I had a lot of fun at Nan Desu Kan this year, even though it was a quiet year. Industry row was small, with only Aniplex and Media Blasters in attendance, so I don’t think that there were any big announcements. And most of my friends couldn’t attend, so I walked around the con with only my partner for company. Still, the con was a lot of fun! We took it easy this year and spent most of our time in the main events ballroom rather than sitting in line or pushing through the crowds.

This year was my ninth year attending an anime convention and my fifth NDK, which made me realize just how old I’m starting to become. It was also NDK’s 20th anniversary—Super Dimensional NDK 20—with a theme of “Throwback.”

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I ended up doing a lot of “old school” things, including catching a showing of The Castle of Cagliostro on Saturday morning. If you’ve never heard of or seen The Castle of Cagliostro, it’s part of the Lupin the Third franchise, and I highly recommend it. It was also directed by the one and only Hayao Miyazaki back in 1979; it was his first time directing a feature-length film, and if you’re a Studio Ghibli fan like myself, you can definitely see Ghibli-qualities throughout this film. I’ve actually seen all of Studio Ghibli’s films, and yet, I had never seen The Castle of Cagliostro until seeing it at the con this year.

After getting our fill of “old school” anime, my partner and I stood in line for one of the most anticipated events of the con this year. Shinichirō Watanabe—the director of Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, and more recently Terror in Resonance—was a special guest at NDK. He, along with the screenwriter and musician Dai Satō, led a nostalgic and funny panel about Cowboy Bebop and Satō’s foray into the world of anime.

We learned that the order in which Cowboy Bebop’s episodes were written and the order in which they aired do not correlate, and that if an episode features Ed, it was probably written by Satō. Watanabe and Satō also revealed that their inspiration for Ed was one of my favorite anime and video game composers—Yoko Kanno. Overall, it was a great panel, and I think everyone in attendance was thankful for the chance to meet Watanabe-san and Satō-san and to convey to them just how much anime fans appreciate Cowboy Bebop.

We attended the NDK 2016 AMV Contest next, although I still have a hard time enjoying AMVs. I invariably end up with a headache halfway through the show and end up missing out on most of it. AMV stands for anime music video. It is a video usually made by fans who take a song—anything from an American pop song to classical music—and cut clips from an anime or from various anime and compile a video that goes along with the song.

Although I ended up leaving halfway through the show with a headache, I really liked the Best Local winner, “Lessons I’ve Learned” by Moonpie, which featured scenes from the anime film The Boy and the Beast directed by Mamoru Hosoda. Luckily, I ended up catching the second half of the reshowing on Sunday morning, which means that I did get to see all of the entries.

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Sunday was especially quiet. I ended up attending the Art Show Auction where I tried bidding on a beautiful print of Stephanie Kao‘s submission to the Bring Down the Sky: A Bioware Fanzine! I didn’t win it, which was disappointing, but I may buy the fanzine now instead.

I also briefly attended the Charity Auction, which really is a great way to end the convention. Every year, NDK sponsors a local charity, and all proceeds collected during the Charity Auction go to that charity. This year, NDK sponsored Canine Companions for Independence, and although I didn’t stay to the very end, I’m sure that they broke donation records yet again.

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So, did you attend NDK this year? What did you enjoy about it? What kinds of experiences (i.e. cosplay, panels, video rooms, dealers room, etc.) are important to you when you attend cons? Sound off in the comments!

The featured image included with this article is from the NDK 2016 Program Guide cover art by Stephanie Kao.

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Rine Karr is an Anime Writer at Girls in Capes. She’s a writer and aspiring novelist by moonlight and a copyeditor by daylight. Rine loves good food, travel, and lots of fiction, especially novels, anime, manga, video games, and films. She’s also the Chief Copyeditor and an occasional contributor at Women Write About Comics.