2011: The finale

As 2011 comes to a close soon, I'd like to thank everyone on board with Neko Nation from all the cities we've been involved in, no role has been too small and I'd like to think that everyone has played a huge part in helping make Neko Nation what it is today.  What was a small project during my university break pretty much forced me to leave university to carry on doing this and also Tokyo Hardcore as well.

It's been a huge year with ups and downs, thankfully most of the downs were behind the scenes and more or less to do with the workloads but greatly outweighed by all the ups with how this year ended, I'm absolutely over the moon with how things have been gone with Neko Nation in 2011.

The last show in particular with Adelaide was just phenomenal and mind blowing, I pretty much planned for a massive overhaul to the Neko Nation show and my god did it work out spectacularly in the end, with over 30 staff on board I thought it was going to be a nightmare to keep things all under control but I've got a great team who helped out a lot.

We've had a lot of spectacular fun with all our shows but this time around we managed to get some video footage and coverage through both AV-Con TV and I Got Superpowers, which I've put a link too below for both the videos and the article which featured us as well.

http://igotsuperpowers.com/events/pull-anime-themed-party/

Expect a lot more posts in the upcoming weeks in regards to some of the highlights over 2011!

Neko Nation - Tour Updates for November

Got some pretty exciting updates in regards to Brisbane and Adelaide plus some details in regards to all the other shows we're working on, let's get started with what's happening!

Melbourne
We have got plans for a Melbourne show in 2012, we are currently in talks of teaming up with another local production crew who have been involved in Manifest to combine for an uber Melbourne show.  We will have more updates soon.


Sydney
We have started getting some catgirls and DJ's on board and have almost got everything almost ready to go, more details in the near future.  ^^

Perth
We've got a new venue lined up and just waiting to sign the contract any day next week to go ahead.  Things have gone a lot slower than we would have liked due to figuring out the best options in regards to an event on Wai-Con weekend.  We do have something and details will be announced soon.  ^^

Adelaide
We've recently had a meeting with AV-Con on Friday.  To cut a long story short, we're working together with AV-Con for this show and in future shows which we are really excited about.  The biggest news is that we are having the AV-Con media team coming down with their video cameras to film the event for their latest project, AV-Con TV!

We're working extremely hard on making it the best event ever with a lot of work done on every detail that we can to make the event better.  Remember the overheating issues, air conditioning sorted.  Want more prizes, extra sponsors obtained.  We've got some amazing music producers such as Korw and Neko Theory plus interstate DJ Giddy Kong coming in from Perth.  We've got a huge AMV set up organised and arranged.  A brand new lighting setup we're working on as well, the amazing new music line up and our biggest staff list yet, (close to 28, our average show usually has 10-15 in comparison!).

Brisbane
Our debut show is getting very exciting over in Brisbane with our most massive demand seen for an Eastern states show ever!  We've recently just sorted out our DJ line up for Brisbane and my god is it one of our most amazing DJ line ups yet.  We've got big local names and interstate DJ's coming down for our debut Neko Nation Brisbane show.



DJ Triex (Owner of Ruffbeatz Records):
We've got the owner of Ruffbeatz Records, the biggest J-Core record label in Australia!  His label includes the likes of DJ S3RL, Helblinde and Shingo DJ just to name a few.  Bringing his amazing array of J-Core and a couple of surprises on board, we're very excited to have our biggest name yet join Neko Nation!



DJ Agr1ppa (Bitch Brigade)

Well known for her work behind Brisbane industrial band Bitch Brigade, Agr1ppa will have a DJ set featuring all things pink, cute and PVC (or is that kawaii?).  Famously well known as well for her love of all things Japanese which will feature plenty of Japanese pop and club tracks, we are extremely excited to have her on board for Neko Nation Brisbane.


DJ Giddy Kong (WA)
If you think that DJ's are overhyped jukeboxes, then you obviously have never seen one of Giddy Kong's sets.  Neko Nation's most famous and craziest DJ is well known for his insane and crazy antics, ranging from hacking toy guitars and DDR mats to his DJ equipment to various sound samples to make for an interesting set.  With his music variety being quite erratic, from Rickrolling to 600bpm madness, he is a unbelievably unique DJ that will have you either dancing, laughing or ragequitting.  Did we mention that he has a pedobear outfit as well?  XD

Get excited Brisbane, this promises to be one of our best shows yet!

Neko Nation Adelaide - v3.0 - Ready for Mega Update!

Hi everyone, less than 4 weeks to go till the next Neko Nation in Adelaide.  Looking forward to our third one and it's in our hometown Adelaide.  Extremely exciting since the Adelaide show is the biggest on the entire circuit (at least so far anyways!).  Neko Nation Adelaide is a lot of fun for us being in our home town since we're treated a bit like mini celebrities and are quite well known over here and we're friends with quite a fair few people involved with the show.

Neko Nation Adelaide is special in the sense that we get to bring on our revolutionary new show with plenty of new changes to our  last two which we are extremely excited to work on!  Here's a bit of a preview of what we have planned.

New venue
We are moving our premises to Higher Ground which we are extremely excited about moving to a new venue.  Higher Ground promises an exciting new setup similar to that of Neko Nation Purrth which saw a massive stage and dancefloor in comparison to the last show.  The new venue has exceptional staff on board to work with us to help bring you an amazing new show.

Located not too far away from the previous venue, it's away from the usual Hindley St crowd and easy to get too.  Featuring a much more spacious open area and also a drinks line that won't take over 10 minutes like in our previous shows!

New Music Format

We're scrapping the unpopular rave room and trying out our new speed "speedycake" DJ format system, featuring 14 DJ's over a wide varieties of genres.  Featuring our usual, J-Rock, Anime, Gaming, J-Core, Gaming, Meme plus some of your favourites such as J-Pop, K-Pop, Bubblegum Pop genres, now we're going to feature debuting some new genres such as J-Trance, Touhou and Disney, yep, expect a pretty amazing new musical experience that you will not find anywhere else in Australia.

Expect some pretty amazing and incredible DJ's with plenty of new DJ's making their Neko Nation debut, including producers, Neko Theory and Korw.  We've got Neko Nation's favourite and most famous DJ on board once again, DJ Giddy Kong hailing from Perth, well known for his unpredictable and crazy sets which saw his last set involve a hacked guitar and DDR pad to make music out of while coming as Pedobear!  Although overall, expect an incredible soundtrack across so many Neko Nation music genres of the musical nyan cat rainbow spectrum!

Graphical Updates!

I've done my best to work on improving Neko Nation's image over the past few months in particular with the use of our lovely new mascots who are absolutely adorable.  XD

We're working on various new things such as our new advertising campaign featuring A1 sized posters.  We'll also be working on some new stuff for the show, including some pretty impressive graphics plus a new AMV setup with a projector that we struggled to get working at our previous venue.

Themes
Have a merry Christmas, expect a slight Christmas theme in this show, say goodbye temporarily to prize bags and say hello to presents wrapped up!  Plus expect a catgirl or two to be in Christmas theme!

Catboys
We've had a few Catboys but more or less as substitutes in the past for other catgirls.  This time, Adelaide has demanded catboys so we've picked a pair of epic catboys for the Adelaide show who will definitely dress and serve to impress!

Cocktails
Working on some pretty awesome new drinks and cocktails on the night, we have a new venue which is going to help us go ahead with this.

After Party
Think the party stops at 3am?  WRONG!

We've setup a free after party from 3am-6am at The Pimp Pad.  Adelaide's awesome gaming joint, featuring unlimited gaming on PS3 and 360, lounges to chill on, food and drinks available throughout the night plus your chance to chill out with Catalystic and Saccharine the two behind Neko Nation!

Get ready Adelaide we're ready to bring on one hell of a show for Neko Nation Adelaide, this is going to be our biggest and best show yet, get your tickets now from Tokyo Hardcore @ Shop 144 Adelaide Arcade.  We're excited and we hope you are too.  ^___^

2012 Tour!!!!

Neko Nation is extremely excited to present a Neko Nation 2012 tour!

Within half a year of putting on the event back and forth between Perth and Adelaide, we have received an insane amount of interest on the East coast and extremely excited to be bringing Neko Nation to Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.  Plus of course we're not forgetting about our birthplace in Perth and also our home in Adelaide!

We will be looking to return to Perth very soon in the first show with a special event taking place during Wai-Con weekend, we are very close to getting something sorted and we've been a bit spoiled for choice with options so we're deciding on a final decision soon!

Brisbane has recently been booked, despite the dramas of last time where we had to cancel the show due to the venue shutting down, we are back bigger and better than ever with a huge response from Brisbane Supanova for February 11th @ St Pauls.

We will be making our first show in Sydney after a lot of demand for a show we're finally making it down next year and are very excited to start getting to work on their debut show!

We had our first show in Melbourne recently and sadly wasn't our best show and didn't go to plan, we're very  excited to bring a brand new show which will be absolutely better than ever, with support from some special up and coming DJ's, stay tuned for more information!

We will finish our tour with a home show in Adelaide, we have got an interesting show planned with quite a nice surprise but you will find out soon!

<3 <3 Catalystic <3 <3

Behind the scenes at Neko Nation

So a bit about what I actually do with Neko Nation.  Neko Nation since September has ended up turning into a full time job, along-side running Tokyo Hardcore with Saccharine.  Also I work every night for ANZ so as people know I'm generally quite got my hands full with being busy but I'm very much used to it.  XD

While a show may only last 6 hours, there's sometimes up to three months planning for a show and for some shows in the future possibly a lot longer!

We deal with lots of people, from catgirls, DJ's, photographers, venues, fans, helpers, models, sushi caterers and a lot of people in general, while putting on a party can prove to be tricky, when there is so much going on it can prove to go completely in over your head, although in more recent times and with experience (although I've had a lot of event experience before I started Neko Nation) I've nailed it down to around a 100+ point process.  So there's always quite a bit to do and when you multiply that by multiple shows there's an insane amount to do at times!

So what sort of things happen behind the scenes?

While selling the show to hundreds of otakus isn't too terribly hard, trying to impress the venue owner can be a nightmare at times who generally are completely mythed at our concept and take quite a lot of convincing to do.  It used to be quite tricky when starting out, although it's become a lot easier having got multiple events behind our belt.  Some venues are easier than others and there's always a venue or two who have difficulty grasping our event in terms of explaining to them what catgirls are for example!

There are other fun things such as organising photoshoots, working with sushi caterers and dealing with a lot of our event staff who are always a lot of fun to be around, watching the catgirls arrive with their outfits and hearing some of the stuff the DJ's play always makes for a lot of fun surprise which makes another show a lot more refreshing on my end.

Managing the show on the night is a crazy thing, you've got people who want to ask all sorts of questions on the night and I actually don't get much of a chance to party at my own night because I'm dealing with so many people and everyone wants to talk to you, let alone get a chance to party.  However I always do find time to enjoy myself and I do get to talk to fans outside of shows.  Plus Saccharine always helps out insanely and helps keep the show in control and looking amazing as usual.

There's a lot of work in the way of managing all the online media (Facebook, website), accounting, e-mails and all the things that come with running a business and while time consuming it's all part of the joy and the love of doing something I really love.  Being able to talk to people about what I do is quite an enjoyable part and while it can be stressful at times, I seriously love the show.  As the last picture proves, I'm not doing it for the money, but for the love.  XD

Tour Update - Melbourne

Neko Nation had their debut event in Melbourne this month and it turned out to be one of our more interesting events that we had done.

Melbourne was looking to be a very exciting event, some of our sexiest and most colourful catgirls yet were ready to serve at the beautiful ABODE.  We had interesting DJ's, including Kimochii with a Perfume and Capsule filled J-Pop set, FryRice with some interest anime themes and remixes, special guest and famous Australia lolita icon Melodydoll famous for her "Put It In The Bag", played a special Visual Kei and Vocaloid mash-up.  While Catalystic had a bizarre mix of J-Rock, J-Trance and Industrial which went all over the place but somehow it worked!

For Melbourne we had our largest marketing budget yet, spending more money on Facebook, posters, fliers and our promotion at Manifest, we did our absolute best to get our name their to create a huge show!  Yet it was our smallest show yet.  Those who did go gave us tremendous feedback.

It was a night where things didn't go to plan, with Neko Nation being shut down early for poor attendance in Melbourne which we hope will never happen again!

We did our best and we do hope to be back in Melbourne with a completely brand new show as it was a difficult show and we are looking forward to bringing one amazing full show next time, since we have so much more to offer!

Tour Update - Perth

Hi everyone, will be doing my best to actually update the blog, I've just been extremely busy with the tour and the launch of Tokyo Hardcore!




We recently had two shows on our tour, the first show was held in Perth on September 23rd and it was easily the best and biggest production show we had done yet, mega thanks to all the staff involved, the venue who were amazing to deal with and helped up put one amazing show and of course all our fans who helped make it one of the most enjoyable shows yet.

It was an amazing show which saw many crazy and unique aspects, we were able to introduce Perth to Saccharine's very popular Bubblegum Pop set which brought a mix of meme's, 90's pop music and well known songs in the anime scene.  We had sexy schoolgirl catgirls who did an amazing job despite the pressure of one of our DJ's dressing up as Pedobear for the night and chasing after them in some amusing photos.  Our free sushi was kicked up a notch thanks to Iku Sushi, with possibly some of the tastiest sushi yet and a new surprise for our guests cheeseburger sushi, which may sound a bit odd to some but those who had it were very blown away!

Perth was an amazing show and was our biggest one yet, in terms of the venue, projector size, number of stalls and even number of people attending as well.  We're glad it went well since we were determined to take Perth up another level and in the end it was an amazing show and I'm so looking forward to coming back!

Epic Thanks

Once again an epic thanks has to go out to all the people behind the Adelaide Neko Nation for what was our biggest and best show yet.  While me and Susannah put a fair bit of time into the show we had around 25 other people involved that made this show happen.

We had 8 absolutely stunning catgirls on board Carrie, Kelly, Katja, Saccharine, Bethany, Lenii, Nana and Jimmy.  14 DJ's on board, with a special thanks to our new DJ's Shy, Visual-Kei-ra, Super BC Kid and our favourite, Giddy Kong who flew over from Perth again!  Our photographers, James, Thanh and Ashlea and when you include our doorman, venue staff and our awesome sponsors, Gametraders Marion, Freq Entertainment, Tokyo Hardcore, Miss Pixies and of course our huge favourite Shin Tokyo who have been epicly generous with prizes!

Seriously mega thanks, this was by far our biggest show yet and it was the most successful yet.  <3

Manifest

Just to let everyone know that we're going to be at Manifest at the Tokyo Hardcore stall, we'll have plenty of fliers for Neko Nation's debut in Melbourne plus our special, 2 for $30 ticket Manifest exclusive offer as well!

We'll also be doing a special promotional panel which includes talks on a variety of topics:
- What to expect at Neko Nation Melbourne
- A brief history on Neko Nation
- The future of Neko Nation
- A sneak preview of Nekomimi!
- How to get involved with Neko Nation
- Meet and greet the owners and founders!
- Question time

We're looking forward to coming down to Manifest and checking out Melbourne!

All Ages Events

One of the most commonly asked questions we get is whether we are going to put on an all ages event.  Quite simply we would love to but people have to understand the difficulty of the situation of putting on an all ages event.

First of all, putting on an 18+ event anywhere in Australia isn't too tricky well at least for experienced event promoters, however an all ages event varies not just from city to city but from council to council.  According to governments there's a whole stigma against the under 18 crowd, apparently they're seen as dangerous, irresponsible and shouldn't be out late.  Then we've got the problem of venues, there's few venues that like the idea of having teenagers partying and on the other end, venues aren't really keen on putting on events when they can't make their money on alcohol.

There's a lot of work that gets put into an 18+ event, however there's an insane amount of work that gets involved before being able to put on an all ages event, let alone all the work that happens afterwards like with 18+ events.

Having said this, it is not something I'm completely keen on giving up on, I remember how frustrating it was not being able to attend events I thought were awesome when I was underage and wished that my favourite events were all ages events.  So with that said, it is something we will look at and will investigate if there are any opportunities for us to do so.  ^^

Neko Nation Updates - July 2011 and Tour

Neko Nation Radelaide
Saturday, September 3rd 2011
Live on Light Square
The latest Neko Nation Radelaide has been released.  We had tickets on sale at AV-Con and we've hit the record for pre-sale tickets already, despite the event being 6 weeks away!

Expect all the craziness you have come to love from Neko Nation and prepare for one hell of a party, especially if you're still suffering from post AV-Con depression this is the perfect cure for you!

If you missed your chance to get tickets you can get tickets from Venuetix.

Neko Nation Tour
Perth - Friday, September 23rd 2011 @ The Bakery
Melbourne - Saturday, October 8th 2011 @ Geddes Lounge (The Basement)
Adelaide - Saturday, October 29th 2011 (TBC) @ Live on Light Square
Brisbane - Saturday, November 12th 2011 @ Step Inn

I would like to personally apologise for the lateness in bringing the information for the tour, unfortunately there has been delays due to Tokyo Hardcore, moving from Perth and unfortunately it takes a long time to deal with venues for our event, (not many clubs are used to our very strange demands for the night!).  None of the events have been 100% confirmed, we're still 90% confirmed with all the venues and are getting lots of little last minute things sorted out with all the venues before we work on creating the fliers.

Staff Search
If you applied for the staff search, we're getting back in contact with as many of you as soon as possible, I haven't been able to properly get back to you all until the venue has been booked, things such as venue size, closing times have a huge effect on the numbers we need staffing wise.  We have got a good number of staff helping out for all the events, although we could use a few more in Brisbane and we've ended up having to cancel the Sydney show due to virtually minimal applications for roles.

Manifest
We will be in the Tokyo Hardcore stall for Manifest Melbourne in August.  We will be selling tickets and will have fliers for the first Neko Nation in Melbourne taking place in October.  We will have special discounts for those who buy tickets through our store at Manifest like those who bought tickets at AV-Con.  We will also be putting on a special presentation about Neko Nation and more about the event in a special panel.  Feel free to also talk to us in the stall to give us your feedback about the event and get involved!

Consensual

Our most popular suggestion and request is when we are going to do an after party for a anime convention.  We are getting involved with our first convention at Consensual in Melbourne in November 2011.  Consensual is Asutralia's first yaoi and yuri convention and we are very excited to get involved with Avi and the team behind consensual to throw one hell of an amazing and potentially sexy party!

The future of our industry

It's quite an epic time to be a geek in Australia, there are all sorts of new cons and events popping up everywhere.  Our regular cons are growing epicly and I've been told that Supanova hit some pretty epic crowd numbers recently throughout the events.

We're also seeing all sorts of new cons and festivals popping up, some of these include Consensual and the K-Pop festival in November.  The growth of smaller subcultures of yaoi and yuri and K-Pop is showing a massive expansion all around.

The likes of Shin-Tokyo and Empire Toys, geek stores have been growing in size and popularity this year, despite all the online competition which has seen many retail chains around close down this year.  They're still rising above the challenge as fans remain loyal to their businesses.

The Mana Bar has launched recently in Melbourne after it's success in Brisbane, news was that the owners got into trouble with the council for blocking the footpaths due to the insanely long lines on launch.

For those on in Perth and Adelaide, we've had Neko Nations here instead which the last one managed to hit capacity and the announcement of our tour, there is no shortage of us slowing down any time soon either.

This week also sees the soft launch of Tokyo Hardcore at AV-Con (Adelaide), which has come about due to a high demand in Japanese fashion.  There's been a lot of interest and hype surrounding it's launch and it is going to look quite spectacular once they have their soft launch a few months from now.

It is a great time to be in this industry.  For those thinking about entering though, a word of caution, everyone in this industry works damn hard to strive for perfection, including myself, however it's because we love what we do and from my end, I can't wait to expand Neko Nation, kick start this tour and help our industry grow massively.  ^^

Japan!

The Neko Nation owners recently went to Japan to get started on our next business project Tokyo Hardcore, a Japanese lolita, gothic and cyber fashion store featuring the best brands from Japan.  We had a blast meeting a lot of the brands in person and went really well with the meetings, we will have more details and a proper blog for this soon as well.  We're working on getting a stall at AV-Con as well too!

More details at: http://www.facebook.com/we.love.tokyo.hardcore

On my own personal blog I've done a more serious blog about the things and adventures I had in Japan which you can check out at: http://hyper-catalystic.blogspot.com/2011/07/trip-to-japan.html

This is more a light hearted look into some of the things we did and saw in Japan that I personally thought was quite amusing.  XD

The JR (Japanese Rail), system.  Might be a good idea to start learning this before you go, to say it's a bit confusing is an understatement.  Choose to not learn it at your own peril or you'll never get to anywhere you want to go in Japan!

Found outside a hotel in Osaka.  It's just to freakish to properly caption.  :S

 McDonalds are never far away in Japan!  XD

 Naomi (our translator), took us to this really awesome gothic restaurant located in Shinjuku, the menu is written in a big chunky gothic bible, this place looks amazing!  Also holds the Tokyo Decadence events as well.  ^^

Found at a temple in Shinjuku, notice how the wooden part at the top looks exactly like a giant penis.  XD

The one game everyone wanted to play in the Sega Arcade, the Vocaloid game, I totally did not try to glomp the poster here.  XD

Reasons why Japan is awesome, you're discouraged from wearing Crocs as soon as you get to the airport.  XD

DOS compatible floppy discs.  Japan is so far ahead in technology that you can't possibly fathom the amount of power these discs can hold!

Shinjuku, very clean thanks to their anti-elephant policy.

This is what the ads for the new Zelda game look like, seriously.

Cubic Mouth, as Naomi quoted, "it looks like clown porn".  Somehow Disney gave approval for this brand to exist.  Click on the picture to see it zoomed in, we saw this merchandise everywhere around Japan, seriously, wtf?!

Cat relaxing cafe, think catgirls serving free sushi is awesome, what about cats serving coffee!  Ok, that's probably not what this place was about but the sign is somewhat quite misleading.  XP

Edward Cullen is so last decade, Nyanpire is the new vampire for the new decade.  Does Edward Cullen drive in a cat shaped car that looks exactly like himself?  Didn't think so, hence why Nyanpire is just too damn awesome.

Last but not least an ad for phone company SoftBank, they're the only phone network you can get iPhone in Japan.  They've got a bizarre advertising commercial involving a family, I originally thought the family didn't have a dad but our translator actually pointed out that the dog is the dad!  There are kids in the family and to be honest it's all sounding a bit Azu Manga Diaoh (think Chiyo-Chan's father).  The ads lead to some very interesting merchandise for this character and this is just another case of whacky advertising in Japan and why we love how strange Japan really is.  ^^