Glamborous
>> ART, ANIME AND ALL AGES
After POW! WOW!, I had told myself no more art, but with all the creative energy here, it sometimes seems that avoiding art in Honolulu is about as easy as avoiding sunshine and ocean views.
My college friend, Yuma Terada, was in town, and I had a chance to catch up with him. In college, he turned my first album into a full-blown musical with actors, dancers and audience interaction, so I was excited to hear about what he was up to now. He had told me about his dreams before and it was something along the lines of, “You know how you’re in the toy store and there’s all the action figures for a certain story or TV show, or, like, Disneyland has a whole theme park that centers around its characters? I want to do that.”
And he seems to be well on his way. He’s a partner in a company called Cork, which provides access to Japan’s most prominent novelists and manga artists. It’s part literary agency, part artist management, so its work entails arranging artist appearances like Anno Moyocco’s book signing and manga demonstration at Honolulu Museum of Art, as well as setting up adaptations of manga into television series, movies and merchandise. It was really inspiring to hear about the scope of his work, and I have no doubt that he will be a part of a project that reaches the level of mainstream entertainment.
Later in the week, I got one of the strangest event invite texts that I have ever received. It read, “Senior Citizens, art and food at Linekona for the Honolulu Printmakers Annual Exhibition. Come at 6. Lots of pandas, too.” With so much focus on demographics, target audiences and tailored experiences, it was nice to attend an event that had the type of diversity that is lacking in the arts and entertainment world: a wide range of ages.
There’s already a large generation gap due to technology, but aside from family gatherings, there are rarely events that truly cater to all ages.
Think about it, nightclubs (aside from Rumors) tend to target 20-and 30somethings. Younger people would love to come but can’t since alcohol’s involved, and the events are usually past the bedtime of most grownups. So I thought it was really cool to see single-digit-year-olds running free through the halls of the museum, Millennials chilling to Scott Ohtoro’s DJ suave selection, and people as old as my parents and even grandparents enjoying themselves as equals all in the same place.
I hope to attend more events like this because there’s a certain powerful energy when all ages unite, kind of like when cartoon robots of different animal species join together to make a larger robot with different animals for different limbs. If we were joining together to fight a common enemy, it would have been a hybrid amorphous being of monotony and indifference — and we collectively kicked the crap out of it.
The art was super tight, too.
