I'm back from Kumoricon Portland's big anime (Japanese animation) convention. Don't know how many attendees there were, but it was probably in the 5,000 range.

Karen and I have been anime fans since we discovered the work of Hayao Miyazaki in the mid-Eighties, first by accidentally stumbling upon his amazing (but never released in English) Future Boy Conan animated TV series in Spanish on Univision.

We caught the anime wave when it was just starting. It's gotten awfully huge in the meantime. I can't even keep track of the names of all the animated movies and TV shows coming out of Japan, let alone watch all of them. (I'll make some recommendations in a minute.)

Anime differs from American cartoons largely through the concept of "more": more violence, more romance, more elaborate costumes and settings, more character development, more plot, bigger explosions -- and more viewers.

The assumption is that people of all ages watch anime, so the themes are much more like prime-time shows than Saturday morning cartoons. Anime has a strong element of love interest. Even kid shows tend to revolve around a complex web of crushes and unrequited love, which I find charming. Shows aimed at older viewers add sex appeal, which to me has a Fifties/Sixties retro feel, like Diana Rigg in her skin-tight jumpsuit in black-and-white episodes of THE AVENGERS. And all this means that romance is in the air in most shows, whether open or implied. I think it's the romantic elements that make anime so much more popular than mainstream science fiction with female viewers.

In anime conventions, it's more or less expected that you will be in a costume representing one of your favorite characters.

This year I have chosen to be an air pirate from Porco Rosso, a film I despair of describing, other than it involves fictional air pirates off the coast of Italy in the late Twenties, who are constantly threatened with being put out of business by the main character, Porco Rosso, a bounty hunter and reluctant hero.

The air pirates were on the whole a middle-aged lot, I came to the con dressed as one of them. This choice also had the advantage that it could be put together from off-the-shelf items: a flight suit, leather helmet, goggles, silk scarf, military shoes, etc. Many fans take infinite pains to make costumes from scratch, but I'll bet they don't have a farm!

In addition to wearing costumes evertwhere, there is a great deal of picture-taking at anime cons, with everyone striking their best poses or demonstrating their trademark moves. As an air pirate, I of course posed with my "captives."

This con has everything: masquerade balls, role-playing games, multiple video-viewing rooms, panel discussions, workshops on a zillion topics, a dealer's room with all sorts of merchandise, an area for artists to hawk (and create!) their wares -- you name it.

It was in the Portland Hilton, which was a shame, I thought, because I hold a grudge against the Hilton for living in the Dinosaur Era and not having wireless on every floor, just so they can stick you for ten bucks a day for their pathetic single Ethernet cable per room. This is the 21st Century, guys! Among the four of us, we had five WiFi-equipped devices. Dinosaur hotels like the Hilton compare poorly with, say, Motel 6, which seems to have had free WiFi forever.

WiFi aside, it was a lot of fun, and I'll probably be there next year, and take an artist's table while I'm at it, with stacks of my books -- One Survivor (my science fiction novel) and Through Dungeons Deep my book on fantasy role-playing games, plus whatever wares we come up with from our Artsy Android T-shirt and gift venture.

Recommended Shows

Among my favorite shows are:

• Anything by Hayao Miyazaki. Start with Totoro if you like children's movies, or Castle in the Sky otherwise.
• The Big O. Possibly the most incompetently-named show ever (the show's creators had no clue that the phrase, "the big O" actually meant something), this show falls into the genre of film noir, along with The Maltese Falcon and Bladerunner. Deeply textured, with lots of mystery, double-dealing, beautiful settings, femme fatales, giant robots, you name it.
• Cardcaptor Sakura is completely charming and very well-written. The main plot (Sakura has to retrieve all the magical cards before they cause trouble) is almost overshadowed by love-interest subplots. Everyone in Sakura's class has a crush on somebody. This show is aimed squarely at the tastes of ten-year-old girls, and has a very different feel from the more macho shows aimed at boys.