Last month saw mayamada return to the MCM London Comic Convention, the largest comic convention in the UK and a three day pop culture extravaganza in East London.
Cosplayers: What Does Creativity Mean To You?
London Comic Con is fast approaching and that means a ton of great cosplayers will be gathering in east London for the biggest comic convention in the UK.
This month mayamada is making a return to Comic Con and to mark the occasion we’re bringing you another round of interviews with a fantastic group of cosplayers. Our first cosplayer interview feature included all UK artists, this time we’re adding an international flavour with six cosplayers from different parts of the globe!
Comics + Amiibo Prizes At GamePad!
GamePad! is going up a level in the lead up to London Comic Con! We’re coming back to the Petit Miracle Hub for the fourth edition of GamePad! on Saturday October 17th.
MCM Expo Birmingham
Last month we took a trip up north (well, north-ish) for our first visit to the MCM Expo at the NEC Exhibition Centre in Birmingham. After a great time at London Anime & Gaming Con, we were excited to get our second convention of the year off and running.
We set up in the Comic Village and manage to cover our table with regular and limited edition of the Samurai Chef manga as well as our new Samurai Chef chocolate bars.
It’s been a while since we’ve been to an MCM event, but we were quickly up to speed once we got our bearings.
There is so much to see at MCM. We only got to see a fraction of it from our stall, but we were treated to Robot Wars matches going on just behind the Comic Village – we loved watching that show!
We also got to meet up with some great exhibitors including Canime, Helenasia and Choizilla, who had one of the best presented tables in the Comic Village and a cool outfit too.
As always it’s about the cosplay and we saw a tons of great outfits over the two days of MCM Expo.
Even the security guards were getting into it…
So that’s two events down and many more to go in 2015. Not only conventions like Hyper Japan and London Comic Con, but we’ll also have our very own mayamada events starting with GamePad! in April.
Stay tuned to find out where to catch us after that one…
Pharrell “It Girl” Video
Running mayamada has given us plenty of opportunity to see all kinds of reactions to the phrase “anime and manga”. There have been some interesting reactions over time, luckily most of them positive.
Although we know anime and manga does have a strong following, it has lived largely outside of the mainstream since the days of regularly watching Dragon Ball Z and Naruto on TV. This despite the massive growth of events like London Comic Con and Hyper Japan.
That’s why it was great to see Pharrell, arguably the biggest music star on the planet right now (sorry Kanye), release a new video for his single “It Girl”. It’s a great visual mix of anime and old school video games, and fun to watch.
Seeing such a big artist delve into our world was a pleasant surprise. But the video wasn’t without controversy and several major websites have highlighted the “Lolita Complex” theme running through the video.
Admittedly, there are parts of Lolita fascination that can be considered creepy to people already familiar various anime and manga subcultures, so it’s easy to see how a mainstream audience would find it so troubling.
But beyond that is the wider implication of anime and manga being discussed in the mainstream at all which shouldn’t be ignored either.
We started mayamada to help increase the awareness of anime and manga, our goal is to show that it’s not a collection of weird stereotypes, but another valid form of entertainment and storytelling. Our line of clothing and comics go some way towards changing perceptions, and we’re always excited to see other people use the style in creative ways.
Between Pharrell’s “It Girl” video and the new Jordan Brand Slam Dunk Collection, the awareness of this part of Japanese culture will only continue to grow and that’s a good thing.
But maybe try using some older characters in your next anime video Pharrell? Just to be safe.
