Nom-Con Saturday Special

I was looking forward to Nom-Con all week and with press pass in hand, I trundled through the double doors to Ireland’s newest anime convention. One of the first things I noticed was that over 80% of the attendees at Nom-Con came decked out in their finest cosplay gear. I caught sight of characters from Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Ouran Host Club, Dante from Devil May Cry, Peter White from Alice In The Country of Hearts (with an over-sized pocket watch) and of course Naruto and Lolita fashionistas. Everyone took pictures of each other’s cosplay outfits, it was great to see and feel a community spirit of like-minded fans.

The Trade Hall was doing impressive business too with attending companies such as Beez Entertainment, Zen Pop and Genki Gear just to name a few. I picked up the second volume of the manga Alice In The Country of Hearts for €8  and the entire season of Cowboy Bebop for an impressively cheap €30 price-tag. The Trade Hall was filled with people throughout the day, when I asked traders they said ‘Business was okay.’ This is a slight understatement as people were laden down and clutching onto their purchases.

(l-r) Claire Thompson, Autumn McCullogh and Emma O’Neill cosplaying as members of Ouran High School Host Club.

I called down to the anime screening room and managed to catch 20 minutes of Trigun and fell in love with the series. It’s been on my list for some time but I never got around to watching it.  Vash the Stampede and co. has been bumped up in line for purchasing and I’ll end up with a fatal case of the lol’s. I managed to catch another series called Angel Beats! which left me confused and bemused about it.

Ducking out from Angel Beats!, I managed to catch the Zen Pop Panel about publishing comics and breaking into the industry. I was surprised to find that at least one of their members create their comics all by hand with no digital editing or rendering software whatsoever and that another member of the group is to sit her Leaving Certificate next year.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s line-up at Nom-Con with Lolier Than Thou, a gameshow-esque to find the biggest fan of Lolita fashion at Nom-Con this year and of course the gaming and anime screenings running all day.

Sharon Nolan as Charmander, everyone’s fave Pokémon.

Posted by Klara on 6:27 pm. Filed under Hot Picks, Latest Column, Lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry