Late report from Animecon X

Animecon X was held in mid July at Kuopio Music Center. It’s been about five years since our last visit to Animecon or rather Finncon/Animecon multievent, which made our trip rather nostalgic. We travelled to Kuopio by train, which set some limitations to what costumes we could pack for the weekend. We tried to travel lightly, since we’ve had our complications with trains and piles of luggage. Years back we forgot our kit with all our make-up on the shelf. Thank goodness Yoki realized that we missed one bag the moment we stepped on the platform and rushed back in to get it.

We both had one costume each for the two-day convention. I wore the school uniform I made for Saya and Yoki chose Kirlain Fuyu Jaw're, a character from Varjella. For Fuyu Yoki left out the white robe she wore at Desucon Frostbite, which is like a representative outfit for members Kirlain family. This light version was summer version of a sort and it indeed lived up to its name.

Animecon weekend was full of sun and heat. Even my uniform was hot to wear. Although the weather made cosplayers suffer it allowed the new outdoor photo service, which really was a nice change even if it required more work from the photographers and the assistants.

 Photos: Santtu Pajukanta

As a venue the Music Center was rather... confusing. It was suprisingly hard to navigate around even with the booklet. It was odd, because the building itself wasn’t that big to begin with. It took me about three to four strolls around the place until I got hang of it.

The Quests of Honor were Spoony, DJ Sharpnel and Benzaie, returning quest from last year. The program itself varied from Moomins to Japanese horror stories. I think that Animecon X was a convention where we spent more time at panels and lectures than in any other event in past few years. Usually we are occupied with competitions or some other cosplay related activities.

The highlight of Saturday was undoubtedly the anime concert. Kuopio’s Symphony orchestra with Atso Almila performed on the main stage playing different anime themes and songs for hour and a half in the evening. The concert was good despite the video clip weirdness, which hopefully will be fixed to match the orchestra’s efforts in the future.

The opening piece was Lugia’s song from Pokémon- Power of One. It truly brought up memories accompanied with few tears. But I dare to say that I wasn’t alone with my feelings. Some of the pieces were not that familiar to me, but when the theme of Noir started I think I stopped breathing! In all, I couldn’t think a better way to end the evening.

On Sunday we managed to have a small photoshoot at the nearby park, went to see few lectures and the show cosplay competition at the concert hall. The performances varied a lot, but the top was easy to pick from the bunch. I was so happy that our seats were so close to the stage that I was able to see facial expressions of the competitors. Especially the winners! It was so enjoyable to watch so effortless and natural performance.

In all, Animecon was nice and carefree weekend spent in good company… with hotel breakfast! The next stop for us is going to be Tracon at Tampere. Greetings to the hosts of the entertaining panel discussion at Animecon about cosplaying and parents; we might have one cosplaying mother in August! Our mother has always been a supporter of our hobby (when she got over the fact that our work room will never be totally organized ever again) and few weeks ago she opened a discussion: “Could I wear something else than just regular clothes for chance?”