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Sugoi Con Author's Notes 2005 Notes held up when the advertised WiFi access at the author's Sunday night motel didn't work: Maybe there is a star system at anime conventions. Sugoi Con's 2005 attendance felt smaller than 2004's. This point was raised by an acquaintance: perhaps fewer people attended the Kentucky event because the big-name dub actors spent the same weekend at Anime Vegas in Nevada and there were no Japanese guests in Kentucky. Or maybe the Halloween weekend date didn't appeal to some fans. Or maybe it was the football game on the other side of the river. The Cincinnati Bengals had another home game on the convention weekend, this time against the Green Bay Packers. Some anime fans didn't like the feelball fans' behavior in 2004 - did that discourage them in 2005? Packer fans weren't as crazy as the previous year's Pittsburgh Steeler fans, and the Bengals won this time while they lost to the Steelers in 2004. Some fans who went outside the convention center on the event's Sunday said they could hear cheering from the stadium on the north side of the Ohio. The reverse may have been true on Friday, where you might have been able to hear D'espairsRay from the football stadium. Certainly you could have heard the Jrockers from nearly anywhere inside the convention center; the band was so intense that we could hear them clearly from our photo booth in the hall outside, whether the doors were open or not. Sugoi Con combined two of the convention center's halls for the concert, but they didn't need all that space, since there were no more than 200-300 on hand for the show. Anyone on hand got a great, close view of the band, including the baffled-looking Covington police officers who watched from off to the side. Of the four U.S. conventions on the last weekend of October, we chose Sugoi Con because it was the closest and least expensive trip. The Las Vegas event was exceptionally tempting, but Sugoi Con was a fairly short drive and cost less than a flight - even if the price of gasoline means a full tank of fuel costs more than a DVD. Las Vegas has a reputation as a 24-hour town, and Covington has a taste of that - literally - if you head west of the convention center. On the other side of the tracks sits a cluster fast-food restaurants that never close. That was welcome when we headed for our cheap motel around midnight after a day's duties at the convention. Among the costuming highlights of the weekend were the pair of Jo's from Burst Angel on the same day, the pair of fan-wielding girls from Full Metal Panic, the woman who made herself into a Moromi from Paranoia Agent, the Count from the Gonzo version of Count of Monte Cristo, and new mother Michelle's turning her baby into a Moogle while she wore her Final Fantasy Lulu outfit. Something else we've noticed in recent months but not mentioned in these notes: many fans create original costumes based on their own characters, a great development because it shows their creativity and enthusiasm. This site stayed close to costumers with another photo booth setup. We had enough space and material to create the large backdrop we've wanted to use, eight feet high and fifteen feet wide. We had to carry more of that material for the extra size and additional day we spent at the convention, getting to stay on a Sunday for once. And yes, we do deliberately have different background colors for each day of the event - and the orange color for the day closest to Halloween was no coincidence. The weather was decent for the convention weekend, sweater temperatures under clear, blue skies once the morning fog burned off. Sugoi Con Main Page