Post #238

(Note from Jason: For the sake of having a complete Otaku Ohana archive here, I’m cross-posting this, the last post made on staradvertiserblogs.com, to this site. New content will be coming soonish! I just need some time to get some fresh air and food first.)

Amazing Hawaii Comic Con is hosting its Special Edition this weekend at the Hawai’i Convention Center. It’s a pretty impressive guest list, headlined by comic writer Brian Michael Bendis and featuring Chad Hardin (artist, Harley Quinn), Veronica Taylor (the original voice of Ash in Pokemon), members of the Hawaiian Comic Book Alliance and Max Mittelman, Ray Chase and Robbie Daymond (voice actors who play prominent roles in One-Punch Man and Final Fantasy XV). For tickets and information, visit amazinghawaiicomiccon.com.

But you’ll have to excuse me if I only briefly touch on that because of a bigger announcement that needs to be made: What you’re reading is the 238th post written by either me or tag-team partner in fandom Wilma Win since Otaku Ohana migrated from starbulletin.com to the staradvertiserblogs.com domain in 2012.

It is also the final post of Otaku Ohana as you’ve known it for its 7-year existence.

Let me clarify at the outset that I’m not one of the 15 recently laid-off newsroom employees at the paper. (Neither is Wilma.) My primary duties at the paper are as a copy editor and page designer, and I’ll still be doing that. Recent cuts have, however, resulted in a shifting of priorities for staradvertiser.com, and those of us who write blogs were told earlier this week that most of the blogs — save for the four UH sports blogs hosted at hawaiiwarriorworld.com — would be discontinued, effective Friday, Oct. 7.

I do, however, have some good news about the future of Otaku Ohana. Shortly after that blog migration I noted earlier, I quietly reserved a space on WordPress, intending to use it as a backup in case anything ever happened to either that server or the original Star-Bulletin blog server. Things happen all the time that cause chunks of the Internet’s history to disappear forever, and I wanted to be ready for that.

Thanks to staradvertiser.com webmaster Adam Sparks and Editor Frank Bridgewater, who gave me the go-ahead to do so, I’m pleased to announce that I’ve gained full rights to house all past Otaku Ohana content and publish all future posts to that WordPress space. So yes, this blog will live on. It’ll just be updated at its new home — set your browsers and bookmarks to otakuohana.com, please — and be a 100 percent more freelance-ish endeavor.

So why am I continuing this blog away from the umbrella of Star-Advertiser branding? It’s because it’s become something more than A Thing I do in my spare time at the paper. It’s become a labor of love. A coworker once told me that he enjoys reading what I write because my style seems more like it’s written from a fan’s perspective rather than a clinical journalist’s perspective, and it’s something I’ve tried to keep intact all these years.

In the 11 years I’ve written Cel Shaded and Otaku Ohana, I’ve met so many cool people had so many wonderful experiences and had fun writing about it all. And it’s all thanks to you, the people who’ve stuck with me and Wilma over those years. We are otaku, fans of anime, manga, comics, cartooning, sci-fi, fantasy, what have you. We are ohana, a family. Granted, we can be a somewhat dysfunctional family at times — trust me, I’ve heard enough off-the-record, behind-the-scenes stories to write a book if I was that sort of person, which I’m not — but still a family nonetheless.

I just have one request: If you like the blog, now more than ever, please spread the word about it. I usually note when new posts go up on my Twitter (twitter.com/jsyadao) and Facebook (facebook.com/jsyadao) accounts. Sometimes Google+, too, if the Otaku Ohana Anonymous Director of Forced Social Interaction reminds me about it. Readership going forward is something I’m going to closely monitor to determine whether I should continue to request press credentials at most of the Con-athon shows, because I feel somewhat guilty asking if hardly anyone’s reading.

See you at otakuohana.com, space cowboys.