2015 off to a great start with Sweet Desires

maid cafe

Over the Weekend I had the opportunity to attend two events on one day, and so I did. The first event was one held at Trincity mall, Trinidad called Comicfest. That event was what I consider a buffer event, one that fits in between other events schedules to either promote a future event or as a way to build awareness of such events in general. It was a great event but, it’s not the subject of my article today. That honour goes to the Sweet Desires Maid Café and Cosplay Pageant. It was technically the first event of its kind here in Trinidad and Tobago and so it had the heavy task of establishing itself among the other already established events hosted here in our country. The reason I say it had a “heavy task” is because we here in this country tend to be harsh on events that are not successful to the extent that we may never attend another event by that event planner, and this subject is loosely related to Sweet Desires Maid Café & Cosplay Pageant (damn that’s a long name).

So what do I mean when I say that? Well its simple really. The promoters of the event , AV once hosted an event that I happened to have attended that wasn’t well received. This led to a sort of unspoken boy cut of all future AV events by attendees of that event. It was an unsuccessful event, but it brought on an undeserved punishment to future events from AV. Sorry for the history lesson, but I felt that it was necessary to give the full impact of how the event was received, by other patrons that I spoke to, as well as my personal experience.

 

So how did AV do this time?

 

When we got to the event, we were greeted at the door by two individuals who asked for our tickets. After mentioning the sites name we were quickly given pink bands that granted us access to the building. As we approached the door a maid standing there greeted us with a smile and said welcome in the cutest way, and I believe there was use of the word “sama” 😀 “all in all a wonderful way to start the day”, I thought to myself as she opened the door for us to pass the threshold. As I took the next two steps. There was a sense of familiarity that I always get at conventions. There was the sound of anime music playing in the distance, the sound of video games being played, along with the voices of numerous people that flooded the auditory senses with a sound that I can only call nerdy-awesomeness.  After we entered the building and did a bit of meet and greeting with a few regular attendees and friends we were given a table next to the stage so as to cover the events as they happened throughout the day. However before I started covering anything I needed food inside me, for you see, being a typical Q I skipped breakfast and was now in a partially zombiefied state.

Mimi Mitsu

 

We called over a maid by the name of Mimi Mitsu (cute name right) according to her it’s partially taken from her real name which means honey bee. She was our main server for the day and I was quite happy with the service that she offered us throughout the day. Mimi first mentioned that we would be getting some complementary snacks and a drink of our choosing. I got the chicken sandwich and cake with grapefruit juice. After she severed the food to us she politely asked if there was anything else that we wanted, then bowed said something cute and then proceeded to serve other attendees. Now that’s what I call quality maid service.

All the maids and butlers that were at the event were like this. They were all eager to serve, offering help when needed and also entertaining the patrons. There was even a maid auction where by the attendees would be able to bid to have the services of a particular maid for the rest of the day. This was very well received by the crowd as it got everyone involved, bidding $50, $100, $150 and up.

Sweet Desires maids were like an all in one package. There was a maid to suite whatever fantasy you had, they sang, they danced, they played with you. If I had to say that there was one thing that was the highlight of the entire event it would have to be the maids, but as with events of this nature one thing can never be responsible for its success. This is because when we attend these kind of events we always need things to keep us active throughout the day. Things like gaming, shopping for awesome merch, dancing and more. Some of these activities were supplied by regulars to these types of events like Chrono Fantasy Entertainment, Shoppe AnythingAnime Central TNT, Clinique mask and Huggins gaming café.  They covered the gaming and merch aspects so that some could play games like dance central, or grab that last key that they needed to finish thier fairy tail collection.

 

The crowd
The crowd

Another big aspect that is needed to have a successful convention is a lively involved crowd. If the people at the event are not enjoying themselves, and getting involved in the proceedings then the event will certainly fail. It’s the basic premise of a convention, “we get together to have fun”, and boy was it fun. The turnout for this conventions was about a few hundred (I didn’t count). They filled the venue from wall to wall with amazing cosplay, nerdy conversation and fun activities. At one point during the day I went outside to get some fresh air and ended up joining a conversation about who would be the next One Piece character to join the straw hat crew.  These are the things that make conventions like these worth attending. It’s the passing by fellow nerds, otakus, fans talking about anime, comics, manga and the like that gives you that sense of belonging.

 

The cosplayers
the cosplay

Once you have a great crowd the the next thing you need is to get them talking to each other. At a convention one of the best conversation starters is the cosplay itself. This is because it’s a lot easier for someone to walk up to a total stranger and ask them about the character they are cosplaying than it is to just walk up to one that’s out of cosplay and say hi. The cosplay acts as the buffer between the two allowing for a simulated ease and comfort similar to that of close friends that have known each other for years. The colsplayers at this event were top notch. some of the best local cosplayers were present. There were also a lot of fresh faces among cosplay crowd.  


If only dating had cosplay 🙁

I ended up talking to some of the cosplayers at the event and as I mentioned above it was quite easy to start talking to them.

Sterling Sankar – Arno “AC Unity”
He told me that it was the first time he had sowed something. Had he not said that I’d have assume that he either bought the outfit or was a professional tailor.

 

Michael Rahaman –  Himself “not cosplaying”
Now this bloke totally fooled me, because as far as I was concerned he was dressed so extravagantly that it just had to be some character in an anime that girls would totally fawn over. It turned out that he created his own character. As he put it, ” you can create your own character if you want”. Being able pull off such an awesome look like his without a character from an anime or otherwise as your insparation is simply amazing.

 

Cher-Marie Lewis – Gareth “Thief”
Can I just start with “damn I love fem gender blend cosplay”.  She told me this was her second time cosplaying. Her first time was at AEX 2014 as a character from the PSN game Journey. It’s always nice to see returning cosplayers, especially when they’re enjoying themselves as much as she was.

All in all Sweet Desires Maid Café & Cosplay Pageant was a wonderful success. It had one of the best Cosplay competitions that I’ve ever seen, from an organizational structure point of view, and also one of the most welcoming event coordination teams. Their Slogan; “You belong” really resonated well with the crowd and you could tell that it was not just a few words put together to sound cool, but actually words that they used in every aspect of the day’s events. There is so much more that I can and would like to say about this event, but I’ll save that for a podcast.

if you’d like to hear more about my thoughts about this topic, then I suggest you listen to the Buttonsmashers podcast.

Qudduws Campbell

That messy hair bloke: Romantic, Food lover, Gamer, Sports Fan, Manga Reader, Tech Head, Podcaster... Pretty much do a bit of everything.