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As many of you know (since I saw you there), Mountain-Con III was held about a week ago (September 21-23) at the University Park Marriott in Salt Lake City. Major guests included Garrett Wang, Felix Silla, David Prowse, BarBara Luna, Femi Taylor, Cynthia Cummens, Chase Masterson, and Craig Richard Nelson (returning for his third appearance). 

Local guests included Diana Pharaoh Francis, Jake Black, Andrew Dabb (don't recal seeing him there, though), Paul Genesse, Ken Rand, Eric James Stone, Karen Anne Webb, Dan Willis,Tyler Kirkham, and Howard Tayler.

The convention was mostly on the first (lower) floor of the hotel, with the main convention rooms surrounding a central area with club tables and tables for various guests for signing and chatting with fans. All of the guests were very friendly toward the fans, and all but one were very open to fans taking photos of them and with them. 

Wang seemed to fit right into the fans, and could likely blend in without such a well known face. Silla enjoyed joking with people as well. Nelson even helped out with making announcements throughout the con.

Mountain-Con had their first Masquerade, which had 14 entries (pretty good for a first time!). Everyone seemed to be having fun, and their were some excellent costumes and acts. Charlie and Steve Harmon reprised their "Mirror, Mirror (Part II)" act, the perennially updated Borg was a favorite, and Dr. Frank-N-Furter even put in a crowd-pleasing (or shocking, perhaps) appearance.

KSL did a story about the con, and they were featured on a segment with Big Buddha on Fox 13. 

Looking forward to next year. I'll be posting some pictures later.

Well, Anime Banzai 2007 is over now, and I think it was very successful third year convention. All of the people I talked to there enjoyed themselves, and we are all looking forward to next year. Despite a doubling of the at the door rate from last year (to $30/person), the numbers at the con were still almost what they were last year. The amount of activities and the amount of time were also doubled (since they could start about 12 hours earlier than they could while at Salt Lake Community College), and they took advantage of all the extra time. 

The dealers room was about the same, though at least one of the dealers had less merchandise available than last year due to flying to the con instead of driving. Many of the dealers were familiar from past years, too. There was no art show this year, from lack of interest I'm guessing. The art show last year was smaller than the one the first year. It may be that they just need someone very dedicated to running one. We'll see if they bring it back again.

This was the first year Anime Banzai was held in a hotel (specifically, the Sheraton City Centre Hotel on 500 South), and while there were some rough edges due to inexperience on the part of the con staff and dealing with hotel issues, I think they did an admirable job overall. I even talked to some of the other hotel guests who asked me what was going on, and some of them seemed genuinely interested instead of amused or scared by all the weirdos running around in strange costumes. The hotel staff seemed more friendly than when CONduit was there. 

The guests this year included Artbeat and Michael Dobson. Artbeat was very well received, and had an encore performance on Saturday night in addition to their scheduled Friday night concert, pushing back the cosplay contest an hour. After their concerts, they sold copies of their CDs, signed them, and posed for pictures with their fans. From my perspective, they were very gracious throughout. 

Artbeat is an unusual group, being a Jrock group from the United States rather than Japan. The members of the group speak both Japanese and English, and have released three independent albums. They have been making the rounds to various conventions, and have even begun being noticed in Japan. 

Michael Dobson is a well-known English-language voice actor working for the Ocean Group. He's voiced Starscream (Transformers), as well as many other anime and non-anime roles. He gave a presentation about what it was like to be a voice actor, covering some of his experiences over the last many years. 

I participated on two panels, one about classic anime (1980s and earlier) and one about the difference between reality and the portrayal of life in Japan in anime. Both were very well attended (probably not due to me, but I can hope), and those attending asked a lot of good questions which we answered. You can get the handout for the classic anime panel here:

If you like anime, or even just curious about it, I highly recommend attending next year. It's great fun!I'll be posting some pictures later.

Salt Lake City (and the surrounding area), has two anime-only stores:

You can find domestically released anime and manga at many local stores in addition to the two above. Just be careful you know what you're buying as some of the other local stores carry pirated goods, too.