Hong Kong: ACGHK
Also known as the Animation-Comic-Game, this is a yearly affair that's held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre usually at end of July or around August.
A comic-cum-anime-convention that brings the comic culture to life in Hong Kong, this event is an amazing experience not only for toy geeks and anime nerds but also travelers who would like to attend a festival/event with a local touch as well.
Earlier on that day you could see Gundam fanatics doing up their dorama, spray painting, adding their final touches and rearranging greeneries, miniature buildings, and giant robots.
I even tried speaking to some of them with my delicate Cantonese only to find out that they're Facebook friends who knew each other from this FB Group before meeting up. And before they know it, it's become their yearly tradition to come create and display these amazing pieces out of pure passion.
How cool is that?
Once you're in you'll see familiar brands like Funko, Gundam, SHFiguarts, P.O.P: Portraits of Pirates One Piece figures, and the legendary Hot Toys which have a crazy zig-zag queue with marvel fans waiting in line to get their loot. I managed to speak with a few figurine geeks only to find out that they have been queuing for hours just to get their hands on the Hot Toys Ironman figurine.
Some of them are collectors, yet a few of them are actually queuing to get that merchandise to flip it in the market in a later date.
Apart from the toy bazaars, you'll spot gaming counters as well. With booths set up with a theme and sometimes booth games to give you the best gaming experiences. Girls dressed in glittery tube tops and long gloves beckoning boys over to try out games, getting leads, building awareness and so forth. It's an obvious marketing trick but sex really sells in industries like these.
You'll find your eyes darting around the whole convention hall as it is overwhelmed with goodies, from figurines, arts to eye candies. The cosplay scenes are pretty amazing and they swept me off my feet. Though most of them are girls (there are hardly any guy cosplayers compared to the scene in Singapore).
Oh, and most of them are really friendly and they would be more than happy to "selfie" with you and even throw in a bit of fan service if they're in the mood.
Go search "ACGHK cosplay" and you'll get to see how it's like.
And Some of the girls are surprisingly young, (19-21 years old)
You'll definitely find the photographers from Hong Kong surprising. Or rather, it was for me. I actually saw one directing one of a female cosplayer to push and show more of her boobs.
(In Cantonese)
"Nice, yes, yes, make your boobs bigger" -shutter clicks-
"Yes I like it big" -shutter clicks again-
This incident left me slightly dumbfounded as I moved on to check out other parts of the convention.
I spent a lot of my time walking around, exploring the booths, walking into the toy exhibits and admiring the fine details and works of those figurines. I do have my fair share of anime knowledge even though I'm not too hardcore.
Talking to random locals about games, I even had fun trying to figure out the Hong Kong names of several League of Legends characters. Animes like Tokyo Ghoul, Psycho Pass, One Piece and Bleach have always been made timeless by these cosplays due to its popularity.
This convention would definitely be one of my must go as an AFA (Anime Festival Asia) regular and I'll visit again if opportunity allows!
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