Nomcon 2013

I was at Nomcon a big anime, manga convention in Dublin this weekend. I had a great time, did alot of networking and met awesome people! For once I didn't cosplay as I wanted to dress up for a change giving I had a fun dressing up at Dublin Comic Con. :)

I ordered a dress from Cosmates.jp which is school girl looking so I wore it to Nom. I am very happy with the dress!

I only attended the convention on the Saturday and found the event to be very relaxed, calm and sociable. There was also a very community feel to Nomcon and the staff were very helpful, accommodating (as conventions are). There was a point I was queueing nearly two hours for Monica Rial's (Voices Mari Illustrious Makinami from Rebuild of Evangelion, Fairytale and various animes) autograph and the staff kept on apologising to us for the wait.

When I arrived at the convention I went into the trade hall to do my shopping :) and chatted to a few traders. I was glad to see Jimi Mitsue was there. I met Mitsue at Nomcon last year and she presented a Japanese poetry which I enjoyed. I always found her a pleasure to talk to.

Mitsue shows off lovely Japanese crafts made by her father.

Thomas and I with Mr. Yamada who works in the Japanese Embassy and who I collaborate with for the Experience Japan Festival. He is very much into anime and enjoys going to conventions.

The trader hall. There were talented artists, United Publications selling figures, Comics, T-Shirts ect.

The above photos is cosplayer Anathiell selling her self made crafts. Anathiell is known for doing Lightning from the Final Fantasy series and she took part in the Cosplay stage show at the Experience Japan Festival as the White Mage.

You can look at more of Anathiell's cosplays here.

This photo above really suits the Joker being dark.

You may recognize this Miku Hatsune cosplayer from previous cosplay events. This is Leanne and she was Eternal Sailor Moon at the Experience Japan Festival Cosplay stage show back in April.

What was nice about Nomcon the majority of cosplays were anime (I know you think weird as you thought cosplay began at anime conventions, actually costuming began in Sci-Fi conventions in the 1930s) but nowadays the majority of cosplay are from well known films eg The Avengers, Iron Man, Batman and computer games eg Mass Effect, Halo ect. Therefore it was nice to see alot of anime cosplay.

Here are some shots I took of excellent cosplays.

The photo below was the long queue to Monica Rial's guest signing.

Meeting Monica Rial was worth the wait! She was buzzing with energy to the end (sure would you love it if alot of fans specially queued just to meet and chat with you for a few minutes and get your autograph :P)

Akemi Solloway was Nomcon's other guest. She is very popular in the UK convention scene in promoting Japanese culture. Akemi is Japanese but works in the U.K and in Japan. She presents alot of talks on educating international folks on Calligraphy, Japanese mannerisms, Japanese traditions. I took part in her Calligraphy workshop and she was nice to meet and helpful in instructing us.

My piece I done. It reads Nihon!

I had an interesting chat with Akemi after her workshop, asking her how did she get to where she is, which I need to follow up with an email. ^^ Akemi is doing a charity titled Aid for Japan. It is a very good idea in sending disadvantaged children and orphans from the Tsunami disaster in 2011 to the U.K so they can get an education in learning English. Please read more about the charity here. It would be good to organise a charity event linked with Experience Japan or Eirtakon, Akumakon or to organise an event.

Even though I was at Nomcon for only a few hours and I didn't get to experience much events, panels and screenings. I really enjoyed it and thought it had a relaxed and warm atmosphere which I mentioned earlier. The convention seems really well ran and the staff were very helpful. One committee member in particular John, the nicest guy you would ever meet! He made sure I went to Akemi's Calligraphy workshop. To be honest if you are the type of con goer who goes to conventions for the gaming and not really into anime, more into current popular computer games, films, comics Nomcon wouldn't really appeal to you as it is more a dedicated Anime convention and has a high Japanese cultural focus to it. Nomcon is kinda a convention version of Experience Japan with more focus on the anime. If you just enjoy going to conventions for the craic then you would really enjoy Nomcon too!

Please see more photos on my Facebook and I will be putting some up on my Cairdiúil page too.
Also see my Nomcon blog post from 2012.

I look forward to Eirtakon!