J-Popcon 2008 started today, yaaaaay! A quick note for those of you who don’t know, J-Popcon is an annual J-Pop convention (hence the name) in Denmark. Anywho, I was there at 2.30 PM, an hour and a half before they opened, since I went straight there from having taught an English class to some gymnasium freshmen. Taught them all about faking a file corruption to get 12-hour extensions on papers if they missed their deadlines, about the sex industry in Japan, organized crime, and all that stuff that youngsters these days need to learn X3 Madhatter was in line waiting with me and got one of the Swedish chicks staying at his house to flash her Akatsuki bra while in line, so that was pretty entertaining for a little while XD He then started playing ninja soldier with his walkie-talkies that have a range of five friggin’ kilometres, cause you need that in everyday life >_>

Anywho, of course it had to be friggin’ cold outside, so by the time I got in, I could probably pierce armour plating with my nipples X3 South Korea was NOT there, and didn’t even show up in the line until 30 minutes after I finally found a place to sit and of course he had to make me wait with him, so there went another hour standing in line! >:3 but he got attacked by Panda, so I guess we’re even XD The only problem was that eeeeverything seemed to be a bit delayed. And by a bit, I mean like… 2-3 hours or something XD And someone had messed up the program schedule, so people had no information on what movies were going in what cinemas at what time, which was a total bust >_< Gamer-room was also several hours delayed, and didn't reeeeally feature that many good games in my opinion, though they did have Rock Band! :3

Aaaanywho, before we even figured any of that out, we were spending a great deal of time with one of the gophers, Nemu, who also attends our school. This was simply because we didn’t have anything better to do, and cause we like talking with her since she’s lots of fun (even though she hits us… X3). Besides, she was wearing purple clothes and make-up, HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE THAT?!?! I was like “baaaaw ♥” >3> *ahem* yeah… She’s probably gonna hit me for that if she ever reads this… >_>

She wasn’t the only person from our school the we actively spent time with, as The Twins from South Korea’s class had also shown up at the con (one was wearing a white traditional Chinese shirt, which was AWESOME! :3), and they were accompanied by the always cute Hopy, who was wearing a kick-ass yukata (summer-style kimono) :3 Hopy looked absotively adorable in her yukata, though it could’ve been prettier had the colour of it been primarily purple, but hey, that’s just me XD I also met up with Frost and Lupin, two girls I haven’t really seen since my gymnasium days, so that was always nice :3 They were kinda busy looking for stuff to buy in the dealer room (a hall were people can set up shop and sell various items), but I’ll be talking to them again tomorrow, I hope ^_^

All in all, it was a pretty cool first day, if you just look away from that I totally sugar crashed during the evening and felt like crap due to major dehydration (headache, fever, blurry vision, etc. You know? The works), forcing me to go home 1½ hours before all my friends X3 But I hope to make up for it tomorrow with renewed vigour! And enough money for food and drinks… >3>

Today was actually a somewhat interesting day at J-Popcon :3 The peoplez had set up magnetic white boards and written today’s schedule on them, which was nice, except they didn’t really stick to it too well… Stuff would get delayed by half an hour or an hour at a time XD

A lot of people showed up today, and I mean A LOT of people… Unofficial numbers say we were around 1.400 people on Saturday, which is a total fire hazard just waiting to happen O.o Also, note to J-Popkai, in rooms where tons people gather for several hours while wearing costumes that don’t breathe all that well, for the love of all that is good in this world, CRACK OPEN A FRIGGIN’ WINDOW EVERY NOW AND AGAIN!!! The Otaku Café smelled like a mix of popcorn, french fries, and old, sweaty gym socks… It was putrid >_<

Well, while the Otaku Café was a bit “JFC!! O.o”, the game-room had a pleasant surprise; a game I could relate to: ‘Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection’ XD Though I’ve never played beyond ‘Tekken 5′ (there’s a surprisingly big difference between the two), in the 20-40 minutes I was standing there, I was whoopin’ ass XD Only lost one match against a Dragunov player because I got kind of predictable after a few matches against him, but I fixed that pretty quickly :P Lupin even came by and whispered “You’re cheating :3” in my ear, since she actually knows how good I used to be at Tekken games (Danish pro circuit, whoo! XD)

Anywho, I credit the day being awesome to Lupin and her younger sister, whom I finally got to meet formally :3 She was so adorable, made me go “aaaaaw :3” a bunch of times when she acted all shy and stuck close to her elder sister (then again, with all the pedobear guys around, I really can’t blame her >_>) and Lupin was of course as cute and sweet as always <3 >3> I ended up spending a great deal of time with them by chance, since whenever I was looking for someone else, they would for some reason be there XD

I also ran into Hopy a few times, who for today’s occasion was cosplaying as some blue-haired chick from XXXholic (I think it’s called, I don’t really know the manga/anime >_<). She seems to have gotten into the habit of calling me Muki-sempai or just Muki due to my hair being purple-ish (紫 = murasaki = purple). I don’t really mind that she calls me that, and I think it’s sorta sweet in a very odd kinda way… but it takes a little getting used to since I rarely actually spend time with her :/ However, seeing how my Japanese teacher sometimes refers to me as “Murasaki-chan”, I might get used to it sooner than I think >_< I also happened to run into a girl who used to draw Yaoi pr0n of me and Madhatter, so that was a fun surprise XD She has the COOLEST hair though!! O.o

South Korea didn’t show up until later in the evening because he was “busy busy busy“, which is South Korea jargon for “I played DotA all night again, and didn’t wake up until 14.00 (2 PM)…” XD When he finally did show up, we figured we should go check up on Nemu, since I hadn’t seen her since I got there four hours earlier and we figured she might have gotten eaten by Domo-kun or something >:3 We asked Madhatter and was told that she was working in the wardrobe, also known as TEH BASEMENT OF DOOM!! O.o Poor girl was stuck working that station for like… six hours or something @_@ But she seemed to be having fun, all things considered, so I guess it’s all good :3

During the end of the evening came the only event that I figured would be worth attending; karaoke! :3 For some reason, they only give this excellent event 30-45 minutes, while all other events got twice the amount of time. I don’t see why they couldn’t just have left this on for 2-3 hours or something, but they didn’t :/ All the songs were from anime or games as far as I could tell, but unfortunately, there were only about 10 songs… After that, we were more or less tossed on our asses, so I went home XD

Anywho, all in all, a very good day, since I got to play Tekken against a couple of peepz and spend a bunch of time with Lupin, something I hadn’t done in like… a year-and-a-half or something, so that was nice :3 Hopefully I get to spend some time with her again tomorrow and watch her sister walk down the catwalk, if I can get up early enough for the cosplay event ^_^

So, today was the final day of J-Popcon and the day of the giant cosplay contest + cosplay catwalk. I unfortunately did not go because I suck ass at get up before noon, so I’m leaving reviewing the cosplaying to Nemu who actually did go. I will however say that it was two of my friends who won the trip to Japan, so a BIG congrats to them! ^_^

From what I gather, the general opinions on this day are split into two groups. If you went to the cosplay event, today was TEH SHIT!! If you didn’t, it was just plain SHIT!! And yes, I belong in the latter group, because to me, every little fucking thing just had to go wrong starting with the baldy, better known as ‘Per from Playright.dk’, stroking his ego.

Having missed the cosplay event, the only reason I had for going was to join the gaming contest. I entered right when the first fight had ended and asked the guy in charge if it was too late to join, to which he responded “Yes.” Fair enough; I missed the deadline, said “oh, sucks…“, and hell, nothing much to do about it, but then he added on “we did advertise this event for three days… *hint of arrogance and fucktardness*” Aha… Well, let’s look at how true that statement is, shall we? *Ahem*

•On the first day, there was no programme schedule, so no one knew about ANYTHING going on at the con. Even the gophers were like “… *shrug*” when asked about the schedule, so as for Friday, no advertising.
•On Saturday programme schedules had apparently been made, however the only people who knew were the gophers and the people who were told by other people or who found out by chance. The magnetic white boards only listed events for Saturday, so unless you were one of those lucky people who found out about the schedule, you wouldn’t have known about the gaming event (I was told by a friend about the event at the end of the evening, by the way).
•The event was not even mentioned on the “Events” page of J-Popcon’s own blog (they said they would make the other events public ASAP, but now J-Popcon is over and it STILL hasn’t happened).
•The room the tourney was advertised (i.e. written on the schedule hundreds didn’t know about) to be in was changed last second
•The game that was advertised to be played was changed last second (the signs saying that the room was changed still named the wrong game, this is how last second the change was)
•The time the tourney was advertised to start was changed last second
•No notifications of any of these changes were posted on J-Popcon’s own blog. They didn’t even upload a schedule to their blog to give people an idea of what was gonna go on (“Hi, you’ve reached Common Sense’s answering machine, I’m out right now because I got sick and tired of you people ignoring me, YOU GOD DAMN SONS OF BI-*beeeep*“).

So, unless your marketing strategy was to FAIL more than a FAILosaurus Rex shooting FAIL beams of FAIL at the comet from the cosmos of friggin’ FAIL, I don’t think you advertised the game event well enough. Furthermore, implying it was somehow my own fault for not knowing (I’m not a friggin’ psychic), since you did such a “good job” advertising the event that the problem couldn’t possibly have been with you, was just a stupid and bitchy thing to do. But hey, that’s just my opinion, feel free to act like a fucking arrogant and overly incompetent jackass anytime, but if you wanna grow a pair of testies and take responsibility for your fuck-ups, that’s cool too ^_^ P.S. [2;240] minutes ≠ 3 days (just for future reference =D).

To sums things up:
•Sunday at J-Popcon if you went to the cosplay event = “YAAAAAAY!! BEST DAY EVER!!! =D”
•Sunday at J-Popcon if you didn’t go to the cosplay event = “HAD WE BEEN IN SERBIA RIGHT NOW, I WOULD’VE RUN YOU THE FUCK OVER WITH MY TRACTOR OF DOOM!!! >:3”
And to top things off, my friggin’ favourite umbrella broke in SIX different places on my way back from J-Popcon because of stormy weather!! FUCKING BAD DAY!! >:3 Well, at least I had chicken… and squid… and curry rice >_<

Well, ladies and gents, here we have a new thing on M Dash; a featured post by an outside author. For those of you who are a bit slow on the draw and haven’t been reading any of the recent posts, we had a J-Pop convention here in Denmark not too long ago, which I wrote some reports on. However, what fun is a story if you don’t hear it in full from all the important parties? So, I asked Nemu, who had signed up as a gopher (which despite it being an easier job than it was back in say 2005, still friggin’ sucks) if she would be kind enough to write a report of the con seen through the eyes of a Gopher. Surprisingly, she agreed, and without hitting me I might add! I also asked Hopy to make one from the eyes of a Cosplayer, and while she agreed, I’m pretty sure she’s forgotten, like she did the pictures of J-Popcon she promised to send… =_= Anywho, here comes Nemu’s report on J-Popcon :3

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Gopher… gopher… Distantly in my mind I wondered if they meant those little furry creatures that often let people be fooled by their cuteness, when I first saw the little box on the registration form. “Check here if you want to be a gopher” who wouldn’t want to be that? Furry! So I signed up for it. It sounded like fun! And… what’s this? A free T-shirt you say? I’m so there!!

This was a few weeks before J-Popcon actually started, and I realised later that perhaps it would’ve been wise to have asked someone who’s been a gopher before what it was all about. But alas, I didn’t, which is why I was so surprised when I found out what exactly I had to do. Perhaps it was just me and my normal state of confusion, but I never expected to stand outside in the cold for freezing parts off I didn’t know could actually freeze for almost 2-3 hours. My first job as a gopher consisted of standing guard outside and let people in, gradually, not exactly how I expected to spend my first shift as a gopher, but fair enough, it’s all in a day’s work. Surely the next shift would be much better. After all this was the infamous J-Popcon I’d heard so much about.

My next shift (still Friday) included the movies, which was actually kind of fun. I got to see Soul Eater, and though I’m not a fan of mecha, I could feel the joy of the Mobile Suit Gundam Fanclub, in complete dress-up I might add, and so I didn’t mind being stuck inside a dark room filled with young men and women dressed as Gundam Suits for nearly 4 hours. In fact, the only thing that bothered me was the fact that I wasn’t allowed to leave, which made me kind of restless and sleepy (I dozed off at some point I’m ashamed to say). Although this sounds like a really boring day, I left the con at midnight surprisingly happy still, and excited about the following day.

I didn’t really have a lot to do Saturday, I reported in early in the morning, joined the snoozing people in the Otaku Café and read tons and tons of manga, supervising, seriously though, I was supervising, making sure people didn’t break out in a sprint with 500 mangas tucked under their arms. I’m happy to say there was no need for me to tackle anyone that day. When that was over, I had about 7 hours to kill before I had my next shift, which gave me plenty of time to enjoy J-Popcon’s facilities! I was free to roam the vast plains of the “Dealer Room”, which cost me a ton of money – music, anime, manga, figurines, pillows, T-shirts and plushies. Oh my economy and I had a huge argument that day! I went to the game room, and tried out Dance Dance Revolution – or whatever that was – in super ultra slow motion. It went fairly well. I hooked up with some other gophers and just enjoyed the mass of cosplayers that were always present. And then came the basement of doom… a 7 hour shift working in the cloakroom underground, just exchanging coats and bags for small pieces of coloured numbers. I was psyched! -_-‘ When you have 6 people, 2 which had had 3 hours of sleep, 1 (me) suffering from a severe lack of sugar, and 3 “normal” people, in the same moisty, dark room, weird things start to happen. It was incredibly fun, but bad for the mind! Truly a basement of doom!

Sunday… the last day of J-Popcon. It was pure awesomeness! This truly was the day of cosplay. The day was spent laughing and awing over the amazing cosplay acts and costumes. I have seen one live before, and I wasn’t disappointed in the least! Cosplaying as an ANBU (random) that day I fit right into the crowd of cosplayers, and yet stood out from those who went on stage – I thought I’d done a fairly decent job cosplaying, but those guys blew me away. The make-up and costume were grand and extravagant, and their acts were throughout. It was awesome! If you didn’t see it, you missed out on the awesomeness of awesome! The cosplay acts were followed by a documentary on cosplay from the German Team – so cool! – and later the rewards were giving. All this were followed up by a catwalk, photoshoot and reaaaally good cake from the guys at the bar. I was so sad to go home, but I had to. Having a test Monday morning sadly doesn’t sit well with staying out the night before.

Monday I woke up feeling sad and sore; running up and down 5 flights of stairs really doesn’t sit well with my untrained muscles. J-Popcon was so much fun, mainly because of the people that I met and talked to (I got to see my favourite anime characters in real life size – yay! o/.) Every time someone asked me [so..how was it?] I would giggle and just go off into my own little world. I can’t wait for the next one, even if it is a whole year from now. Being a gopher is not something I’d want to do again, even though all the “employee perks” were nice. Hey, free T-shirt! xD

Yeah, I realize a month later that I forgot to write this part… =_= First off, I would like to give credit to J-Popkai for even bothering with trying to put a con together, getting all the rooms, equipment, setup, etc. in order. So a big pat on the back for that. Also a pat on the back for at least trying to make things work smoothly, the keyword being “trying“. But considering the situation, they did it pretty well. On the other hand, they did kind of ask for it since from my point of view, everything was planned only about a month or two before the actual con started, where as most others start only a month or two after the last one ended. This I can not definitely say though, since I was not part of J-Popkai, so I leave confirming this to Madhatter. Oh, and also big props to the gophers for being awesome in enduring the hell that is being a con-slave (though it was significantly worse “back in the day”… scary thought, huh?).

But here comes the critique: This year’s con was, without a shred of doubt, the absolute worst con I have ever been to and it just seemed so badly organized. Here are the main reasons as to why the con sucked this year:

•Schedule: In the beginning, there was none. When they finally got it, there was no notice so people could get it, and even if you got it, half of it wasn’t true anyway, because events changed rooms or times or even both, and in general. The idea of writing a schedule on white-boards across the floors was a pretty good quick-fix, but 1) it didn’t come up until Saturday, 2) was only a one-day schedule, so you couldn’t plan for the next day (this was not their fault though, there wasn’t enough space, though maybe an extra white-board?), 3) and it was updated infrequently.

•Focus: Almost everything was focused on cosplay. They had hours upon hours upon hours (so that’s at least 3 >:3) of presentations on cosplaying. What happened to the rest of Japanese pop-culture all of a sudden?! Why no presentations on fashion and trends in general? Of current music and artists? Current art? Current movies and animation? Popular places in Japan, like host-cafés and such? All these things that the average Danish anime fan might not know about, but which is really interesting. In the J-Popcon of 2006, I remember there being a music/artist presentation, and it was a SMASHING hit, they filled an entire room about the size of a large school gym with people. Diversity people, diversity; there’s more to J-pop culture than people cosplaying.

•Theaters: There were only two. In 2006 there were four, and that worked better, in my opinion. At least have three, and have one show feature length films while the other two show series or something. And like with the regular time-schedule the movie schedule could only be seen if you coincidentally walked close enough to the entrances of the theaters, since they weren’t printed anywhere else, not even in the booklet you got at the entrance.

•The cafeteria: It was just sub-par… They served like three things or something, and it tasted badly and smelled even worse. Again, have more options. Just because I’m at a J-Pop convention doesn’t mean I want to eat only sushi or noodles, I might want french toast or something. At least they had french fries… But thank goodness for the many places in the area where you could buy food.

•The website: Seriously, if you are having a major convention, and you have a website exclusively for that, you would expect it to be updated. Why was there no schedules, regular and the movie one, on the website in a .pdf or even in HTML, so that people can see what will be going down when? Even the slowest solution takes only an hour or so to make. Why were any sudden changes not written on the website? Not even the events, once they had been decided, were added. The last thing written was just “We’ll update when we know more” a few weeks before the con started, and it wasn’t updated since.

•Gameroom: Was supposed to be bigger and better, and while it was slightly more spacious than usual, there were less games and consoles, because the space wasn’t used effectively. They opened up to a sideroom, in which they placed only one game, Rock Band, and a shitload of seats. Had the room remained closed, another three consoles could have been up against the sliding doors or whatever they were. If you’re gonna open up to an additional room to get more space for consoles, maybe try, you know? actually placing more consoles in there? Like, duuuuuurrr <_> (Edit: After correspondence with Per of Playright, this was due to Sony recalling the consolles and games that were ment to go in that room last second, so Playright is not to blame for this) And for the love of all that is good in this world, crack open a window!! A dozen consolles in a filled room produce a shitload of heat which makes the entire atmosphere unpleasant to be in for more than 10 minuttes.

As you can see, a lot of things one would expect to be no-brainers because it’s is so basic and obvious that it should be there, weren’t, and information was never published so that it actually reach the public. That made this year’s con lé suck ass. And of course, they could just go “Well, it’s easy to critique us, but we didn’t see you helping out!! >:3“, which is completely true. Then again, I was never asked despite offering my services, now was I? In fact, Madhatter, who was actually helping out and trying to keep people grounded, was thrown out because he wasn’t afraid to be openly critical of how badly some of the things were organized, wasn’t he..? In a case where you already have a shortage of people, getting rid of more would be in the “fucking bad decisions“-department. Anywho, let’s just hope they learn from their mistakes and take some of this critique to heart and actually try to change some of the things for next years con. If not, then I sure as hell won’t be coming next year, as I know many others won’t.

P.S. Please note that this isn’t to say that the con was ALL bad, but the bad parts would often outweigh the good ones. For more details on each day, please read the daily reports. Also note that as I am human, I couldn’t be everywhere at once and thus have missed some of the events which I obviously then have not written about.