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Anime Boston Author's Notes 2005 These notes were posted late because the author's first move on arriving home Monday was to go to a movie theater and watch "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Grainy print, and the best version of "Hitchhiker" remains the original BBC radio play. Sundays usually are the slow and quiet days at anime conventions, but not for this writer and not at the third Anime Boston. The day supposed to be reserved for rest was remarkably busy. Here's now it went: Start by getting out of bed at 7 a.m. and hunting the streets around the Prudential Center for open stores in a search for office supplies. Find paper at a Wallgreen's and sheet protectors at a CVS. Make another stop for orange juice at a remarkable Shaw's supermarket. Head back to the room, pack bags and shower, use the Sheraton's video check out to get out of the room, make the two-block long walk to the convention center and set up the photo booth, which attracts fans as soon as the sample binders of cosplay pictures are laid out and the sign bunny is inflated. One hour later, beg off from taking pictures to rush to the other side of the convention center for a Yoko Ishida interview session. Offer Ishida a Ricola cough drop when she starts coughing and she takes it. Leave the brief session and head back to the photo booth to find fans are patiently waiting, some fro new pictures and some to look for images taken on Friday and Saturday. Kind-hearted fans offer the author orange juice and water (after others came up with apples and donuts during the weekend). Take pictures while reestablishing a WiFi connection and setting up a NASCAR.com account to be able to listen to the day's Talladega Superspeedway race. Get the connection established just in time to listen to the play-by-play of the huge 25-car wreck. Talk to a MIT student researching a paper on the meaning of photography in cosplay, and introduce her to costumers who tell them her views on how the photos validate their work and make them feel good. Monica Rial and Emily DeJesus arrive to have their pictures taken with Kawaii Kon caps, fulfilling a promise they made to Hawaii fans that they would get the caps' pictures on the web site. Have the winner if a charity auction for two pictures arrive just as word goes out to shut down the artists' alley. Break down the booth, tossing the three partially used rolls of plastic tablecloth material (lavender from Friday, gold on Saturday and powder blue for Sunday) into the trash. Have a fan ask if the rolls of material are really trash and claim them, saying his girlfriend might be able to use the stuff.  Grab a cab for a ride to the Howard Johnson's on Boylston where the author will spend Sunday night. Have the cabdriver go the wrong way toward Copley Square and get him to turn around. Check in at the Howard Johnson's and see that it's a block south of Fenway Park. Get into the room in time to watch the last six laps of the Talladega race on Fox. Grab a camera, make a short stop at the motel's Chinese restaurant to check their menu, then take the tourist walk all the way Fenway Park. Spot two TV trucks parked outside the closed ballpark. Head to the restaurant for shrimp and steak with mushrooms and watch the end of the Miami-New Jersey NBA game, then watch a TV newscast that features a live report from the TV truck the author just passed. Return to the motel room and finally sleep. For this event, we spent all three days running a photo booth, the same task we had handled one year earlier but in a more open location. The 2004 location was in a nearly-hidden room at that old Park Plaza hotel, while the 2005 spot was in the convention center's main concourse. That was part of the convention's major change, moving from the 70-year-old hotel to the Hymes Convention Center. The great part was the added space, while the bad part was the big hotel bill, nearly as expensive as staying in a Times Square hotel. But Boston has an anime convention while the five boroughs of New York City do not. To which an acquaintance responds: "AnimeNEXT, from the outset, has always promoted itself as a NYC convention.  We are no different than the NY Giants who are a NY team playing in the Meadowlands.  Heck, we're closer to Times Square than the NY Yankees (Bronx), the NY Mets (Queens), or the NY Islanders (Nassau County).  We are as much a part of NYC as these other sports teams. "You are correct that state lines put us on the other side of the NY state border.  But geographically it is all part of the NYC metro area.  It would be greatly appreciated if you could help us dispel this perception that NYC does not have an anime convention.  Or at the least, do not help propogate this inaccurate information.  Sorry if this sounds like I'm ranting, but I'm irritated that people don't know about us because of statements like the one in your article.  Sure it's technically true, but it makes AnimeNEXT seem like we're not even in the same ballpark (forgive the pun)." The success of Anime Boston could be seen as a Boston win in the endless Boston-versus-New York rivalry. The biggest win in that series, of course, came seven months earlier when the Red Sox ran off the Yankees and marched on to sweep St. Louis in the World Series. It's useful to note that Anime Boston was a short distance east of Fenway Park. And there was the New England Patriots' win in the Super Bowl; that team started as the Boston Patriots in the American Football League and once played their home games in Fenway. The Red Sox theme extended to the baseball jersey worn all weekend by the convention chair, and the Red Sox hat worn by the Mama costumer from Child's Toy that had a Red Sox hamster celebrating over a fallen Cardinal from St. Louis. There were times when the convention center's concourses sounded like a ballpark with yelling and applause, but that was a bunch of fans playing "duck duck goose" on Saturday night. The Anime Boston crew had the best stage lighting this site has seen at an anime convention. Too bad they spoiled things at the costume by placing a podium that blocked the view of most of the downstage left audience. And there was the odd decison to give an award to a group that didn't appear on stage. The room that the convention used for that contest and concerts, with its upper deck of seats,  looked more like half of a small college basketball gym than a convention hall. It was about half full for the contest and has plenty of room to grow, as does the entire convention center. With that extra space, Anime Boston has the potential to move into the top tier of conventions and could match events such as Project: A-Kon and Katsucon. We'll guess there were around 5,000-6,000 people for the weekend, compared to the 4,000 to which the convention was limited in the previous two years. Anime Boston is going to move to the Memorial Day weekend in 2006; we were told the convention had to take those dates or run on the Patriots' Day weekend, which would mean competing against the hotel-filling Boston Marathon. People asked one question a lot, so here's the answer: we took 4, 275 pictures during the weekend, of which 789 were posted on the site. Moving into the second third of 2005, there's been a surprisingly slow pace of information coming from many conventions which either have been announced for later in the year, or were last held in 2004. We're still waiting for word from Fanime Con, Anime Expo, Otakon, Yasumi Con, Pacific Media Expo, Japantown Anime Faire, Nan Desu Kan, Anime Sound & Vision, Tsubasacon, and SugoiCon for 2005 guest and event plans. The most bizarre move came from the organizers of the event that was known for its first two years as Anime Reactor. In the next-to-last week of April, their existing web site had this unusual message: "Anime Reactor has shut down. Please visit these other Chicago Area Conventions." The page lists links  to Anime Central, Wizard World Chicago...and "Reactor." The blurb on the "Reactor" convention's web site talks about how they want to merge the anime, manga and U.S. comics worlds. Which is exactly what the organizers of Anime Reactor said when they started the convention in 2003. Now we're confused. New event? Old event repackaged? Anime Boston Main Page