Since the summer of 2003, when it became clear that the Memorial Day weekend of 2004 would have four anime conventions in the U.S., this site had to choose - which one to attend? Or, which ones?

In theory, it was possible to attend all four events. Start on Thursday with Animazement's preview night, then head to the opening day Friday for Anime Mid-Atlantic. Follow that with a cross-country trip to Fanime Con and their Saturday costume contest, then head down the coast for the Pacific Media Expo and their Sunday costume contest.

That was a do-able itinerary with enough means, but this site's author was a few hundred dollars short of making it work. Three weeks before the holiday, the author booked a double trip for the first two days of Animazement and the last two days of the Pacific Media Expo.

Fans and supporters of the conventions not attended by this site shouldn't take the author's choices too hard. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with Anime Mid-Atlantic or Fanime Con, it's that the two-convention strategy worked better for the author's pocketbook than three or four. The author had been invited to run a panel discussion on his web site at Fanime Con, but had to turn down the invitation because of the extra travel costs. And a few days before Fanime, the opportunity arose for a paying picture gig - but it was too late to switch plans because of the expense in changing flights.

In the same way, the author didn't go to the previous weekend's Anime North in Toronto, because he stayed home to work at the race track job that helps pay for the convention trips.

It didn't make any sense to try to go to a pair of conventions 2,200 miles apart on the same weekend, of course. The best choice would have been to go to a single event for a couple of days, then head to the 500-mile race in Indianapolis. But the author likes to pack the maximum experience into a convention weekend. Deep down inside, he wanted to be able to brag about doing something few had done - or dared to try.

The travel plans meant the author had to pass up the Indianapolis 500. It was the first time he'd missed the race since 1995, when he made the mistake of being too lazy to make the trip.  As compensation, he instead went to the Infiniti Pro Series race one week earlier (where he confirmed his action photography skills are still sharp).

Animazement was comfortable without being overstuffed. The North Carolina convention seemed quiet when the author arrived on Friday afternoon, but things got busy as fans and guests of honor arrived for the day. Yu Watase's presence for the first time in two years was welcome, and counterbalancing her quiet demeanor was the open playfulness of Chika Sakamoto.

At times, Animazement didn't feel as busy in 2004 as in 2003, and there was speculation that some of the people who would have gone to the Durham event instead went to Richmond and Anime Mid-Atlantic, a 170-mile drive away. At first it was hard to tell - one dealer in North Carolina said he heard the Virginia convention had a quiet first day. Later, we learned that a contingent of Virginia cosplay regulars went to Anime Mid-Atlantic, some of them to run the costume contest. Rarely have two anime conventions on the same weekend been held three hours apart.

Because he wanted to see the Animazement costume contest, the author missed Saturday's opening of the Pacific Media Expo. That also meant the author missed the big events with Nami Tanaki and TM Revolution: sorry for the lack of pictures and stories from those performers, but the author wasn't able to be in two places at the same time.

An acquaintance in the anime industry estimated there were around 1,500 people on hand for that day, which was the new event's busiest day. Sunday, when the author arrived in Anaheim, was quiet, and Memorial Day Monday was even quieter.

Mike Tatsugawa, PMX chairman, said the convention attendance was around 4,000 people over the three-day weekend. Another 4,000, not included in that total, attended the Nami Tanaki and TM Revolution concert on Friday night. Tatsugawa felt that many of the people who went to the concert did not return for the convention for the rest of the weekend.

That prevously mentioned industry friend said the new convention would have looked more crowded, had the entire event been held in the Anaheim Hilton and Towers, the hotel where Anime Expo was staged in 1998 and 1999. The dealers' room was in a hall of the Anaheim Convention Center, where there were enough vendors to fill about a quarter of the room. The author spotted one of those vendors packing up to leave around 10:30 on Sunday morning, while the others dealt with the small number of fans who strolled through before noon. Even the ADV Films and Suncoast display started to come down in the late morning.

Dealers were stretched thin with the four events on the holiday weekend, as a few tried to service two or three events. However, to put some perspective into the event, the weekend with the largest number of anime conventions in 2004 wasn't the Memorial Day weekend, it was the first weekend of April with five conventions.

Tatsugawa said the main obstacle to getting people to the new event was the number of graduation exercises held at the same time. That might have had an impact on Animazement as well, since the News-Observer in North Carolina ran a weekend story on how some facilities had two or three graduation events in a single day. To avoid the California conflict, Tatsugawa announced that PMX in 2005 (yes, he's planning for a second event) would be held on the Labor Day weekend. That's still going to be a weekend with convention conflicts, because that holiday weekend is typically used by the AnimeFEST convention in Dallas and Dragon*Con in Atlanta, but the Labor Day weekend looks to have no anime convention competition in 2005. The location for PMX had not been decided at the end of the 2004 event, Tatsugawa said.

This writer wasn't at Fanime Con, so he couldn't be sure how many people went to the northern California event instead of traveling to southern California for the new convention. Tatsugawa thought that Fanime Con took about 1,000 people from PMX, while the new event probably took about 2,000 from the northern California show.

Two interesting items: Keith Burgess, producer and sometimes actor for Manga Entertainment, said he had one of the most bizarre lead roles in Dead Leaves, the truly strange Production I.G. series that is scheduled for a summer release. We're not sure that we can use the character's name on a family-oriented web site. Also, PMX continued the Anime Expo tradition of holding a charity auction for the City of Hope, and raised $22,845.

This trip came one week before the author plans to head to Dallas for Project: A-Kon, North America's oldest anime convention. In 2001, this site wrote that "...judging from the noisy, approving audiences, the most popular events of the weekend were the improv acting seminars staged by Babylon 5 actors Richard Biggs and Jason Carter." Neither actor had any anime ties, but both pleased fans in Texas.

Richard Biggs at Project: A-Kon in 2001

   
One week before Memorial Day, Richard Biggs collapsed and died at his home from a ruptured aorta. The married father of two was 44 years old.

Meri Davis of A-Kon passed along these words from writer J. Michael Straczynski, posted on a Babylon 5 newsgroup: "Richard was a consummate professional but more than that he was an honorable, stand-up guy. If he gave you his word on something, you never had to wonder about it afterward. He was always helpful and supportive of all the cast, even those who only came in for one episode, always with a ready smile and determined to do whatever it took to make the scene work. He was, quite simply, a terrific guy, and everyone here is just devastated at the news."