If you want to go to a small fandom convention, go to a sci-fi con. Anime conventions don't stay small unless they fail, and Nekocon is no failure.

What started as an intimate autumn get together of Virginia anime fans has become an eastern  favorite, judging from the license plates in the hotel parking lot (all the way from Rhode Island to Michigan). The last time Nekocon used the Chesapeake Conference Center they didn't use all of the space and retreated to the Holiday Inn in Virginia Beach, but in 2004 they got every inch of the center and used it to the max. The best of the space improvements came in the dealers' room, which was cramped in 2003 and filled half of the conference center in 2004 with a larger collection of dealers. And still it isn't large enough, judging from the talk that Nekocon is going to move in 2005 to a new convention center on the north end of the Hampton Roads area.

This experience of two Virginia conventions on two consecutive weekends had a touring show feeling, since the guest list for the previous weekend's Anime USA was essentially the same as the Nekocon guest list...or at least it would have been had not a couple of people who went to the first convention dropped out of the second. Fans didn't seem overwhelmingly disappointed, and the convention went ahead at full speed. This site gave a little more space to those who were fresh to the second convention, again catching up with the web comic artists.

We spotted actor Greg Ayres spending a lot of time on a computer terminal in the hotel lobby; turned out he was checking some stuff having to do with a Houston theater troupe to which he belongs. Ayres still talks of showing up at a convention one day in a costume of home of his characters, something he could have borrowed from one of the many Nekocon fans.

Instead of cosplay, Ayres had an appearance with actor Tiffany Grant at a live commentary showing of the first episode of the Sister Princess dub, full of roles for youthful-sounding female actors. The show was as fun to hear and watch, especially its music which used cues in the same way as the MGM and Warner Bros. cartoons of the 1940's. Most anime shows have memorable themes coupled with ordinary background music, and Sister Princess could be the exception.

As with all small conventions, you know you've gotten larger when the costumers become the big stars of the event, and that's happened with Nekocon. Blessed with mild weather, the walk through the parking lot between the hotel and the conference center became a smaller version of the concourse between the hotel and the convention center used by Anime Expo in California. The combination of sunny, blue skies and the lack of tall buildings in the area let the author play a couple of fill-flash and shutter speed tricks to use the sky as a cosplay photo backdrop (too bad conditions aren't like that at all conventions).

Fans' positive response to having their images submitted to Cosplex was heartening, with a few cosplayers coming up to the author and asking how it was done. There were also a few male costumers asking if they could get in on the fun: not yet.

This author cut a deal with the organizers of the costume contest to get pictures of the participants as they lined up to go on stage, and hauled his extra strobe and umbrella package backstage where he got the images in a cramped hallway. Then he packed everything up, rushed for the hotel lobby and it's strong Wi-Fi signal, and uploaded the images to the site before the contest started. After hanging out in the lobby for a while, he returned to the ballroom to get game show pictures and document the contest's winners.

After the contest, the author went back to the lobby where he had set up the extra lights to take a final series of pictures and sell a few things. It seemed like a good idea, but something might have been telling the author he shouldn't have tried. He'd set up a tripod on top of a small table to get more elevation for the strobe, but - untouched - the tripod fell off the table four times. It took that much to convince the witless author that placing the tripod on the floor was a better idea.

The other personal oddity of the trip: the author has a bizarre habit of losing things on the Nekocon trips. He's left perfectly good jackets in the Norfolk airport, and on this trip, his favorite racing sweater was last seen on top of a clothes rack in the cheap motel where he stayed.

In the hotel lobby, a TV set was tuned to the Cartoon Network all weekend. It seemed like a nice touch, but the meaning didn't settle in until the author made his final motel room stop, turned on the room TV to the same channel, and saw a show featuring a teen in a red jacket and a suit of armor. For anime fans who travel, Nekocon was the largest of four events in the U.S., but for those who stayed home, the convention weekend was the weekend for the first U.S. cable showing of Fullmetal Alchemist. We'll be watching to see the impact that showing has on fans and the general public, recalling how much the Cartoon Network's showing of Gundam Wing and InuYasha meant to those series.