Fanime 2002 Report

The weekend of April 26 - 28th was doubly intensive for ADV as we attended not one but two major anime cons the same weekend with DLW and Ken Wiatrek attending Sakura Con in Seattle and myself attending Fanime 2002 in Santa Clara California. It made for an interesting weekend of both nostalgia and excitement for the future as although this was ADV?s first trip to Fanime ADV had previously attended Anime America at the same hotel way back in 1993 and I had personally attended both the first national anime con Anime Con ?91 and the first Anime Expo in 1992 in neighboring San Jose. Although there were many changes in the area perhaps the one that I found most fascinating was the sheer increase in size that anime fandom has enjoyed since the birth of ADV back in August of ?92. Whereas the first Anime Con pulled just over a thousand attendees and the early Expos and AnAms were doing good to push the two thousand-attendee envelope Fanime overwhelmed the Santa Clara convention center with a staggering six thousand fans that took over both the Westin and neighboring Hilton hotels! And whereas the earlier anime cons had to draw from across the entire country Fanime was on the same weekend as the three thousand plus member Sakura Con just up the coast in Washington. For someone who got into ?that weird Japanese animation stuff? back in the early eighties it was extremely gratifying to see how far anime has come in a short 10 years.

As for Fanime itself it was a great con and we certainly will be returning next year. Although no one had anticipated quite the number of fans who actually turned out the staff kept things running fairly smoothly although some last minute glitches in the guest programming resulted in yours truly being drafted for a position in the Anime Match Game on Friday. (Matt Miller had to cancel at the last minute and since they already had a sign made up that said ?Matt??) Perhaps the highlight of the con for myself besides the always wonderful fan response at the ADV panel was the reunion with many of the original Eva TV dub actors. Besides myself (my acting name is Brian Granveldt and I supplied the voice of Hyuga) attending Fanime were Spike Spencer (Shinji) Kendra Benham Spencer (Maya Ibuki) Amanda Winn Lee (Rei) Jason Lee (Aoba) Allison Keith (Misato) Sue Ulu (Ritsuko) and Tiffany Grant (Asuka). A truly bizarre factoid that came up during the middle of the con and one that still has us all shaking our heads at the many strange things that seem to happen wherever Evangelion is involved was the realization by someone that there was an relationship between some of the Eva actors. You see Amanda married Jason and Spike and Kendra are also now married and a few weeks ago Tiffany and myself also announced our engagement? so all three of the Eva pilots have ended up marrying the three prime Eva techs. Fact IS stranger than fiction.

It was a shame that Fanime had to occur on the same weekend as Sakura Con as I have many friends I missed seeing this year due to the conflicting schedules but as anime fandom continues to grow almost exponentially every year it seems that more and more often we?re forced to pick which con we want to go to on a particular weekend. There are around 40 anime cons planned for this year alone and there are several weekends this summer with three and even four cons going on! Anime has come a long way since David and Janice Williams and myself first made the long cross-country drive from Houston to Anime Con ?91 in San Jose and returning to the location that helped cement my ambition to help bring anime to the U.S. in any way I could made me feel very proud and grateful to have been part of the extraordinary group of people who make up anime fandom. To the organizers of Fanime Sakura Con and all of you out there thanks for making ADV and anime in North America the astounding success it has been.

Matt Greenfield
Vice-President
ADV Films

Posted on Tuesday, April 30, 2002 (Archive on Thursday, May 30, 2002)