Nekocon 2024 Summary!

 Hi everyone!

Nekocon was held 13.-14.7 in Kuopio's Musiikkitalo once again. My journey there started on Friday. My traveling companion and boyfriend Don had work that day, so we planned to leave once he got back home. Departure ended up taking an hour or two longer though. Driving there went ok, though google maps gave us a weird route to a different place. I don't know if it was a typo on our part or maps just being weird, but after a while we found our airbnb. Firith and Shiro Samurai were super nice and fetched our tickets for us, so we didn't have to wait in line during the con day. Thank you guys lav juu! ❤

The main entrance

The ticket

The theme this year was creatures and weirdos, which was a perfect opportunity for me to bring Ix Elizabetta from Welcome to Demon School Iruma-kun!. Last time I wore this costume was Desucon 2023. I've made a couple improvements since then, like a whole new skirt with better patterns, new tail and fixed sleeves.. I still need to get a new wig, but for this convention, it looked ok. ^^

I felt cute, though I still need to figure out cosplay makeup 

Don snapped the pic :3

Once we arrived, Don wanted to go shopping. He had a couple manga series in mind he wanted to get, so of course I would accompany him. The only programs we wanted to see was Nekomättö (Tekken 8 tournament) and Antti Pääkkönen's Q&A. We had a lot of time on our hands, so we explored the area.

Dealer's hall

Artisan's area

Main hall/Cloakroom

After shopping in dealer's hall and artisan's area, we also checked out the Lumit building for the gaming room, second hand shop and the main thing, artist's alley! ❤ Also the Tekken 8 Tournament was held in there. I didn't find much from second hand, except whole series of Fushigi Yuugi manga for 10€! ^^ I've been wanting to cosplay from it, either Miaka or Yui, depends if I get someone to cosplay with me. 👀

The gaming area, we played a little bit of Sly games :3

Azucena Vs Leroy

K.O!

This tournament was a tryout for Sunday's final. It was exciting to watch, though there were some complications, but those are a classic in these events. I didn't know we had this good players in Finland!

We didn't have enough time to watch the whole thing, but we checked out the artists alley, the con had different artist's for different days after all, so I didn't want to miss anything.

❤❤

After the tournament we had a little bit of time left before Antti Pääkkönen, so we went to get some boba's from Aina Kesä! You could get 20% off if you were wearing a cosplay costume, which was super cool. :3 

I was a little nervous to go though, since I heard that there were some kids throwing water balloons at cosplayers! I can't say I'm surprised though, I heard that there were kids harassing cosplayers in Desucon as well, but still! For future conventions, be careful if you're leaving the con area. Nothing happened to us, thankfully, but still.... What the hell is wrong with children??? This could be very traumatic experience to someone and overall dangerous! Also it could ruin someone's cosplay, those are super expensive, no matter if bought or self made! >:(

 

Don had a kiwi boba and I had a strawberry milk tea with matcha swirl, it was so good! 

Now to the main event! Antti Pääkkönen, the voice actor of so many characters! To me his work as Taichi Yagami from Digimon was the most memorable. The show went pretty much the same way as Seppo Pääkkönen's did last year, at first some clips were shown of the VA's roles and then there was an interview. After that the audience could ask questions. I personally had nothing to ask, since everything was answered during the interview. The experience was still, super emotional to me and even more so when I got a chance to take a picture with the man and ask for his autograph. ;_;

Iconiccccccc

I was smiling, but also holding back tears of joy. I couldn't even say anything other than a muttered "Thank you for everything" ;___;

AAAAAAAAAAh He was so nice

After that emotional rollercoaster, it was time for us to leave for the day. I wanted to change off from my costume, get some food and walk around a little more around town, we even got a couple drinks.

Sunday! We packed some of the stuff on Saturday evening, so packing and cleaning up the rest would be easier in the morning. I cosplayed Venat that day, since Ai cosplay I have been working on had some complications I didn't have enough time to fix. I didn't mind this though, because of people's reactions alone! Best one was from Artist's alley, they sold FFXIV art and when I stopped at their booth, one of them literally gasped and whispered "Venat!". They were so nice and I love the stickers and prints I got from them! ;_; I was just too awkward to have a proper conversation or really say anything. It was quite the contrast with Elizabetta, I got some nice comments on my costume, but it was more in the "Idk know the series, but the character looks familiar" -kind of fashion. :'D I can't blame them though, Elizabetta is a side character after all.

I still don't know how to cosplay makeup, especially for Venat :I

"Flow" plays in the distance

Don snapped this photo also!

The only main event for Sunday to me was Nekomättö Finals! I really wanted to go see the cosplay competition, but the ticket line was sooo loong! So yeah, I gave up on that. Don wanted to do some final shopping for manga and some games, so I accompanied him. I was tempted to buy a Tengen (Demon Slayer) figure by Sega, it wasn't that expensive, looked quite large, but I was really looking for a Rengoku one, so I had to leave him there.  

Usually I don't have anything specific I need to buy, but during this con I was on a quest to find a sticker book! I have accumulated some stickers over the years, sometimes from artist's alley, sometimes I get them as a freebie, but I have nowhere to put them. I found some books from qpeura, they seemed to only have Genshin Impact themed books, I didn't really care about the characters on it, but I would've bought it for the art alone. I already picked one up and was about dig my wallet, until the seller said to me "You are a FFXIV person right?". I of course said "yeah" and they told me they have one copy of FF-themed sticker book left, it was a display piece, but it was in good condition. Of course I bought that one instead, they also gave me a free sticker! ;u; Mission accomplished!

It's so cute!

On to the Nekomättö finals! Pretty much all the players were on an e-sports team, so these guys were the real deal. I honestly would have taken a part of this competition, if my brother would've joined me. We've played Tekken games since Tekken 2 on PS1. That is THE fighting game for us. Though, we would not have made it too far though. :'D Anyway, the tournament went well. I was on the edge of my seat, super excited, the fights were intense! It was so funny to me how the meme/troll characters were the ones that made it to the last round, Kuma vs Yoshimitsu. This tournament really gave me the itch to not only play Tekken, but also make a cosplay from it! XD

The beginning

Son VS. Mother!

After the tournament we went to Dealer's Hall one last time as well as Artisan's area to do our final final shopping. I found Venat print and Don got snacks. Very important stuff! Then I went to the dressing room and changed out of cosplay. After that. started the drive back home.

Mirror selfie before changing

I had so much fun at Nekocon this year, sadly it went by so fast! I was left with a lot of inspiration for my next cosplay projects. Next convention is going to be Tracon in Tampere, so I'll probably be more quiet here for a little while. Until next time, bye! :3 

Pssssst! Does anyone know if there's going to be a WoL sticker trade in Tracon this year? I might make some stickers of my character anyway, but I would like to know if I should bring them with me. :3