24-26 April 1999
—by Charles McCarter

Anime Central was held in Rosemont, Illinois on 24-26 April 1999. While in the same general vicinity of the Chicago area, after last year's convention, programming needs required a move to a hotel with larger programming space.
Unfortunately, due to the lovely Midwestern weather, my flight was delayed out of Los Angeles by six hours, and I arrived too late to witness the opening ceremonies. However, on hand were returning Guests Sonoda Kenichi, Kotobuki Tsukasa, and new addition Moriyama Yuji. American guests included a large number of American voice actors and actresses, including the always entertaining Amanda Winn Lee and her husband Jason Lee, as well as Lisa Ortiz, Rachel Lillis, and Crispin Freeman, all of whom have been enjoying work on the POKÉMON juggernaut.

The Hotel

The first thing I noticed about the con was the hotel. While the convention space was nice, most of the attendees stayed in what could be described as the "Eastern Bunker" of the hotel. The biggest difficulty was that in order to get to your hotel room to any of the programming areas, one had to allow a significant amount of time. Return trips to the room were not to be undertaken lightly.

Clockwise from top left: Kotobuki Tsukasa smiles for the camera. Sonoda Kenichi smiles at the end of his press interview. Moriyama Yuji relaxes during an interview. Kotobuki and friends pose for the camera.

Programming

Programming featured a panel for each guest of honor, where they could talk about their works and answer the questions that fans like to ask. However, some of the Guests surprised the attendees with their candid comments about working in the anime industry. Sonoda, for example, took the opportunity to

Scott Frazier shares some of the more bizarre experiences he's had living in Japan at the "Being a Foreigner in Japan" panel.

decry the recent remakes of old anime television series, insinuating that these showed a lack of creativity on the part of the production companies and a lack of faith from the sponsors. He would reiterate these comments later in the press session.
Other panel topics included "Being a Foreigner in Japan," and "Anime Online," which was attended by several EX staffers. The "Foreigners in Japan" panel was enlivened by the witty stories of both Scott Frazier and Richard Kim, who managed to make living in Japan seem at once interesting and exciting and paradoxically bizarre. One especially interesting panel discussed the merits of Saturday morning television. And, although it may not have been directly related to anime, it brought back a lot of nostalgic memories to the audience members.