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Notes written mostly at 562 miles per hour and 37,500 feet: This author encountered a couple of people who actually read the author's notes, so it looks like a few things have to be explained: Why did the author have a bandage on his head? On the day before the convention, he hit his head on a nail that had been hammered into a door at home, unnoticed until it jumped out and bit him. Why did he miss the opening ceremonies? His connecting flight was delayed by snow in Denver, where all of the flights had to be deiced before they took off. The author missed the scheduled interview session with actors Scott McNeil and Michael Dobson because they weren't able to get down from Vancouver until late afternoon, the session was postponed until the next day, and it came at the same time as the Saturday costume contest. The author knew of a Friday night song and dance performance by a group of Sailor Moon fans, but missed that, too. And the entire third day of the convention was missed because of the need to rush home and join the rest of the real world at work. If Sakura Con missed their 4,500 attendance cap, it wasn't by much. The convention got over 3,000 people on opening day, as many on Friday as they got on the entire weekend of  2003. It just seemed as if half of
those people came down from Canada for the show, including one group
that brought red-and-white top hats styled like the Canadian flag, and
used those hats to make people "honorary Canadians." Eh?Among the honorees were Colleen Clinkenbeard and Monica Rial, who may have gotten that treatment in order to get them to reveal spoilers about the middle episodes of Kiddy Grade, especially after episode eight when...they wouldn't say. As unusual was another group of fans who decided to bring their plushie collections - including a couple of items that reportedly cost $150 each - and have a plushie group picture in the hotel courtyard. Unfortunately, a costumer who was dressed as Princess San's wolf from Mononoke-Hime spotted the plushies and started to eat the Pikachus. It was the most violent moment of the weekend. The dumbest moment of the weekend came when the fire alarm sounded at the Hilton hotel on Saturday afternoon, briefly rousting everyone from the hotel until the all-clear was sounded. The same thing had happened two weeks earlier at Anime Boston with the same results. This wasn't a photo sale weekend for the author. Another vendor had that post, so the author left the printer and extra case of lights home. Instead, he concentrated on interview sessions, which led to some great chances to learn how creative people click. Hiroki Kikuta brought excellent observations on his theory of composing music, Hiroshi Nagahama had a nice comment about the popularity of strong female characters in anime, and Yoshitoshi Abe remained eloquently mysterious about the fictional worlds he creates. Saturday at Sakura Con had an unusual pattern because the costume contest was held in the afternoon instead of at night. So, instead of rushing through the afternoon with panels, interviews and hall costume pictures, then getting a brief break to assemble things before the contest, Saturday saw an unending flow of events, from the first interview session at 9 a.m. to the end of the last concert at 10:30 p.m. The author takes too many costume contest pictures to be able to think straight, but he does guess which entrants will win the event's awards. He guessed wrong this time: the prizes went to entrants that he expected would not get anything. And that's why the author stayed out of the NCAA basketball pools at work. There was a big contrast between the two Saturday concerts. The costume contest ran an hour late because the convention tech crew spent extra time getting a sound system set up for a band to play between the final cosplay presentation and the awards presentation. However, when the last contest entrant finished their time on stage, lot of people in the audience got up and left and didn't wait for the band. And when the band did start playing, most of the remaining audience trickled out, apparently uninterested or unimpressed. When the band stopped playing, the remaining audience looked to be about the same number of people who had gotten in early when they ran their sound check. The exact opposite was the case for the Hiro concert. All of the people who left the first band - and a few more - crowded back into the ballroom to hear the J-pop singer. Before the late-running event, they chanted "Hiro! Hiro!" to encourage the show to start. After Hiro and her two attractive dancers finally took the stage, the crowd chanted "Hiro! Hiro!" to encourage the dynamic show to continue. And after Hiro's last song, the chant was repeated to get her back on stage for an encore. The cheering and chanting continued for a long time, and the audience was rewarded when Hiro reappeared for a final number, this time wearing an Ichiro Suzuki jersey from the Mariners. The crowd loved Hiro's brand of bouncy dance-pop, but one of the biggest cheers came when she broke into a rendition of the late Bart Howard's "Fly Me to the Moon," a reaction from Evangelion fans more than from aficionados of American pop standards. Hiro's concert, the second of the season by an Avex performer (Koda Kumi was a hit at Ushicon), was a big success, and could encourage Japanese companies to send over more of their performers to the U.S., hoping that convention fans encourage their friends to follow these performers. Of course, even with the Avex stars this year and the return of TM Revolution to the U.S. in late May, the hottest acts to come to the U.S. would be Gackt, Dir En Grey or Mana, judging from the number of female fans who wore those costumes to Sakura Con. After seeing and hearing so much of Hiro in performance, the author wanted to hear her talk about her career after the breakup of Speed. Alas, the interview session was set for Sunday, by which time the author was several states away, headed for home. Those who want to learn what the real world thinks of an anime convention can check out this story on Sakura Con that appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Much of the deskbound work on this site is spent on the convention schedule page, and some Google searching turned up a listing for an early October, one-day AniZona convention in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe. That convention wouold have meant the only large populated area of the U.S. without a convention, the Southwest, would have its own event. However, a few weeks after the web site promoted the show, it was switched to say there would be no AniZona in 2004. Still, the largest U.S. geographic area without a convention is the upper plains and midwest area including Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas - and even those states are within nearly reasonable driving distances of some conventions. On the Sakura Con weekend, the convention schedule page was switched from listing 2003 conventions to noting 2005 events. Already there's an interesting weekend for fandom, the fourth weekend of April 2005. That's the weekend for Kawaii Kon, billed as the first anime convention in Hawaii. That breakthrough event is going to come on the same weekend as the third Star Wars Celebration in Indianapolis. And one year away, already there are four anime conventions scheduled for April of 2005. This site plans to get to many more conventions in 2004, but some of the more ambitious travel weekends will be spent at a race track instead. A money-making auto racing job that seemed to have faded in January resurfaced in April, so the author will spend much of the spring and summer watching race cars and getting paid to do it. That decision takes the author off the road for a few convention trips, but will help pay for other journeys later in the season. And since there are an amazing 37 U.S. events left in the convention season, there will be plenty of chances to travel.  That travel has its rough points, like needing to leave the author's motel at 4 a.m. Sunday for a 6:30 p.m. flight home. But the strategy worked: the author wanted to get a window exit row seat for its extra legroom, and being first in line at the ticket counter helped the author achieve that goal. And it was from that seat that the author achieved another goal, getting pictures of Mt. St. Helens from the air. The first leg of the flight home headed south from Seattle toward the Cascade Range, and a convenient right turn brought the famed volcano off the airliner's right wing, with more than enough time to pull out the camera and get plenty of shots of the mountain. |
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