Tag: hoku kon

The reign of Hoku Comic Kon Honolulu is nigh

CCH logoThe second stop on our yearlong parade of local conventions, Comic Con Honolulu, is coming up on Friday, and … okay, real talk: Just like how people keep calling the Don Quijote on Kaheka Street “Daiei” or “Holiday Mart,” or people in Waipahu still think of the Don Quijote store there as the old GEM store, or a whole bunch of other “Remember when ______ was ______?” conversations that fill #ThrowbackThursday threads on social media every week, a lot of you out there still think of Comic Con Honolulu as Hoku Kon, right? Even though we went over why the name changed earlier this year? It’s okay; I find myself switching between the two as well.

Whatever you prefer to call it, the convention launched as the all-the-things offspring of Kawaii Kon is ready to show con-goers what it has to offer. While it may not be as big as Kawaii Kon — the entire show’s only taking up the top floor of the Hawai ‘i Convention Center –the enthusiast spirit of the long-running anime convention certainly remains a core element here. Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend this year — we’re still working on taming the beast that is our new editorial computer system — but if I could go, here are what would be some of my highlights.

The Anime portal keyThe intro to Ingress panel! Hear about Niantic’s free-to-play massively multiplayer augmented reality game for almost every smartphone out there (sorry, Blackberry and Windows Phone users). Learn about the convoluted back story — something about a battle for Exotic Matter, aliens that either ought to be welcomed with a platter of cookies or repelled like con attendees who forgot to shower, and a buncha researchers, shadowy types and weird artificial intelligence constructs who have died, shattered into shards and been resurrected more times than the Hawaiian Netmender portal changes hands daily. You can also learn why the Enlightened is awesome (lovely greenish hues over everything; “think green” projects a solid environmental message; noodles) and why the Resistance is … umm … equally awesome (hey, they consistently build my portal at work to level 6-8 with a multihack and heat sink that I quietly hack, happily gearing up to go blow up their portals, links and fields elsewhere, so I’m not complaining).

If you decide to attend and subsequently begin playing, I should note two things. First, apologies in advance for all the free time and gas it ends up sucking up. Second — and I cannot stress this enough — please sign up for the Enlightened. You don’t know how many times I’ve talked about these intro to Ingress panels and ended up having readers join … only for them to become my biggest in-game rivals (*waves at agent ArcturusFlyer*). Sigh. 6:30 p.m. Friday, Panel Room.

Comic Jam Hawaii represents! Some of you may remember the Sketch Improv panel during Kawaii Kon, during which artists from Comic Jam Hawaii improvised sketches based on certain themes and ideas shouted out by the audience. It’s where the world first got to see a fire-breathing Slap Chop chicken …

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… the adventures of a side job-taking samurai …

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… Winnie the Deadpool …

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… a Totoro/Fast and Furious mashup …

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… and, of course, 50 Shades of Totoro.

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Sketch Improv is back for another go-round, this time with a slightly tweaked name (it’s Art Improv in your programs now) and a bigger venue (the Main Events room) but likely with the same sketchy hijinks. It should be a fun morning. That’s from 10:30 a.m. to noon Saturday.

memorabilia showcase 1Several Comic Jam artists will be over in Artist Alley as well. Roy Chang, MidWeek cartoonist and Pepe the Chihuahua’s kalbi handler, will set up his art board and offer free art portfolio critiques. Jon J. Murakami, Star-Advertiser “Calabash” cartoonist and creator of Gordon Rider, the Ara-Rangers, and Edamame Ninjas, will be selling a number of new items, including prints of his work from Udon’s upcoming Capcom Fighting Tribute artbook, original sketches, reusable shopping bags with customized hand-drawn art, and — assuming the books come back from the printer on time — Ara-Rangers issue #2. (Hopefully he gets over his cold in time for con, too … get well soon, Jon!) Kevin Sano and Michael Cannon will each have tables and will be selling prints and original artwork as well. (By the way, to the right, you can see a set of four Minions that Kevin custom-painted in the colors and outfits of various Kikaida characters, which I stuck in my new home office showcase. Clearly I love them. Bonus points to anyone who can identify the other things in the showcase at the moment.) 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Saturday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday.

Gates McFadden and Edward James Olmos! Not gonna lie; these are the only two guests I recognize straight out without having to resort to Google, one being Dr. Beverly Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the other one being an Academy Award nominee for best actor (Stand and Deliver, 1988). I’m very much a comic/sci-fi blogger in training; heck, when NPR recently released its list of top 100 sci-fi/fantasy books as voted on by listeners, I found I had read … exactly one of them. (Animal Farm. For school. Great book, A++++++ WOULD READ ORWELL AGAIN.) That’s not to say the rest of the guest list, which includes actors Adam Baldwin, Erin Gray, Mira Furlan, Sean Maher and J. August Richards and comic artist Khary Rudolph, is anything to dismiss; it’s a respectable roster that any startup convention would love to have.

It should be noted that the autograph policies were released Wednesday afternoon, and for those of you accustomed to lining up for free autographs and photo ops at Kawaii Kon, there’s going to be a bit of sticker shock involved — if you want a complete collection of Year One Comic-Con Honolulu guest autographs, it’s going to cost you $290. Olmos is the highest at $60, followed by McFadden at $50; Baldwin, Maher and Richards at $40 each; and Furlan and Gray at $30 each. (Rudolph will offer free autographs all weekend.) Want pictures of your experiences? It’s going to cost even more. Welcome to the modern-day convention economy, folks. Strap in your wallets and prepare for the ride.

IMG_8501_editCosplay cosplay cosplay! I’ll readily admit cosplay has become the modern-day equivalent of “Hey! Manga’s a thing! OMG, girls are reading comics now!” in modern-day con culture, the go-to topic mainstream media chooses whenever they want to talk about all those anime/manga/sci-fi/fantasy/comic book/whatever fans converging on Big Convention Spot for the Weekend. Heck, our paper covered that angle on Sunday (premium content; subscribers, please read that article, Mike Gordon and Jamm Aquino did a good job with the words and pictures, respectively). That said, people love to dress up, and cosplayers of all skill levels will be showing up during the weekend, from average fans all the way up to our most prominent local cosplayers (Uncanny Megan, shown above with tag-team partner in fandom Wilma J. at this year’s Kawaii Kon! Leah Rose!). For you do-it-yourselfers, I count at least six cosplay-related panels, from Megan and Leah’s Cosplay Q&A (10-11 a.m. Saturday, Panel Room) to cosplay photography (3-4 p.m. Friday, Panel Room) and a whole variety of topics in between. And that doesn’t even take into account the Cosplay Competition, running from 6-7 p.m. Saturday in Main Events.

Interested in attending? Online registration has ended, but you can buy three-day passes ($55) and single-day passes (Friday, $35; Saturday, $40; Sunday, $30) starting at 9 a.m. Friday on the fourth floor of the convention center. Pre-registered attendees can pick up their passes at the same place starting at 8 a.m. Friday; it’s worth noting that unlike Kawaii Kon, passes will not be available for pickup Thursday night.

Want more information? Visit the con site at comicconhonolulu.com. Questions? Lob ’em at the con’s Facebook page.

Hoku Kon rebrands (and other convention news)

It may not have seemed like it’s been busy around Otaku Ohana Central, what with my general radio silence here for a little over two weeks now, but the truth is that there’s a lot of stuff going on. I’ve just been too busy dealing with a good number of outside-of-work things that have left me too exhausted to do much of anything else. (Nothing too weighty, mind. Unless you consider tag-team partner in fandom Wilma J. and I trading Tsum Tsum hearts back and forth a problem.)

CCH logoOne of the things I did during this recent hiatus, though, actually had something to do with this blog: On Friday, I had a chance to sit down and chat with Faisal Ahmed, co-chairman of Kawaii Kon and Hoku Kon with Marlon Stodghill, about a number of things related to the two conventions. I’ll have more of that conversation posted … umm … eventually (the resolution of that outside-of-work stuff is still very much up in the air), but the biggest thing to emerge from it came at the very end. In a move confirmed on Hoku Kon’s Facebook page last night, the convention has rebranded itself and is now going by the name Comic Con Honolulu.

There’s been a fair amount of discussion following the announcement, much of it centered around possible confusion between this event (happening July 24-26; key guest so far is actress Kelly Hu) and Amazing Hawaii Comic Con (Sept. 18-20; key guest so far is Stan Lee). Here’s what Faisal said about the name change and why they decided to go this route:

People just don’t know what Hoku Kon is, and they’re just like, “Is there any way you can add in the words ‘comic con?'” It’s just one of those things of getting the word out there and getting the people to understand what the show is about. Like, “comic con,” people think of San Diego Comic Con. And as somebody who actually studies trademark law, I think they have a very strong right to the word “comic con,” but unfortunately they don’t. People basically know what it means. It’s become a generic term that everyone goes, “Oh, you’re gonna have comics, sci-fi, fantasy, you’re going to have this giant thing, people dress up.” Everyone knows instantly what it is. And a lot of the radio stations and TV stations I talked to are just like, “If you’re able to add the word ‘comic con’ into your name, I can actually get coverage for it, I can let people know that it’s happening, we can actually make it a bigger deal.”

Which then … with dealing with sci-fi guests, is what they care about. Even if you’re willing to pay a lot of sci-fi guests, they’re not willing to come out unless the show has 7,000 people, 10,000 people, 20,000 people. Because it’s just not worth it to them. And ultimately … my dream for Hoku Kon or Comic Con Honolulu would be to have studios come out, to have Marvel come out and have a presence, have HBO, have Cartoon Network, have all these people come out and basically give people the opportunity to have this interactive experience without having to spend the $10,000 to actually go  to San Diego Comic-Con or go to another show on the mainland, or buy a ticket that’s $300.

The goal is to keep prices low. I’m sure as time goes on they’ll inch up slightly, just as everything in the world does. I really don’t want it to be a show where we have to charge $250 for the opportunity to even show up and then pay more money to do stuff. Everyone I talked to who isn’t a nerd basically is just like, “You need to add the word ‘comic con’ in there and we’ll understand.”

This is actually the first time we’re actually talking about it or announcing it. We’re working on kind of finalizing how it’s gonna happen, just because rebranding is always an arduous task. So we’re going to start having it called Comic Con Honolulu, just so people (a) know where it is and (b) know what it is. We’ll keep the name Hoku Kon as a byline, just because … we have to remember that “hoku” means “star” in Hawaiian, it is a local show. It’s gonna be run by locals, the events are gonna be done all by locals, and again the only mainlanders to do anything are Marlon and I, and our job is support, is to make sure that we can provide all the tools necessary for the show to happen.

… We have to get people kind of used to the name, and used to understanding that Hoku Kon is the exact same thing, it’s run by the same people. It’s just going under this new name to make sure people know what the event is. And the reason we didn’t call it “Hawaii Comic Con” or “Comic Con Hawaii” was just because there’s already HawaiiCon, there’s Amazing Hawaii Comic Con. And we wanted to show that we’re doing something, again, more local. And so that’s why we picked the city.

Three-day passes for Comic Con Honolulu ($45) are now available; applications are also being accepted for Artist Alley tables. For more information, visit www.comicconhonolulu.com. (Or you could plug in hokukon.com for old time’s sake; both addresses will get you to the same destination.)

Meanwhile, at the other conventions:

  • Amazing Hawaii Comic Con is sending down several staff members for an informal meet-and-greet starting at 7:30 p.m. today at Dave & Busters (1030 Auahi St., in the Ward Entertainment Complex). Come down and chat with them; they’ll even buy you your first drink.
  • Anime Matsuri Hawaii‘s Artist Alley table registrations are now live; cost is $170 (plus a $5.24 Eventbrite processing fee) and includes a 6-by-2-foot table, one three-day pass and limited electrical power. Read up on all the rules and sign up at ow.ly/MiE7s. The convention also recently announced its first anime industry guest: Maile Flanagan, the English voice of Naruto Uzumaki (who now follows me on Twitter, *squee*). Three-day passes are $45 through June 15; visit ow.ly/MiGCt to get that set up.
  • Anime Ohana still has their three-day pass for $25, but you’ll have to act fast; that special ends tomorrow. Visit animeohana.ticketbud.com/anime-ohana.
  • And for those of you who really want to plan ahead, Kawaii Kon has opened online preregistration for 2016 — three-day passes are $45 general, $40 ages 5-12. Get started at ow.ly/MiJds.

Kawaii Kon reaches out to Oni-Con Hawaii attendees

This post is coming to you from Otaku Ohana Mobile HQ, a different room at the Ala Moana Hotel than in April, yet with the same lovely view of the yacht harbor between the Hawaii Prince Hotel and another building, the name of which I still wouldn’t be able to tell you without Googling it first.

kawaii-kon-logoThe last time your friendly neighborhood anime/manga blogger stayed here, as you might have figured out if you deigned to click on that link above, was for Kawaii Kon. This time? It’s just a humbler staycation retreat, some time to relax and catch up and plot out a few more work-intensive posts for down the line. And yet somehow, Kawaii Kon has managed to generate some news that’s drawn me back to the keyboard sooner than I expected. It feels somewhat … appropriate, in a way.

On Sunday afternoon, Kawaii Kon posted a rather lengthy update to its Facebook page. The big big news, which I won’t be going into much detail here because we barely have enough time to cover all things anime/manga/cartooning, never mind adding sci-fi to the mix, is that the dates for sister sci-fi spinoff Hoku Kon have been set. The preview day will be Dec. 7 at the Doubletree Alana Waikiki’s Pikake Room, while the full convention is happening July 24-26 at the Hawai’i Convention Center. (Side note: I haven’t really heard anything bad coming out of the just-completed first edition of HawaiiCon, the sci-fi convention on Hawaii island held over the weekend, so it looks like we may have another winner there. They have dates for next year, too: Sept. 10-13.)

But then there’s the matter of the final two paragraphs, which directly addresses the silent elephant in the room on the local convention scene: Oni-Con Hawaii. Right now, given what we’ve seen in May (original post here, reactions here) and in August, I’d be very surprised to see anything emerge from the brand this year … or ever again, for that matter. Here’s what Kawaii Kon had to say about the situation:

On another note, last year when we heard that Oni-Con Texas expanding their convention to Hawaii under the title of OniCon Hawaii, we wished them the best of luck in their new adventure. As a first year convention, OniCon Hawaii did an admirable job overcoming many challenges. Right now it looks like there may not be another OniCon Hawaii this year and we think that is unfortunate for the fans. As much as a convention puts in work to make a successful event, the fans too put in a lot of effort and planning as well. 

While we don’t have any contact with the main organizers of OniCon Hawaii, we at Kawaii Kon wanted to see if there was anything we could do for the fans that were looking forward to OniCon Hawaii 2014. What we came up with was this: If you pre-registered for OniCon 2014 and bring proof to our Windward Mall Anime Day on October 11, 2014 we will give you a free DVD (while supplies last).

So, would-have-been Oni-Con attendees (or even those of you who’ve been keeping an eye on this whole situation from afar): What do you think of the offer? I’d love to hear your reactions, whether in comments below or over on Facebook.