During a LAN party in at my local high school, I noticed a group of guys, most of them in their late teens or early twenties, watching cartoons on their computers which all seemed to be plastered with stickers of female cartoon characters in skimpy outfits. Some even sported small plush toys on top of them for decoration. Being a young teen with no knowledge whatsoever about anime, this first encounter with this particular community did not exactly leave me with the best of impressions. It was only later, after some intensive matches in Battlefield, that I went over to the “weird nerds” to find out who the opposing players were. During my little chat with them I also asked about the cartoons they were watching. That question changed my life.
I was given a quick introduction to a few mainstream series that was popular at the time, one of them a ninja-themed series with a troublemaking kid dressed in an orange jumpsuit-looking outfit as the main character. Silly right? Well, after agreeing to give it a chance and watched the first episode, I found myself liking it more than I would have thought. Before I knew it, all the episodes I borrowed had been watched and I wanted more – luckily I was sitting in a place with a whole bunch of people into this “anime” thing close by.

Over the following few months I saw a lot of anime from all kinds of different genres. One thing I liked in particular was that the series usually revolved around one big story with a connecting thread throughout the episodes. I quickly found myself having a favourite series such as Full Metal Panic!, Chrno Crusade, Fullmetal Alchemist, Cowboy Bebop, Fate/Stay Night and a few others. Around the same time as I started watching anime I also joined one of the first online anime communities in Denmark called Animeguiden, where I got to know new people with similar interest. It also was not until this point it dawned on me that series like Pokémon and Dragon Ball were also Japanese cartoons – or anime, as I was told the “proper” name for them was.

It was also through Animeguiden and a yearly gathering some of the core people of the forum organised that I first heard of J-popcon, the only anime and manga convention in Denmark at the time. That however is a story for the next part.

Information on activities are, although last minute, finally available on their website for everyone to see. A sad development taking last year’s great job into account. Still to appear in any form is the official announcement of this year’s guests, however that doesn’t necessarily mean that there won’t be any. Finnish cosplayer Elffi posted on his Facebook page that he will be attending Genki this weekend and be a part of the jury for the cosplay competition on Sunday. Hopefully we’ll see something from the convention group before tomorrow to shed some light on this.

On a more positive note, Genki has invested a lot of energy in providing more and better options for the hungry and thirsty visitors this year. Compared to last year’s sad selection of Hot Dogs, French Fries and few brand name sodas, this year will seem like a true feast. The team behind Genki has hired a group to take care of making good food for reasonable money as well as offering drinks at quite affordable prices.

For now, all we can do is pack our bags and get ready for a weekend hopefully full of good experiences.

This year Genki is moving from their old venue in Roskilde to north of Copenhagen at Farum Arena. This will be the second time Genki is moving venue since it saw the light of day back in 2009 at Valby Kulturhus in Copenhagen. The change of venue was decided on to improve on at least one key aspect in dire need for change.

On the matter of food Genki had to rely on one third-party food shop located inside the venue during the years in Roskilde. This meant no sale of food and drinks could be made by Genki itself and the available selection at the mentioned food shop was very limited and priced sky high. This will all change with the move to Farum as Genki are bringing in their own people to cook and bake food throughout the weekend. Hopefully this will bring lower prices for the visitors, a more interesting menu and still a bit of money to be pocketed by Genki.

There’s more good news to all the cosplayers attending Genki. The Nordic Cosplay Championship (NCC) looked very poorly planned and even worse when it came to execution up until now. However after attending Närcon this summer and seeing the amount of effort put into the NCC by the new organisers in the NCC committee and the successful nature of the NCC finals this year, I do believe there is a good chance NCC is heading for better times! Best of luck to those to are entering the Danish preliminary round.

On the more general level, the amount of events that’ll take place at Genki this year seems ridiculously low, at least if you are to go by the official website. As per today only four activities are mentioned on the event page, of which two are the cosplay competitions. I sincerely hope that there’ll be more on the program when the doors open but not having more information available this late is a bit unsettling given Genki’s otherwise good track record when it comes to updating their website.

Check out their website here if you haven’t already!

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=Epo1F4lc_lE

Syfy’s upcoming tv-series, Heroes of Cosplay, aims to reveal some of the more competitive aspects of the US cosplay community. The announcement of the series spawned all kinds of reactions from cosplayers and non-cosplayers alike. Some of the more heated comments came after a NY Post article was published. The article in question gave, according to large parts of the US cosplay community, a very narrow-minded and misguided prespective on the subject of cosplay and it’s practitioners.

I’m so confused—or maybe they are. In case you don’t know, (and I sure didn’t), there are hundreds of thousands of people around the world who spend millions upon millions of dollars on intricately constructed costumes for their personal use… We aren’t given any in-depth knowledge about what these folks do to earn a living in the real world that enables them to spend every waking hour and dime on making costumes. Several of them seem to be involved in the industry.
– Linda Stasi, NY Post

One of the more well-structured and composed responses came in the form of another article, Dear New York Post: Let’s Talk About Cosplay, published on Uloop. While it is written in a defensive language, it does highlight some of the often-misunderstood concepts surrounding cosplay as well as pinpointed the flaws in the NY Post article.

Your recent review of the upcoming SyFy reality show “Heroes of Cosplay,” had a few inaccuracies in it, to say the least. By portraying the cosplay community as though we are “confused” and “weird,” your piece, rooted in many false generalizations, has angered a great many cosplayers across the U.S. and contributed to the way that society looks down upon them as abnormal for pursuing their hobby.
– Hsing Tseng, Uloop

What started as a small article on a preview of the upcoming Heroes of Cosplay docu-series turned into something much bigger and once again brought to attention that cosplay, not just as a hobby but as a whole, is still something quite far-fetched in the minds of the general public. I urge anyone in the community who has a sound knowledge of cosplay and solid credentials to stand up and create proper awareness of cosplay, ensuring accurate information is passed on towards the mainstream media. An obvious part of the community to call upon would be cosplayers with a background within journalism. For them to come forth and make use of their skills and networks to influence the people they can reach out to would be a good start, that could hopefully help create a more positive awareness of the hobby.

A big part of it, at least for now, revolves around the anime and cosplay communities and as such I feel like it’s a site worth pointing out, especially if the Conmonster team manages to keep up the pace for new content!

Check it out here!

This post will be about how I actually managed to find a decent looking gallery plug-in that I can live with so jump over to the gallery section and check out the photos from my trip to China and visit to CICAF (China International Cartoon & Animation Festival).

With J-popcon 2013 over and done, I thought it would be a good time to actually get moving and get it done. First up, making sure the theme works and then start posting stuffs.