Comic Con Seoul 2019 – Highlights and my review!

It is time for another Comic Con! Can’t believe it’s been a year since the last one. Please watch my video for the main highlights and lots of Billy Boyd footage (I am a big fan of the LOTR movies). I have made an entire video for the Cosplay Championship, which will be uploaded on Monday.

I wanted to write a longer review of my opinion about the event, because I had some thoughts about how it went. Also, at the end of this post, there will be some HD pictures of some of the models and figures in the convention, and in the cosplay event there will be pictures of that. So, let’s get to it!

Venue
Much improved from last year. Way less hot and very spacious. Made me question if they didn’t sell enough tickets or if it was actually very spaced out, but overall I thought the event flowed well and didn’t feel stifling. The only issue I had was that artist alley seemed deserted.

Registration and entry
This year, if you bought tickets online, you had to register beforehand to get a barcode that would then give you the tickets. Mind you, I still had to line up for about an hour and a half despite having registered beforehand etc. I didn’t mind the registration system but I overheard some people talking and they seemed puzzled and dissatisfied.

Booths
I was disappointed with the variety offered in terms of booths. There was a lot of the same stuff from last year, especially the figures and displays. Some booths seemed really redundant, like the Aniplus booth, where they only sold ichiban Fuji and that’s it. Many booths didn’t have anyone there or looked empty. However, my biggest complaint is artist alley. There was a lack of interesting artists, considering how many good artists there are in Korea I wonder why they didn’t have more people. With silent cinema, it’s good that it was bigger but I wish they had kept it in a separate area because it didn’t feel very silent, and I quite enjoyed the more intimate feeling of last year’s silent cinema. Finally, I understand marvel is super popular in Korea, but there are so many more interesting heroes, franchises, and projects to exhibit. I would like to see more inclusion of other pop culture franchises because right now it feels more like Marvel Con instead of Comic Con.

Talks/events:
I attended many of the talks offered this year. Overall, I think that they were interesting and enjoyable, but there is definitely room for improvement. With Billy Boyd and Kevin McNally, the translator was great, but there seemed to be a bit of disorganization on the part of the celebrities in allowing the translator to speak, and I wish they would have prepared them better to allow the translator their time to speak to the Korean audience fully. Also, for the first two days, the talks happened with only slight moderation, and it was mostly just the audience asking questions. Not to blame the audience, but most questions were very superficial or they repeated themselves. When you have such great talents in your event, I think there would be a big benefit to asking them about interesting questions having to do with their industry and other matters. In the last day the Billy Boyd talk I saw did have a moderator, but again, the questions were not extremely interesting and I felt like the moderator also made things hard for the translator.

The conversation with Iida Riho was great because she really knows how to entertain the audience, but I felt like the questions being asked to her were extremely simple and uninteresting. I understand her cuteness is part of her appeal, but that doesn’t mean that she can’t answer more developed questions. In this case, her translator seemed flustered and nervous. I understand that it can happen, but I could tell even Iida had to compensate due to that fact.

I had a lot of fun in the masked singer competition, and I thought all the singers were amazing. The same can be said for the cosplay championships, they were well organized and well timed, aside from a few hiccups. I really enjoyed both of those events.

Overall I enjoyed the convention but I feel like it could be more developed and diverse in its content. However, I think it’s a bit upgrade from last year and I am excited to see how they will keep improving!