Neko Nation 2012

Neko Nation would love to thank everyone for an absolutely epic 2012.  This year we finally toured all of Australia and we managed to pull of two shows in every city!  We broke our banks by dramatically investing in increased budgets into our shows, (our last Perth one cost 8x as much as the first show to put on!) but it was all worth in the end to see record crowds come out to our shows.

We held massive events all over Australia, including our very first official convention after party and all ages event taking place inside the Adelaide Convention Centre in AVCon.  This was an amazing special event as we never dreamed of such a huge event and we're very thankful for AVCon to help us create something this truly amazing.

We had a huge amount of support from all of our sponsors, especially Madman, Siren Visual, Beserk and Anime-X our main national sponsors, plus many other local sponsors.  We've had amazing catgirls with some amazing creative outfits and we even had the boys show them a thing or two with our shows too!  We saw amazing DJ's including massive talents from the hardcore, J-Core and hard dance scene such as Ravine, S3RL, Noc.V, Essi, Requiem and Triex join our events.

We expanded into new events this year by getting involved with Neko Domination, Hyper Dragon, Adelaide Chinatown Harajuku no Yoko and Neko @ The Pad.  Our favourite by far was Adelaide Chinatown Harajuku no Yoko, a local community event dedicated to cosplayers and lolitas looking for a place to hang out with the goal to create an atmosphere similar to Harajuku featuring stalls, DJ's, photographers and prizes, it was a great night for all which has been officially recognised and supported by the South Australian government and featured on Channel 10 news and The Project.

With new venues, even bigger budgets and international guests planned, expect an even bigger year from us, as we're working on making 2013 even greater, with even more free sushi served by catgirls for all our attendees!

<3 from the Neko Nation team.

Conventions 2013

At the turn of the millennium we started seeing conventions dedicated towards anime, the likes of events such as Wai-Con and AVCon attracting a couple hundred of people at a few university buildings, events like this today have now expanded into massive convention centres and the likes of events such as Supanova and Oz Comic Con have hit the ten's of thousands.  In turn we have seen a great increase in the number of conventions around Australia, while we haven't listed all of them, we've listed a fair few ones that we think are worth paying attention and interest too.

Supanova

Probably one of the most famous cons in Australia right now, Supanova has been generally seen for sometime as the convention in Australia.  Supanova isn't just for anime fans but for gamers, comic book fans, sci-fi fans and heck anyone who likes all things geeky and pop culture related, heck even wrestling geeks get catered for.  This is a convention with truly something for everyone.

Supanova's rise to fame has been through it's wonderful array of special guests that come from all areas of geeky fandom.  Having hit Adelaide for the first time this year, it's currently the only convention that is hitting all the major capital cities of Australia and especially in the case of Brisbane is definitely a major highlight for any anime fan.

Supanova generally takes place in April in Melbourne and Gold Coast, June in Sydney and Perth and November in Adelaide and Brisbane.

Oz Comic Con

There was a massive amount of hype and controversy about Oz Comic Con as it finally launched in 2012.  Massive controversy surrounded around the usage of the name, with the event having nothing to do with the original Comic Con, while never claiming to be affiliated with the massive San Diego event, they didn't do much to distance themselves.

With that aside, it's launch featured none other than Stan Lee, not via a video screen like at many other conventions in the past but actually in the flesh, a mighty drawcard for a legend in his 80's who rarely does cons anymore these days.  Despite all the criticisms it was too much for many fans to resist and both Adelaide and Melbourne were packed, while extremely popular, the event suffered many criticisms from lack of organisation and teething problems (http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/07/what-happened-at-oz-comic-con/) , the event is back in 2013 in Perth and Adelaide with William Shatner, the first event is always the hardest and here's hoping that they can learn from their mistakes to put on some amazing shows in 2013.

AVCon
There's a numerous amount of anime conventions around Australia, Wai-Con (Perth), SMASH (Sydney), Manifest (Melbourne), AI-Con (Hobart), Animania (Sydney and Brisbane), however rather than going through every single one, we're going to focus on our favourite anime convention of the year, AVCon in Adelaide.

AVCon is a huge deal, for those in Adelaide, you'll see massive AVCon banners strewn across the city, it's officially recognised as one of the top 20 events in Adelaide by their government and the numbers are pretty much ahead of all the other cons (or on par with Melbourne) and keep in mind this is the smallest major capital city of Australia!

In 2012, AVCon effectively used the entirety of the Adelaide Convention Centre, for what was a massive convention featuring all your usual cosplay, stalls, panels, fashion parades, artists alley, maid cafe and the gaming is really something else, with literally over a hundred consoles and TV's on freeplay for all the play plus a massive stage to play Rock Band on like a real rock band complete with awesome sound and lighting!  There is awesome night entertainment featuring screenings, mature age screenings and gaming, quiz nights and our favourite a free all ages Neko Nation event and a bar for those over 18!  AVCon takes place in July in Adelaide.

PAX
Around 8 months out from the con, PAX launched pre-sale tickets, the 3 day tickets were sold out within a week.  This is what many are claiming to be the con of the year by far.  PAX is the Penny Arcade Expo, a massive gaming expo from the people behind the famous Penny Arcade comic.  While we have seen the recent EB Expo which has been a great success and well loved by many goers in Gold Coast and Sydney, PAX promises a huge array of gaming in consoles, PC, tournaments, exhibitors and live music performances.

While tickets are definitely pricier than other cons, this is a convention that is expected to deliver with many people going expected to travel from interstate for one of the most exciting weekends of 2013.

Necomimi Review

Time to revive our blogger and we'll start off with something that I've been meaning to get around for a while and that's our review of Necomimi.  While most people have already made up their minds about the product, whether it's ZOMG, brainwave controlled cat ears! Or in the case of others, complaining about how expensive the price is, you've probably made up your mind.  For the rest still sitting on the fence or curious to know a bit more, here's our first hand experience.

We got our hands on the next gen European model, after spending 30-45 minutes or so calibrating brain patterns it was then good to go.  For us, obviously we're going to be biased and love the whole thought of brainwave controlled cat ears, it definitely does work quite well from our experience.  It's not super sensitive as many people who try to test a reaction of comments to get short term effects but this is something that does work over a short time span of minutes, it is picking up brainwaves, not facial responses or movements.  At the end of the day, it does exactly what it says it does and my god you need to see it in person to realise how much fun it is, not just for the person wearing it but for the other people around the wearer!

If you have intentions of wearing them quite a bit (and if you're paying that much for them, why wouldn't you!) it's reccommended you get some rechargables, battery life is around 8-10 hours, so definitely will get you through an entire night of Neko Nation or a convention but it may sputter our and become a bit weaker, slower and noisier near the end of it's time.  With that said, it's not exactly like you're going to be wearing it to sleep so the battery life is more than fine and it does use AAA batteries.

We bought the latest European model, this was the next gen batch that works best for Australia due to our radio wave frequencies, Japanese models worked just as well since the frequencies worked well for a variety of regions.  It's worth noting that the American models do work weaker on our shores with how radio waves work in America compared to Australia in terms of the frequencies.  The next gen European model was launched most recently at a major con in Europe and had a slight upgrade to make them more quieter and a bit more sensitive to picking up brainwaves.

Perfection?  Well for those who have been excited at the idea there are two downsides, the most obvious one is the price, with headsets costing between $100-195, depending if you get a cheap import or buy locally.  So obviously it's better and cheaper to import?  Well there's a bit of a gamble, unfortunately the headsets have been a bit hit or miss with a sizeable number of headsets malfunctioning pretty quickly which myself and a fair few others I know have experienced, buying overseas will not get you a warranty under Australian law nor will you get an optimised version for Australia.  The malfunctioning has been blamed on poor quality control, with increased pressure to bring out more units due to the insane demand, so I wouldn't be holding out for a price drop soon.

Overall, yes, if you need to have these in your life, by all means, you need to have Necomimi.  However with the price and some of the defects going around, this one is for the hardcore fans at the moment.  If you want to see these in person, come to one of our events, I generally have them on while DJing!  XD

Neko Nation July 2012 Updates

Neko Nation AVCon

We're looking forward to our biggest show yet thanks to teaming up with AVCon.  AVCon is one of the most amazing cons in Australia, home of the Adelaide round of the Madman cosplay championships, featuring well over 100 freeplay gaming TVs and consoles and lots of amazing and awesome anime and gaming activities all weekend.  This is bound to be one of our biggest and best shows which is finally been lowered down to a 15+ rating, so all the younger ones can finally party but there's also drinks available in the convention centre bar as well.  Noc.V from Melbourne will have a special J-Core set and best of all entry is free with a Saturday or weekend pass!

http://www.facebook.com/events/322775804467908/

Neko Nation Sydney

18+ Event

7pm-4am

July 14th 2012

Midian Theatre

Our next show takes place in Sydney as the unofficial after party for SMASH, this will be an extremely special show as we return to Sydney to celebrate Sydney's premier anime convention with Sydney's premier anime party.  It's a big show with interstate DJ's coming down from Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide for the occasion!

http://www.facebook.com/events/224285827682373/

Berserk joins Neko Nation!

Neko Nation is proud to announce Beserk Clothing as our latest official tour sponsor.  Beserk Clothing is Australia's leading alternative clothing store and label.  Dark clothing sometimes with a cute touch, with heavy influence from Japanese and anime.

http://www.beserk.com.au/

Noc.V Coming to you soon!

Noc.V has recently stated his intentions to drop by at some more of our future Neko Nation shows!  For those unfamiliar with Noc.V, he's one of Australia's most talented J-Core producers, specialising in euphoric intense high speed remixes of anime songs.  Noc.V was also behind the Neko Nation theme song that has featured on the Neko Nation videos.

http://soundcloud.com/nocv

Neko Nation Brisbane v3.0!

Neko Nation will be returning to Brisbane soon, we've been frantically searching for a new venue to make our next show an even more amazing one!  For those in other cities, we're current in the middle of planning out the rest of our shows for 2012, so keep your eyes peeled on our website and Facebook for all the latest updates, we're expecting to have some news for you this month in July!

Tour Diary - Purrth (Part 5 / 5)

 The last stop and I had no idea whether to be excited or dreading this show.  Personal problems had started creeping into my life so this tour was starting to become a huge drain on myself.  This job is stressful but combined with problems, socially, relationship, financially, mentally and health wise, I just struggled to get this show on the road.

Although of all the shows, Perth was one I was happy to finish off with, it's my birthplace, my original hometown, it was the original hometown of Neko Nation before the move to Adelaide in the middle of last year.  Perth is a mindblowing achievement to see where we've come from, we used to put Neko Nation in one of the tiniest bars in the Perth CBD to probably the biggest venue in the Perth CBD (yes, there's bigger venues in Northbridge, but we'd rather not).

Production wise, Perth has got the biggest venue, we've got the biggest dancefloor, the biggest stage, the best DJ equipment, the best lighting and DMX (lighting controllers), we've got an amazingly stocked bar (Rekorderlig anyone?), we've got the Byte Nyte gaming crew with multiple video games for play and the best sushi in Australia by far.

I think Perth managed to get a bit up there with the craziness, we've seen some epic dancing on stage, lightsaber battles, poi twirling and even well rehearsed K-Pop routines, Perth from a professional event promoter's point of view is by far our more well run and polished show.  The crowd can be a bit on the tamer side but once they got a bit of alcohol into them and we played music from Perth's favourite fetish, My Little Pony, they went absolutely bonkers.

Perth was a bit of a tricky show since we had a few staff members pull out but it actually worked out to be quite amusing for me in the end as it turns out that I talked to the catgirl who didn't have a partner and we ended up having the same maid dress, so myself and Tara decided to maid it up and serve sushi together, it was the first time I served sushi all year so it was lots of fun.  I also got to replace a DJ and play my new school Neko Nation set which is seeming to prove quite popular, so I had fun up there, although with Perth, Gigavolt and F-it had some pretty awesome sets that we only see in Perth which went down well.

So with a successful show, how do you celebrate the end of the tour, well I will admit I did party hard at various points of the night but the next day, after some hangover food, there was a lot of sleeping and watching of Eurovision, for once I wasn't craving Iku Sushi the next day because I ate so much of it.  For those outside of Perth, Iku Sushi is the most godlike sushi place in all of Australia.  It's got amazing decor, the hugest variety of non-alcoholic drinks, interesting meals and cheeseburger sushi, the most delicious delicacy I've ever had in Australia.

Back in Adelaide, returning home triumph having had the most amazing time on this tour.  Meeting some many wonderful new people, exploring lots of new places and working hard but the shows in the end have all been worth it.  I can not wait to put on more shows later in the year, Perth and also all the rest of Australia, you all rock, keep supporting our shows and we will make them bigger and better for you.  We're glad that people enjoy our show that we are able to do this for you all because it's truly special to see everyone having lots of fun no matter what they've had during the week, it's those moments where you truly forget about the mundane-ness of your life and just go out and forget it all and truly live.  <3

Tour Diary - Brisbane (Part 4 / 5)

I was mega excited for the Brisbane show, Brisbane is a show I hold very close to my heart, Brisbane was originally a show that nobody wanted to go too when we organised our first show and to make matters worse, we didn't hear from the venue for months, only to find that the venue was shut down.  Frustrated by the setbacks I had a massive comeback to put Brisbane on the map, and thanks to a huge push from a few superstars in Brisbane, Jacqui and Sammi being two of the main two, we had the best and biggest debut show in Neko Nation history in February.

Coming to Brisbane was great, we've been on the back of the small Melbourne show which just didn't feel like a Neko Nation in a sense and we came to Brisbane, a show which had lots of applicants, we had a huge budget for this one, we had so many DVD's and Blu Ray's as prizes from Madman and Siren, we had massive sound and lighting upgrades and we also had Triex and S3RL come out to play for an epic show.

Brisbane never ceases to disappoint, I got to let rip my favourite new style of set, from 8-9pm, an electro, K-Pop set, then a J-Trance, Handzup, Hardstyle set, the tour had forced me to pace myself thanks to some pro J-Core DJ's joining on board, including Riot Angel who made the trip to Adelaide so I gave up my slot at the end for a ridiculous expression set.

Brisbane's crowd never disappoints, we see massive conga lines all over the place, we've seen massive group pile on photos and it's by far our most colourful show, plus the people are amazing in Brisbane, I came to this city knowing no-one at the start of the year and they've kind of adopted me into their world.  I've truly loved them back, they're very drama free and insanely fun loving and they just come to let everything go and party.

On my end, it wasn't the most fun night, I had numerous incidents throughout the night, meaning I missed S3RL's set and a fair of Triex's but I caught Tonium's pony set, which for someone like myself who doesn't get this pony craze, was mindblown by this set, from what I heard from S3RL and Triex they did good, although we've noticed the so called kiss of death effect from Susannah.  Originally an experimental idea to have Susannah play Bubblegum Pop, she's pretty much filled the dance floor got people to go completely crazy and whoever plays after her will just struggle to keep people on the floor due to people being so exhausted from pushing too hard.

Overall I loved Brisbane, it's got great people, I like the city and it's a nice place which is a mix between the fast paced city life of Melbourne and Sydney but got the laid back elements of Perth and Adelaide.  There's nice Japanese influences in particular Harajuku Gyoza and Mos Burger are absolutely amazing places.  Also got to give massive props to Ben for letting us stay over in a big house which everyone in welcomed us greatly, Brisbane is always such a brilliant, unpredictable and wild party and I hope that never changes.

Tour Diary - Melbourne (Part 3 / 5)

Third Stop, Melbourne.  The decision to go to Melbourne was a last minute one, when we had an interesting idea and offer.  We went with a new rebranded event called "Neko Domination", more focused towards the goth/alt crowd, with a focus on dark EDM and EBM.

While some of you may read that thinking that we've lost our mind, to an extent we have, we're using our Melbourne minds.  Melbourne was by far our lowlight on our 2011 tour, our only 2011 Melbourne show was poorly attended and barely set Melbourne on fire, however we learned some lessons from our last show and we headed into this show having had great shows in Sydney and Brisbane this year.

The end result was quite a decent night, thanks to the help of Alex who managed the "Domination" room we saw a huge interest in the goth/alt scene coming down to support our event, although the colourful cosplayers were nowhere to be found, despite our marketing campaign at Supanova in the weeks leading up to the event.

The show was an interesting one, with Noc.V being a highlight and actually probably one of our best DJ's on tour with an amazing J-Core set and it was generally quite a fun night overall.  The new style of show was interesting, taking me back to the style of events that I used to work with when I was helping others put on events.

The event felt a lot like the very first Neko Nation in a sense, we could count the DJ's on one hand and we only had a small number of people at our event.  Melbourne is by far our most bizarrest city, we advertise Neko Nation as a cosplay event and the number of cosplayers at each of our Melbourne events can be counted on one hand.

Sadly, on our end, we're going to be putting an end to Neko Nation in Melbourne and leave our focus on the other four major cities as we've come away from Melbourne with very little interest for our shows.  :(

Tour diary - Sydney (Part 2 / 5)

 Our second show and our first interstate one on the tour and actually it's the first time that we've ever put on a show in Sydney.  Sydney has been a city which we've struggled to get a show happening in 2011.  However things really started to go our way in 2012, a growing cosplay scene, new sponsors plus massive support from our lead catgirl (Rachel) and also from the venue owner (Herbie), we could make it happen.

Sydney was by far our most nerve wracking show, we've had difficulty attracting hype and interest but in the weeks leading up to the show we've had a lot of love and support from our fans to make this an awesome party.  I rocked up to find myself actually really enjoying Sydney, the arcades, food and the city were absolutely amazing, plus our venue as well too.

Our Sydney show is one of our most uniquest shows on the venue, taking place in an unconventional venue, it makes for an interesting and unique underground feel that really put an interesting twist on our show and for one great atmosphere for the show.  Mixed with an extremely varied Sydney crowd which has an interesting mix of alt, rave, goth, cyber, furry, cosplay and geek cultures.

The show went better than we expected, in particular we noted that the sushi in Sydney went faster than in any other city by far and we had really great fans who really stuck till 4am to party hard, I was suggested to play speedcore near the end and they did dance to it.  Favourite highlight was by far Kuma Drop playing his entire set in a pedobear outfit, plus Shyen's Disney was a popular crowd favourite.

We love this show, it's an amazing venue to deal with, nice massive chill out area and is a popular one for the interstate fans as well too.  Sydney was a blast and after spending another day discovering the massive city and having a blast, we're excited to be back for SMASH to throw a massive after party for all the Sydney fans!

Tour diary - Adelaide (Part 1 / 5)

 First stop Adelaide!  Our tour starts off in Neko Nation's current home of Adelaide.  Adelaide is by far the most exciting show to prepare for as we regularly gets our fans coming into Tokyo Hardcore to buy tickets, we get to see the excitement first hand and actually interact with the community in our own hometown, compared to just talking to people on Facebook with the interstate shows.

We headed into the show completely sold out of pre-sales, the second time we have achieved this feat (the other time being Perth for the unofficial Wai-Con after party).  So we had massive reasons to get very excited for this show, especially since we were going into this show nailing what we believed would be one of the most amazing shows ever as we believed the last show was great but we could finally work on putting on all the finishing touches to get everything the way we wanted it too.

The Adelaide show was pretty much the stuff of dreams, a titanic amount of support came from all over the place, 14 DJ's, 8 catgirls, 10 media (including AVCon), it's by far the biggest show staff wise and well supported by the entire Adelaide cosplay community.  Our numbers hit over 300, taking the attendance title back after temporarily losing it to Brisbane at the last show.

Adelaide is by far the most special show for us in terms of the amount of support, attendance and love we receive and it was massive motivation for the rest of the tour, plus Adelaide certainly knows how to party with absolutely packed dancefloors and crazy antics all over the place.  It's a show like this that shows why Neko Nation has chosen to reside in Adelaide.

Having been satisfied we were ready to pack our bags for our debut show in Sydney!

Top 10 Moments of 2011

2011 was an amazing debut year for Neko Nation, we put 7 shows on and we've met an amazing bunch of people and had an amazing amount of time and experiences.  While the whole trip has been amazing, there were a fair few standout moments of the year and we're going to count them down.

10. Neko Nation launch! (Purrth, February 2011)

Our first show in Perth may have only had 4 DJ's and 2 catgirls but nonetheless it was enjoyable night as the very first Neko Nation took place when it was launched in at Bar 138 in Perth on February 5th 2011.  The turnout was around 100 people, maybe it wasn't as big or amazing as our most recent shows but we had to start from somewhere but there was enough love and demand to put on another show and another one and another one!


9. Cheeseburger Sushi (Purrth, September 2011)
While many people reading this might be in shock at such a creation everyone at Neko Nation Purrth was.  Iku Sushi ended up providing up with cooked cheeseburger sushi and the end result?  It was the most fastest sushi run any of our catgirls had ever done, there was no need for taking laps around the room as this was virtually gone by the time they got from one end of the venue to the other.  This stuff was amazing and those who tried it at Purrth definitely thought so.

8. Neko Nation Upgrades!  (Various shows)

While our launch was special, watching Neko Nation grow was quite an amazing thing to watch throughout the year, Adelaide saw the launch of an 8 catgirl show, 12+ DJ's, stalls and a mini stage.  Things were a massive improvement in Adelaide after our first show in Perth.  Things did get a lot better in Perth soon, once we worked on our next setup in the Bakery which featured a decent sized stage with DJ booth, projectors and dancers as well.  However we definitely saved the best till last in Adelaide which saw the production ramped further with a bigger stage, lazers, snow machine and a speedy music format which featured 14 DJ's which caught the attention of AV-Con and I Got Superpowers.


7. Giddy Kong (Various shows)
Giddy Kong is our most famous, interesting and controversial DJ on our show, touring around to as many shows as possible out of his own pocket, he comes to play extremely bizarre sets that aim to please our fans, make them dance and also possibly mortify them with his insane trolling.  We've seen antics such as his Pedobear outfit, his hacked guitar and DDR mats and his love of random speedcore.


6. Less than 3 but more than 50?! (Adelaide, September 2011)
Saccharine had her first bubblegum pop set in Adelaide and it was an amazing success and the crowd certainly got crazy right into it.  Of particular note was when Saccharine played "Less than Three" which ended up creating a conga line which we estimated got to around 50 people, this was not the last which we saw off it, later on we saw a smaller but still impressive Nyan Cat conga line on the night.


5. Putting the win in twincest! (Perth, Various events)

Saccharine and Kae were the first two catgirls for our first show and they kept coming back for more being well known as our two most famous catgirls on Neko Nation.  Kae and Saccharine didn't know each other before the first show but ended up getting along quite well to routinely pull off their twin act, which may have gone a bit too far at the first Adelaide show which lead to many friends getting the two mixed up!

4. Damage Dollz (Adelaide, May 2011)
This was Neko Nation catgirls at it's sexiest and finest.  Saccharine's go-go dancing group the "Damage Dollz" put on a sexy performance which included 4 of Adelaide sexiest and hottest alt models in some pretty sexy, tiny outfits getting pretty close and wrapped up in string.  It made for one amazing show and in the end it was a once off as the Damage Dollz  went their separate ways later in the year.

3. Pedobear (Perth, September 2011)

Neko Nation's beloved Giddy Kong came up with an epic idea to wear a pedobear outfit for a Neko Nation event.  While he didn't end up playing in it due to the heat and lights on stage he was seen wandering around the entire show with the outfit which created quite a few interesting pictures, especially when the catgirl twins Kae and Saccharine were around!

2. Still Alive Finale (Various Shows)
Giddy Kong accidently started a tradition which ensued at most shows which saw a bizarre celebratory dance for the final song "Still Alive", the first Perth show saw a singalong, Adelaide ended up seeing ballroom dancing to "Still Alive", while the last Perth show ended up seeing a variant of the circle of death, where we saw people running around in a circle only for the circle to collapse at the last minute, Perth certainly had a lot left in them by the end of the show.

1. The Kiss (Adelaide, December 2011)
Adelaide's cosplay scene two well known popular if somewhat controversial figures, Adnan and James ended up pashing on stage at the last show of the year during James' set.  The lead up for this moment was often "joked" about for a very long time and people certainly were pretty shocked, surprised but also very excited to see it happen as well too.  It's certainly one of the highlights that everyone remembered from that show.