Last post I wrote was a lot of negative feelings but the reality is, I’m super thankful to everyone for their participation and their contributions to making this whacky concept of turning a weeaboo nightclub into a reality. So I guess now is a good time to reflect on a brief history (trust me, I could write a novel about this one day, but I’ll keep it somewhat brief on the main points).
I have worked in the events industry since 2003, I was a glassy, door person, bar staff, bar manager, personal assistant, event setup, event pack down for a wide variety of events. I worked for a wide variety of events, your usual festivals, club events, underground dance parties and even a 24 hour rave LAN! For a long time I had always worked on somebody else’s events and with a free Summer holiday break in 2010-2011, decided to give putting my own event on a shot!
The concept behind Neko was more or less a anime, cosplay, Japanese music nightclub event, it wasn’t an original concept, had been done in a few other places in the world in Japan and the Americas but in Australia the closest you got were a few J-Rock band performances, Tokyo Electro Invasion, Outbreed and we slowly started getting the hype of the first gaming bar opening up in Brisbane (Mana Bar).
On paper, it was a simple concept that as we see today, obviously works but trying to sell it back in 2011 was hard when people had no idea what this was or why people should get hyped about it. I had no reputation in the anime, gaming and cosplay scene, I didn’t have any fancy videos, superstar DJs, amazing anime artists but somehow people showed interest. That first show was a tough one, I DJed 3 hours (and pretty terribly), there was never more than 5 people dancing (and most of the time it was my close friends), just hit 100 people and we barely had any sushi or catgirls but people enjoyed it.
The most surprising thing wasn’t the response from the attendees, but the amount of interest from interstate. A fair few people who were jealous that Perth got the event, quickly I had people asking me to bring interstate, which included key people who were able to help make these interstate shows happen. Perth may have gotten the first pilot but it was bare minimum stuffs, Adelaide we went from 2 catgirls to 8, 4 DJ sets to 12 across two rooms, the first live performance and we had twice the attendance of Perth, Adelaide proved it was a legit thing which helped motivate me to move there and helped making it take it Australia wide within 15 months.
2012 was when I started to have my senpais starting to notice me. Madman actually contacted me about sponsorship and AVCon wanted us to do their official after party, so I’ve got one of the biggest anime cons in Australia and the biggest anime company in Australia wanting to work with me, I felt like what I had done was not just recognised by those I was close with but it was something that major players were taking notice and supporting us with.
Also made a lot of changes in 2012 that thankfully people don’t remember from the really rough 2011 events, switched over from real life catgirls to anime art, made the debut in my favourite venue in Perth Gilkison’s, also had a few famous debuts including the likes of Jadeabella and Kenaz.
The next year was an emotional one for me, had a bad relationship breakup, I house hopped, I lived in a garage for a while, in short it was rough and I think the only thing that made me happy during that time was putting on Neko Nation events, seriously, everyone who was able to contribute and help me throughout that period to put on shows, thank you. I ended up moving back to Perth and that first show back in my first home was magical, I ended up hooking up one of my catgirls, asked her out a week or two later and we’re still together to this day!
A lot of Neko after then was how far we could push things and in 2014, was when I went absolutely bonkers and organised Neko Planet, 3 performances, 5 cities, 5 nights in a row, I don’t think I had done a back to back show, or a show with more than one performance. In the end, I somehow made this tour work logistically and it happened but commercially a massive failure, this was a case of trying to do a large festival for the sake of it, that said I learned a lot from it and it would come in handy a few years later.
Speaking of doing things for the hell of it, I worked with my favourite goth act from when I was a teenager (Velvet Acid Christ), I DJed at a maid café, played alongside Vocaloid legends including Livetune and we also did Neko on a boat, we played “On a Boat”, bucket list complete.
It was also around this time we did the Nekonomicon calendar, where raised approximately a few grand for cat shelters around Australia, we expanded it into a few versions of catgirls, catboys and cosplayers. It was a lot of work but really great to finally give back to all the kittens!
2015 was the year we ramped things up a lot, I worked 2 jobs, we expanded into some interesting new venues in particular Sydney and Adelaide while we also had massive success with Yui Kanan. Absolutely amazing girl to deal with, had so much fun bringing her to Neko and a dream to work with. In the background the wheels were set in the motion that year for our biggest show in 2016.
I got my biggest dream DJ for Neko Nation, getting TeddyLoid was a massive effort and a lot of the credit needs to go out to SMASH for helping make this happen. TeddyLoid was a massive risk and that tour was probably the best tour we did over the 3 days, which had all our biggest shows on the tour including a sold out Brisbane event and of course massive shout out to Will-O-Wisp Cosplay and her crew for the amazing Me! Me! Me! Dance which went viral.
It was at that moment at the end of that Perth show, roll the credits Neko Nation should have ended, so in front of the curtain especially in Brisbane we had some absolute crackers of a show, especially with the push to get more performances happening at Neko Nation however behind the scenes was a bit of a different story. We had various staff members struggling with burnout, juggling travel, event preparation and full time jobs. Let alone myself who had to deal with 18 hour shifts with almost no sleep to get these shows happening and doing this multiple times in a month.
The end result saw a bunch of health complications, including a period where my body rejected food, my body either vomited or excreted everything for a few days, I had temperature shocks, I had a nasty ear infection which I cured before a show through sticking a needle in my ear drum. Shows never got cancelled, as the famous saying goes, the show must go on!
Health issues aside, it was completely worth it, I’m super proud of seeing a virtually non existent cosplay/anime party scene in Australia and managing to take it up to the production standards, national expansion and the recognition from fans, peers and even international recognition. I feel so go damn happy with what’s been achieved and what is possible that I never want to stop but even if I did, I can feel very happy with what I’ve achieved when I decide to call it a day.
