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Anime USA Author's Notes 2005 Notes started after a taxi driver and a limo driver argued over who was going to drive the author to the airport (we took the taxi): You know you're in a different world when you look outside your hotel room, see the National Cathedral on the horizon, then glance down and spot the Porsche dealership across the street from the hotel with 14 Cayenne SUV's ready to be bought. Tysons Corner and Vienna are part of the large outside-the-beltway, hyper-affluent suburban region built when people attracted to the power and money of Washington, D.C. didn't want to live in the District. A week ago, our ride to Youmacon near Detroit took us past empty storefronts; the ride to Anime USA passed office buildings carrying the names of Raytheon and Airbus. (If only those buildings were designed as elegantly as the Saarinen-drawn main terminal at Dulles International Airport). The only things in common with those areas in Michigan and Virginia was the presence of anime conventions. One vendor said Anime USA's attendance seemed to be smaller than in 2004, and he thought attendance at all anime conventions had declined since the Labor Day weekend, Hurricane Katrina and the resulting wave of charity fund-raising that could have cut the money available to spend on conventions. We got that same feeling a few weeks earlier at Sugoi Con, but not at Anime USA. For the first time, the convention used all of the Sheraton Premiere's meeting rooms, and it looked as if the event filled that space to comfortable capacity. We were told that Anime USA's leaders are looking for a larger space in 2007, but we'll guess they might have to consider that move a year earlier. The most obvious sign of change came in the dealers' room, which was half again as large in 2005 than in 2004. The lobby hang-out area was noticeably more crowded and the other meeting rooms were filled whenever any of the acting guests of honor appeared. Vic Mignogna, showing off his jeans that had been decorated with Edward Elric by a friend, had so many people show up for his Saturday event that the convention had to cut access to the room. However, anyone who missed Mignogna at that event could have found him wandering the halls, gladly making himself accessible to fans. You'll see pictures of singer Kristine Sa and actor Caitlin Glass on these pages, but we missed their convention panels since they were scheduled on Saturday night, at the same time as the costume contest. Also, Sa's concert was scheduled for Sunday afternoon, by which time we were back home and sitting behind a desk, trying to sneak peeks at a TV set carrying the last NASCAR race of the season. We did manage to get everything else posted before the show was over, thanks to the Sheraton's layout and some useful WiFi. The hotel has a business center in an odd location, on a deck above its pool, but it was a close and quiet spot where the escaped several times to get some work done. It was pay-per-use WiFi, but the price was worth the result as we were able to get pictures and stories online during the convention weekend, long before the event had ended. Costumer Sue Shambaugh, who will be in charge of the Anime USA contest in 2006, approached us with a point of concern. She's heard talk that some entrants are cheating by placing themselves in the wrong categories when they enter costume contests. Many contests divide their entrants among skill levels, from novice to journeyman to masters, with the higher levels intended for those with more experience and previous awards than the next. Shambaugh said she checks this site's pages to identify award winners, and wondered if there was a way to set up a clearinghouse to make a database of winners. We recommended that Shambaugh get in contact with anime convention organizers through a mailing list that we watch. She's going to encourage those organizers to use the contest standards of the International Costumers Guild, the organization involved in the annual Costume-Con. Beyond the idea of fairness, Shambaugh is interested in having anime conventions use Guild standards because anime costuming is the area where costuming is growing. Beyond huge fandom events such as Comic-Con International and Dragon*Con, the sci-fi cons where serious costuming began are shrinking, and the largest anime conventions are larger than the World Science Fiction Convention. On Friday night, we spent some time wandering the back of the ballroom where the Move concert was held. Move, which has produced music for Initial D, mixes rock and rap in their performances. Move's male vocalist isn't a singer, but a rapper - the melodies are saved for the female vocalist. The mix of hard rock and rap pounds out rhythm with a wall of sound, which we'll assume was the affect the band wanted. We listened closely in the back of the room and found it was hard to hear any details from the instruments; guitar licks and even cymbal shots from the drummer didn't get through in the mix. The convention had warned that only 700 people would be let inside to see the concert; as far as we could tell, everyone got inside who wanted to experience the show. You could have gotten most of the benefit of the event by just standing outside the ballroom; the band was so loud that you could hear everything in the hall, even with the doors closed. Anime USA Main Page