By Gene Ching
Just a few weeks after I was at San Diego Comic-con, I was at another fan gathering on my home turf, GalaxyCon San Jose. On August 15-17, 2025, GalaxyCon San Jose held its sophomore outing at the San Jose’s McEnery Convention Center, the same venue where we held the 2025 Tiger Claw Elite Championships earlier this year. As San Jose’s premiere venue, the McEnery has been home to a succession of fan gatherings; the first one that I covered for KungFuMagazine.com here was back in 2015 when I was chasing down an interview with Ray Park for our July+August cover story. Consequently, I’ve covered every successive con in that house ever since.
GalaxyCon oversees over a dozen cons across the nation, but last year was the first for San Jose (see The Kung Fu of Comic Cons – GalaxyCon San Jose 2024: Plus Michael Dorn on Klingon Martial Arts). For me personally, that was a bold launch. Being a lifelong trekkie, it was an honor to chat with Dorn. I’m very grateful to GalaxyCon for providing me with that opportunity. After all, GalaxyCon aims to service fans, and I am a fan of many genres, not just martial arts.
GalaxyCon San Jose 2025 followed up its debut nicely, demonstrating that the success of their first outing here in the heart of the Silicon Valley wasn’t beginner’s luck. This year’s event attracted a solid line-up of guest stars: William Shatner, Barry Bostwick, Lou Ferrigno, Soleil Moon Frye, Dolph Lundgren, Ron Perlman, my old Man at Arms cast mate, Danny Trejo, and many more. Danny was extremely busy attending to his line of fans, and I spoke to him last year, so I opted not to interrupt his flow with another interview. GalaxyCon is for the fans, and Danny has a lot of fans.
The Martial World at GalaxyCon
With SDCC still fresh in my mind, I opted not to pursue any interviews at all this year. Instead, I turned my focus to overarching mission here – observing martial trends in pop culture. SDCC is overwhelming in magnitude, one of the biggest cons in the world. Within the packed aisles, foot traffic jams are commonplace there. There’s too much going on there to see just half of it, but if one looks long enough, anything can be found, even martial arts. GalaxyCon is far more intimate and manageable. Booths and panels can be perused at a leisurely pace. There are still lines, like the one for Danny, but they are much shorter and evenly spaced. However, martial arts are harder to find.
The most prominent 2025 trend is Labubu, the ugly Chinese doll that has captured the planet. It’s a textbook example of China’s favorite Tai Chi strategy – soft power. Labubu first emerged from the Chinese retailer Pop Mart in 2015. The Labubu craze is reminiscent of the early days of Hello Kitty, Beanie Babies, or Cabbage Patch dolls, skyrocketing Pop Mart’s value so much that it just opened Popland Beijing - a 40,000 square meter theme park inside Chaoyang Park that is dedicated to Pop Mart characters but mostly Labubu. Pop Mart has several other plush dolls and figurine lines like Skullpanda, as well as licensed Disney and Harry Potter lines. There are 26 Pop Mart stores in the USA at this writing and if they’re good marketers, they’ll bring booths to cons soon; their fandom would love it. If Pop Mart plays its strategy well, they could be the next Funko Pop.
I long for something martial to catch fire like Labubus. Overall, the martial arts genre remains underrepresented at cons. Occasionally there is a distributor of collectable DVDs which might offer some choice vintge Shaw Brothers or Golden Harvest titles. But for such a massive movie genre, I seldom see that much Hong Kong film representation in cosplay or merch at cons. Martial arts fandom manifests more in anime here.
On the anime front is the latest Netflix blockbuster K-Pop Demon Hunters. I confess that I’m a huge fan. K-Pop Demon Hunters combines three elements that I love – K-Pop, Asian mythology, and of course, martial arts. The three heroines wield traditional Korean weapons: Rumi bears a saingeom (akin to a Chinese jian), Zoey throws shinkal (akin to Chinese bi shou or Japanese kunai) and Mira wields gokdo (akin to my favorite Chinese polearm, guandao).
Note that in my SDCC coverage, I called Mira’s gokdo a woldo. It’s my understanding that both terms apply, but to be perfectly transparent, it has been K-Pop Demon Hunters that has inspired my exploration of Korean cold arms. All these terms are new to me. I have just begun to explore this area of hopology, thanks to this movie. And if any of my readers knows a solid resource for Korean hopology, please leave a comment in the discussion thread below. Discovering gokdo and woldo is exactly why I look to pop culture trends at cons. You never know where your next lesson on the martial world might appear.
At this writing, K-Pop Demon Hunters has become Netflix’s most watched film of all time. On August 23-24, it had a limited theatrical release for a sing-along version across 1700 U.S. theaters. That garnered $19.2 million despite still streaming on Netflix, capturing the national box office’s top slot for the weekend. Netflix is considering several follow up projects including two sequel films, a TV series, a short film and a live action stage musical. For us martial artists, it’s time to sharpen our saingeom, shinkal, and gokdo.
Avatar the Last Airbender continues to be a prominent martially oriented fandom. The work of my Kung Fu cousin, Sifu Kisu, gave that show a Kung Fu underpinning like no other. The original series is awesome, and if you know your Kung Fu, it’s even more awesome, thanks to cousin Kisu. Twenty-twenty-five marks the 20th Anniversary of AtLA, although that was hardly acknowledged at GalaxyCon. Nevertheless, the AtLA fandom remained strong. The series is so cherished that cosplayers and merch is still wildly popular and there were plenty of offerings at GalaxyCon San Jose.
Once again, Weapondirect was the dominant sword vendor at GalaxyCon San Jose. They had two booths and dominated sales for anime katanas. They still don’t have a website – a search will bring up outdoor enthusiast sites. You still must just catch them at a con. I love to check out their booths. It’s such a wild arsenal – from cartoonishly anime to some high-quality reproductions.
And as with any con, there were a lot of lightsabers available. Standout at GalaxyCon San Jose were Hooked on Sabers and Kyber Cave. I’ve been asked to focus on a review of combat lightsabers, but honestly, despite being a board member on Terra Prime Light Armory, I only own one combat worthy lightsaber. Combat lightsabers are its own huge galaxy. It’s so much research, so much lore, and I indulge my warrior nerd enough with these con reports. But perhaps I’ll interview some vendors at a future con.
I’m sad to report that despite their motto, Cobra Kai has died. One of the greatest expressions of fandom is cosplaying, but I only saw one Cobra Kai cosplayer (it’s an easy cosplay because a basic Karate gi is very affordable). But beyond that, there was very little Cobra Kai merch available. While the series was first being broadcast, there were plenty of Cobra Kai offerings to be found, but not so much anymore. Perhaps the latest movie installment, Karate Kid: Legends put a damper on the formidable momentum from the Netflix series. As I’ve said before that film may be the dealbreaker of the franchise.
Lawrence Washington returned with his art box bodega to GalaxyCon again this year. He had a booth at our Tiger Claw Elite Championship 2024 as his art leans heavily into martial arts. As a vendor, GalaxyCon treats him well, but not due to his martial arts art. “Honestly my martial arts boxes were kind of a bust.” reports Washington. “At conventions geared towards superheroes and anime, martial arts is considered ‘niche.’ That disappointed me greatly because I'm very passionate about martial arts, Kung Fu cinema, etc and I have a lot of ideas that may never get explored due to lack of interest by con-goers. Still, I try to pepper aspects of martial arts in my work in other less obvious ways. For example, I'll do a Hello Kitty or a Pikachu, but they will be performing a high kick or a fighting stance.”
A unique aspect of GalaxyCon San Jose is GalaxyCon After Dark. During the day while the exhibit hall is open, GalaxyCon provides a Family Zone that offers fun games and event for ‘kids of all ages.’ There’s even a Kids Costume Contest. In contrast, After Dark provided adult entertainment, 18+ only and you had to show ID. Bars opened across the convention center for those of drinking age including one with a live DJ. There was a Rocky Horror Shadowcast with a meet & greet with Barry Bostwick. There was a Social Club that held a Drunk on Disney event. There was also Drunk Tetris and a Drink N’Draw. Even more risqué, there were burlesque and drag shows including Cosplay Cabaret, and shows like Queens of the Galaxy, Drag Bingo, and the Boob Tube Review. There was even a Deep Space Boutique with adult themed vendors and artists.
Like with SDCC, riding coattail on GalaxyCon was another independent party in the neighborhood. The Ritz hosted We Touch Grass: Anime Rave on Saturday night. I did not attend that. There wasn’t enough information to tempt me. Besides, the weekend prior to GalaxyCon, I worked at Outside Lands, a major annual music festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park that I’ve been part of since it launched in 2008. This year Outside Lands was dominated by EDM. I’m a self-confessed bass worshipper, but there was so much last weekend that for the first time, I hit my EDM wall. We Touch Grass: Anime Rave is a movement akin to Shrek raves, although it takes a wider focus with anime. DJs spin dance tracks out of anime soundtracks and cosplay is encouraged. GalaxyCon San Jose After Dark had its own DJs at one of the bars, but it didn’t catch fire and was nearly empty by midnight (After Dark went until 2 AM).
My only disappointment (and this was with the fandom at large, not GalaxyCon San Jose) was that Ne Zha 2 had no presence. It’s the biggest animated film ever and currently ranked as the fifth highest grossing movie of all time. Read that again – THE FIFTH HIGHEST GROSSING MOVIE OF ALL TIME. It’s the only film in the top 50 highest grossing films that’s not a Hollywood production. Back in our glory days of print publishing, I wrote a regular column titled ‘Chollywood Rising,’ wi ‘Chollywood’ was an early term referring to Chinese cinema, derivative of ‘Bollywood’ which referred to India (Bombay) produced cinema. The term fell out of fashion, and I abandoned it for the title ‘Fast Forward to the Fight Scenes’. GalaxyCon San Jose happened just prior to the second North American release of Ne Zha 2, now dubbed in English and starring Michelle Yeoh as Ne Zha’s mom, Lady Yin, so perhaps it was just bad timing. And ironically, the Ne Zha 2 theatrical re-release was eclipsed by K-Pop Demon Hunters sing-alongs. We’ll see if Ne Zha appears at the next con.
Over the last decade, there have been several different Comic-con events in held in San Jose McEnery Convention Center. It’s a good venue for such a gathering, in the heart of downtown San Jose. We hope that GalaxyCon San Jose can continue to provide the Silicon Valley with a fan gathering that our fandom here deserves.
About author:
The next GalaxyCon San Jose is August 21-23, 2026. Tickets for next year are on sale now.
Gene Ching is the Publisher of KungFuMagazine.com and the author of Shaolin Trips.
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