MCM Comic Con – Birmingham

On Saturday me and Dane went to the Birmingham Comic Con and it was one of my favourite ones to date! Maybe not over Hyper Japan for obvious reasons… 😛

It was pretty much a last minute decision to go after umming and ahhing for a couple of weeks and due to this we weren’t able to grab priority tickets like we did back at the 2014 Comic Con. This being said it turned out well as we booked our parking in advance so we didn’t have to pay after etc etc. We got there an hour early and had to wait what felt like 10 minutes to be let into the convention. Then we had 6 hours of browsing around the stalls, doing some shopping, admiring all the amazing cosplayers and have a good time.

Before I go onto what amazing cosplayers I met and had pictures with throughout the day I want to show off what I wore as I loved it so damn much and got loads of compliments on it!

A few weeks prior to Comic Con I did my weekly eBay search of Black Milk Clothing bargains and came across this Adventure Time dress. These came out YEARS ago and are now museum pieces, meaning they aren’t coming back unless Black Milk decide to release a limited amount. I wanted this dress back when it first came out but due to money and such I didn’t get it. What probably would have cost near to $100 AUS dollars I go for £35. What a bargain! Of course the pattern as you can see is Lumpy Space Princess who I adore!

It’s a skater dress so it flares out a little which I find to be the best style for my figure. The material is lovely and think meaning if it needs to stretch a little the pattern on it won’t get ruined. I teamed it up with a long white t-shirt as I knew it would be too cold outside to wear it without anything underneath. All about the layering in the winter time! I also teamed it with black tights (which I wish had been thicker!), my triumph Dr Martens boots, my new red coat from M&S and a navy choker.

So when we were ready to go we set off to Comic Con!

This was one of my favourite comic cons I’ve attended to date for one reason, all the amazing pictures I managed to get with cosplayers! I’ll be talking about who I saw in the order I saw them!

The first cosplay we spotted was this amazing Totoro from Studio Ghibli My Neighbour Totoro, which is one of mine and Dane’s favourite movies. I never usually have pictures with anyone at conventions as I often feel too shy or they walk off and I never get chance to have a picture at all. However I shoved my way in the best I could and got my picture.

The next cosplayer we saw was another Studio Ghibli related one, which is from my favourite movie, Spirited Away. This person was dressed as No Face and was definitely one of the best cosplayers I saw all day! I’ve never really seen anyone dress as No Face before so I was so excited to see him. Again like Totoro I waited for my turn to have a picture and got it. By this point I was like a little kid, I was so happy!

This next cosplayer felt kind of official due to where you had to stand to have a picture and although there wasn’t an official queue, it did feel like you were queuing to have your picture with him. Of course it’s Deadpool and oh my God he was a legend! Of course it would have been better if it was Ryan Reynolds, but hey it was a guy dressed as Deadpool, a proper costume too not a shitty morphe suit! No offense to anyone who wears/wore a Deadpool morphe suit… 😛

When I went over to him I didn’t expect him to talk, but he did! He say hello, asked if I was okay and even complimented me on my dress and said, “Purple really suits you!” WHAT A BEAUTIFUL HUMAN BEING!

Ahem… Anyway! He got me to put my hand in a backwards C shape to form a heart and thus our picture was taken. I loved how chatty he was and how into the role of Deadpool he was. It was amazing and I hope everyone got the chance to get a picture with him who loves Deadpool just as much as I do. OH and he even has his little unicorn. 😛

This cosplayer was one of the hardest to get a picture with and I’m so glad I did to be honest, even though I did feel like a pain in the arse. I was tired, as was Dane and I couldn’t be arsed to push and shove to get a picture BUT by not doing this a lot of people were being rude and barging their way through. One girl in particular was very rude and as I went over to have my picture she barged past me. I ended up calling her something very nasty (begins with a C…) and walked off. Later on however I saw the Totoro again and this time with the cosplayers family who were dressed as Satsuki and Mei and not only did a somewhat get a picture of them all together, but I finally got my picture with Totoro.

After taking some photographs of me by the big MCM Comic Con sign we were just about ready to go home when we saw the last cosplayers we had pictures with and by far the best ones we had pictures with. Dane had wanted to get a picture with a Stormtrooper (or two) all day and we never got the chance to. So we saw them having pictures with some other people and went over to have ours done too. Dane had his picture taken first which he loves, but then it was my turn and it got funny very fast!

They had proper Stormtrooper armour on that also had voice changers inside so they sounded like the ones from the movies. They told me to get down on my knees as I was being arrested and proper went for it! The officer in black wasn’t there beforehand but when he saw how I was having my picture taken he got into the picture without me knowing… Until I saw the picture anyway! I loved the two pictures that me and Dane got with the Stormtroopers and a part of me wants to pop them in a frame at some point so we can remember what an amazing day we had.

Haul wise we bought each other a couple of Christmas presents, as well as some pictures for the house, but in Dane and Natalee tradition we always get at least one picture drawn of us, which is this one. We both love it so much and it’ll go in a frame and put in the house somewhere.

After a long day we came home cooked some dinner and relaxed. We had a lovely time at Comic Con and it was definitely better than the first one we attended together in 2014. My only negative about it this year was how many fake Nendoroid’s were flying around. One stall in particular annoyed me as it just sold nothing but fake items. You could tell they were fake too… I wanted to say something to some guys buying them but I couldn’t, I didn’t want to worry I would be kicked out for being rude or offensive.

Other than that it was amazing and I can’t wait to either attend Comic Con again or even Hyper Japan next year!

Did you go to an MCM Comic Con event this year? If so let me know which one and which cosplayers you saw and loved! You may have even attended Birmingham like I did! If so what did you do there? Make sure to leave all your comments down below!

Until next time, take care all and I hope you had a lovely weekend.

Hyper Japan 2015 Part 2

Well here it is, part two of Hyper Japan, as well as me showing more of what I bought.

After we had rested up at the hotel we got ourselves ready in some fresh clothes and headed back out. We decided we would get dinner at Hyper Japan as we hadn’t yet properly visited the Eat Japan section and were excited about all the food we would be able to try.

When we arrived we decided to go back into the Game & Anime Park to see if we missed out on anything, which is where we finally got to have a go on the Sword Art Online game, which once again, was awesome.

As well as that there was someone cosplaying as Jolteon, which was amazing considering the position they would need to stand in all day! They got a huge crowd, including us and were having pictures with people too, which of course I did.

We had some time to kill before we could go and pick up the picture we were having drawn of us both so we walked around the other areas again for a while. We had heard that there was a stall set up where people would have a Domo Kun around to take pictures with, something we had wanted to do previously in the day, but had missed. However we didn’t miss the second time and made sure to get in the queue for a picture. The guy who took our pictures took loads and they’re all amazing!

The person in the Domo Kun costume swayed back and forth between us so it looked like he was leaning on us, which is incredibly cute! I love Domo and have a largish plush of him in my room, I just wish I could have a life-sized Domo as a friend… Sad nerd is sad.

I wanted to give some of the bubble tea at Hyper Japan a go so eventually when the stand went quiet, I went to get some. I’m not going to lie, this wasn’t the best bubble tea in the world BUT the tapioca pearls were amazing! Very soft and squishy and definitely some of the nicest ones I’ve had. But although it wasn’t the best, it did the job and was very yummy.

As we had a further look around we found a stall that was writing your names in Japanese, as well as another stall that was making badges with your name on in Japanese. We of course got one of these each, and these are mine. We also found a travel stall that when you filled in a survey you got a free cute eraser, we of course did one each. These little cuties are now in my room.

There was only one (but a very good one) Japanese beauty stall in there that we had visited before leaving to go back to the hotel the first time around, but I forgot to mention it in part one. But I picked up this hair styling tool that is used to curl your hair whilst you dry it. If it works for Japanese hair, then I don’t see why it won’t work for mine! I still need to try it out properly and will do Friday before I’m off down south for a BBQ. I’ll make sure to update how it goes! The one thing that appealed to me the most about this is that it is plastic, not ceramic and therefore won’t do any damage to my hair. It was only £3 which I thought was a bargain!

Finally it was time to go and pick our picture up and I was so excited to see what the artist had done. So when she handed it to us I was really taken back. It’s one of my favourite things from Hyper Japan, London in fact. When we visited Comic Con in Birmingham we had our first manga picture of us together drawn and I loved that, but we did get a lot of comments saying that the drawing of me on it looks nothing like me, which if anything was upsetting. So the fact that with this picture everyone is saying this one actually looks like me, it makes me really happy! The artist just got all our details, including the plait of my hair, my bow necklace, my boyfriends sunglasses, and cap, etc. I’m just so happy with it.

After this we decided to get some food. I’m not going to be positive here, but I’m being honest. The selection of food at Hyper Japan was rubbish. There weren’t many stands and even so there wasn’t much on offer. We ended up having loads of chicken and vegetable gyoza’s, as well as some fried noodles that my boyfriend had as they made me feel a bit ick (I HATE bean sprouts!).

We ventured around taking in anything we may have missed and eventually we were told we needed to leave. Since Hyper Japan one of the sellers there has uploaded a video of the weekend onto YouTube and who is in the video? My boyfriend! It’s at 6:07 and you can see my boyfriend walking past the dancers. We were looking around the stall when they were dancing and it’s here we were told we needed to go, which sucks as we wanted to sort of blend in with whatever fun they were having.

After this we decided to go and claim our free pina colada’s from Malibu and they were delicious! It was pina colada day on the 10th July so we decided to take advantage of the free drinks.

When we were walking away from the O2, I took advantage of getting plenty of pictures of how gorgeous it looked at night. We got our train and then the DLR back to the hotel and had a lovely bath together and went to bed. We were shattered and it’s safe to say our legs were killing us the next day. Even though we went out for more adventures!

Before I wrap up this post I’m going to just talk about the negatives since Hyper Japan, as over on their Facebook page there has been nothing but people moaning about this years event. Saying it was too big, it was too public, the food range was awful, people kept getting lost, the list goes on.

I agree with some of the things that people say, the first one being that cosplayer’s were on show to the public which is true. If I was in that position I would feel incredibly anxious. Another being about the food and drink selection being rubbish, which it was in all honestly. My friend who has been for years even told me herself that side was rubbish. I was very disappointed. Another complaint was that the staff that Hyper Japan had hired were rude, which they were! At one point towards the end we bought a beer to share but we had to stay in the Eat Japan section to drink it, although people were drinking beer in the section we wanted to go into, which was extremely annoying. You would ask them questions and they would snap at you, which wasn’t nice at all.

Somethings that people are complaining about that I don’t agree with is how much room there was to walk, I didn’t honestly mind the walk and neither did my boyfriend. We put this down to how crowded and horrible Comic Con Birmingham was in November. I also don’t agree with the rantings about queuing either, we never had to queue much and if we did it wasn’t for long to be honest.

Either way, we loved Hyper Japan and I would love to go again for the Christmas Market in November, but it depends on money. We didn’t spend as much in Hyper Japan as we thought we would which is good, but I think that’s down to the fact there wasn’t really MUCH on offer for us to buy.

I recommend it, especially if you’ve never been like I never had. It’s definitely a different experience and I recommend any Japan  lover to do it at some point.

Have you ever been to Hyper Japan? What did you think? If you haven’t been before, would you like to? Make sure to let me know in the comments.

Until next time though, take care all and I hope you enjoyed my Hyper Japan two-part post.

Hyper Japan 2015 Part 1

I have struggled to start this post because I just didn’t know how to start it, and due to that it’s actually a day late… Oops! I’m literally just going to throw myself into it and ramble on about things in the order they occurred on the day, which I’ll warn you was long and also picture heavy! I also bought quite a few things at Hyper Japan or was given plenty of freebies, which you can see above, but I’ll go into more detail about those throughout the post.

This post is actually going to be split into two parts, because as I’ve been writing it, it’s just appeared to be WAY too long! So I’ll have part one up today, and part one up tomorrow!

Although we were shattered, we were ready for Hyper Japan and made sure we got up bright an early to get a big breakfast and then head over to the O2 where the event was happening. I’ve never been to the O2 in London before so I was in shock when I saw how big it actually is. But to get there we took the cable cart over which was pretty cool, although I was really anxious when we went over the first time, damn anxiety!

We arrived and the queue was ridiculous… However we had paid a little extra to get fast registration tickets, so we were lucky and didn’t need to wait in that queue. I later read online that it took people an hour to just over it to get into the arena. Not good! We had a bit of trouble waiting in the queue but for once my anxiety didn’t hold me back from voicing my concerns and I spoke to a member of staff about what was happening. Basically, people were pushing in and then laughing at us all who they had pushed past. Me raising these issues got us to the front of the queue, which we couldn’t complain about.

When we finally got inside we were even more excited! The O2 wasn’t that busy but it was sure heaving with restaurants. It just meant if we didn’t wish to eat at Hyper Japan, we had some choices around us.

There were various places you could visit at Hyper Japan including, Eat Japan, Hyper Fringe Market, J-Culture, Hyper Kawaii, Hyper Live, and the first place we visited, Hyper Game & Anime Park. This was probably one of the funnest places for us so it being the first place we went into was pretty awesome.

As the name suggests the Game & Anime Park was of course full of those. Nintendo was of course the main gaming event in there with loads of different demo areas for various different games, as well as a huge stage where members of Nintendo were talking people through new and upcoming games, as well as some cool events happening. We went there to watch about the latest game from Animal Crossing, Happy Home Designer (I’ve already pre ordered it!). I’m a huge Animal Crossing fan so I was super excited when we were told that event was happening on the stage. We watched the whole thing and due to being such awesome people, we were given a free Mario Kart 8 keyring, which I gave my boyfriend.

As well as that there was also a Playstation 4 console where people could demo the new Sword Art Online game, which is coming out in autumn this year! Exciting news for Sword Art Online fans like me and my boyfriend. We both had a go on the demo which latest about ten minutes and it was a pretty straight forward game. There was a huge queue when we first went into the Game & Anime Park so when we went in for a second time, that’s when we got to have a go.

Of course due to Nintendo being there, they also had some of their Amiibo items on display for people to look at, which of course we did. The ones I got most excited for were the yarn Yoshi ones, which have come out to accompany the Wii U game Yoshi’s Woolly World. They come in three colours, my favourite of course being the original green Yoshi. These are made out of real wool so not only do they look like little woolen figures, but they actually are!

Going back to Animal Crossing and the new game Happy Home Designer, these are coming out alongside it so it was nice to have a look at the cards that will be coming out for it. You use these cards to call different villagers and people in the town then and there instead of waiting ages for them. It was also nice to discover that Nintendo are bringing out an add on for old 3DS, and 2DS ‘s where you can use the cards, instead of needing to but the new 3DS.

Not long after the event where the people of Nintendo were talking about the new Animal Crossing game, a Pikachu suddenly waddled past us and over to the main Nintendo section. We followed it to discover that you could have pictures with it, so we got in the queue and got our pictures taken! It was so adorable and I wish we could have gone back and had some more pictures of it. But alas, we had things to do.

Before we left the Game & Anime Park I had a quick picture (or two!) with a massive Colossal Titan head that had been blown up with air for people to take pictures with. It’s from Attack On Titan, one of mine and my boyfriends favourite manga/anime. My boyfriend didn’t bother having any pictures with it, but I made sure to take advantage of it, as it was pretty awesome and the picture I got of me with it is definitely one of my favourites from the day.

We picked up a few bits and pieces from the Game & Anime Park and my boyfriend was lovely enough to buy me a handbag. I had my eye on it since the seller announced they would be selling them at Hyper Japan over on their Facebook page. When I told them I wanted to buy one they were lovely enough to let me look over the bag I got to make sure it was okay and such, which of course it was. It also came in a dust bag which I love! I keep it in there when I’m not using it to keep it nice and fresh looking. It’s a dupe of the Samantha Vega handbag which I’m fine with, as it’s a nice dupe and when I’ve used this bag since me getting it, it’s amazing quality and is really sturdy and great! I’m super pleased with it, and for £35 it was well worth the money. My boyfriend also bought me some green tea matcha Kit Kat’s, which were only 80p each! By far the cheapest ones in the whole of Hyper Japan.

We moved over to the other areas of Hyper Japan and probably spent most of our time there looking around all the various stalls and stands.

This is the Tofu Cute Candy Festival and something we visited twice because we loved it so much! For just £6 we got all these treats to eat and try, so we got two of these. There were various things we got from Pocky, Kit Kat’s, chocolate, sweets, and as you can see on this picture, a green tea matcha mochi, where was delicious. It was a great way to sample things before buying them in the shop next door. The shop was so busy too, it was probably one of the busiest stalls of the day.

As the Saturday Hyper Japan day is split into two separate events people are told they need to leave for half an hour whilst the event is swapped around so before we headed off we ordered a picture to be drawn of us together, as well as picked up a picture of me that someone had drawn in the Fringe Market.

We also decided to grab some food from the Eat Japan section. We bought some tuna onigiri, and to the Japanese onigiri is like a sandwich to us, which I LOVED! They were two for £6, which wasn’t cheap for but for how filling it was, it was really nice. I think we’re going to try and make these ourselves in the future.

Then we headed back to the hotel as we were pretty shattered and wanted to drop off some of the stuff we had bought, as things were beginning to be quiet heavy. The queue for the cable cart was long! But luckily we were alright and soon got into a cart with some people. I felt a lot more relaxed the second time we rode it and I would love to go on it again in the future.

And whilst I was going to continue talking about Hyper Japan, I’m going to stop for today and call this part one out of two. This post is just turning out to be way too long to fit into one post without it not beginning to be boring.

So tomorrow I shall talk about the second half of Hyper Japan in part two!

What do you think of my first Hyper Japan experience so far? Did you go to Hyper Japan? Let me know in the comments.

Until tomorrow, take care all.