Anime North 2009: Chapter 7

After another night of sleeping between car, video screening room, and table I was ready to take on the final moments of Anime North. The Sunday is a bitter sweet time for most people. It is the culmination of a weekend that few are likely to forget, however it is also the final moments of something that will be hard to recapture, and hard to ever explain to those not present.

Like a leadership conference, or all you can eat pancakes devoured from four aye em to six, while the sun rises beyond the wall length windows of a campy retro diner, connections were formed that should not have otherwise existed. Or perhaps, connections that should have always existed, but were prevented by the walls of social conventions, and polite society.

Beside me a girl dressed as a maid is roused from her slumber. Her dream, much like this brief moment in time, has come to an end. But it does not mean that she will sleep no more. Next year the convention will come again, and for three more days – a mere oh point eight percent of the year - the lucid hallucination will return.

Phone numbers are exchanged between costumed critters, with many knowing that they will never be used. Who they are in these moments is not who they will be weeks later.

Gone is the living internet – gone is the unquestioned friendship and kindness. Social barriers return as people walk to the parking lot, giant swords trailing. Creates of manga are loaded into van back hatches. Doors are slammed. Ceremonies mark the end.

And just like that, the hotel returns to normal – the new bride no longer has to wonder if she choose incorrectly in booking this hotel for her honeymoon. The poolside is free of cat girls, and monsters, and early-teen waifs.

The dream has ended; we’ve all lost the game.

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