into a racing fan. |
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