Neko Nation =/= Rape Culture

There have been people wishing to boycott Tokyo Hardcore because of their recent decision to stock Tentacle Grape.  This technically applies to Neko Nation, since it was actually my idea to bring in Tentacle Grape.  I'm absolutely mindblown that people feel the need to boycott us on what is such a trivial matter in my opinion, and this isn't the first time since we've had someone get upset over the Pedobear picture as well pictured below too.

First of all, I do understand the whole idea behind rape culture, it is a serious and important social issue that is relevant and I'm all for the ideas behind it to a reasonable extent.  Rape is a serious issue but so are the likes of torture and murder.  Saw has been a successful series that has spanned off 7 movies due to it's shocking, gory and disturbing torture sequences, the best selling games of last year were Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3, games that encourage and glorify death on a bloody war torn battlefield. Like rape, we often see torture and murder are trivialised, glorified and joked about.

The reasons why the like of gruesome torture movies and violent video games exist is due to the context.  We need to remember that these situations are highly unrealistic, to allow these scenarios to happen in real life would be highly sickening to all.  We also need to remember that these situations are highly unrealistic and while the likes of serial killers exist and are a serious and disturbing issue, you'll be hard pressed to find someone that claims that Saw would highly trivialise serial killers and in real war, there aren't any respawns.

This is why the whole boycott against Tentacle Grape is ridiculous, people are boycotting what is a highly unrealistic situation that would not relate to relate to real life.  The name is a play on "Tentacle Rape" a ridiculous scenario where a monster with tentacles will usually attempt to tie up a girl with their tentacles and then proceed to rape.  People are amused by that it is an unusual scenario and are buying into the product because of it.  Tentacle Grape is generally sold to anime fans that get this reference, so this is not a product stocked on regular supermarket shelves.  This is not bought by people who think that rape is amusing or silly, it is bought by people are amused by the whole idea of tentacles.

The product is targeted and being sold to a small niche market and I'm utterly confused that they feel they've done the right thing by boycotting businesses that trivialise rape via Facebook.  This is a highly weak strategy of trying to "support" a cause especially by targetting the small businesses at the bottom of the food chain.  Do you see PETA trying to protest against the local butcher?  Do you see gay rights rallies being protested at your local town hall?  No, they go for the bigger targets because it's the more effective targets.  There's a huge difference between actually trying to make a difference and being seen to try to make a difference, one only has to look at Kony2012, the most "supported" movement of 2012 with many millions behind the cause which made no difference.

The point I'm getting at is that if you are really going to do something for your cause actually, go do something that will actually effect or send a message to the top of the food chain.  You can protest, share and like all you want on Facebook but Kony wasn't exactly shaking in his boots on April 20th.  People need to actually donate your time, money, effort and talents into a cause to make some sort of serious impact which is not done by the keyboard warriors.

The reasons why this product is being sold is because people find the idea of tentacle rape an amusing one thanks to hentai released from Japanese anime companies, then there is also the fact that there are certain hentais in Australia that are legal which have tentacle rape in them.  This is what needs to be aimed for, I just see this whole campaign as protesting against one hentai joke rather than the actual root of where this all stems from a case of knee jerk reaction in trying to be seen to do something rather than actually doing something.

People need to realise that Neko Nation is not some major multinational wholesome corporate company.  Neko Nation is a small business that operates in a niche market that provides a party environment for those 18 and older.  This means that Neko Nation will try and connect with it's demographic (anime fans who like to party) by making communications with an approach that involves anime and is not necessarily family friendly and/or politically correct.  Neko Nation does not take the conservative route with it's messages and therefore might cause a select few individuals to be offended and misunderstand our messages but if you're not able to properly understand our messages and also view things light heartedly, then Neko Nation isn't for you.

Neko Nation does not take the conservative road try to play it safe to be inclusive of everyone.  We are here to do something different by including those who have felt excluded down this conservative path, think about how many clubs and bars will let you in with full cosplay and are willing to play music that is not RnB or house in Australia.

We are maintaining our decision to stock Tentacle Grape as for the select few who think that we are being offensive by possibly trivialising rape (and are highly unlikely to go to our shows anyways) is completely counteracted by the fact that most of our fans would realise that this is a novelty (tasty) harmless product (ignoring the sugar content!) that just a pokes a bit of light hearted fun at anime culture.

End Of Financial Year 2012

So it looks like I get next Friday off and can make it down to Chinatown Harajuku no Yoko, normally this would be quite awesome, sadly this also marks the first time I've been asked not to come into my work.  Getting a night of on end of financial year is a sign that my hours are really starting to trickle down at my work (in Perth it's been a bit of all hands on deck in past years), it's been a while coming but it's slowly starting to hit.  Heading back to uni was by far the right decision here. On and on the note of end of financial year, doing both me and Susannah's tax this year will be my hardest tax challenge yet.

It's been an interesting last week, having been catgirl-less (Susannah in Melbourne), I've had a pretty rough week, lacking motivation with my usual life but managing to chill out more and watching more anime for once, Asobi Ni Iku Yo being such an amazing anime that I enjoyed incredibly and definitely one of my recent favourites, in what's been a week I've been sleeping in lots, not getting much work and feeling pretty depressed.

It's getting to an interesting and nervous time since two of my big events are coming up, Neko Sydney will be interesting, it's a bit nerve wracking since afterparties are definitely a bit nervewrecking with how the last one went in terms of their unpredictability but I'm expecting it to be a really amazing show.

The big one is Neko Nation AVCon, I have to admit I don't think I ever imagined I'd see the day we'd be able to pull anything like this and of all the cons to be with, AVCon, by far the best anime convention in Australia (seriously, having been to a fair few around Australia, it blows the rest out of the water).  It's a big new challenge and I'm looking forward to getting this event all sorted out soon, the feeling of pulling this one off will be amazing.

Beyond that, I'm curious to see what the future brings, I've got a significant charity project I'm looking to launch next month to actually give back towards and work on possibly another new event but on a pretty small scale this time.

University is something I'm a bit nervous to be back in but hopefully I should do fine, I'm making the switch to Advertising and Marketing, it's something I'm a bit nervous about since, I've been feeling a bit weak compared to seeing some of the stuff the pros pull off but all I need to do is beat the people in my uni to get a job.  Last experience with marketing in university, I got 91% in my exam, plus I've been getting a lot of practical experience with the new direction I've been taking Neko Nation this year, so once I get into the rhythm of university I should be fine.

This month is proving to be a struggle against myself, battling depression and trying to make the most short bursts of positive and hyperactive energy to get through the days.  With that said, I just need a few smaller things sorted out and a few little victories to really get through the rest of this month and things will start to pick up.

Oh and last but not least, awesome fan art created by Khat too, mainly for my DJing page, especially since I've got Kawaii Loli Attack this week and Necromancy next, should be fun and something to look forward too!  ^^

Neko Tour v1.0

Doing the Neko Nation tour has been one of the most unique, intense and interesting experiences I've had in my life.  There's been a lot of hard work, tough times and even a relationship breakdown but it's been rewarding, meeting many new friends and visiting lots of amazing places.

Travelling around Australia has been great, I've enjoyed travelling to all the cities.  Being back in Perth was probably the most special moment though, since it had really felt like a bit of a homecoming and it seriously had changed so much in the time I had left, plus it was very chilled out being with old friends, watching Eurovision and taking it easy after what was a crazy tour.

My personal life suffered dramatically on the tour as me and Susannah had to deal with a lot more than we usually would thanks to lots of frustrating things that just haven't gone our way on the tour which has really tested us, in the end, as soon as we spent more than a day apart it was pretty safe to say that on my end I missed her and couldn't live without her.


The other thing I pretty much noticed on the tour was the whole Melbourne vs. Sydney thing.  I've had a lot of people tell me bad things about Sydney and lots of amazing things about Melbourne when to be honest I found the complete opposite about both cities.  I found Sydney to be a lovely city filled with lots of interesting and fun activities, it felt alive, there was a lot to do, even during the night and was definitely a fun highlight of the show.

Melbourne wasn't too bad this time but honestly that place still irks me, there were good people there but honestly with the exception of two people I would have no reason to ever return back to Melbourne both personally.  I've found putting on events in Melbourne to be more of a "glorified party scene" with a huge focus on attracting popular people than trying to attract people to your event by making it good and was honestly the last straw in terms of ever wanting to go back to Melbourne.

I found myself enjoying the company of lots of random people and new friends on the tour, especially Brisbane always throws up lots of new fun interesting people who love meeting us, they had this unique way of welcoming us and it's this interesting tightly knit community that love coming down and seeing our show.  MOS Burger and just something about Brisbane I feel like I could move or live here in the future, the weather is a bit extreme but I'm from Singapore and could easily adjust to it.

Perth I had a blast, it's a tightly knit community since we don't change our staff members much here since we've got a lovely community of people that I work and deal with at this place.  In particular I had a blast catching up with Tara, who was pretty much going through what I went through last year in terms of her long distance relationship and it was great to party with her as well.  Overall I had lots of fun and honestly Perth is an amazing show, we've got lots of video games, cheeseburger sushi, the biggest venue with the best lighting, DJ Equipment and it's a pretty much was one of my original goals when  was a lot younger to hold an event in Gilkisons and I'm glad we've become a regular there.

Just finished Hyper Dragon last night and it was a good event, low on numbers but launching a new event in Winter is tough due to sickness and cold weather, Hindley Street was quite abandonned.  With that said I enjoyed the new challenge of putting on a new event and the new DJ set I had to come up with was an interesting challenge as I've switched back from my 180bpm stuff, back to 128-145bpm range due to finding amazing J-Core DJ's on this tour.

Anyways, rushing to get all the Supanova promo done in time but for now, taking a nice day off, catgirl animes, Formula 1 and more blogging.

Adventure Time

It's been an interesting past few months.  After kick starting off the Neko Nation tour in Adelaide things have not slowed down a single bit in my life. With shows all around Australia including Brisbane last weekend and only Perth to go.  There's been no weekends off with Chinatown Harajuku no Yoko kicking getting launched last month and working at Kodomo no Hi Festival.

These last 2 months have taught me a lot and that I'm basically pushing my limits incredibly hard to the edge, I'm a workaholic and have no problems admitting that as my social life is an absolute wreck at the moment on having no time to see people and those times that I do I'm either too sick or working at social occasions.

This tour has been a blast and I've learnt a lot from it, it far from feels like repeating the same show 5 times over, each show is quite different, there's so many different people on board, different venues and different crowds, it's absolutely crazy, fun and amazing to travel around and do this.  While I'm glad I have the chance to do this, I'm proving that I'm not doing well to cope with all this.  Not only does the show involve a lot of work but that's on top of the store, my day job plus my new projects.

I'm now seriously looking at my future plans for the year and looking at dropping out of Tokyo Hardcore soon.  There's so much stress coming from here that it makes sense to start dropping my commitment out of here soon, especially with the number of hours going into it and myself not getting really much out of it in terms of personal satisfaction.

As such I'm looking to really need to make a move onto continuing my studies since my transfer didn't work out originally I'd like to give it another shot since I would like to start to get a proper career going.  Neko Nation and Tokyo Hardcore doesn't exactly pay the bills and the job that does isn't likely to last much longer, unless you all decide to throw away your Internet banking and embrace cheques again!

I'm leaning towards finishing off my commerce degree although looking at switching from accounting to marketing.  I think lots of people laughed and joked that I couldn't be an accountant and the path I'm going down is proving less and less likely to suit an accounting role.  In general, marketing has been the one subject I seem to be very highly obsessed with, I seem to be analysing so many marketing campaigns just for the fun of it, that I probably should actually consider doing this for a living.  I only studied marketing once and I got over 90% in my final exam and pretty much virtually dominated the class in terms of work and participation on all the optional work as well.  I'm pretty keen to go back to university and prove myself since while I don't miss assignments and exams I wouldn't mind giving it another crack.

I have intentions to finish off this year quite hugely and with a bang although for now, it's time to figure out how to get through this hectic month and let things quieten down soon as I work my way to recovery.

Neko Nation Brisbane - May 2012

Flying to Brisbane is always a fun experience, I was very excited for the Brisbane show, Brisbane produced our most successful city launch and this time we had a few more tricks up our sleeve with the likes of S3RL, Triex, more catgirls, sushi, lighting and sound, so it was going to be a very exciting show to put on.

The event turned out to be an absolutely amazing night.  It was a huge achievement to do things a lot bigger and better.  I've heard good feedback about the event which is good since I was a bit nervous it wasn't the case as this was probably the most stressful show on the tour due to constantly being needed all over the place, so I didn't really get to enjoy the event as much as I would have liked compared to other shows, however it does happen from time to time.

I stayed at a famous geek/party house in Brisbane and got to spend some time in the city checking out MOS Burger which served some nice burgers with amazing Japanese style service.  Benjamin did an epic job as a host for our time in Brisbane and I had an absolute blast.  Sadly it got cut short when I fell pretty ill the next day, the one downside about this touring is the glamour, travel, fun and adventure is also plagued with lots of hard work, stress and emotions, which has really caught up to me again, so I'm going to have to take it easy despite a crazy schedule ahead.

I had a blast in Brisbane, S3RL, Triex and Lacehunter in particular pulled off some incredible sets (while I struggled to pull off a set as well as I'd like too.  The massive conga lines and the absolutely epic dancing and crazy crowd that makes the Brisbane show so unique and impressive.  Now to get better and get ready for the next show in Perth!

March-April 2012 Updates

It's been a very interesting past month, I'm not heavily into the swing of things in terms of event promoting with lot been happening over the last month and the next month.

I guess the big things have been all happening in Adelaide here where I'm starting to really feel like a well known part of the anime/cosplay scene now with my work.  Neko Nation came and went last month and my god that was such an amazing night.  From my end, pulling off the December show to me was about bring true justice to pull off the concept in a huge new exciting way that was a bit more than a party that would be seen as a significant event, I felt like that I almost pulled this off in December but walked away thinking that there were just a fair few touches that needed to be done and I think the event in March was probably one of the first events I've walked away with very little I wanted to change, we hit 300 (which I now need to get a Boku tattoo for according to Susannah) and everyone told me they had a fantastic time, it was a great way to kick off the tour!

It was very odd at the end of it since usually the big push and drive comes from making everything better although on the plus side it did make me feel confident that I know that this is what I'm good at doing.  It continued in Sydney which was a really fun show, it was a new city, a tricky new place but the show went good and it was lots of fun.  Sydney had a very unique atmosphere due to the venue which we could never get at another show, it was also great to have fly over guests from Adelaide with Shyen, Jadeabella and Lemphek to have some nice familiar faces around.  It was a good show for them to come too since from our point of view we had a lot of fun putting on what was a much more raw and underground event than usual that really took me back to some of the events I attended when I was younger!

Sydney was seriously a massive weight off our backs, it took us a long time to come here since just getting the support and interest has always been tricky but Rachel and Herbie really helped support us this year and also James did last year too, the wait was worth it.  I also really enjoyed taking time off in Sydney, it's a really lovely place, nice huge city to explore, lots to do in terms of exploring and wandering around.

I had an interesting opportunity to do something quite different with Chinatown to help put on and promote the Chinatown Harajuku no Yoko, while I admit it was a bit tricky at first to get it organised due to delays with our busy schedules we finally all got the ball rolling, with Chinatown and the Adelaide City Council doing a massively epic job to promote the event on newspapers, radio and local and national TV!  I was really happy with the night since it's a bit tricky doing something a bit different and new but it was really nice to help out and do something great with the community which I hope to work more with these people and the general anime, cosplay and lolita community.  It's also just great to see Adelaide getting behind really great initiatives like this.  I often hear many judge Adelaide as boring with very little to do but the reality is when there is something to do, Adelaide does support it and I'm really glad to be in such an amazing and supportive city as Adelaide.

This weekend was Neko Domination and by far my trickiest challenge since Melbourne is a city I've always had personal problems with, everything always goes against me and the cosplay scene refuses to go to Neko Nation no matter how hard we try to get them to come along.  It honestly feels like My Little Pony in the sense where the main audience isn't who we think it is but at the end of the day, if the goth/alt crowd want to support it, then why not!  They usually do in our other cities but are generally out numbered by the cosplayers and anime fans but in Melbourne it's the opposite.

Interestingly enough Melbourne worked out well for us, we got a much better turnout than we expected and the venue was quite happy.  I struggled to DJ up there due to playing for 200 minutes and going all over the place but somehow I did it in the end.  I also have to give a massive thanks to Noc.V for simply just pulling off possibly the best Neko Nation set we've heard all year.

Overall life has been interesting, life has been tiring and looking to try to get some time off soon but I feel like I'm starting to really get somewhere doing something I really enjoy and quite confident I'm good at.  ^^

Inspirations and Demotivations

Work, work and work, what else is new?

Anyways, this week has been a horrendous struggle, trying to manage Tokyo Hardcore is proving to be such a huge challenge, it's time consuming, emotional and I'm getting insanely run down for little reward.  Basically I've hit pretty much breaking point with the business, since I'm feeling too powerless and less motivated with the business.  My understanding of fashion and the lolita community is never going to be anywhere near that of Susannah's and while both me and Susannah are in this together, the reality is I'm more or less going to go by her expertise and as such I'm losing motivation as I'm honestly feeling more and more out of control.  As such to remove myself from all the dramu and stress I'm probably going to play a day or twos role in support at most now with accounts, graphics and business analysis in terms of the stuff I do best.

In exchange, I'm focusing and moving all my work towards Neko Nation.  I'm aiming to put on a show a month at least, heck in May and July it's likely I'll be doing two shows in both those months depending on how all my plans go, with that said, June I'm taking a break plus around May, I'm expecting ANZ to start cutting my hours back significantly.

I've got an insanely busy month up ahead since I'm starting on the next massive project, the Neko Nation store.  If you've been into Tokyo Hardcore or saw our table at Neko Nation Brisbane you would have a bit of an idea what this involves.  However, this should be quite exciting since we're expanding massively and getting in lots of awesome stuff which I'm very excited about.

I've got a fair few other projects I'm working on as well although these are my main ones.

I'm hoping to work more with the Japanese community and try to actually give back where I can, I'm pretty happy I'm now in a position where I've had people asking me to help out and now that I'm intending to step back more from Tokyo Hardcore I will have time for this, the next one I've got lined up is the really fun Harajuku night happening in Chinatown hopefully this month.  Should be one epic night, I thought it was awesome enough that Adelaide had two crepe places and has an epic amount of cosplayers, geeks and anime fans per capita.

The other one is a bit of an interesting one, basically looking to trying to help out with the industrial scene.  I had an absolute blast last time I went out to an industrial night this year.  I actually miss the industrial scene a lot and there's always lots of awesome people I can really relate too and just have fun stomping the night away.  It's also an interesting thing because I would like to get to the point where I'm helping out by DJing but I don't really have the intention to put on events.  I miss being involved with events and helping out in a way that doesn't involve me having to manage a night.  Far from the end of Neko Nation, personally I would love to get out and expand into other areas and enter back an old familiar scene with new faces in a new city.  With that said, I wouldn't completely rule out ever putting on an industrial event.

Also looking forward to the getting the Neko Nation shop out there, since eventually down the line I get to fill another one of my projects I've wanted to do for a while.  ^^

Things are frustrating right now, very but things will eventually be healing up soon.  The latter half of the month has lots of good stuff happening to make up for it though.  ^^