Force of Habit, I Suppose…

Dearest Rachel –

A couple of weeks ago, shortly after returning from Japan (from which I had unsuccessfully tried to get a room in the hotel that the convention was being held in; when you’re fourteen hours out of sync with the world you’re trying to deal with, that adds a level of difficulty to the process that makes it darn near impossible to accomplish, and we’ve missed opening days enough times without that challenge to deal with), I’d booked myself a room at the next closest hotel to the Coralville Hilton for this year’s Anime Iowa. Since she was planning to visit for her first time with several friends from college, I contacted Erin, and let her know that she needed to get in gear, if she (and they) wanted to get their hotel reservations and admissions taken care of (as they would stop offering the badges for online purchase either at the end of this month or early in June). While thanking me about the badge reminder, she affirmed that they had already taken care of their hotel stay some time back (albeit also at a different hotel than the one hosting the convention), so they’d taken care of the hard part.

But then she asked me a question: “Wait, didn’t you say that last year was going to be your last at Anime Iowa? Why’d you change your mind?”

I had to pause at that; I really hadn’t thought about it – or if I had, I didn’t want to admit it to myself. After a few moments of pondering the question, all I could come back with was, “Force of habit, I suppose.”

Now, you would have found that funny, since you recognize the Stan Freberg reference embedded in it. To be fair, it’s a pretty innocuous line in and of itself; it’s King Ferdinand’s response to Isabella’s lame explanation that really sells it – and under the circumstances, it’s probably a decent follow-up for me to address when it comes to these sorts of events:

“Isabella… when are ya gonna stop fooling around with these nuts?!”

***

Of course, Anime Central and AnimeIowa have their own unique sets of reasons why I go to them; I’ll deal with the latter more when that weekend is upon us – assuming I can come up with something. For now, let’s see if I can address this one; why I go to it, and why those reasons have changed.

There’s a certain ‘sunk cost’ aspect to Anime Central; we came to the very first one back in 1998, and haven’t missed attending since – apart from the two years in which it was cancelled during Covid, and, of course, since you’re no longer here to attend in the first place. Despite the fact that your absence means that I’ve no one to crosstalk with as we wander through everything, I think I still want to maintain that perfect attendance record for some reason or another. It seems a particularly trivial, even petty, reason, but sometimes it’s the only thing I can seize upon in order to explain my little habit here.

After all, it’s not as if I even watch that much anime anymore; in fact, since discovering YouTube through Daniel’s friends at college, we’d sort of given up on it. There are still two series that we saw all but the last episode of before your accident; I had planned on watching the final episode of each of them and reporting to you about them when I attended one of these conventions since then, but I couldn’t bring myself to, and they were other things, not so much demanding, as attracting my attention away from this self-imposed task that, truth to tell, I didn’t really want to do. If nothing else, I advised you away from watching the last episode of Kino no Tabi specifically because of its tragic ending, and I had heard less than glowing reviews about how Shimoneta ended; so why bother to watch these and confirm what I already knew, especially given that either one would be relatively unpleasant?

But as I said, there have been changes to the dynamic at Anime Central. Not to the convention itself, to be sure, although I suppose Covid has altered it in its own ways – although maybe less so than I expect, as some of the mandates that we had to adhere to last year are not likely to be in force. No, this is on a more personal level. These conventions used to be a way for the two of us to get away together; obviously, that’s no longer a thing – and it brings into question why I should continue to go to Iowa. However, at least here in the Chicago suburbs, it’s close enough that Daniel has gotten interested in attending. The fact that Logan comes along (and indeed, is more into anime than I suspect the two of us combined) makes it that much more so for him.

So that’s a whole new reason to continue to go here, anyway. But if it were just the boys wanting to go, why, you might ask, do I still bother to go as well? It’s not like they need chaperoning or anything, and most of the reason I’d be walking around have all but disappeared in the intervening years. So why bother?

I really don’t know, honey. Force of habit, I suppose. Or maybe I’m just not ready to stop hanging around with these nuts just yet.

Anyway, keep an eye on me, honey, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.