San AnTokyo 06 Transformed San Antonio Summer Raves
It’s been nearly a month since the HakubiVerse revived its legendary anime rave tradition, even after concluding the story with Number 5. Despite the decision to end the saga, we couldn’t just step away from delivering the best anime raves to a city that craved them. The stars aligned in such a way that I felt compelled to keep the San AnTokyo series going, despite the intense effort required. This immense workload is why I’m only now getting around to writing this blog, but I’m thrilled that we were able to pull off San AnTokyo 06: Henshin Impact. Curious about how this event came together? Let me fill you in.
Last year, during an Instagram live session, I mentioned my desire to step away from event promotion and return to music production after the overwhelming success of San AnTokyo 5: Ultima Nights. For nearly a decade, San Antonio’s rave scene was dominated by uninspiring, dissonant music and promoters with questionable motives. Determined not to accept this as the norm, I made it my mission to revive the true rave spirit by collaborating with organizations like EBE, JDS, Music Around The World, and Hard Dance Texas. This eventually led to the creation of HakubiVerse and our signature events. After my so-called “retirement,” I toured Texas, soaking up the vibrant dance scenes in Houston, Austin, and Dallas. However, San Antonio still did not feel like the rave metro compared to the other cities in the Texas Triangle, and I realized HakubiVerse had one more mission to complete. I knew San AnTokyo needed to return, but the theme and lineup were still uncertain. Then, serendipity stepped in. San Antonio’s Power Rangers and Tokusatsu convention, Morphinominal Expo, announced their event and needed an official afterparty. Meanwhile, West Coast legend Kygore (formerly DJ Delusion) was looking to make a splash in the USA, planning a stop in San Antonio with his friend and fellow West Coast icon, DJ Lucky Rabbit. To top it off, Canadian Hard Dance star Tamerax was set to pass through Texas. With these elements falling into place, we established a triple-main event celebrating tokusatsu.
Before diving into the epic triple-main event, I wanted to highlight the key factor that made San AnTokyo 6 possible: Morphinominal Expo. This Texas convention serves as the local counterpart to Power Morphicon and Rangerstop & Pop, offering San Antonio a dedicated celebration for Power Rangers, Super Sentai, Kamen Rider, Metal Heroes, and other Japanese live-action fandoms. I’ve been a fan of Power Rangers since the debut of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in 1993, and my interest in tokusatsu grew when I discovered its source material, such as Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger and its follow-up, Gosei Sentai Dairanger. This passion expanded to other childhood favorites like Metal Heroes for VR Troopers and Beetleborgs, Gridman for Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad, and Kamen Rider for Masked Rider. San Antonio has a strong Power Rangers fandom, but it’s thrilling to see the robust interest in Japanese tokusatsu as well. Morphinominal Expo was a standout event with an incredible lineup of guests, events, and panels. My only regret about partnering San AnTokyo 6 with Morphinominal is that I didn’t get to personally enjoy the expo as much as I was allowed as Ame and I were busy ensuring the afterparty was exceptional, especially following the high bar set by last year’s San AnTokyo 5. Despite the busyness, I had the chance to meet many of my favorite toku actors, including Reiko Chiba (Pteraranger Mei – Zyuranger), Shiro Izumi (Dragonranger Burai – Zyuranger), Charlie Kersh (Yellow Ranger Minh Kwan – MMPR: Once & Always), Steve Cardenas (Red Ranger Rocky DeSantos – MMPR), Brad Hawkins (Ryan Steele – VR Troopers), and Alyson Sullivan (Yellow Eagle Taylor Earhardt – Power Rangers Wild Force). There were many more I wished to meet, but between the two days of the convention, I had to shift focus back to the rave.
San AnTokyo 06: Henshin Impact took place at the historic Deco Ballroom, located in the heart of San Antonio’s Deco District on Fredericksburg Road. The layout for San AnTokyo returned to a single-stage setup featuring headliners Kygore, Lucky Rabbit, and Tamerax; in addition, I (Sephi Hakubi) along with DJ acab would return to open and close the show respectfully. Keeping with tradition, we have invited Kokoro Idols to be our live-performing guests to signal the transition from my set to the series of hardcore main events. I would get feedback about San Antonio from the fans wanting EDM or Hard Dance and HakubiVerse never thought of a formula on which spectrum of dance music we would like to highlight at San Antonio. After we had a two-night massive at San AnTokyo 5 last year showcasing each specialty each night, we unofficially decided to make even-number San AnTokyos Hard Dance (Happy Hardcore, J-Core, Hardstyle) and odd number San AnTokyos EDM (House, Trance, Electro). I did kick off the show with both AnimEDM and Hard Dance as this time it was my responsibility to warm the crowd into a frenzy of excitement for the night ahead, starting off with what I call AnimEDM with tracks from PSYQUI, lapix, Tempura Kidz, Koda Kumi, Teddyloid, and others then bringing the climax of the first set with Hard Dance tracks from SymBiotiX, MesoPhunk, TANUKI, S3RL, PLight, Redalice, Porter Robinson, and others as well. After some brief introductions at the end of my set, Kokoro Idols took their place in front of the stage through a series of idol dance routines. What I had hoped to accomplish with San AnTokyo was to not just make an anime rave, but a party for the anime community. The performance of Kokoro Idols along with inviting cosplay guests like EggCosplays, Opal The Designer, Tomiversecos, Silver Vulpix Cosplay, Channya, and Drunkencomedian really made San AnTokyo into a real anime party. As the Kokoro Idols performance completed, San AnTokyo 6’s triple-main event would begin with Tamerax. I was very fortunate that I could have Tamerax become part of San Antonio’s iconic anime rave as I’ve been a long-time fan of his and was looking forward to crossing paths and performing alongside this incredible musician someday. Tamerax performing at San AnTokyo was also another incredible blessing as the Canadian headliner would become the second-ever international Hardcore DJ to perform in San Antonio’s entire history (after Fracus & Darwin in 2019). Following Tamerax was DJ Lucky Rabbit, a shining star of Hardstyle from Los Angeles, California that shook the walls of the historic Deco Ballroom and the neighboring Woodlawn Theater with her powerful Hardstyle sounds. An amazing spirit that is not afraid to play the hardest of cores, Lucky Rabbit showed that she is an amazing talent that can take any energy on the dancefloor into the most fun vibe. The fun absolutely does not stop with her as Kygore would break limits with fun through his set. Just like his good friend Lucky Rabbit, Kygore also brings out the hard and fun sounds; however, he has no problem going over the top cosplaying as his signature Cat Maid and losing himself in the euphoria of a Hard Dance performance. This lineup just flowed perfectly and it was a perfect story told as DJ acab (who also grew up in Southern California), would close San AnTokyo 6 to a perfectly impactful end.
With San AnTokyo 06 now in our rear-view mirror, we now venture on to the remaining HakubiVerse shows of 2024 such as KadabraCon’s Kadabra Rave on October 4th and 5th at the Mansion Royal in Corpus Christi, and our first music festival Galaxy Station at the Bayou Music Center in Houston. This week, we have another massive event in San Antonio that we’re preparing for as on Saturday, September 14th in Deco Ballroom, we will host Do It All Night, a night of pure dance sounds featuring another world-renowned headliner and House music legend, Robbie Rivera. HakubiVerse hosting an icon like Robbie Rivera in San Antonio sounds like an incredible dream come true and we are excited to see that dream manifest; we hope to see you all at Deco Ballroom on September 14th for a real dance music experience. As far as the future of San AnTokyo, we are definitely thinking about making San AnTokyo 7 happen, but now we’re back to the start in figuring out when, who, and what the theme will be. For now, enjoy my opening set from San AnTokyo 06: Henshin Impact.
