By Vicky Li, high school student in Shenzhen
Shenzhen, China, May 2, 2014, — Season Comic Exhibition (Summer) 2014 opened in Shenzhen on May 2. I had looked forward to it for a long time. I have been to HK C3 and Shenzhen ACG(Animation, Comic and Game) Exhibition before, but never been to SCE (Season Comic Exhibition). Today is the opening day of SCE – Summer. I spent some time on the long queue outside the exhibition. There were mountains of people there.
Many Donjinshis greeted me when I went into the exhibition hall, but they didn’t seems good for me. I thought they were just so simple without anything special or too expensive. There were so many Cosers (costume players). Those Cosers were pretty beautiful, much better than those in SACGE. I enjoyed famous songs and BGM from animation, including the “Kokuhaku” from Supercell, which moved me many times.
I felt excited when I visited there. I found different groups of people in the exhibition: families, couples, kids and so on. I realized that the hope of future development had appeared in Chinese ACG industry. Years ago, Chinese people thought animation only made for the babies and kids, and adults could learn nothing from it. Maybe because of this kind of view, Chinese animated industry grew up really slowly. OTAKU couldn’t accepted by normal people. On the contrary, Japanese people love ACG culture. The average age of Japanese who watches animation is 33 years old. Japanese producers make all types of animation for different groups of people, not just only for the babies and the kids. Today I found many adults attending to this celebration.
At the beginning, only a tiny group of people loved ACG. However, we insisted in it. We wanted people to understand our culture. We wanted other people to treat us equally, although we wore exaggerated clothes and talked about “odd” things. Over time, we were accepted by other people steps by steps.
I’m so happy to be at SCE – Summer right in my hometown Shenzhen today. I feel proud and satisfied. Now, finally, we are accepted by more and more people in the society. For people, if they insist on one belief, they will eventually be accepted by others. Homosexual love, personal freedom, clean environment and all these will be realized if people own their courage to insist on them for a long time. Time will change everything and solve every hardship.