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Sakura Con - Author's Notes - 2007 The weather was one of the big stories of the weekend, something so unusual that it was front-page news in the Post-Intelligencer. On the convention's opening Friday, you could see Mount Ranier from Seattle (the king of the Cascades is nearly 60 miles to the south), which is a sign of decent weather - but Friday's weather was spectacular. Seattle recorded a record high of 80 degrees, the few clouds in in the sky were unusually white, fluffy and dry, and people were astonished by the invasion of southern California weather in the typically dreary Pacific Northwest. Of course, it couldn't last, and Saturday brought standard Seattle drizzle, broken only by a few hours of Sunday sunshine. That rain, unsurprisingly, drove costumers indoors from the fourth-level plaza that was used for most of the weekend's gatherings. Sakura Con was held on the Easter weekend, a time that once was avoided by big public events. But the major religious holiday didn't stop anime fans; we heard the paid weekend attendance was over 10,000. A few years ago, Anime Boston also had attendance success on the same religious holiday. That Seattle crowd caught the convention organizers by surprise. The registration line was the longest we've seen since last year, with some fans stuck in that line fr several hours. If we had been at the back of the line we would have given up and gone home, and we kept wondering if there's a faster way other than the "take your name and money and print a badge" system that often doesn't run quickly. This writer still prefers the Gen Con system where you pay in advance and are mailed a badge before the show, the same basic system used by most big sporting events. Travel and schedule conflicts kept us away from Sakura Con in 2006, so 2007 was our first exposure to the event's location at the Washington State convention center. It's arranged vertically rather than horizontally, with the major ballrooms on the equivalent of a sixth-floor level, two stories above the main level. That bridge-like construction meant the top floor vibrated like a drumhead during the loudest events, a sensation that unnerved some of the more sensitive fans - but that's not unusual for buildings with big expanses of unsupported floor space. The convention center also is like a bridge because it's constructed directly over a highway, just like the Hynes convention center in Boston was built over the Massachusetts Turnpike. In a year where conventions have been cutting back on the number of Japanese guests of honor, Sakura Con had the strongest collection of those guests of the year. It seemed as if the Seattle event had more Japanese artists and creators at one show than the rest of the year's U.S. conventions combined. We wonder if the large number of Japanese guests attracted the large crowd, the biggest anime convention attendance of the season. Certainly, those Japanese guests led to a higher sense of excitement and energy than we've seen at other events this year. All of the Japanese creative people had been guests at previous U.S. conventions, except for Kaori Nazuka, the Eureka voice who was a newcomer. Nazuka made her mark, in more ways than one, when she had - and won - a swordfight with director Akitaroh Daichi during the costume contest break. Daichi retains his love of potatoes, and was spotted munching potato chips in a room overlooking the dealers' room. That room was crowded for most of the weekend, but it was oddly empty during a double-header concert on Saturday afternoon when dealers should have been at their busiest. The most powerful American guests of honor may have been the Megatokyo and Penny Arcade webcomic guests. All have been popular repeat performers at Sakuracon, people who can fill big rooms with their fans. The Holkins and Krahulik Arcade team was as big a home team as the Mariners or Seahawks. Penny Arcade is big enough to have their own convention that is going to rival Sakura Con in size when it moves to the same Seattle convention center in August. Two years earlier, Sakura Con used two hotels next to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, but had to move downtown when they ran out of space. In 2007, the long-running Norwescon sci-fi convention (there have been 30 Norwescons as compared to ten Sakura Cons) was on the same weekend as the anime convention. And, the Emerald City ComicCon was held the weekend before Sakura Con. From the look of the convention center crowds, those competing events didn't keep anyone away from Sakura Con., which probably had three or four times the attendance that Norwescon had. We try not to dwell on the sadness of life in these notes, but we must mention that on Tuesday of the convention week, the father of actor and director Amanda Winn Lee passed away.  It was one of those slow deaths from cancer that is all too common in this world, made all the sadder because Lee's father was a physician who treated cancer cases. Lee and her husband, Jason Lee, have been some of the most welcome and creative people on the convention scene since this site began, nearly ten years ago.  It's been sad to watch them go through the trials of life that began with their son's illness and now includes the father's death. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers; if you enjoyed seeing them at conventions, they deserve your support in their hour of grief and need. Sakura Con Main Page