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| On the Palm Sunday weekend, the start of
daylight savings time and a few days before Passover, there were four anime conventions in the U.S. and
nine worldwide. So why did this site travel to the Middle Tennessee Anime Convention? The Nashville event was the closest and least expensive of the possible trips - although there was one temptation. On the same weekend was Costume Con in Decatur, Georgia, a half-hour's drive east of Atlanta. Costume Con, the ultimate costuming event, changes locations each year. Nashville would have been the halfway point of the author's drive to Georgia, but he decided to be lazy and stop at the Middle Tennessee event instead. The last time this site went to the Nashville convention was in 2001. There was no trip to the 2002 edition because of racing work, and the 2003 event was cancelled. On top of that, the 2004 convention changed hotels about three months out, moving to the neighborhood west of downtown Nashville, next to Vanderbilt University. The good news for the still-fledgling convention was that they plan to run another edition on the first weekend of April in 2005, the first time that they've planned a year in advance. The bad news was that they managed to overstuff their home at the Marriott hotel. The last time the convention was held, 400 people showed up and they planned for 600 in 2004. When they reached 800 people on Saturday, the convention started turning people away. Space was so tight that the lines for the dealers' room had to go outside - good for fans that the weather was dry. The Middle Tennessee event likes to give its attendees buttons instead of laminated badges. They ran out of buttons and had to grab a makeshift supply of stickers on Saturday, which meant people walked around with hand-drawn "Saturday" and "Two-Day" stickers on their chests. However, there's room to grow in the area, Vanderbilt facilities that might come into play into the future. One spot is a meeting room that's located on the top floor of a parking garage - a location that's being considered for the dealers' room in 2005. Yes, it doesn't make any sense to put a meeting room on top of a garage, until you see that the room has a clear view of the Vanderbilt football stadium. Of course, 800 people in one day is a tiny number by the standards of most anime conventions, but it's a decent draw in the Nashville area, with its astounding number of entertainment options. Head a few miles to the east and you're downtown, amidst the greatest collection of country music attractions in the world. There are several live shows every night, not including the Grand Old Opry in the huge Opryland complex northeast of downtown. It's not bad for an anime convention to draw a fair number of people in the face of that competition, especially when it was the first convention in two years. The Middle Tennessee event might have been a bellwether in the transition of anime conventions from college party to family show. There were a surprising number of adults at the event with "parent" stickers on their clothes, ushering their costumed children through the halls. The cosplayers are getting younger in Tennessee, with a lot of grade school and junior high kids in the mix. How big is that change? On the Nashville weekend, this site made a Virginia university anime club the personalities of the week. But at the Middle Tennessee event, one of the largest costume contest groups came from an area high school, and their outfits looked as good as the costumes made by college fans. Some older fans might be dismayed by the youth movement, but that's part of the continuing growth in anime fandom. Sci-fi fans resemble the AARP as they continue their literary-versus-media grumbling, while anime fans go out and put on a show. And when this youngest generation of anime fans grows up and passes the habit to their children, who knows what will happen then? One of the best part of the anime enthusiasm is that it answers the complaint from arts advocates, that the humanities are being ignored in the no-child-held-back rush toward standardized testing and the emphasis toward math studies. Anime fans are being drawn toward the arts without a dollar being spent by a school system, and that kind of unforced enthusiasm has to be good for the future of the arts. Keep that in mind the next time you see fan art or a costume contest skit: these fans are making art because they've been inspired to do so, and not because some teacher or bureaucrat handed down a requirement. There was a lot more anime enthusiasm than basketball fandom at the convention, of course. The convention weekend was the same weekend as the NCAA men's final four, so anime fans missed the amazing Saturday night finishes in Georgia Tech's win over Oklahoma State and Connecticut's victory over Duke. Earlier in the division one men's basketball tournament, Vanderbilt had a surprisingly strong run. After they lost, attention turned to the women's championship and the Tennessee team, from down the road in Knoxville, which reached the final four. And that leads to this convention's odd real-world coincidence: one week earlier, this site was at Anime Detour in Bloomington, Minnesota, not far from the Twin Cities home of the University of Minnesota. A couple of days after the convention, the Minnesota women's team also made the womens' final four. The Tennessee car trip took the author twice through America's most amazing interstate interchange, exit 21 on I-65 in Kentucky. The interchange on U.S. 231 outside Bowling Green still has two Waffle House restaurants, one on each side of the highway. Those twin restaurants are still there, even though the interchange has become crowded with convenience stores and motels. The double Waffle Houses are the only roadside throwbacks to the era of back roads and Burma Shave signs. The road trip produced another one of those "things went right" moments that overshadowed the author's inability to find the right Nashville exit for Broadway: driving means parking, and the author put his car in the aforementioned garage behind the Marriott. On Saturday night, the author packed the car and rolled toward the exit booth - but it was empty, and the author worried that the garage might be closed for the night. Then he spotted the box that said "if attendant has left, place ticket in box." He did, and the gate opened, letting the author escape without paying. As he drove away, the author wondered how much money the garage loses that way. On the way home, the author finally took the time to stop at the National Corvette Museum outside Bowling Green. That conical red building holds the first 'Vettes of the 1950's, the Indy 500 pace cars and prototypes. The Corvette has a reputation as America's ultimate sports car, although the author wonders if there was a statement about the car's real appeal when a tour bus full of senior citizens arrived at the museum... |
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