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Reactor Author's Notes 2005 Seven months earlier, this writer was in Houston and rode in a shuttle van past Enron Field, uh, Minute Maid Park or whatever they're calling it now, on his trip to the KamiKazeCon convention. In October, this writer was in Chicago and drove past Comiskey Park, uh, U.S. Cellular Field or whatever they're calling it now, on his trip to the Reactor convention. There was no way to tell that the two cities on this writer's convention travels would provide the teams for the World Series. And the bigger coincidence was that both Chicago and Houston would have fandom conventions on the same weekend as the Series' opening games. While the writer used the occasion to wear a White Sox shirt, baseball was naturally of little interest to convention fans. The score of the opening same was announced a couple of time on Saturday night to less than thundering cheers, and there was even less interest in Northwestern's football win over Michigan State on the convention's Saturday. The convention hotel wasn't far from Evanston and the Northwestern campus. This site was interested in Oni-Con and Houston, but took the less expensive and shorter trip  to Illinois for Reactor. The event dropped the "anime" from its title, but it was basically the same as its first two years. There were no Japanese guests at the renamed show, but there was no noticeable change in the kind of fans. We saw the usual suspects that attend Anime Central (and that event's chairman was a judge in one of the Saturday costume contests). Reactor, which had been in a Rosemont hotel for its first two years, took a step backwards when it moved to Lincolnwood. The Purple Hotel was the least impressive "full-service" hotel this writer has encountered. Two openings on the writer's floor were covered by mysterious blocks of drywall, the hotel claimed the writer's reservation had expired, the seats in the hotel restaurant were covered with decades of stains, the high-speed Internet access and a telephone in the writer's room didn't work - the place was a worn-out 1950's relic that was indifferently managed. We hope Reactor's organizers got a cheap price for the weekend, because anything else would have been a waste. The front desk staff was as cold as the Saturday night chill that left frost on windshields in the parking lot. There was enough room at the end of a corridor for our photo booth setup. We're always fascinated by the traffic pattern; in the morning, we have to play carnival barker and chase people down, but the opposite is true in the afternoon and evening. We felt honored and lucky when a big "sexy no jutsu" ("harem no jutsu?") Naruto group chased us down twice on Saturday. A photo booth neighbor on Friday was a live-action role playing group. Hearing the game master's instructions to novice players sounded like an exponential explanation of the infield fly rule and the tuck rule. The larpers were still pacing off their steps when we folded out booth stuff and headed to our room. While there were no Japanese guests at Reactor, there were prominent guests in Richard and Wendy Pini, creators of the Elfquest universe and fans of manga before manga was cool in the U.S. Wendy Pini was a judge in the runway costume contest on Saturday, but others judged the skit contest. The runway contest was fun, but the skit contest dragged on for two hours. We hung around for the runway awards, then skipped back to the photo booth, just in time to encounter a cute Chobits costumer who wanted pictures. We missed the skit awards, though. One fan asked this writer if he had brought any copies of the 2003 cosplay book. We had to disappoint him and answer that we had three copies left and all of them were in a box at home. We've considered restarting that project with a new book, but the lack of an interested publisher and the high cost of good self-publishing a book has kept us from trying that again. There is good news for cosplay fans; issue no. 56 of Super Manga Blast, the anthology from Dark Horse, has a large collection of costuming pictures from this site (although they're in monochrome). The bad news is that there may not be many more issues of that magazine, which is being placed on hiatus by Dark Horse. But the good news is that we're going to start having material in Newtype USA, starting with the December issue. And we'll still have stuff in the limited-distribution free version of Animerica, along with the bimonthly Protoculture Addicts. One chore we completed at home was updating the convention schedule page to reflect four new 2006 events. There's a one-day Llamacon in Massachusetts, a Matsuricon north of Columbus, Ohio, a OMG!con in western Kentucky and a Shimakon in southern Texas. Three of those conventions are on the same dates as established events - Matsuricon is on the same weekend as the Middle Tennessee show, OMG!con is on the same weekend at A-Kon and Shimakon is on the same weekend as Anime Weekend Atlanta. Of the 50 or so events already scheduled for 2006, the Matsuricon got our attention because of the other events in the same state and nearly the same time. There are plans for four 2006 anime conventions in Ohio in one month's time from late March through late April - Paicon Genesis, Anime Punch, Animarathon and Matsuricon. That's a big change for a state that only had one or two conventions all year, and a state that has six conventions scheduled in 2006. Other events remain a mystery. The Halloween weekend is supposed to be the weekend for a Southern Masquerade Experience, but the event's web site lists two locations for the convention that are nearly 30 miles apart - Gadsden and Anniston, Alabama. There's no resolution for the conflict on the web site, and little or no information on the promised East Meets South event that's supposed to be promoted by the same organization in December. And the largest mystery is the fate of the second Kunicon convention (called OtakuCon) last year, which might be in Florida in December. As of this writing, the Kunicon web site has been down for two months and there's no online evidence that the event exists. One year ago, the Kunicon organization was promising to hold several events around the U.S. each year. Two months of online silence from that group aren't promising. (Miami-area damage from Hurricane Wilma might make a convention a moot point, anyway...) Reactor Main Page