Month: June 2014

Your anime / manga blogger’s clearing-house clearinghouse

New posts from me in this space have been rather sporadic as of late, and for that I apologize; it’s probably going to be like this probably through mid-August or so, as I take care of some projects at home and then endure … *shudder* … the primary election season at work. (Insert screams here.) I’ll try to update this blog as much as I can in the meantime — there will be some kind of coverage of the MangaBento exhibit here while it’s still up, I promise! — but if I disappear for weeks at a time, don’t worry, I’ll still be coming back. Sometime. I’ll tell you when we’re ready to abandon this blog, and we’re definitely not ready to do that yet.

One of the things I’m doing at home is some major cleaning, clearing out some of the stuff that’s been piling up to make room for new things. It’s a bit like that for news involving the local anime/manga fan community, so let’s make with the cleaning already and get to the news:

IMG_9289“Showme” the artwork: It’s time once again for the annual exhibit by MangaBento, the group of artists inspired by anime and manga, on the second floor of the Honolulu Museum of Art School (1111 Victoria St.), with an opening reception (with refreshments!) scheduled for 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday and the exhibit itself running through July 12. This year’s exhibit is called “Showme”; rendered in Japanese kanji, the sound-alike phrase “shoumi” means “relish, gusto, appreciation.” If this exhibit is anything like the group’s past exhibits that I’ve covered in this blog over the years — “Kakimochi” in 2011 (part 1, part 2), “Nakamaboko” (part 1, part 2) and “Tomo-e-Ame” (part 1, part 2, part 3) — expect a nice blend of 2-D and 3-D art in a variety of media, a giant mural in the stairwell from the first to the second floor, and a table where visitors can sketch to their hearts’ content. For more information about MangaBento, visit their website at www.manga-bento.com.

KPP in HNL: In case you aren’t familiar with the work of the 21-year-old artist currently known as Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, here, have one of her music videos.

And another one.

And yet another one.

10373038_10101024997209366_8916960168389356119_oWhen you can describe the one with the flying koi and mouse-head robot no jutsu! as the most normal of the three, that’s … saying quite a bit, actually. Here are more of her videos on YouTube, in case you’re inclined to follow up.

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu — or “KPP,” to her loyal fans and lazy anime/manga bloggers who don’t want to keep typing “Kyary Pamyu Pamyu” every time they refer to her in a post — is coming to Hawaii for the first time to wrap up her “Nanda Collection” world tour, at 5 p.m. July 20 at the Waikiki Shell. Tickets went on sale Friday … and since I only started seriously working on this post around Wednesday, I held off on writing up this item in case demand hit Bruno Mars/Jack Johnson-esque “sneeze and you missed out” levels.

I suppose I needn’t have worried. Judging by those videos above, it probably takes a fan of a certain constitution to really appreciate what KPP brings to the table. Indeed, after being AWOL due to heavy server load on the first day of ticket sales, Ticketmaster’s interactive seat map finally kicked in and started working on Saturday … and here’s what it looked like as of a little after 8 p.m. Saturday. Dark dots show seats available.

Screen shot 2014-06-21 at 8.11.33 PM

That’s about half of the $85 level seats and virtually all of the $60 level seats that are still available. $30 lawn seating’s still readily available, too, for those of you who don’t mind bringing your own mats.

So if you want to check out what all the fuss is about (and see for yourself just how much more crazy KPP can cram into a live concert), go forth and get yourself some tickets now.

My cutest as-yet-unpublished-until-now picture of the year so far: This one, taken at the “Crossing Cultures” artist meet-and-greet event late last month at the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii.

IMG_6949-edit

Kids love their plush pups from nemu*nemu artist Audra Furuichi, that’s for sure.

An Oni-Con Hawaii 2014 update: Nothing to report. Let’s … just move on.

A Taku Taku Matsuri Summer Festival update: For those of you who missed the event’s recent successful Kickstarter campaign, presale tickets are now available on Ticketleap (ow.ly/ygYBF) — $13 (plus a $1.65 service charge) for anyone 16 and older, $8 (plus a $1.40 service charge) for anyone under 16. The event, which as of now features voice actor Kyle Hebert, DJ E2D, video game tournaments, a Star Trek-themed cafe and various artists and vendors, runs from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Aug. 9 at the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii (2454 S. Beretania St.). Looks like more artists and vendors would be appreciated, too, so email taku2matsuri at yahoo dot com if you’d be interested in contributing to that effort.

Speaking of Taku Taku Matsuri: There’s a water gun fight (or more specifically, a WATER GUN FIGHT!!!!!) scheduled for July 19. No details yet. But I’m fairly confident there will be more info posted at the event page somewhat sorta soonish.

And while we’re (probably) at the beach: Any good WATER GUN FIGHT!!!!! has to take place outside … which brings us to a few other beach events being held this summer. On July 3, Jason David Frank — otherwise known as “the  tri-named Power Rangers actor not named Johnny Yong Bosch that everyone goes crazy over” — will be hosting a beach day at Duke Kahanamoku Beach starting at 11 a.m. He’ll also be shooting footage for the second season of My Morphin Life.

Kawaii Kon recently announced plans for its annual beach day as well — mark your calendars for 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Aug. 16 at Ala Moana Beach Park, and get ready for a day that already promises to include sand castle building and a game of Capture the Flag (“now with water balloons!” as the event page proclaims, seemingly giddily). Keep up with how that develops over on the anime con’s event page.

Midnight milestone: Taku Taku Matsuri hits Kickstarter goal

taku taku matsuri logoIt looks like the local anime/manga fan community will have something to do on Saturday, Aug. 9 (besides voting in the state primary election, of course) after all.

A shade before midnight Friday — and with about four hours left in the campaign, at that — a $15 pledge nudged the Taku Taku Matsuri Kickstarter campaign to its $2,000 funding goal. The monthlong campaign ultimately closed with $2,070. It was close, but we’ll indeed be getting our second edition of the summer festival with voice actor Kyle Hebert, a Star Trek-themed cafe, video game tournaments and a dance party featuring DJ E2D.

Just how close was it? Via Kicktraq, a website that offers handy-dandy Kickstarter campaign breakdowns for stat geeks and friendly neighborhood anime/manga bloggers looking for something more meaty to write about than just “Yay! This campaign got funded,” here’s a graph that breaks down donation amounts by day, taken from its overall analysis of the Taku Taku Matsuri campaign. Click on the image to get a larger version (which still is a bit hard to read, so sorry, older folk).

dailypledges

Here’s what’s interesting about this graph: In most of the campaigns I’ve followed over the past few years, there’s an initial burst of enthusiasm among the hard-core faithful, a loooooooooong period of little movement where pledges trickle in, and a last-minute push where people pile on, most likely because they see the goal is within reach and are more than happy to back a winner. Sometimes, the property’s popularity is enough that it’ll blow past its goal in a matter of hours — the oft-cited Double Fine Adventure and Order of the Stick reprint campaigns are among those, as are the more recent Anime News Nina graphic novel and Megatokyo visual novel campaigns. Others, like the campaigns for Sweet Revenge Honolulu’s pie press, Tommy Tallarico’s Video Games Live! project and a new Amplitude game from Harmonix, needed that last-minute push to carry them over the top.

At least all of those performed rather decently at the outset, though. We never did see that initial enthusiasm for the Taku Taku Matsuri campaign; it raised only $100 a week in and hadn’t even reached $800 by the time I wrote of it again last week. Which made that last push to the finish even more remarkable — something clicked somewhere that made more people want to give.

Consider also:

  • The last $1,225 — 59 percent of the total! — was contributed over the last six days of the campaign.
  • Going by straight-up backer stats — that is, assuming someone who contributed to a particular tier paid exactly that amount and nothing more — the campaign would have raised only $1,160. That means backers straight-up donated $910, or close to 44 percent of the amount raised.

Kicktraq’s funding progress trend chart also shows just how crazy it was tracking this campaign. The green line shows the amount the site estimated the campaign would raise based on the funding trend at the time; the blue line tracks actual funding progress.

exp-trend

Note that the only time the green line ever went above the goal line is when the blue line met it … on the very last day. It’s a frenetic pace that I have to admit I didn’t see coming about a week or so ago.

So! I can write this part with much more confidence now: The second annual Taku Taku Matsuri summer festival will be taking place in the Manoa Grand Ballroom of the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii (2454 S. Beretania St.) Non-Kickstarter preregistration tickets, at $13, will go on sale … ummmm … sometime sorta soonish; I’ll have more information as that becomes available. For the latest information, visit www.facebook.com/taku2matsuri.