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.  ^^