Weekend adventures

OK, I just spent the weekend at my first Anime Con, Anime Detour. A few of things came out of this for me:

1) Anime fans are an interesting bunch. There was much more running around in costume than at the comic conventions I have been to in the past. Maybe I need to spend more time at science fiction cons in general to get used to this. In general I like it though. It was a good atmosphere and I think it is something I want to do more of. We shall see in the future, but I think I will be going to Anime Detour again next year.

2) I know way more about Anime than I thought. I figured that since I have not watched any of the recent series, I would be lost amidst the Anime faithful. As it turns out, I have apparently been absorbing Anime through my skin via osmosis and recognized a fair portion of the costumes. I found myself somewhat intrigued by a lot of it and I think I will be spending some time watching some of this stuff in the near future.

3) I am getting old. I worked as a volunteer because I knew one of the staff members (he was why I went in the first place) and they were short on people. While I was "badging" (verifying people were wearing their con badges when entering con areas) I noticed that a high percentage (40+ percent) of these people were wearing pink badges. The system worked like this: orange badge=AD staff, green badge=dealer/con guest, blue badge=adult con attendee, pink badge=minor con attendee. I was amazed and appalled to realize that something like half of the people I was seeing were literally half my age or less. I had no idea that anime had penetrated the youth of America this deeply. I think the thing that bothered me the most is that in far too many cases, I would not have know they were so young had it not been for the badges. I'm trying to figure out when my ability to read ages went out the window...

Anyway, I had fun and I want to do it again. I'll even try to remember to post some of the pictures I took of the costumes in the next few days when I remember to download them from my camera!