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A-Kon - Author's Notes - 2006 Notes finished yet again at O'Hare Airport: A-Kon marked the welcome return to convention life for one of the most enjoyable of guests of honor. Shin Kurokawa was a regular on the convention circuit when he was a translator and video producer, in the days that AnimEigo of North Carolina was a cutting-edge anime importer. But three years ago, he encountered major health problems that left him blind and helpless. Surgery restored his sight, and he was able to get back to conventions at A-Kon's midpoint. After his physical trials, Kurokawa looks good, all but unchanged from his heyday - something that was confirmed just after we met him on the convention's main floor. Kurokawa was wearing a pattered T-shirt that seemed nothing special, but it - and his handsome face - was special enough that a female fan insisted taking his picture. It left him in disbelief, but it was nothing we hadn't seen a few years earlier, and it confirmed that he's really back in the saddle. You might want to offer up a prayer for "Doc" Fraga, who might have some health problems with which to deal. The high point of the weekend was the air conditioning at A-Kon's hotel and convention center. For other conventions that might seem like a backhanded insult, but not for something in Texas in June. If the air conditioning didn't work, there would have been no event. The official outdoor temperature was measured at 98 degrees, and in the heat of downtown Dallas, fed by asphalt and the sunlight reflected by the many glass-clad skyscrapers, and it must have been well over 100 outside. Only anime fans and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun, but the "outdoors" were the covered walkways between buildings. Those paths were warm in the afternoons, but they were still cooler than being in the real outdoors. This writer's main employer insisted that he work on Friday this year, so we missed A-Kon's opening day, not arriving until late Saturday morning. Fans comments suggest we were missed because of our later arrival. Our big shortcoming of the weekend was missing actor Vic Mignogna's costuming as Cloud from Final Fantasy, but we did get a picture of Kristine Sa's new tail. The A-Kon dealer's room stayed open all weekend, an improvement from the previous year and a sign that there was an agreement between the convention and the Dallas fire marshal. In 2005, that marshal closed the room for several hours because some potential emergency exits were blocked by dealers' tables. In 2006, the passages were clear and there was more space between aisles. Dealers were still grumbling about the money they lost when the room was closed during Saturday's peak hours the previous year. There were some Japanese guests, but they didn't want their pictures taken, including musicians who presumably wanted to sell CD's. That voice acting panel we covered was the smaller of its kind over the weekend. There were twice as many dub actors in a second panel, including people (Carries Savage and Taliesin Jaffe) who weren't on the official guest list. The panel was in a room never used by A-Kon before, mostly because it was tucked away on the hotel's four floor and hard to find and reach, but fans still found the room and backed it, waiting delightedly as their acting heroes arrived. Our sports coincidences this time were strong ones, starting with the Dallas Mavericks' playing in the NBA finals. The American Airlines Arena where the Mavs play was visible from upper-floor hotel rooms, and it was said that some downtown hotel guests were in town for the basketball. The Mavs won both of their first two games of the series at home, with game two coming a couple of hours after A-Kon was over. The other coincidence was the Indy Racing League event at the Texas Motor Speedway on the convention's Saturday night. It was very tempting to spend that night at the track watching the 210-mile per hour racing, but we calculated the extra expense of the 40-mile trip to the Denton County superspeedway and spent the night taking backstage pictures of costumers before the costume contest. Too bad that event started late and that costumers got rushed on and off the stage because of concern that a concert would run late - which it did, but not because of the costumers. If we get a plane ticket, we're headed next to AnimeNEXT in New Jersey, across the Holland Tunnel from Manhattan. We expect to have a photo sales booth at that convention, and we'll look to recruit costumers for the Cure Magazine goth and J-rock fan pages and for a forthcoming cosplay book from Stonebridge Press. And we're also planning to head to Anime Expo, where we're planning to join the Newtype USA panel and take some special pictures for the magazine's convention report. A note for fans who want to reach us by E-mail: the old lillard@dm.net address no longer works. If you tried to send us a message using that address, it didn't reach us. We're replaced that address - which went down after nearly 15 years - with a new address linked to the domain, lillard@fansview.com. That address does work. A-Kon Main Page