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Youmacon Author's Notes 2005 As long as you weren't the kind of person who expects things to start on time, Youmacon went well. The startup convention was not the first Michigan anime convention - there have been events before in the Grand Rapids area - but it was the first organized convention in the Detroit area. That region is as heavily connected to the auto industry as you think, but those connections extend to Japan. All of the major motor manufacturers in Michigan have alliances with Japanese companies, so much that travel between Japan and Detroit is a major business. The gate for this writer's Sunday flight home, in the new McNamara terminal at Detroit Metro airport, was across the concourse from a Northwest flight to Narita airport in Tokyo. (No, it has not been renamed "Naruto" airport - yet.) The overseas flight was using a Boeing 747-400, as large a passenger plane as you can buy, and the gate agent kept announcing that it was a full flight. Youmacon didn't have any Japanese representation in its first year, but it had some popular actors. Johnny Yong "Vash" Bosch and Vic Mignogna and Caitlin Glass from the Fullmetal Alchemist series are the kind of performers who love dealing with fans, and Youmacon was a great place for them to shine. We'll guess no more than a thousand people were at the convention during the Friday and Saturday we were on hand, and that kind of small crowd gave the actors the chance to get really close to the fans without being mobbed. The pictures of Mignogna and Glass cavorting with fans on this site are just a portion of the fun those performers had. When Bosch's Eyeshine band rocked on Friday night, Glass and Mignogna were in the audience, standing behind the front-row crowd and enjoying the show just like everyone else. Also in the audience was singer Kristine Sa, who had finished her performance but didn't rush backstage. Instead, Sa and her manager stood off to one side and watched Bosch's band with the rest of the audience. Sa had to overcome some vocal difficulties from the previous week and needed her sound check as an extended warmup, but once she got loosened up, she gave the Michigan fans a great performance - something seen by the number of people who went straight from her concert to her autograph line. Those people may have been among the first to buy Sa's new CD of anime tunes, songs that were featured at the concert. Sa, who finished college earlier in the year, seemed energized by the chance to get back on stage and perform in front of an audience. The only thing wrong with the concert was that it started a couple of hours late. That matters to this time-obsessed writer, whose sense of scheduling has been warped by too many airline flights where you have to show up hours early, but no one else complained. There also were no bad words we heard when the Saturday night costume contest also ran late, but that was offset by the short length of the contest. The pictures on this site document every entry and nothing was left out; there were few images because there were few entrants. Some good costumers didn't enter the contest, including a Dios from Last Exile that we assumed was going to be in the contest - but he wasn't. The convention placed their contest sign-up table right next to the registration window, so it wouldn't have been hard for anyone interested to enter. It's unlikely that people from the Detroit area are shy about appearing on stage, and we're not sure why there weren't many entrants. Perhaps that was a reflection of something seen the previous weekend at Nekocon, where it was said that the hall costume contest was so popular that some fans entered that show rather than appear as walkons in the Saturday night stage contest. The only sign of sparse attendance came on Saturday night, when this writer was breaking down his photo booth. He wandered to the water table next to the main events room entrance, looked inside and saw only a half-dozen people on the dance floor - about one person for each of the DJ's loudspeakers. That photo booth, which stayed busy, was the site of another piece of fun fan interaction. Perhaps inspired by Bosch's first acting break in the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers series, Youmacon brought in a big delegation from the Power Rangers SPD series - actors Chris Violette, Bruce Kalish, Monica May and Alycia Purrott and producer Greg Aronowitz. On Saturday night, a fan who made his own exceptionally detailed version of the police uniform for that series brought May and Purrott over to the booth for a bunch of posing and pictures, and the actors enjoyed the opportunity. To our recollection, that Power Rangers group was the first time sentai series' had gotten a major push at an anime convention since a couple of the series' artists and designers were at one of the Anime Reactor conventions. In the week before Youmacon, this writer spent a few dollars on a ticket to a WWE wrestling show. One of the matches in the Smackdown TV taping was between newcomer Mr. Kennedy and Eddie Guerrero. That match had a clever ending, a neat variation on the chairshot confrontation. After the referee was knocked down, Guerrero left the ring, got a chair (always referred to as a "steel" chair), motioned as if he was going to smash Kennedy with the chair - but instead tossed the chair at Kennedy, who caught it as Guerrero flopped to the mat. When the ref got up from his planned bump, he saw Guerrero flat on his back and Kennedy holding the chair, so he disqualified Kennedy and gave Guerrero the win. Kennedy's reaction was to smash Guerrero with the chair and leave him sprawled in the ring, and Eddie needed a few minutes before he staggered to his feet to the cheers of the crowd. That was probably Guerrero's final victory. Five days later, Eddie died in his Minneapolis hotel room. One hopes the worked chairshot wasn't too real... Youmacon Main Page