what goes around

In a week or so I'll be back in Atlanta for Anime Weekend Atlanta, the Japanese anime convention I helped start and that has happened every year (with one exception) since 1995. This year's AWA is notable for a few reasons, first off being the date, which has moved all the way into December from its usual September, sometimes October, very occasionally November time slot. Another reason has something to do with the first reason, namely that the convention has relocated from its Cobb Galleria Center home for the past twenty odd years. AWA has moved to Building C of the World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta! Now I know technically the Cobb Galleria Center has an Atlanta mailing address, but let's face it, once you're on the Cobb County side of the Chattahoochee, well, is that really Atlanta?

All I know is thirty-nine years back the World Congress Center is where I was attending a thing called the Atlanta Fantasy Fair, an old-school nerd show full of comics and movies and vendors and cosplayers before they were called cosplayers. I wasn't old enough to drive, but myself and my friends, we convinced our parents to let us spend the weekend at the show in a scary downtown Atlanta that had yet to be cleaned up and made safe for tourists, just so we could wallow in comic books, model kits, and people dressed like Darth Vader, X-Men, and Elfquest elves.

But what affected me the most from that Atlanta Fantasy Fair wasn't a costumer or a comic book, it's what happened in an Omni hotel room. Some people attending the show from Florida happened to be members of something called the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization. They'd brought a VCR, some cables and a big pile of video tapes of what at the time was termed “Japanimation,” and their intent was... well I don't actually know what they had in mind. Maybe they didn’t know they’d wind up turning that hotel room into an impromptu Japanese cartoon theater, but that's how things turned out. Friends, friends of friends, and total strangers all found themselves camped out in this random hotel room for hours on end, watching Space Adventure Cobra and Dagger Of Kamui and Lupin III: Castle Of Cagliostro. This was the first place I'd seen these films, the brain-melting power of peak 1980s anime cinema imprinting itself upon my psyche.

Atlanta Fantasy Fair 1985 program book cover and map

Perhaps more important than the Rintaro or the Dezaki films, though, was how they came to me; we saw these films because some fans took it upon themselves to haul equipment across state lines and fiddle with the RF connectors around the back of a hotel TV and show foreign-language animated films to a room full of random nerds, just for the sheer pleasure of sharing these awesome things with people who might enjoy them too.

The Dagger Of Kamui

That's how I came to anime fandom. I saw people doing the work and making things happen, and I took this as my blueprint for action, as my guide moving forward. In a few months we'd have our own chapter of the C/FO in Atlanta, I'd be running the anime room at that very same Atlanta Fantasy Fair, we'd be having club meetings and publishing fanzines and screening movies in odd places and eventually we'd have our own anime conventions.

If those Floridians hadn’t had the generosity to share anime with strangers we might not be here today, and by "here" I mean "The World Congress Center", a half-mile as the crow flies from that 1985 Omni suite where we watched Jiro battle ninjas and Cobra romance triplets. Of course, these days Japanese animation isn’t hard to find. We don’t have to rely on strangers showing up from out of state with VHS tapes. We can go to the movies or turn on our streaming services or throw on a Blu-Ray disc and there it is. But that impulse to share, to present, to drop something amazing on some unsuspecting crowds, that's still with us. That's why I'm still finding myself on that institutional hotel carpeting, still telling people about some amazing piece of Japanese animation they need to see.

And what will I be doing at the 2024 Anime Weekend Atlanta? Well, Thursday afternoon I'll be holding down a table in the Super Happy Fun Sell, AWA's garage sale, swap meet, flea market, yard sale event where the previously loved anime and manga merch finds new homes. Bring cash!

Thursday at 8 Neil Nadelman brings back Totally Lame Anime from its lead-lined containment facility, where decades of embarrassingly bad animation and poorly conceived concepts rise up to bring shame upon their ancestors.

Then at 10pm Thursday it's time again for Anime Hell, the whiz-bang, anything-goes kook-clip-fest where confusion, amusement and amazement battle for control of your eyeballs!

Saturday morning at 10:15 Neil and I will take you on a journey to the beginnings of anime localization in America as we look at the pioneers who saw vast opportunity in bringing Japanese animation to America, with only slight assistance from the Central Intelligence Agency.

On Saturday afternoon we'll explore the wonderful adventures of Candy Candy, perhaps America's pluckiest orphan, as she lassos ne'er-do-wells and breaks hearts across two continents in manga and anime that you aren't allowed to see in America!

Sunday we blast off to Iscandar and parts unknown with the Space Battleship Yamato on a fifty year voyage to repeatedly save the Earth, defy any number of space dictators, and move lots of merchandise through a series of originals, sequels, reboots, and reimaginings!

It's been thirty years since we started Anime Weekend Atlanta, and the closest the show has been to downtown since that first year at the ill-fated Castlegate hotel. What was once a whimsical lark for a handful of devoted anime nerds in a few cities has become a nationwide phenomenon, locking down the largest convention centers in America's major metropolitan areas for gigantic, perhaps intimidatingly crowded festivals that make the early days of anime conventions look like a quiet Sunday school picnic. What will the future hold for this phenomenon? I don't know, but I'm exhausted just thinking about it. See you at AWA!

-Dave Merrill