I’d had the idea for a chapter about the characters going to an anime convention for ages. It’s one of those things where I have a distinct set of experiences that no one else has ever really even tried to capture. I have a whole thing about stories about going to conventions. This chapter wound up being really long, and also Kingsley wound up taking up the role of artist right in the middle.



Cosplay is one of those things where we’d have all kinds of ideas at the con and never actually do. And Snowball’s resemblance to Rei was not accidental.

Jon/Calico did (and still does) have a way of doing lots and lots of brief messages to get the point across.

Jenny/Sunny really was like this online too. And her handle really was “Porphyria,” which is kind of disturbing if you know the full significance of it.

In case there was ever any doubt, AnimeCon is basically FanimeCon. Also Neko Machi is basically San Jose in a parallel universe with more catgirls.

One convention I went totally crazy and really did buy about $200 worth of plushies. Which is less than Michael/Snowball sometimes spent on Gundam models.

Not sure where I was going with this, but apparently I decided to stop going there.

Tiger is based on my friend Mike S. (who is also now my business partner with Star Line Publishing by the way). Everyone’s a catgirl. Yay.

This is based on stuff Kingsley saw when he went to A-Kon, before they ended up having to ban signs because dumb people were hanging out with signs and blocking hallways to the point where they were legitimately concerned that the fire marshal would shut them down. (And considering this was in Texas, that’s saying something.)

I’m including this bit of art by another friend of mine because the comic after doesn’t make any sense otherwise. I should’ve suspected something when he asked me how to write “sausage” in Japanese.

So another thing that needs a little explanation. Mike/Tiger managed to arrange it so that the FanimeCon program guide included a trio of Button Men things (which you could take to the tabletop gaming room to have cut out and turned into buttons), two of which included artwork of Kitty and Sylvia in crazy warrior mode. I decided to have something in the comic so that the Button Men versions of them wouldn’t be totally unexplained when a zillion people at Fanime had the URL on buttons, hence “Neko Machi Alternative,” which was also kind of a vague continuation of the “Kitty’s Dream” storyline.

Ker-KINGSLEY!

Based on when I met Josh Lesnick at A-Kon. I am not always great at being a people person.

Based on an actual guy selling yaoi stuff at FanimeCon.

Based on a guy I met while helping out a bit in con staff. I think his name was Randy. He’s really cool.

Of the various things Kingsley did for Neko Machi, this Fourth of July piece is easily my favorite.

These two comics are based on something that actually happened (though it was an R2-D2 plush). One of my better moments.

The Ginza Cafe was our favorite restaurant in San Jose’s Japantown until it finally closed because the owner retired. It didn’t hurt that at the time we were friends with a guy whose family was friends with the owner, and thus we usually got at a free tray of California rolls out of the deal.

This and the comic before it were based on Jezebel/Dora’s pet dog Bella. Her response to the comic was “Ha ha very funny guys.”

Bonus Stuff