Yo peeps!
I went to my first Mushucon this past weekend or, to be more exact, on 29th April 2017. ^^ If I'm not mistaken this was the second Mushucon in history and, to be honest, last year I didn't have a clue that there even existed a con in Rovaniemi (Santa Claus land Finland) until I saw a cosplay blog somewhere that wrote about it afterwards. I actually find it weird that I managed to completely miss it last year because yeah, when you live in the north –aka where it's rare that things happen– there's always that one friend, who also lives somewhere else in the north, who tells you if there's some events coming up in any of the cities within a 100 km radius, lol. Yes, that distance is considered local in my book. :-D No but seriously, I guess Mushucon last year either didn't invest in advertising or it was just so small that no one ever heard about it outside of Rovaniemi, lol. Then again, I've known about Rovaniemi's manga day for some years now so... dafuq.
Oh well, let's forget about missing the first Mushucon and I'll tell you what the second Mushucon was like! Let's roll!
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| Me and Joni doing the fedora tip, m'lady. #fedorafaggots |
Our con group consisted of me,
Sacchan, Sacchan's little brother Joni and our friend Piia. Before the con we were very unsure if we could even get there because we had no ride, but luckily
Sacchan's (and Joni's) cool dad agreed to do a day trip to Rovaniemi with his camper. Yes, we totally drove to Mushucon in a camper. It was goals. #swag
Me and Joni decided to be fedora fags, for shits and giggles, while
Sacchan took the hip kid route and sported a cap together with a multicolor wig. And, as you can see from the photo above, I didn't cosplay and that's also the reason why there was no "Mushucon plans" post prior to the con – there would have been no point because I didn't cosplay nor work at the event; I just went as a casual visitor with my homies.
I had gone to
Sacchan's place a day before the trip, to make things easier. We left for Mushucon on Saturday morning, around 9:00 local time, if I recall right. Sitting the four of us in a camper and laughing hard at
Pokémon fusions was how we passed time; the one with Doduo and Voltorb fused together, including a hilarious comic, made us all howl with laughter. x'D Otherwise we just talked about video games and derped around. We even had a
turriperse furry friend onboard – say hello to
Piki, the 13-year-old dachshund mix breed! He's such a precious sausage gramps. ;A;
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Piki chilling with Jonsk Joni. |
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| Cutest nakkimakkara in the passenger seat. ♥ |
We arrived at Rovaniemi's kaupungintalo (lit. "city house") 4 minutes before Mushucon would open its doors. It was a nice semi-cloudy day with a chilly wind blowing. I remember that Joni was the first visitor to walk into the building and I was right after him. :'D
First blood!
By the way, Mushucon had free entrance.
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| Mushucon's entrance. |
What immediately struck me inside was that it seemed like Mushucon
didn't use the whole building, just a few rooms for panels and the
entrance hall for the main body of the convention – the shops, con
tables, info desk etc. The unused parts of the building were either
sealed off or just left empty. Because of the really limited space used on the first floor (aka where eveything moderately interesting was, imo) it was quite common that it got crammed, especially close to the merchandise sellers. The second floor was in use too (and it seemed bigger) but it was really empty compared to the first floor – there were only a couple TCG gaming tables (
Magic: The Gathering and
Yu-Gi-Oh!, respectively) and some couches etc that one could sit on. I actually didn't even notice the stairs leading to the second floor until after a couple hours. I got a slight feeling of a case of wasted potential because the second floor was roomy, comfy and left to little attention.
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| Mushucon, seen from the entrance. |
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| A view into the merchandise/main hall. |
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| Again, merchandise/main hall. Info desk to the right. |
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| Merch & main hall. In the far back was a separate cafeteria. |
Mushucon was a small con, just like expected – few cosplayers, few panels, few merch sellers etc. The atmosphere was slow-paced and relaxed, similar to Kitacon, Matsucon and the like. ^^ I have no idea how many visitors there were but it felt like I kept seeing the same people over and over again, until they eventually disappeared and/or left.
No panels or programs really interested me (except for one, but I noticed it afterwards) so I spent my time just walking around to check what kind of stuff were for sale and chilling with my friends. There wasn't so much to do to kill time but I had low expectations anyway (as I often do for northern small cons, definitely not in a bad way thou!) and so I wasn't disappointed at all and just enjoyed my time; if anything it was a bit of a bummer that there was no video game room. ;_; Even Kitacon and Matsucon had one so yeah, I was kinda hoping that there would have been a gaming room somewhere.
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That Tsunomon plush (Digimon) was the first thing I saw
when I looked into this plush blasket. I wondered if it
was fate because I was wearing a Gabumon themed t-shirt... |
I was a bit surprised to see that even a big seller like
Urumi had come to sell at Mushucon! I did chat with the store holder for a while and was relieved to hear that she too, as a fellow
Pokémon fan, cared about the whole issue with fake
Pokémon goods (especially plush dolls) and assured me that Urumi only sells genuine merch, often
imported from either Japan or America. I asked specifically about
Pokémon plushes and voiced my concern and I was happy to hear that she understood exactly what I was coming from! I told her that over the years I've accidentally bought several bootleg poké plushes (thinking they were legit ones, fakes are sometimes well-made nowadays) at cons and that, because of it, I've grown really wary and skeptical of any and all con sellers who have
Pokémon merch, especially. It sucks to not be able to buy fan merch at cons, even if you want to, because of the fear of the sea of unchecked fake goods that cons unknowingly take in. Telling the fakes apart from the real deal can be really hard.
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| Ginga Densetsu Weed plushes for sale, all different types! |
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| Figurines and keychains, rubber strap mascots,badges etc. |
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| I even found some Monster Hunter merch! :D |
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| I was so tempted to buy one of those Lycanroc Midday Form plushes... |
In the back of Urumi's store there was a cardboard box with some sale plushes inside (not pictured). I was actually kind of surprised when the store holder just took some plushes from the metallic basket (pictured below) and threw them over to the sale box; I heard her say something that they were being sold cheaper because they had been lying around for quite some time now (aka being unsold after several conventions). I dug into the sale box because who doesn't love discounts? :D I didn't find anything that made me go "omg I need this!" but there was a cute Keldeo plush in the box and some other Pokémons, like Terrakion.
I was hoping to find a treasure and yes, I love plush dolls too much.
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These are the plushes that replaced the
ones that went into the sale box. |
Another thing that I appreciate with Urumi is that they sell
Ginga Densetsu Weed plushes with manufacturer faults for a cheaper penny! I didn't know about this until I saw it at
Matsucon this year and it stuck to me as awesome. I mean, I'm not the one whose world will fall apart if my plush anime dog has a crooked leg or such (I barely pay attention to small faults like that, especially if it can still stand upright) so yeah, getting a good 5-15 € off the price for any kind of manufacturer errors sounds like a deal to me!
The price on the "disabled doge" depended on how grave the fault was – smaller faults were sold closer to the full price (35,90 €), often 30 €, and the more derpy the plush was the cheaper it got. Eye faults seemed to drop the price the most because yeah, not so many are okay with having their favorite Weed character plush with eyes so differently placed that the poor thing looks stoned 24/7. x)
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| "Herpy & Derpy Weed plushes" says the sign. :'D |
I actually bought a herp derp Tesshin plush (the only Tesshin in the basket above) with a crooked foreleg and a backleg sticking out a little.
Give the derpy dogs a home! ♥ The faults are rather minor (I checked before buying, the plush still stands up easily) so it was sold for 30 €. I didn't find any for 20 € in the basket but at least a couple were 25 €
– with eye derps, of course.
I'll be sure to check out the herp derp Weed basket in future cons too, if it's there – I want to adopt more of them. ;U; They're cute in their own retarded way ~
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| Kummacon's table sold the obligatory sweets! |
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| Second-hand manga for sale. |
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| Second-hand shop selling manga, old videos, wigs etc. |
At some point my whole company, except me, went out to go fetch some snacks etc and Piia also had to take out some money; I stayed at the con.
Sacchan had been carrying my main bag (I had the camera bag) and I forgot to ask it back and so I was at the con for a long time without my friends, my money and my 3DS. Needless to say I got bored because I couldn't buy anything and I couldn't kill time by playing games either. xD So yeah, I just walked around repeatedly and looked at the merch and the Artist's Alley over and over again. And speaking of the Artist's Alley, it was kinda weirdly placed because one of the artists were together with the merch sellers when the rest were in their own corridor. I have no idea why but if it was planned then no biggie, it just confused me a little. Then again, based on the artist's homepage it's actually a company so I guess it makes sense!
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Jasu's table, one of the Artist's Alley sellers (who wasn't in the alley with the rest xD)
Check out her page: jasuwonderworld.com |
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| Amazing and absolutely breathtaking art!! |
Once my friends finally returned I got a berliininmunkki (berlin's donut? idk :D) so I was happy. We sat close to the Artist's Alley and snacked meanwhile we all agreed on that we had seen enough of the convention that we could go back home; the trip back takes about 1,5 hours and at least I didn't want to make
Sacchan's dad either annoyed or bored. We stayed at the con for about 4 or 5 hours out of 7 hours in total so yeah, we had plenty of time to experience the event.
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Artist's Alley. It felt impossible to get a good shot
because of the narrow corridor, the random congoers blocking
the view and the sealed off area in the back. ^^" |
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| Artist's Alley. Notice the huge handmade Gyarados plush! |
I didn't know that there was a drawing room until like the last 15 minutes we were at the con. I saw that, according to the info leaflet, there should be one upstairs but I didn't find it on my first visit to the second floor – turns out it was in a separate room (I don't remember seeing any signs). In my opinion it was kinda hidden and honestly, none of my friends were aware of it either until I told them, even though they had also been upstairs but at a different time than me. I guess I could say that it would have been better had it been in a more visible spot; it seemed like before me there had only been a few people there. :/ Not many drawings on the table.
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| Drawing room or workshop or whatever you wanna call it. |
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| I continued the tradition. Sacchan's Buttman shall never die... |
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With that I've experienced my first Mushucon. I swear I kept accidentally saying Mutsicon several times during the day. xD It was pretty much as I expected, a comfy and simple little con in the north. ^.^ It's nothing amazing but it was generally enjoyable and besides, it was fun to visit Rovaniemi for the first time! There's room for improvement but it's off to a good start. Hosting Mushucon in Kaupungintalo felt decent overall yet a little restricted but, then again, I have no idea what else Rovaniemi has to offer. I would go there again if I can get a ride and if my friends are going – alone I would be bored fast... unless there's a gaming room in the next installment, haha.
And finally, here's my con loots:
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| Tesshin (GDW) plush and a Rockruff (Pokémon) plush from Urumi. ♥ |
