At 09:48 PM 7/14/99 -0700, Ken Arromdee wrote:

On Wed, 14 Jul 1999, Rhea Seraph wrote:

Anyone going this year?
I have to admit, I had more fun at AI98 than at almost any other con I've
been to.

While I can't plan that far ahead, I certainly hope to go!

I'm considering going.  Of course I need a room...  And is it any good?  What
was it like last year?

I don't remember the URL, but if anyone's interested their web site is
listed on the Anipike

AnimeIowa is small. IIRC, last year they had something like 400 attendees,
and that was double the 1997 number. They sold out their hotel last year,
and have moved to larger quarters for '99.

Being small means a lot more guest contact. I spent part of Friday night
last year sitting at a poolside table with 3 GoH (including Jason Lee),
watching Amanda Wynn-Lee and others dragging other GoH's into the hotel
pool - with their clothes on (this is the obligatory convention Amanda story)

Saturday night the hotel totally emptied out one of their rooms (one that
had kitchen facilities), so that a group *not* affilitated with the con
(Twin Cities Anime and Manga Society - TCAMS) could have a big party. Lots
of TVs so everyone could see, lots of food/drink - the only bad thing was
that there were so many people it got *hot*! And the friendly hotel staff
then brought in fans to try to keep the air moving.

The cosplay was well done - the emcee kept things moving. Video rooms had
the usual problems -- hard to see subtitles. The dealer's room had a very
high number of SM CDs on sale (I couldn't get over this), and was small in
number of dealers, but then again this *was* a small convention.

The con staff was friendly, the hotel staff didn't seem to mind the con too
much, and there were several fanfic writers from this list there too
(anyone remember sitting in the lounge across from the hotel desk, cracking
*them* up while making up the "you might be an otaku" list? ^_^)

I don't know what it was, or maybe just a combination of factors -- I went
to AnimeIowa98 last year as a literally last-minute draftee to the fanfic
panel, not knowing what would happen or who was going to be there, and
ended up having a pretty good time, even better than many of the much
larger cons I've been to with specific plans to meet friends there.





Jeanne Hedge

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