Following the late night, we woke up a little tired, but ready to face the day. We got to the Hynes without incident, and I underwent a magical transformation.

Saturday is long held by many a convention dealer to be the best day of any three-day weekend convention, for many reasons. Those who could not get time off for Friday are coming in, many people get tickets for Saturday only, those who were there on Friday have already done most of their browsing and should be ready to commit, and the list goes on.

And there most certainly were a lot of people on the floor in the Dealer’s Room; more than 11,000 according to the announcement that went out perhaps an hour into the day. By comparison, we did not do as well as we should have, considering the sheer volume of people, but we did better than Friday.

We took a lot of pictures (that are still being processed, believe it or not) on Friday and Saturday. Sapo was composing shots with his fancy-pants camera; I was soliciting cosplayers for poses.

Aside from the Steam-Powered Tentacle Boulder, one of the newest Kaiju Heroes, making a totally unscripted appearance at our booth, there’s not too much that stood out in my mind on Saturday*. It was mostly a haze of hawking (the crowds were so thick that we resorted to shouting at passerby instead of trying to engage people one-on-one,) and fending off, among other things, the people who remembered random acts of dancing from last year, and were waiting (albeit eagerly) for random acts of dancing to happen again.

(That’s me over on the left.)

Random acts of dancing don’t just happen, people. That’s why they’re random. Then again, the people probably didn’t realize that they were random; they likely thought it all an act. But really, it just happened. I would have liked to dance this year, but in truth, I just wasn’t feeling it, and it felt a little forced.

We managed to keep from losing our voices before the Room closed, and we went by ourselves to dinner, foolishly following the Jackal up to Fenway Park, just moments after a Sox game had let out.

I now have a good idea of what it feels like to be a salmon. For those of you who don’t know, there is little to no (more like no) public transportation in the vicinity of Fenway; so the entire contents of the stadium cheerfully disgorged themselves onto the streets, heading downhill as we tried to walk uphill in search of food.

All we needed was a bear to casually swat us off the street, and the night would have been complete. Nevertheless, we managed to find food with only a 20-minute wait for seating. I had a chicken salad and most of a slice of Key Lime pie.

What? It was a big salad. I’d tell you where I got it, but I don’t remember the name. It’s a steakhouse near Fenway Park; there can’t be that many.

Thus refreshed, we made our way back to the Hynes, to attend the dance. We had heard about the dance last year after the fact, and were interested in seeing it this year.

We got there, and belatedly realized that we were all encumbered in some way with nowhere to leave our possessions- a situation not conducive to dancing. Not conducive at all. So we left the dance and did some people watching before making our way back to base for some sleep.

As I must do now. Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion to the Anime Boston 2007 chronicle, where our heroes embark on the final leg of their epic journey.

*In my haste to get this all done, I forgot to mention that my dear friend Stephanie, who draws the comic Throat Lump, came by the booth on Friday. She offered to work the booth, as she was without anything pressing to do (her boyfriend and another companion were stuck on line), but wasn’t quite cut out for the task. Nevertheless, it was good to see her.