Kemin mangapäivä 2025 – Hosting an activity room!

 Hello geeks and bookworms!

After years in a deep hiatus Kemi's manga day has returned! It's been a whopping 10 years since I last attended this local event and I think that's roughly when it stopped being held too, give or take a couple years. Kemi's manga day was held on Saturday 8th March, it's a free one-day event in the Kulttuurikeskus building.

Let's get on with this summary!

As a little backstory I want to mention that many many years ago Kemi's manga day was the first ever pop culture event I attended and it's where my cosplay journey started back in 2009. :'D So yeah, I have a certain nostalgic fondness for this humble event – and so when I heard news that Kemi's manga day was about to rise from its grave I got very excited and made sure to inform my willingness to help make it happen, especially because I knew the firesouls behind the effort to bring it back.
For those unaware Kemi's manga day and Kitacon have actually been arranged by a single person all those previous years, more or less, and at some point down the road said person burnt out and that's why both anime events in Kemi suddenly stopped. This is why it's so very important to have other passionate people to pass the torch forward to when your powers eventually fall short!
Anyways, I was early with taking contact and, while my initial position was to be one of the cosplay competition judges, I saw a creeping dilemma approaching the closer to launch we got. That creeping dilemma was called ~not enough programs and activities~. So in a last minute change of mind a few days before the con I asked the main organizers if I could host a drop-in drawing workshop instead of being a cosplay judge; I figured getting activities was more urgent and an art room is easy enough for me to host, despite my numerous struggles. I got a grateful thumbs up and set the plan in motion!

Entrance to the event building. Nostalgic for many of us.

Then came the much awaited return of the king day. My mom was an angel and had promised to drive me to Kemi on the morning and so I didn't have to take public transport or anything. Who wasn't an angel was my neighbors though, because of course they decided to have some karaoke night on Friday night because why the fuck not, complete with humppa and drunken setämies fights. This month has been a ridiculous bullet hell of Murphy's law everywhere for me, I shit you not. Oh well, thank lord my lovely neighbors eventually went to sleep and so I could go to sleep too lol.
My original plan had been to cosplay but due to a combination of bad luck (including aforementioned partying wrecking my chances at a decent night's sleep) and other factors I decided on the morning to just go casual instead. Or well, as casual as my most basic metalhead attire is.

I arrived in Kemi roughly 10:30, with half an hour to spare before the event officially opened its doors to visitors. Immediately upon entering I noticed that some of the artist tables had been placed just next to the entrance, which I personally think is great as it adds a lot of visibility and novelty, as in you can immediately tell that it's not just another normal day at the library. Yes, I'm saying library here because the local library is in the same building and it's the main reason most people enter the building. Also a shoutout to the library for being one of the two organizing bodies and lending personnel to make the manga day flow smoothly!

Immediately upon entering you saw a part of the Artist's Alley.

Here's OwlCraftian's booth, one of the talented young craftmakers. ♥

I went to dump my jacket and scarf in one of the backrooms and then I quickly checked my work station, aka the library's youth room where the drawing workshop was to be held. I scurried around for a few minutes fetching some people to get all the tools I needed for the room (paper, coloring pens etc) and after making sure that everything was ready at 11:00 I spent the next 30 minutes checking the Artist's Alley while I still had some time to do so.
I saw some faces from previous con trips but I also saw a few I've only seen like once and there were one or two booths I think I've never seen before, which was very nice to see! I really like how the organizers have given newcomers and locals a chance to come and sell because Artist's Alley slots are highly sought after and usually events get more applications than there's available slots so yeah, sadly not everyone who wants in gets a place and usually the bigger, already established names get priority. Variety and supporting those with less experience (so that they can get more experience) makes me a happy fellow artist. :)

General view of the main area (immediately after passing the AA).

Before leaving for my work station I snapped all the photos in this summary and yes, because I took the photos early that's why it looks more empty than it actually was during the busiest hours.

Oh, I forgot to mention that aside from the library there's also a permanent comic exhibition (feat. Donald Duck characters) and a museum in the same building. And a cafeteria and a rotating art exhibition hall so yeah, it's not called Kulttuurikeskus (lit. 'culture center') for nothing.

Kemi's children's culture center held a DIY pin workshop in the comic exhibition area.

Once the clock hit 11:30 I made my way through the library and all the way to the drawing room in the far back, past the youth section. When I arrived two kids were already diligently drawing in there, much to my surprise. In this room I was to sit until the cosplay competition started, which was at 14:00 local time.

Drawing workshop, prepared and awaiting attendants~

I'll admit, I was quite nervous at first. I've never hosted any kind of self-suggested activity alone before. I might or might not have co-hosted something at some point, I can't remember. Oh, and I don't count Mericon's photobooth here because it was officially needed and not something that came from my head. I can get panicky in front of people but I figured that watching over kids drawing is less daunting than hosting something for adults, because especially young kids aren't as critical and bothered by neurospicy quirks or social awkwardness as adults can be, generally speaking. Anime events tend to be an exception to this rule, which is a calming thought.
I did start to feel comfortable eventually and I'm very happy about how everyone who visited the workshop was very well-behaved. There were zero behavioral issues throughout the whole day and everyone even knew to keep their voices down despite there being no signs anywhere. #faithinhumanityrestored

A big part of why the workshop existed was because there was also a drawing competition held for minors – the theme was "me as an anime character/hero" and to qualify you needed to draw an original character that had three traits that you also have, be it personality or visual features. Inspiration from existing franchises (aka "me in the Naruto universe" etc) was allowed but no actual character art or a colorswap of an existing character etc.
The competition was originally split into three categories divided by age (for fairness) but it just so happened that every single person who submitted a drawing for the competition was in the same age group! We got a healthy amount of submissions and so, when it came time to judge the competing works, we decided to choose one winner and one honorable mention. And when I say we I mean me and the other judges; originally it was supposed to just be me and Ilkka from the library personnel but Firith and Sallukka happened to show up just when we were about to start the judging process. You see, we had two contestants who weren't done by the time the clock struck 14:00 and so me and Ilkka agreed to give them 15 minutes more grace time to finish their artworks – it would have been cruel not to extend the time a little because the poor kids were so stressed when they realized they wouldn't have time to finish by the original deadline. Yes, I was mentioning every now and then how much time was left. I just didn't have the heart to tell them 'no' when they asked for overtime because I had seen them drawing very focused for the better part of an hour and I know how crushing it can be to hand in something you created passionately that isn't complete.
So yeah, because of this additional time before the judging started that's why Firith and Sallukka already ended up finishing the cosplay judges responsibilities and so we were four people trying to decide on who would win. I gotta be perfectly honest here and say that it was genuinely difficult to pick a winner. Every submission was well done when you consider the age of the artists (everyone was between 9-11 years old with a majority being 10) and similar in terms of technical skillsets. I honestly felt bad and genuinely sad that I couldn't give everyone an award because it was that even. :'( Library budgets are tight af, I personally provided some of the prizes and so did a few others. Just know that if you're one of the contestants and you happen to read this now or many years into the future – you all did a great work and should be proud of yourselves. Keep on drawing!

General view next to the library's entrance.

Once the judging was done we tried to find all the contestants and get them back to the room for the reveal of the winner and handing out the prizes. After some roaming we managed to find all six participants (thankfully no one had left yet!) and the lil' ceremony could start.

After the prize-giving was over the event was down on its final hour and I tagged along Firith and Sallukka to the last activity of the day, namely the former's panel upstairs. It was a filler rerun of the same panel first seen at Mericon's debut in 2023. There were a handful of listeners despite how late into the day it was. I don't know how I managed to appear present and proper because it felt like my brain was nearing the questionable state of fried tofu. Yeah, I have quite severe afternoon crashes sometimes when my energy just drops to absolute Mariana Trench levels. Luckily the worst part of this kicked in after Kemi's manga day was already over because I was yawning non-stop for over an hour and it was embarrassing lmao.

Near the library's entrance. Notice the lost & found bookmark hanger!

Because I was watching over the drawing room all day I saw very little of the rest of the event itself. I did not see the cosplay competition and probably missed half of all colorful visitors but I don't mind, I feel like I significantly contributed to make the event get out of the starting line and run a successful run. :') I'm just so happy to see Kemi's manga day returning from the dead and I would be pissed at myself if I hadn't lifted a finger to help it in some way lol. This means that my summary is, perhaps, not as "complete" as it might have otherwise been – but I have no regrets.

I think that's roughly all I had to say about this fuzzily nostalgic yet new experience. It felt so wonderfully déjà vu to enter the building for the first time and see fursuits and cosplayers again after all these years. I mean, this is one of the buildings where Kitacon used to be when I started out; it's hard to describe this weird nostalgy I'm feeling but it feels like I've come full circle – I started here as a bullied, young and cringy weeb (we all were cringe, don't lie lmao) with hardly any friends and now I am one of the adults forming the backbone of safety and community and making sure that the next generation of kids can have the same fundamental experiences I had when growing up. It feels unreal but it's so very real – this is the kind of small magic that everyone can do: giving back to the very same community that helped you. ♥

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed this little read!
~ Shiro Samurai (aka KaamosWolf) out.

Konekocon 2025 – First winter visit to Kuopio

 Hello everyone!

Konekocon was held this past weekend on Saturday 1st February in Kuopio, Finland. Konekocon is essentially a mini version of Nekocon that's held on the summer in the same city. I've been to Nekocon twice before but never to Konekocon so yeah, I thought I should check it out at least once so that I know whether I've been missing out or not. Spoiler alert: not really.

Let's get to the summary~

Entrance to Lumit, the con building.

The night between Thursday and Friday I spent over at Sallukka's and Dongrieg's place in Kemi, to make it easier to catch the train on the morning. We had a pleasant time just chilling, talking and I also watched them play Monster Hunter Rise together and now I'm tempted to grab it too the next time it comes on sale. :') I played the early demo on Switch way back and it just rubbed me the wrong way back then, I hated so many of the changes as a long-time hunter and decided it would be the first installment of the series that I'd skip. Well, now I saw my friends play and I was quite surprised to see that none of the annoying things in the demo seemed present, almost as if it was a completely different game? It looked like *gasp* Monster Hunter – and the new things suddenly seemed managaeable and not like forced gimmicks you had to use at all times. Completely changed my opinion right there and then lol.

Anyways, we eventually went to sleep (Dongrieg went earlier, me and Sallukka ended up talking about con stuff until way too late lmao) and then it was Friday morning. I was the only one out of us three who was heading for Konekocon (they had just been at Desucon Frostbite the weekend before!) so on the morning I packed my stuff and had Sallukka kindly drive me to the train station. Had a panic moment when I didn't find my phone in my pockets once I sat down in the car (we were already on the verge of running late) but luckily it had not fallen out on the yard – it had just slipped out of my pocket and I was sitting on it. Classic. xD
We got to the train station just in time when the train arrived. I saw Firith waiting on the platform. We got to our seats and then the journey down to Kuopio started... or well, first there was a stop and train change at Oulu, which meant we went to the Asian market on the other side of the street and bought some mochi and coconut jelly drinks.
I honestly don't remember much of the train trip itself, I think I mostly just idled on my phone and then suddenly we were in Kuopio lol. Our hotel for the trip was Sokos Hotel Puijonsarvi, which was a first visit for me.

There was a goldfish aquarium at the hotel's reception!

Of course we got a hotel room that was like the furthest away in the corridor (and no, it still wasn't quiet because some kids were running amok), yay. Anyways, because we had been traveling the whole day we hadn't really had an opportunity to eat properly so of course we were really hungry. We dropped our stuff in the hotel room and almost directly started to look up restaurant options; Kuopio is not really a familiar city to either of us but after staring intensely at Google Maps for long enough we just decided to head out and go with what we found first that looked inviting. Yeah, in truth we couldn't agree on if we wanted pizza or a Chinese restaurant lmao.

Spoiler broiler! We went to a Nepalese restaurant instead!

Fuck me this food was good. ;__;

We found this super convincing Nepalese restaurant hidden inside a shopping center that had these huge decals plastered outside saying "Finland's best Nepalese restaurant" – now it can't be bad at least. :'D There were a lot of people eating inside too and that's always a sign of quality. So yeah, we totally went with this one and oh boy it was a good choice, so much yum yum! For anyone curious who happens to be in Kuopio now (or in the future) and wants to know the sauce name of the place – it's called Mandala and it's located in kauppakeskus Apaja. Well worth a visit, just be aware that it's slightly on the expensive side.

Once we were done we headed back to the hotel for the night. A nice thing was that we had access to National Geographic in the room so we might have watched a lot of programs, including WW2 history (what happened to the submarine USS Scamp) and a program about king Herod from the Bible. It's a good thing that I don't have National Geographic at home or I would probably watch it too much lmao, almost everything's interesting dangit!

Okay, Saturday morning was upon us. I slept poorly, no surprises there. Quickly put some clothes on and headed for the breakfast buffet, which was really good (on par with the Sokos hotel in Oulu). I was disappointed when I saw a handful of random women with multiple macarons on their plates, only to find out that there were none left at the dessert table when I went to look. :C *sniff* Oh well, I don't complain when there's fresh cantaloupe melon available!

Once we were done with the breakfast we went back to our room to put on our costumes. My costume for the con was Yamato no Kami Yasusada from Touken Ranbu. I managed to find the scarf before departure but it was in a weirdass place and terribly wrinked to boot, but thankfully Sallukka let me iron it before I left Kemi; I don't have an ironing board at home – scandalous for a cosplayer, I know!
I don't know what was wrong with this con morning but my makeup just wasn't having it. Like I had done all peelings and moisturizers and prep-work the night before but still the foundation just looked blotchy and shit lol. Not to mention that my eyeliner was particularly assymetrical too, rääh! Normally I might be a bit of a perfectionist but when even Firith said that the wings are noticeably different that's when you know it's bad lmao. I wasn't the only one struggling with putting my costume on though so I take pleasure in that shared suffering lololo

Once we finally were done we took a taxi to Konekocon. Sadly we arrived a bit too late and so we missed the Digimonien Avara Luonto program, again. :'( I wanted to see it already on its first outing at a previous con but it just didn't work out and now we were too late again. I'm just not a morning person so yeah, trying to catch con activities that are on the first couple hours after opening is hard when you have some serious insomnia issues.
It was a bit confusing when we arrived in front of the building because there was basically no one outside (which, on one hand, is normal because winter and cold) and so you have that split-second of doubting if you're even in the right place. It looked so empty. The lack of any posters or anything indicating that something was happening inside was also a bit weird. If you didn't know that it was the correct building you might have just walked past it, that's how plain and unassuming it looked.
Oh well, quite literally the first thing we did after we got our con tickets exchanged was that we went back outside to snap a couple proof photos that we had costumes on.

When you try to be cute but look like you need tramadol.

We had no intentions to have any proper photoshoots because neither of us felt like it – makeup game wasn't on point and that bothered us both enough to feel like it wasn't worthwhile. So yeah, once we got the photos we needed we headed back inside and I changed out of my winter shoes and into my geta. I dropped my shoes off at the cloakroom (honestly it felt nice to only have a bag of shoes to drop off and not half your belongings lol) and then we beelined to the Artist's Alley.

View from the entrance. Ticket desk to the right.

There were no info booklets so instead you had the activities
and info plastered on a few walls around the con.

The Artist's Alley was located upstairs in what looked like a school's gymnastics room. I gotta say I felt a bit dumb because I was so disoriented and confused when I went upstairs the first time – I didn't get it at first that it's the same Lumit building we had been in at Nekocon because we entered from a different floor and direction and because the spaces were utilized differently. So for example what was the Artist's Alley in Nekocon was a lounge area in Konekocon and what was the Artist's Alley in Konekocon had been the video game room in Nekocon. :D

View when entering the Artist's Alley.

Closer view of the middle table area.

Artist's Alley was easy to move around in because it was located in a big gymnastics room and the tables were located along the edges and a group was roughly in the middle. This made the traffic flow well and it never felt crammed nor suffered from poor air quality, which was nice. Oh, I should mention that the gymnastics room didn't only host the artists, there were also some merchandise dealers like manga sellers, Pokémon TCG sellers and an authentic kimono seller whom I was so socially awkward with that I was tormented by that encounter for the rest of the day #help.
I liked that there were some sellers and artists that I hadn't seen before and also some that I've only seen like once or twice!

General pic of the main/lounge area.

After plowing through the Artist's Alley and combined Dealer's Hall we just sat down at one of the tables in the main area for a little while and then we went to look for the 'conikirppis', aka the flea market. I'm not sure if we were just late (clock was roughly 13 something) and everyone had already raided it clean or what but I gotta be blunt here and say that this was by far the worst kirppis I've ever seen at a con. Like it was so empty that it was a very weird sight and what was left was clearly stuff that people wanted to get rid off and no one wanted to buy (*coughloneharrypottermerchcough*). I mean it looks a little bit depressing when you see more table surface than products on the table. It was full-on empty, no joke.
There were a few figurines in boxes that I think were probably fair buys (didn't check price or look closer because the series didn't interest me) but there were some things that just made me shake my head in disbelief when I saw the price tags. I'm not gonna go into specifics but lets just say clearly self-made stuff that either were falling or had fallen apart (or was just poorly made) and with outrageous asking prices considering the condition. It was just... baffling. No one buys near-broken stuff for like 30€, that's some serious delulu.

More tables to sit and lounge at.

After the flea market we headed up another floor to get to the video game room and were most of the activity rooms were. Or well, one of them was a "silent room" option, which I gotta say is a very nice concept because sometimes you might just need to retreat for any reason and it's good that there's a space provided for this kind of needs – especially since it seems rather common that congoers are on the neurodivergent spectrum. This kind of increasing thoughtfulness makes me happy.

View towards the silent room.

Just next to the silent room was the video game room. It was a moderately small room with a few consoles, mostly newer generation. There was at least one PS5 (maybe two), a Nintendo Switch, a PS2 and then one console with a rhythm dance mat. There was a relaxed atmosphere in the room and the guys running it seemed very chill too. I wouldn't have minded playing some Mario Kart on the Switch (I don't have it myself) but the trio of friends seemed really immersed and so I didn't want to bother them and have them potentially ending their session early. I ended up just watching them playing for a while and then I moved on to try and find the karaoke room. There was Tekken 8 that was vacant but I didn't feel like throwing punches.

Gaming room feat. gamers.

I just aimlessly wandered around upstairs and I happened to find one of the panelist rooms that had one of those character improvisation panels running ("how to be in-character", basically) and when I walked past that room I soon came across the karaoke room in the far back. I'm surprised that the karaoke room was so far away from everything else but I guess it was probably one of the few bigger rooms to host it in or something? The room was indeed quite sizeable, I'll give it that. There were several groups of people just hanging out there and the overall mood was laid-back and casual.

The karaoke room and one of Nekocon's mascots singing.

We stayed in the karaoke room for a while because it was free music and also because Firith was on the fence on whether to dare sing or not. It didn't end up happening.

I gotta say that one thing that we both couldn't help but notice was that the average age of the visitors seemed to be a bit lower than on your average convention. It felt like there were a lot of kids and minors running around and because I'm a millenial I felt like a goddamn dinosaur in comparison lmao. I mean yeah it's nice to see that the younger generations are getting into the anime subcultures yada yada but man did it make me feel like an old fart!

Upstairs were also these nice "private boxes" were you could hang out.

View when you arrived upstairs, there's a scene just downstairs.

We eventually noticed that the clock was quite much and decided to head back down to go check out whatever that one Miku Hatsune program was. I'll admit I had no prior knowledge and basically went in blind with the only assumption that it probably featured dancing. I'm not sure if I even had any expectations and that's probably a good thing because I just went in with the hopes of being entertained to some degree. The show was called Snowflake Harmony and it was held on the con's last hours. I wanted to attend at least something and this seemed like it could be fun – and so I tagged along with Firith, who's a big Vocaloid fan.

Snowflake Harmony first solo live debut.

I'll admit I'm probably not the target audience for this because as far as my Vocaloid knowledge goes I only know some of the characters and only barely know some of the most popular songs. Thankfully that did not stop me from having a good time because the Miku cosplayer, who was the sole performer, was super adorable and energetic. She seemed to be a minor but had impressive theathrical talent for her age, which was most apparent in the funny short skits between the dance episodes where she would act out typical teenager scenarios with believable use and range of different voices and emotions. Very charismatic! I didn't catch what her social media tags were but if you see this just know that you did a great job and you have talent for acting! The dancing and lip sync were well done too and seemed to be the correct choreographies to the featured songs (according to Firith at least, I have no knowledge about this haha), it looked like she knew the lyrics by heart because the lip movements didn't seem random at all. We sat in one of the first rows so had a pretty close view to pay attention to that kind of stuff. x)

After the show ended we sat down near the cloakroom for a moment and contemplated our lives. Or more like what to do now. Originally Firith wanted to watch the cosplay catwalk, which was one of the last activities and would start in like 30 minutes. I wasn't really interested and soon enough we both agreed to leave because we realized we were rather tired and yeah, getting out of cosplay and grabbing something to eat was more enticing.
We called a taxi back to the hotel and left Konekocon behind. I don't remember much from the rest of the evening except that my eyes were so dry ngl they were dry already on the morning before I even put lenses on that I joked something about feeling like that flat fish that has the weird migrating eyes and Firith said "eli meno vitun punakampela" and I think that's something I can live by. xD

We went to grab pizza nearby in a place called Green House (yes it had a lot of plants to make the name legit), I honestly recommend because it was cheap and the pan pizza was delish!
The rest of the night we watched some more National Geographic and had some coctails and sweets. Our train home was on the following day so we got to enjoy another hotel breakfast buffet no daim chocolate cake :c.

Iltakevennys.

I have somewhat conflicted feelings about Konekocon, to be honest. It wasn't a bad con per se but it just felt bland and lowkey uninspired I guess? There weren't a lot of decorations (and what existed was Nekocon's stuff, so it didn't even feel like Konekocon had its own identity/branding) and this is probably gonna sound weird, because it's more commonly the opposite issue, but with Konekocon it felt like the building was too big for the con – almost all areas were so spacious that it felt half-empty. I know that they only sold roughly half of their tickets so there were like 500-ish attendants but yeah, I constantly had that feeling in the back of my head of "wow there's almost no one here". Don't get me wrong though, Lumit is a good building for hosting a con. It just felt barren and I really think more decorations would have helped with mitigating this. I can also make an educated guess that Desucon Frostbite being the weekend before ate up a lot of potential visitors, putting Konekocon at a bad time slot.
Perhaps I had too high expectations (partly due to Nekocon and also other winter versions of cons like Närcon Vinter) but I digress, it just felt lackluster and there wasn't really that much to do either. When I looked around it seemed like a lot of people appeared bored and like they were just sitting in groups scrolling on their phones waiting for something to happen instead of socializing. I think having some non-stop workshop activities like a drawing room, manga-reading corner or some kind of casual competitions (gaming tournaments etc) etc would have made the experience a lot more whole.

Honestly, if you live far away like me then I'd say don't bother with Konekocon and save your money. If you live close or are new to the scene then by all means go and support it! At least I can now personally cross Konekocon off my list of events to try out and not be bothered by that pesky "what if" voice anymore. It's not good but it's not bad either, it's just meh. For now at least, and that's only my opinion and experiences. I hope Konekocon grows better in the future, hopefully into its own boots and away from being just a shadow under Nekocon.

Thanks for reading, remember to not eat yellow snow!
~ Shiro Samurai

Northern Lights Anime Party 2024 – Forgot my flippin' camera!

 Hello fellow north-dwellers!

I was in Rovaniemi last weekend and the reason for that was Northern Lights Anime Party, a tiny manga event held in Monitoritalo Monde on the 14th December. It felt quite crazy when it sunk in to me that probably the last time I was at Rovaniemi was way back in 2017 when I went to my first (and only?) Mushucon. Despite living in the northern half of the country for roughly half my life I can count the times I've been to the "northern capital" on the fingers of one hand... and still have fingers left over, lol. Yeah, I haven't been to Rovaniemi much. xD

But hey, let's get this con summary started!

Entrance to Monitoritalo Monde.

I actually left from home already on Friday. Yes, it was Friday the 13th lol. I constantly had this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I'm forgetting to pack something important and I just couldn't figure out what it was. Many times I went over all the stuff I needed for my costumes etc (almost forgot Yuuto's arm wrap!) and still nothing seemed off. Like I couldn't place the feeling at all, it seemed irrational like all the other times I've ever packed and panicked over forgetting something imaginary.
Well, Firith came to pick me up and dropped me off at Sallukka's and Dongrieg's place in Kemi for the night. The reason for these logistics is because currently Firith's apartment is so crammed two people can't possibly fit in there and, secondly, I had some business with Sallukka anyway so it was a two birds with one stone thing – namely I was well overdue to create a new Dungeons & Dragons character for our next campaign!

We had a nice evening creating my eagle D&D character and watching Dongrieg play Fortnite and some other games; it's quite mindboggling to me how much said game has evolved since the days when I casually played it a few years ago – I mean now there's some Guitar Hero-esque game mode and whatnot! I might need to pick it back up some day and give good ol' Fortnite a spin now that there's more to it than just the Battle Royale format, which is a genre that I'm not very fond of in general lol. The rhythm game stuff looked fun, not gonna lie.
Eventually Dongrieg changed games and started grinding something that I can't recall the name of but it vaguely looked like Grand Theft Auto or some crime-based game like that. There was a screen about a dead camera or something and at this point Firith looked at me and I looked back and then it dawned on me what I had forgotten at home. Yes, the bloody camaro camera! I fucking can't believe it, all these years and now is the first time I somehow forget the camera?! :'D The weirdest thing about this is that it never even crossed my mind, I mean I didn't even charge the camera batteries the night before like I always do and somehow my brain hadn't even reacted to that deeply ingrained con-prep tradition missing. Worst part is that my camera bag is always hanging out on my kitchen table so it is quite literally at plain sight 24/7 and still I didn't register that hey, that's the very obvious thing that I'm missing?? I'm dum-dum, there's no other way to explain this massive brainfart because yeah, the "I'm forgetting something" feeling was so stupid strong (more than my normal forgettance paranoia) and the camera was in hindsight so obviously the thing that was missing. I just can't. xD
So yeah, it was late at night and we weren't thus very motivated to drive 40+ km just to fetch the camera, especially because it was cold and we would have to cold-start the car. I figured that, if nothing else, I could always take the necessary summary photos with my phone and just live with the crappier-than-usual quality. Good thing though that there existed a Plan B that was a slightly better option –Firith's old Canon, which was already in Kemi unlike mine. Sure that it wasn't the best camera there ever was (there is some persistent dirt in the mirrors and whatnot; it needs professional maintenance) but at least it's a SLR and thus it's better than your average cellphone. So me and Firith agreed on taking the camera with us to the event the following day and that concluded the pre-con panic episode.

Con morning arrived and as per always I haven't slept shit. :') I was so nervous I couldn't fall asleep, which isn't anything new and groundbreaking for me lol. My original plan had been to change into cosplay before taking the train but by the time the clock was like 4 AM and I still wasn't sleeping I had a feeling that I wouldn't exactly feel fresh and invigorated on the morning. Well, I wasn't.
I'm also an awkward potato when sleeping at someone else's place, no matter how close we are, and I just don't dare to be the first one up and making noise by showering etc if I can clearly hear that everyone else is still sleeping. ;_; So I just snoozed past my early alarms and tried to salvage some snippets of shuteye. At this point I had already done the math calculations in my head and realized that I simply wouldn't have time to dress up anyway and would have to bet on the random card that is changing into costume at the event. The reason this was a big question mark is because we didn't even know if they had changing rooms at all. You see, Firith had tried to message NLAP's social media and email to ask about changing room options already a few days before the event but no one ever responded. Not to mention that for some unknown reason you can't even message them directly on Instagram, like why make it difficult to reach out?? So yeah, this lowered our already low expectations of the event even further – my expectations were so low at this point that I could probably have tripped on them lol. But regardless of the lack of information I still took the risk of going into the con completely unaware of if I even could change into costume on-site. It was stressful, no cap.

Eventually Sallukka woke up and I got a ride to the train station, with some time to spare. Sallukka and Dongrieg weren't attending NLAP by the way, they had other plans. While waiting for the train (and Firith) to arrive we brainstormed the upcoming D&D campaign and my character's background and such – I gotta say I'm very excited to play now and this talk left me on a good note when I left for the train to Rovaniemi. Thank you for the hospitality fren. <3

The train trip went by without any hitches. I honestly have no memories of it? Train from Kemi to Rovaniemi takes about an hour and a half so it's not like it's a long trip for us anyway. Fun fact is that we probably wouldn't even have ended up attending if it wasn't for the random chance that Firith had planned to go see Hant on said weekend after not having met him for literal years; Hant currently works in Rovaniemi (tonttutouhui :'D) although he's originally from the south. I was completely unaware of NLAP's existence and Firith only found out by a promotion on Matsucon's instagram. I got the impression that NLAP's marketing game hasn't been very strong. Heck, there's shortcomings on a lot of other fields too than just marketing, like for example the official website being woefully neglected to the point that the program schedule still isn't even published and it just says on the tab something like "closer to the event more details about the activities will be found here so stay tuned!"... umm... the event was a week ago... *awkward cricket silence*

Yeah I know, I sound a bit negative but NLAP didn't exactly radiate quality based on first impressions. I mean poor marketing, no response when contacting through more than one channel (instagram comment, email), odd limitations (no instagram messaging) and a misleading name that's annoying and inconvenient to say out loud. I mean you can't argue with me that Northern Lights Anime Party doesn't sound like a rave or a club event (think Neonya) or such. I do understand why they took an unconventional name in a way though, it makes you stand out and such but yeah, there's so many easier names one could have used that would have incorporated the same nordic vibes: Rollocon, Rovacon, Auroracon, Northcon, Porocon, Lumicon, Repocon, Revontulicon and so on and so on. And that's just from the very top of my head. There's nothing wrong with plain functional describing names like Rovaniemen mangapäivä/mangatapahtuma/animetapahtuma either – no room for confusion there!
I did learn afterwards though that apparently the name Northern Lights Anime Party is a relic from their debut year 2023 when it was seemingly only a 3h event with some snacks and programs and seemingly it even was age-restricted? In that light of knowledge I can understand the desire to hold onto the roots for sentimentality and to signal that it's the same people behind it, a continuation if you may, so whatever they do I am fine with it; but my honest opinion is that Northern Lights Anime Party is a very awkward name for an event due to its length and misleading mental associations.

Anyways, we arrived in Rovaniemi and the issue of getting to the con venue started. While it might have been only a 15 minute walk from the train station the issue was that it was blasting cold (-20 degrees celsius or more) and we just wanted to start the con day as soon as possible. Firith tried to get us a taxi but all the taxis already in place had some outrageous minimum prices that seemed borderline suspicious to me. Like I think they were all trying to bank in on tourists wanting to go to the Santa Claus village and for us who just wanted a short ride to centrum we were basically, well, fucked. :) Firith had to try several different taxis before finding one who was even willing to drive us, which seems absurd to me because isn't any paying customer a ride worth taking for a taxi driver? I mean our trip costs him like max 5 mins and then he could go right back to the station without hardly missing a beat? It just seemed hella weird to me with the whole "minimum 25+ €" fees like bro, isn't it required by law that the customer pays according to what the taximeter says and not what you come up with? :S Rollo has some highkey sus cabs man.
We eventually got a (still overpriced) ride to Monitoritalo Monde, the event venue. Much to our luck we immediately noticed that it had a Kotipizza quite literally in the same building, except on the other half of it. xD

Immediate view of the cafeteria upon entering the building.

Upon arriving we were a bit confused on where to find the proper entrance. You see, the street-facing side of the building had all these offices in it and it clearly didn't look like the right place. So we wandered around a bit until we realized that you had to go around the building to the backside or something to find the actual entrance (some signs pointing to the right direction would have been nice lol, not everyone is a local). Anyways, we finally get in and much to my surprise the building looks a lot smaller inside than how it appeared outside. I understand a lot of the "outer bulk" is used up by those offices and whatever other facilities that weren't a part of the NLAP's venue deal but yeah, I was a bit shook lol.

Cloakroom and info desk combo. Stairs led upstairs to the Artist's Alley.

Anyways, I immediately spotted the information and cloakroom desk (which had been combined) and went to ask if there's changing rooms reserved for cosplayers. I was met by this person dressed up as March 7th from Honkai Star Rail who said that technically there is changing rooms but they're for the cosplay contestants only and that, if possible, if we could change in the bathrooms instead. This was surprising to me, as a long-time congoer, because the norm for a while now has been that there's always public changing rooms somewhere in an event and that, oftentimes, it's even discouraged to use the bathrooms for changing into cosplay because it takes up so much space and might prevent others from using the very vital facilities for their intended use. I'll never forget that one Desucon years ago when some random young woman screamed for full lungs at a locked bathroom stall "cossaajat vittuun sieltä!!" :'DD (lit. 'cosplayers get the fuck outta there!!').

Oh well, after the confusion settled me and Firith shamelessly crammed ourselves into the biggest toilet we saw. Firith had already done Alicia's makeup before leaving Kemi and so only needed to put on the dress and wig and boom, done. I had to do everything starting from moisturizing my face lmao. Needless to say I took my time getting into costume, not because my costume is intricately complicated to put on or anything but because I'm not particularly fast at applying makeup. I almost felt like a criminal for taking so long in the invavessa and was waiting for someone to scream at me to get the fuck outta there lmao. When I was doing the base for my makeup I could hear Firith chatting outside with a male voice that I presumed to be Hant. I had a slightly trippy experience because even though Hant is a completely new encounter to me his voice sounds weirdly familiar? He either has a voice that is very similar to someone else I know, is very generic or I've randomly seen or heard him at some con before.

The main lounge area feat. pop-up library. Bathrooms were to the right.

So while I was taking what felt like forever putting my costume on Firith and Hant were going through years worth of not having seen one another while sitting on those black sofas seen on the photo above. The reason I took longer than normal (or at least felt like it to me) was because in the middle of doing my makeup I got a random panic attack out of the blue. I have no idea what triggered it, maybe it was stress, but whatever it was I ended up shaking so badly I could hardly stand up and even less finish my makeup! It was quite debilitating because due to the constant uncontrollable shaking I got eyeliner in spots where it shouldn't have been (like on the upper part of my eyelid, thank god it was hidden by the lid crease) and even managed to hit my blue eyeshadow brush on my nose and poked my mascara applicator into my eyeball too. ;_; I did take some medicines I had been smart to pack with me just in case, although in said panic I accidentally chewed them instead of swallowing the pills whole and oh my lord the taste was disgusting!

Somehow I managed to calm down after a while and salvage whatever I could of my makeup accidents before exiting the bathroom. To my relief Firith and Hant were still sitting there. I barely had time to put my stuff down on the sofa before seemingly a con volunteer came to ask me if I wanted to participate in the cosplay competition. This caught me offguard because I was under the impression that the cosplay competition was starting in like less than 10 minutes and they were still trying to get contestants like what's going on? I told the recruiter that I'm cosplaying an OC and "it's probably not allowed" because the common rules are that OCs are almost never accepted into competitions. The recruiter answered something akin to "yeah that's probably not allowed" and then when they were an earshot away from me I overheard them saying "I guess..?". Not gonna lie, this uncertain remark baffled me, I mean if said person was the cosplay competition organizer (I can't be sure if they were an organizer or just a volunteer) then such insecure acting would come across as a bit clueless – as in, it gave me the impression that they don't even know their own rules? I understand being young and inexperienced but yeah, you don't want to appear unsure and doubtful within earshot of attendants because it immediately gives off an unprofessional look regardless of how casual the event might be. At least make sure to try to uphold a professional front even if there's crises or difficulties behind the scenes, aka be mindful of what you say when there's visitors nearby. #protip

I gotta say though that I'm honestly not surprised by the contestant recruiting issue because like a day or so before the event it was informed on NLAP's social medias that they would extend the cosplay competition application which usually translates to "panic mode: not enough contestants" for those in the know of how organizing works. I kinda saw it coming though because let's be real – a tiny, new, poorly known event in the north that has a cosplay competition with a ruleset that has high requirements to participate; requirements so strict they're basically in line with what big, established anime conventions use. There's an obvious mismatch and slight delulu here at play – you can't run a small convention with big-scale competition rules (80% self-made cosplay requirement), especially not in the north because all the competitive sweats are in the south and those in the south extremely rarely bother to come to the north. You will get next to no entries because the rules are too strict. A more realistic cosplay competition rule would be something like 50% self-made or, if you want to be low-threshold and focus on beginners (and making sure the quota gets filled), then allowing bought cosplays but that some aspect(s) of the cosplay has to be self-made or modified and that can be anything from styling the wig to having made the props. The latter example is what Mericon uses, where I've been one of the judges and co-organizers for two years now – and while Mericon is in the south and bigger in scale than NLAP it's still a small event and is of equal age (debuted 2023) and yes, getting enough contestants even with such lenient rules still isn't a guarantee. The newer generations just don't seem to be as interested in competing as the people from my generation (millenials) and bought costumes are on the rise too. So yeah, already when I saw the cosplay competition rules I knew that they would have to resort to last-minute rule changes (basically went from strict to almost anything goes) and recruiting on-site. It was so clearly out of touch. This was apparently their first cosplay competition but still, please do your research lol.
But hey at least they managed to get 6 contestants in time for the contest so it could be held! Would be a shame to have to cancel one of the few activities there was.

View of the main stage. Matsukirppis (second-hand) table to the left.

I did not watch the cosplay competition myself but I heard that it had some difficulties and oddities with it too. Firith's summary mentions a bit more about the experience as a contestant so you can check that one out, if interested!
While Firith was busy with the contest I took to my duty to take the general con photos for our summaries. I also ended up upstairs in a room where this one guy was sitting next to a table with some D&D stuff around him. This was part of one of the planned activities – a beginner-friendly oneshot campaign with pre-made character sheets to fit the theme of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, unless I remember wrong. Please don't stone me I haven't played the game. xD So the dude was the DM and I got the impression I might have very well been the first person to show interest in attending. I went through the character sheets, asked some questions and eventually did a preliminary reservation on the orc character. The DM guy was very chill, easy to approach and assured me that it was noob-friendly and he had the patience to deal with a lot of hand-holding and guidance because yeah, to date I've only played one small campaign with a group of friends and Sallukka as the DM.

D&D room and a friendly (but lonely) bro.

I told him I'd be back for the start of the campaign and that hopefully more interested people show up during the day. There was one slight problem I noticed though and that's that the campaign was to start pretty late at 16:00, aka roughly the time when we had planned to go eat pizza. This realization made me scurry down to meet up with Firith and Hant and ask for some re-scheduling to free up the time slot for the campaign. This ended up being a very good idea anyway since neither me nor Firith had had breakfast on the morning and it was about 13:00 already and we were moderately hungry. Hant didn't mind an earlier pizza break either because who in their right mind does? No but really, moving the dining time forward ended up working in our favor because it gave us a very convenient opportunity to play the Necrozma raid hour in Pokémon Go without having to stand outdoors in the cold!

Kotipizza group selfie!

So yeah, we waddled our way over to the nearby Kotipizza and ordered our foods. While waiting we took some group selfies to pass the time and Hant told us that he'd keep tabs on where the local Pokémon Go gang was raiding so that we wouldn't miss when they arrived at the raid just outside the Kotipizza we were at. It was such a blessing that Hant happened to be part of the local player community because otherwise we'd have no way of keeping track of when it was time to do the raids!
Oh and I find it kinda fitting that Hant cosplayed a Christmas version of James from Team Rocket. xD

I spoiled myself with Sienimestari in lankku form, om nom nom.

Yes, we were totally extra slow so that we could fit in two raids on the same gym. I even got a shiny, lucky me! Shame the IVs were shite but that's to be expected lol. Classic Pokémon Go. xD

Oh, I forgot to mention that before I entered the D&D room (and before the pizza raid) I checked through the Artist's Alley. It was upstairs just like the D&D room was, although I gotta say that the corridor the artists were placed in was quite narrow. Functional yes, but narrow. I can understand that this was probably the only viable place to put it because the event had so little space to work with and so every free meter counted. The only other option I can think of would have been in the main hall where the stage was but that would probably have come with too dim light conditions and being subject to noise and distractions from other activities like the aforementioned cosplay competition and the Mario Kart tournament.
I'll admit that there were more sellers than I expected there to be at an event of this meager size. Some were familiar from before but there were I think two or so whom I didn't recognize! I sadly didn't buy anything this time, it's this time of year when my limited money is already spent on Christmas presents. :'(

View of the first half of Artist's Alley.

Located in the same corridor as the Artist's Alley was also the local Seta ry table highlighting LGBTQ+ rights, which are very relevant in pop-culture subgroups because it feels like the norm is that everyone is queer in at least some way. :'D A great place to promote inclusivity and equality, in other words. I mean you will find your target audience lol.
I'm not sure what other organization or promotional booths there were? I know that NLAP had some collaboration partners with some shops and such and one of the bigger ones was the local library. Libraries are a rather obvious collab partner for anime events because of mutual interests like expanding youth activities and presence in the city and motivating people to borrow books and media for the upkeep of literacy and creative skills, be it through reading manga or developing artistic skills through "how to draw" books.

A closer look of the pop-up library on the main floor.

Rovaniemi's library was present in the shape of the pop-up library as mentioned before yes, but they also had a "make your own free pins from delisted comics" workshop which seemed like a really cool idea for repurposing and recycling old and worn out manga pockets etc. I lowkey regret not checking it out at least, I honestly didn't really notice it at first and when I did I didn't really have time anymore rip. :'( But I know that at least Hant used it to make a pin and it seemed to work well?

Oh and when it comes to random side activities there was this "vote for husbando of the year" competition that was a playful take on a popularity contest with fictional characters. What you did was that you voted by drawing a heart on the blank page next to your chosen husbando's portrait and at the end of the event the winner was announced.
Honestly when I think about it I'm surprised that I haven't come across this formula before given how easy it is to set up and how fun and engaging it is for the visitors?

My favorite husbando Neuvillette was there so of course he got my heart. <3

I'm not entirely sure if there were any rules, I couldn't find any? But I assumed it was one vote (aka heart) per visitor. I felt bad that Wriothesley (on the other half of the list) had zero hearts for a majority of the event and that was just not right because Wrio is a king and deserves love too – thankfully Firith agreed and gave Wriothesley one heart!

Before I knew it the clock had ticked its tocks and I had to run back to the D&D room after having had a coffee break with the group. I gotta say that befriending Hant was very organic and easy, he's so chill and we immediately hit it off with our dumb humor lol. But I'm not too surprised because a friend of Firith's is by extension most likely a friend of mine (to be). I had a feeling though that the DM guy might not have been able to bag other interested players and so I managed to talk Hant into joining me because he showed signs of being interested and had nothing else to check out, the one thing making him hesitate was that he had never played D&D before. I comforted him by saying that if you're a super noob then I'm the noob who's only one step less nooby lmao.
So we went up in tow and my prediction was correct – there was no one else there. I was the only one who had signed up to play for the whole day. I couldn't help but feel a bit bad for the guy because he had clearly put a bunch of effort into doing all the necessary preparations and even handwriting skills and attack papers for all the character sheets to make them as accessible as possible for beginners (color and symbol coded etc), not to mention sit the whole day in that room and just hope for people to show up. Good thing I had dragged Hant with me (hyvä et joku on yllytyshullu eiku) because you need at least two players plus the DM to be able to play and now we could play! I mean.. during the whole day it felt like I kept seeing the same 20 or so congoers in the venue so it felt like there weren't many unique visitors to begin with and, honestly, no one really gave me the vibes of being tabletop bros; I kinda felt like I needed to secure myself a playmate or the whole activity would have been cancelled.

I'm not gonna go too much into detail on what happened during the mini campaign because that would take way too long (and I'm getting tired of writing this post, been at it for 7h now lol who said blogging isn't hard work) but let's just say that it was combat-focused and had to do with a portal appearing and evil entities coming out of it and later we met a NPC old man who was a bit sus but tagged along us and then we went inside the portal into some hellish landscape and there were more enemies. I played an orc berserker and just ungabunga'd my way forward with a bigass maul and Hant was a cleric. The NPC old man was a sage (well, actually a warlock in disguise #spoilerbroiler) and it was kinda hilarious because he tried to assist us by attacking some enemies across the bridge with smaller fireballs but he hit crap rolls and missed every single attack – my man has some skill issues lmao. :'DD I gotta give some props to the DM, he was super accomodating and funny and did fun voices and showed us images of the characters etc on a tablet to increase immersion and such. Really 5/5 guy when it comes to taking care of your players, would definitely play his campaigns again if I see him somewhere. Only sad thing is that when we were roughly halfway into the game I got a message from Firith asking if we were done soon – that's when I checked the clock and realized that the con was closing in 30 minutes and I needed to take a taxi in 15 to catch the train, sos! We had been playing since 16:00 and the clock was roughly 17:30 already, I don't think the DM had expected it to take so long either! So much time had passed in the blink of an eye! Well, we managed to speedrun that second map we were doing and then the DM just resorted to putting on his story-mode voice and telling us what happened and how it ended because yeah, no time left to play through it properly. I found it funny that somehow I sneaked past some intimidating tower guard in my bulky heavy orc armor without alerting anyone. xD

With the campaign wrapped up I speeded downstairs to grab my belongings from the cloakroom (no time to even take off my cosplay) and hurried outside to catch the taxi that was parked in front of Kotipizza, Firith had gone ahead and was already waiting for me. I felt a bit bad because I didn't even have time to say goodbye to Hant. *sniff*

The train trip back home went okay, except that we both were so tired we bought overpriced Red Bull at the restaurant cart in the train lol. Monitoritalo Monde had some weird rule of no energy drinks in the venue so we were running on fumes half the day due to poor sleep.  If there's anything that grinded my gears during the trip back it's that there was this one very obviously sick woman on the same seat row as us (classic us luck), just on the opposite side of the corridor, who kept coughing and doing these very moist inhale-the-snot-back sounds during the duration of the whole trip – like ffs, if you're down with the flu or whatnot then at least wear a fucking face mask if you have to travel or, even better, stay home. It's a minor inconvenience for you but might save someone's life in a worst case scenario so yeah, what happened to the lectures the pandemic taught you?
Guess if we both got sick immediately after the con? Of course we did. :)) My money's on her being the spreader and yes, I'm kinda salty because we both belong to the immunocompromised risk group and had things we needed to do and now we've both been sick for almost a week due to some selfish rando... :C #bigmad


And that sums up my first Northern Lights Anime Party experience. I know this summary might sound a bit harsh but despite the palpable inexperience showing through with the running of the event I have full understanding of the fact, which I learned after the con, that apparently there were only two people in charge of organizing the whole event and all the roles and one of them was seemingly a teenager (based on what I heard, can't confirm the accuracy), so not even an adult yet. I mean yeah, it explains things and the people whom I assumed were the organizers both looked young to me. It's actually pretty wild even when you stop to think about it but nevertheless it's an achievement in itself to host an event of any size at such a young age and whoever the organizers are they should get a standing applause for taking on the daunting task of arranging an event with little to no prior experience – a lot of people wouldn't have the balls to even try or would give up once it got too overwhelming.
We need these people, these firesouls who have the will to actually try and do stuff for the geeks in the north, even if what they produce isn't perfect. Nothing's ever perfect. I mean yeah, Northern Lights Anime Party had a lot of minor hiccups and things to improve on but it's already a win that the event started and ended and, as far as I know, nothing had to be cancelled and no major disasters happened? Sure that the opening ceremony was late by one hour and the cosplay competition award ceremony started before its scheduled time slot because the organizers apparently thought that the people had already left (what kinda reasoning is that, trust your visitors!) and so probably felt a panicked hurry to salvage what might have looked like a premature ending of the event (when odds are that people were outside eating or taking photos etc). I can understand the stress and panic when the venue looks near empty but hey, stick to the schedule and if you have to do changes then make sure that said changes are informed to the visitors via social media, info desk notifications or such. You got this, GG for the effort and the courage. <3

That's all for the last con summary of the year. I honestly had a great time and would attend NLAP again if it's hosted next year. It has all possibilities to grow better with time!
~ Shiro Samurai out.