Kunicon

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Kunicon
Status Defunct
Venue various
Location Miami Beach, Florida (2004)

Saint Louis, Missouri (2005)
Atlanta, Georgia (2005)
Denver, Colorado (2005)
Country Flag of United States United States
Years in existence 2004 to 2005
Attendance disputed

Kunicon was a chain of anime, gaming, and martial arts conventions held throughout the United States from December 2004 through June 2005.

Unlike many other anime conventions, Kunicon was not the pet project of a small group of fans or of an anime club; rather, it began as a business opportunity for Prestige Service Travel, a travel agency owned and operated by Subarashii Nation (formerly D20, Inc). Although initially owned by a for-profit corporation with for-profit motives, Kunicon eventually was discontinued.[1]

Contents

[edit] Past Kunicon conventions

While Kunicon's original goals were to have a convention in each of 12 major cities across the United States, these plans were cut short. Kunicon held a total of four conventions in four states.[1]

Their first convention, OtakuCon Miami Beach, was in Miami, Florida in December 2004 at the Fontainebleau Hilton Resort on Miami Beach.[2] Kunicon was to be held again at the same location in 2005 but was cancelled.[1]

The second convention was held in St. Louis, Missouri at the Millennium Hotel in March 2005.[3][4]

The third convention was held in Atlanta, Georgia at the Westin Peachtree in May 2005.[5]

The fourth convention was held in Denver, Colorado in June 2005.[6]

[edit] Controversy

Originally announced as "Otakucon", the convention started going by "OtakuCon Miami Beach" several months before the first convention in Miami, Florida.[3] Otakon staff has reported that they had ordered a cease-and-desist,[7] but the convention chairman, Manny Camacho, had been reported as saying that the name was simply changed to avoid confusion.[8] When the St. Louis event was announced as the second convention, it was announced under the name "Kunicon".[3]

Following the first convention in Miami, the staff cited an attendance of 5000 people,[1] which precisely matched their pre-con estimate.[3] Most anime conventions will count a 3-day pass as one attendee, whereas other conventions will count that same badge similarly to three separate people attending for three single days.[8] Some attendees had raised disbelief and suspected that OtakuCon had counted people multiple times or had otherwise artifically inflated their attendance numbers.

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Not long after the convention, a fan photographer and Manny Camacho had more than a polite disagreement about the aforementioned photographer's pictorial, which shows the numbers claimed by Kunicon are inflated.[1] Said photographer was apparently, until recently, under a strange NDA about the subject according to a post on the unabashedly anti-Kunicon livejournal community boycott_kunicon. No new information about this odd legal arrangement has emerged to date.

The boycott_kunicon LJ community seems to mostly be composed of attendees and their associates who have either had bad experiences with Kunicon (or its staffers), and/or have problems with the entire concept of the convention. The community is far from measured and objective in its opinions, as evidenced by the posts, and the fact that Kunicon is frequently referred to by derisive and derivative terms such as "UsoCon" (a play on the word "uso" which in Japanese means "liar").

Manny himself was, to be diplomatic, vociferously outspoken when he felt someone had spoken ill of Kunicon. There is some evidence that "astroturfing" has occurred when support against those opinions which Kunicon feels needs to be rebutted or countered. Whether this was sanctioned by the corporate heads of Subarashii Nation or its sister travel company is unknown, but there seems to be evidence that Manny himself had participated in such activities.

There seems to be a not-insignificant segment of anime fandom which is, at the least, uneasy with the concept of a roaming, commercial, for-profit anime convention in the US. Much of this sentiment can be attributed to the feeling that since the birth of the fan convention some 30+ years ago, "for-profit" conventions have routinely been found to be lacking in both quality programming and loyalty to their fans. Subarashii Nation seemed to be trying to alleviate this distaste by stating they were re-incorporating as a non-profit entity, but the papers were never actually filed with the government. Most fans, however, do not realise that most conventions operating in the US are registered as LLCs, not non-profit entities.

The controversy came to an end when Manny Camacho, the Kunicon chairman, announced in his LiveJournal that he had resigned and the upcoming Kunicon Miami would not take place. In his post, he also verified a lot of the controversy that fans had suspected to be true.[1]

[edit] Web sites

Following the Miami, Florida convention in December 2004, the fan community panned the convention as both poorly planned and implemented.[7][9] The convention's forums were locked down in response to a storm of angry posts by attendees flooding the board. Kunicon staff later attributed these technical "problems" to an irresponsible webmaster who acted without permission and was subsequently fired.

As of the last week of August 2005, the Kunicon web site has been offline, returning neither pages nor replying to ping requests. The former convention chair's LiveJournal stated that this was due to some sort of technical difficulty. The outage was previously attributed on the aforementioned LiveJournal to a vacationing IT worker.

In early November, Kunicon's chairman formally announced the cancellation of Kunicon in his LiveJournal.[1]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Delahanty, Patrick (2005-11-05). Kunicon cancelled; former chairman posts attendance numbers. AnimeCons.com. Retrieved on 2007-02-28.
  2. ^ OtakuCon Miami Beach 2004. AnimeCons.com. Retrieved on 2007-02-28.
  3. ^ a b c d (2004-12-10). Otakucon schedule announced. Press release. Retrieved on 2007-02-28.
  4. ^ Kunicon St. Louis 2005. AnimeCons.com. Retrieved on 2007-02-28.
  5. ^ Kunicon Atlanta 2005. AnimeCons.com. Retrieved on 2007-02-28.
  6. ^ Kunicon Denver 2005. AnimeCons.com. Retrieved on 2007-02-28.
  7. ^ a b Koulikov, Mikhail (2005-01-26). 2004 Year in Review: Anime Con Highlights. Anime News Network. Retrieved on 2007-02-28.
  8. ^ a b Lillard, Kevin. OtakuCon - Kunicon Plans - 2004. A Fan's View. Retrieved on 2007-02-28.
  9. ^ Koulikov, Mikhail (2006-01-11). Conventions and Events. Anime News Network. Retrieved on 2007-02-28.

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../k/u/n/Kunicon.html"