OU alum Jeremy Haltom and his partner Christina Haltom are hosting the inaugural Anime Island, an anime convention, Saturday and Sunday at the Jim Thorpe Multicultural Center.
Anime Island began as Jeremy’s capstone project while he was studying entrepreneurship and venture management at OU. He said studying at Price College helped him understand the business side of convention work.
The event will bring together anime fans, voice actors, cosplayers, artists and vendors. Jeremy and Christina said one of the biggest challenges has been transforming a class project into an event people know about.
“The most difficult part has been figuring out how to spread the word to the anime community, to people that would attend the convention,” Christina said. “There’s a lot of going out and putting out flyers and posting on social media, and that was a whole new experience for us.”
The Haltoms have worked for conventions in the past. Christina once worked as a guest services representative, giving her experience with booking voice actors.
“It’s just about reaching out to agents, seeing who was available, seeing which voice actors would work with the vision that we had,” Christina said. “I’m really excited about all of them. A couple of them we know. A couple of them we’re friends with because we’ve worked with them in the past, but there’s a few we’ve never met that we’re pretty excited about.”
Voice actors attending include Leah Clark, Morgan Berry, Sara Ragsdale — all featured in “My Hero Academia” — and more.
There will be two cosplay contests: the adult contest is Saturday and will award cash prizes and the children’s contest Sunday, which will include prizes provided by cosplay guests running the competition.
Giving back to the community is an important part of the event as the Haltom’s will donate 10% of all sponsorships to Among Friends Activity Center — a nonprofit organization that provides socialization, learning and recreation to adults with disabilities.
Jeremy and Christina Haltom at his OU graduation.
The donation recipient was chosen because Jeremy volunteered at the organization during his Integrated Business Core class. Since Christina is a special education teacher, Jeremy invited her to volunteer as well.
“We both kind of just fell in love with the members there, and I know they are huge fans of OU,” Christina said. “Even the OU football team went out and visited them. We wanted to pick an organization that we could give back to, and it made sense that we picked that one.”
Anime Island is run under Mortal Curiosity, a parent company owned by the Haltom’s designed to create a variety of unique ventures. The convention is 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are available online.
“We’re really excited,” Christina said. “We hope that people come and that this is just the first of many for us.”
This story was edited by Madisson Cameron. Tori Pham and Sophie Hemker copy edited this story.
