With more Otaku, Cosplayers and Nerds than you could shake a stick at (and believe me we were hitting them pretty hard with that stick), AkumaKon has exploded into it’s second year and has not only raised the bar for itself in 2013 but has set it for the Convention season! We were impressed…actually we were very impressed!
Between more special guests, an expanded trade hall and a tightly packed event schedule it seemed that the crew behind the event had put a lot of effort into the weekend and it clearly showed. While operations as big as conventions will never run as smoothly as hoped, AkumaKon pulled the entire weekend off with little to almost no hitches.
Our only grievance was with the cancellation of the Street Fighter play having had front row seats to last years Death Note play we had high hopes but what kind of business would show business be if things went right one hundred percent of the time!
With some of the friendliest staff working the weekend and some fantastic artwork, kudos to Ann Marie Burke (Art director for AkumaKon) the convention spilled out over the three days with fire juggling, panel,s tournaments, an elaborate Maid Café and as previously mentioned a trade hall with more choice and traders this year!
If we were disappointed with the cancellation of the play, our misery was only short lived as Saturday night saw some serious fun with a Burlesque night. Ran and hosted by Kirsty Smith, who also happened to perform as both Roxie Parts and Ring Mistress Rosalia, she was joined by The Chronic Candies and Naomi Bomb two upcoming Burlesque acts taking to the stage, to excite, thrill, wow and entertain a huge crowd. A special surprise came about when Tab Kimpton (special guest and trader) took his performance to the room and blew our minds!
Before we forget we’d like to mention that while all the staff went above and beyond to ensure we had a good time, we’d like to give special mention to Sharon Nolan, Dominique Meehan and the guy with glasses on Saturday who helped us find our way around (bad case of journalist losing his notes so I’m sorry but I can’t remember your name!).
Well for those of you who missed out on the awesome weekend that was AkumaKon we’ve prepared some snapshots of our time at NUI Galway’s Anime convention and handpicked some of our favourite cosplayers!
Editor-in-Chief, part-time super villain and hoarder of cats. If you can’t find me writing, I’m probably in the kitchen!
