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Anime Reactor Author's Notes 2004 Anime Reactor has two Saturday night costume contests. Anime Fabulous is the strut -the-runway contest , which is followed by the Cosplay Idol contest for skit presentations. You'll find pictures and awards from the first contest on this site, but not from the second. Why? For the second year in a row, this site had a picture and book sale table at the Anime Reactor artists' alley. Following the first costume contest, the author thought he had just barely enough time to rush back to that table, process and upload the pictures from the first contest, then run back to the ballroom for the second contest. But when he got back to the table, there was a small crowd waiting to have more pictures taken and printed. Customers always come first, so the next couple of hours were spent make sure the fans got what they wanted. During that time, the second costume contest came and went. The author first learned of the winner when another cosplayer mentioned that the winning skit group got their award because "...they bribed the judges with a bottle of Jack Daniel's." A few minutes later, that winning group showed up at the author's table, wanting pictures and prints. The group's leader had the first place trophy in one hand and a black Jack Daniel's box (presumably empty) in the other. Both trophy and box were prominent in the group's victory pictures. It definitely was a winning weekend for this site's author, and the above anecdote explains why. The second Anime Reactor had a larger crowd than the previous year's inaugural event, and many of those costumed fans strolled by the author's table. Each day started slowly, with the gentle Saturday start giving the author enough time to slip away to hear author Ryo Mizuno. But once 12:30 arrived each afternoon, it was like someone flipped a switch. Each afternoon and every was so busy with visitors and customers that the author didn't have time for anything else. Of course, that's what you want to happen, and it was a great demonstration of how well the picture and book idea works. The hot book at Anime Reactor was the first issue of Cosplex, the Japanese cosplay "mook" for which the site author has been asked to help recruit American cosplayers. The author got three copies in the mail on Wednesday of Anime Reactor week. One copy stayed at home with the rest of the magazine collection, while the the two copies went to Rosemont. We were told that one of the Anime Reactor dealers was selling the book. There's no official U.S. sales yet, but there is a web link on the site of Cosplex' publisher that may work, if you read and speak Japanese. This site's author can't, and he couldn't tell if that site was taking orders outside of Japan. A friend from Anime Central also stopped by, noting that the May convention is going to have a different setup for the artists' alley - a change that should make long-suffering artists happy. In 2003, the Anime Central alley was rousted from a hotel concourse to make room for the costume contest crowd. In 2004, the alley was stuffed in a back room that was well off the beaten path. However, we're told that in 2005, the alley is going to be moved to the Rosemont convention center, and it's going to be positioned so all of the fans will have to walk through the alley to get to the dealers' room. That'll finally get the artists the location and attention they want at Anime Central. The Anime Reactor weekend came after a rough time for anyone trying to travel by air from Japan - and anyone living in the northern part of the country. In the middle of the preceding week, Japan was hit hard by Typhoon Tokage, which killed dozens of people. In late summer and early autumn, Florida had been flooded by four hurricanes, including one that crossed the state and came back for another bite, but Tokage was Japan's eighth typhoon of the season. The bad weather was potentially bad news for a convention that had expected to have four guests of honor from Japan, but everyone managed to get out after the typhoon hit. Then, during the convention, a series of earthquakes hit northern Japan and some people lost their lives. This October weekend was one where we had to choose between conventions. The inaugural Oni-Con near the Houston, Texas international airport was tempting, but Anime Reactor was the less expensive trip - especially when we chose to stay in a Motel 6 with room rates less than half the price of the convention hotel. The choices will get more difficult in 2005, when there will be at least eight weekends with more than one convention in the U.S. Some fans may say that conventions are trying to beat up on each other, but there's no way to avoid the conflicts. With at least eight new conventions expected in 2005, there will be around 80 events in the U.S., four times as many as in 1999. With only 49 usable weekends in a year, fewer if you want to avoid snow in the north, there will be date conflicts. The same thing happens each year in Chicago when the White Sox and Cubs have home games on the same days. A technical note to explain the different look of the costume pictures from this convention: since the 1997 start of this site, the image cataloging and processing software has been Thumbs Plus version 3.30. It wasn't until the autumn 2004 release of version 7 that the author was satisfied with an upgrade and made the switch. The "web page wizard" in version 3.30, used to make this site's picture pages, limited the pictures to 399 pixels on a side. That limit was lifted in version 7, so the author chose to upload pictures that are 500 pixels high. Larger pictures mean more transfer time and space used, so we'll have to evaluate those factors before deciding if we'll use the larger pictures for the rest of the season and beyond. Also, we had a different lighting setup, using a pair of Westcott umbrellas to diffuse the light from the Sunpak 383 strobes. The result was a smooth, subtly asymmetrical lighting effect. It took a little more time to set up the lights, but the results were worth the effort - and the lighting was so smooth it didn't even wake up the two guys who slept on the couches surrounding the indoor waterfall that the author used as a photo area. Anime Reactor Main Page