Fanime 2002 Gallery

Updated May 31, 2009

Fanime 2002 Writeup
Fanime Con 2002 is over, so we've taken some time to write up some brief impressions of the con. You'll be able to find more details at various sites like Anime On DVD; this is meant to be a brief description of the con, followed by a fairly massive gallery of pictures from the con.

NOTE: If you find yourself in one of our pictures, and you would like us to show your name or want your picture removed from the site, please email us with subject "My Fanime 2002 pic" and let us know. Please give the exact filename of the picture (e.g. "day3/r0011092.jpg") and your name, plus what your costume was (if you want) at

April 26th - Day 1: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Overall, the con seemed to be pretty busy for a Friday. This seemed a little surprising, but these articles at the Mercury News probably helped: Some Favorites, Teenagers hooked on anime, Silicon Valley animation convention. One nice thing this year is that the dealers room is a lot bigger, so there should be fewer problems with lines.

April 27th - Day 2: Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10
Saturday is always the busiest day, and you could tell. Even with our fan table in a less accessible region than last year, we were seeing plenty of traffic. Most of the great panels were on this day, as was the Masquerade (or Der Cosplay, as Fanime calls it). Der Cosplay, as usual, ran out of tickets quickly, due to the limited seating at the convention center theater. We saw people walking around the dealers room with signs that said "Will buy masquerade ticket."

As for the Masquerade itself, here is what staffer Ed Schwartz has to say (since he was the only staffer who got in): The fan favorite was the Jin-Roh Wolf Brigade here and here). Returning favorites, the CSUS martial arts club gave an impressive performance, beheading cardboard cutouts. They mixed "skit with humor" with their martial arts display. If Harry Potter was made into an anime series, it might be something like the three women who presented a satellite campus of Hogwarts, a witches finishing school in Tokyo. The highlight for most of the male members of the audience was the "Yui Seiryuu No Miho" dancing by the Fushigi Yuugi priestess (Julia Nolan). Unless it was the gold-clad nine woman "USA Musume" group dancing to a Morning Musume song. The highlight for females was Chris Tang's "Special Ed. Raiden" portrayal of a life size, "correct in every detail" action figure. The glitziest costumes were on the "Priestesses" by Stitchen' Babes. This year, the style for NERV boxes was "short." Hopefully not setting a new trend, one of the skits featured a toilet on stage. The staff skit was short!

"What goes up, must come down," unless it was one of the two piñata prizes that a strong armed girl threw up into the lights. The piñata was the turtle (Tama-chan) from Love Hina.

About a half dozen excellent anime music videos were used to separate segments of the masquerade.

The most popular stage hand was Jerry from Davis. He probably got his full quota of embarrassment for the year. Long time No-Name staffer Robert as stage manager was essential to running the masquerade. New staffer Trevor at far below "touch Dieter's Totoro" level, wasn't quite good enough even to polish emcee Brian's shoes. I hope Brian didn't kick Trevor too hard. Better luck next time Trevor!

April 28th - Day 3: Part 11, Part 12, Part 13
This was definitely the wrap-up day. There were fewer people around, and many people had to hurry and get checked out of the hotel first before going back into the con. The Fan Club Summit took place in the afternoon, and Ed was good enough to attend this for us. Quite a number of clubs were there, although apparently Robert Miles from BAAS ended up monopolizing the floor slightly. By the end of the con, the latest attendance estimate we heard was between 4,400 to 4,800, pending a final count. This isn't as much of an increase as in past years, but with Sakura Con going on at the same time, and the economy in the state it is, this was probably to be expected.

A quick chat with the Media Blasters people at their booth got the information that éx-Driver should be out around June. Interestingly enough, the woman we talked to said she didn't think they had the rights to the movie.