Conventional Wisdom

(Historical Notes: Anime USA isn’t the first anime convention I made a conscious decision to not go back to.  Heck, it’s not even the first of this comic’s original Big Four to be dropped from the schedule.  I’d already quit doing Katsucon for several years by this point.  Still, this one felt a lot stranger to sit out than Katsu did.  For one thing, my memories of Katsucon had been poisoned by all the bad experiences with panels there, so I didn’t really feel like I was missing much.  What’s more, I didn’t really “make” the Katsucon decision so much as I went along with the decision all my usual roommates had made.  If none of the people I normally stayed with were going, that made it a lot easier for me to “decide” not to go either.  AUSA was different, though.  This time, it really was a conscious decision on my part to not go.  A big part of it was because AUSA wound up being pretty deep into December that year, and I just wasn’t going to take an already busy Holiday season and try to cram a convention into it.  But the fact that I never went back afterwards shows just how much I was leaning towards my “local cons only” philosophy even here.  Also, if you’re wondering what’s up with the Hungry Hungry Hippos… well, just click the tag and find out.)

(EDIT: OH!  Check it out!  I’d forgotten that I was re-posting these comics in full over on tumblr, so there’s actually some original commentary preserved over there!  Past Me doesn’t really say anything that isn’t here, but it’s still kinda cool.)