My Desucon Frostbite 2025 report
Although it's been a year since my last convention, I've been attending Desucon and Desucon Frostbite religiously for more than a decade by now, so I have the whole con experience down to a routine. While the convention these days may not be as exciting as it once was, I still very much enjoy going twice a year!
Here's a day-by-day recollection of what I got up to under the cut since it got long.
My schedule for this year was mostly the same as it's been previous years, except I went to more programs than usual. On Friday I listened to an introduction to Nendoroids. I haven't been collecting any since a friend of mine gifted me the NO. 6 pair in 2023, or I found Utsutsu at the Desucon Frostbite flea market in 2019. The friend I was with now stopped collecting even longer ago, but there wasn't much else to do on Friday evening. Since we weren't new to Nendoroids we didn't expect to get much out of the program, but we did have one distant dream for there to be a mention of the SB69 Cyan Nendoroid. The presenter was very enthusiastic and had a great stage presence so it was fun to listen to her talk. I was a little grossed out hearing there are currently around 2700 of those little guys and then a miracle happened - one of the slides had Cyan on it!!!! We both squealed!!!!!!!!! 10/10 presentation, would fangirl over Cyan again.
The main event on Saturday was the guest of honor program, an interview with Tsubasa Yonaga. I mostly associate him with Nagisa from Free! and not much else, so I wasn't super excited to have him in Finland, but he was very cute and fun, as seiyuu's tend to be. During the opening ceremony on Friday he knew how to play along with the hosts by accepting a challenge to try Finnish/Lahti specialties (a Runeberg torte, a semla (I can't believe that's the English name for laskiaispulla) and a 'nikumagu' "meat cup", a Lahti city specialty of kebab meat in a cup (don't ask, I've never tried it and never will). Also, going to the sauna and ice swimming, which he seemed somewhat concerned over (as he did over the meat cup, the way the audience laughed at it).
During the interview I liked how he kept looking and waving at the audience, making heart signs with his hands, aiming to connect with his fans. As for what he shared, he told us he decided to become a seiyuu after being bullied and developing a complex about his voice in elementary school, discovering the profession when his teacher wrote down the kanji for seiyuu (lit. excelling with your voice) and realizing he could turn his weakness into a strength/weapon. He revealed his good taste as he mentioned Akira Ishida as his favourite seiyuu growing up and one of his current role models. He said he got the role of Nagisa without an audition, which was apparently the case for most of the cast on Free! except Haruka, and during recordings Mamoru Miyano would be a (fun) nuisance (as expected). A performance he got a lot of praise for and was particularly happy with was Nagisa during the 2nd season of Free! when he opens up about his feelings. A role he'd like to play that he hasn't already would be a mascot from Precure, or a last-boss type villain. He wasn't able to pick a favourite role of his as they were all equally precious to him. Something relating to the production side of things I found interesting was that recordings for games are done individually, as opposed to groups like anime recordings are, which makes them more challenging when you can't play off anyone else's lines and presence. Lastly, Yonaga wasn't (politely) exactly thrilled to visit Finland in January, cautiously mentioning how everyone had told him it's a nice place to visit in the summer, but said that the views were pretty and that Suomenlinna (which he was brought to before the con) was impressive. Unfortunately his wishes for what to do before leaving were seeing the Northern Lights or Santa Claus, and those things are NOT happening in Lahti. Either way, I hope he enjoyed his time because he was a very nice guest!
The other program we went to on Saturday was a talk about vampires in anime and manga, because who doesn't love vampires? It started with a brief history lesson and overview of the most significant and popular works that molded the genre/myth in Western literature/popular culture and how it was brought over and continued to develop on its own in Japan. I thought it was interesting how certain trends appeared in the West and Japan at the same time independently of each other, like the more sympathetic/tortured soul portrayals found in Interview with the Vampire and Poe no Ichizoku, or the high-school romances with vampires popularized by Twilight, which were apparently also central in Vampire Knight, which started publishing right before the first Twilight book came out. The presenters spent most of the time going over different works like those and I became inspired to pick up a bunch of them, such as Vassalord. (which I rarely hear mentioned, but when I do, it's always someone's personal favourite), Trump (bad "Trump trigger warning" jokes aside, the art looks very nice), the Blood franchise (especially the CLAMP one, I think my boy Watanuki will make an appearance somewhere there) and DRCL Midnight Children (as the art is to die for). Goddamn, vampire works are hot.
On Saturday evenings, me and my friend have a tradition of trying out different restaurants in Lahti for the brief period of time they're in business. This year we went to Santa Fé, as it was close to our hotel. It was a bit pricey for what it was, but had good food and drinks.
A new thing we tried out this year was going to a café for a takeaway drink on Saturday and a proper breakfast on Sunday morning, which we think will become a new tradition for us!
Back to our old traditions, we always attend the AMV-competition on Sunday mornings, and this year was no different. The quality was very good and I was particularly happy to see AMV's for Mononoke and 3-gatsu no Lion right at the start. My favourite AMV might've been this mashup with NGE and Lain, even though I'm not usually a fan of combining two different shows like that. The editing looked technically challenging/tedious, fit both shows, was clearly inspired by/partially lifted right from NGE, but complementary and additive, with its own twist as well. Then I don't know how to feel about the winner of the audience vote, since that was a DMMD jumpscare. I'll never escape that BLVN, but at least I'm in this boat together with my friend, as we have a shared history with that game.
Soon after, and right before the end of the con, it was time for my most anticipated program, about the Monogatari girls and what makes a well written female character. My expectations were met, the presenter knew what she was talking about, had an academic angle and was actually analyzing the characters and the work. She talked mostly about Hanekawa and Nadeko and chara-type based writing as opposed to narrative-based writing, as described by Hiroki Azuma in his book Otaku: Japan's Database Animals. It's interesting how Monogatari keeps (at least trying) having its cake and eating it too, providing fanservice and sexualizing its characters, but turning it around by revealing something human about them as it does so. I never think about any of the main girls as "bad" people (in the sense of not being nice to be around), which is something the presenter said about both Hanekawa and Nadeko, but as a positive, since that makes them great female characters to her, as they're allowed to be flawed and fully fledged with interests and hobbies and lives that move forward even when they're not on screen. I also liked the way the presenter compared Monogatari to other works and had specific and appropriate examples to back up her claims. She did a good job narrowing the topic down when there's so much you could say and get into, but at the same time I would've loved hearing more about some of her claims and opinions (what do you mean Nadeko Medusa is one of the weaker arcs??????).
During the ending ceremony Yonaga reported having tried all three foods (the semla filling was jam), and enjoying them (even the weird lihamuki/nikumagu meat one), but skipping the ice swimming and sauna.
The most exciting part of the ending ceremony is always the announcement of the next guest, and this time around I was super excited to hear Kamome Shirahama will be attending Desucon 2025 in June! I haven't been keeping up with Tongari Boushi no Atelier / Witch Hat Atelier, but I adore her and I'm super excited to see and hear what she has to say!!!
Some other fun things about the weekend include me dressing up in kimono and hakama for the first time for a con, which was super fun! A little stressful too, since I had to bring more stuff with me than usual and spend more time putting it on compared to regular clothes, but absolutely worth it and I'm planning on doing it again in the future :)
And then finally here's my con loot!! I always love getting some manga and this time I'm happy with my investment in a CLAMP oneshot for 2€. I got some more washi tapes for my collection and after sleeping on it, I got a sticker book with a Dungeon Meshi design that fits my aesthetics and doesn't scream "anime merch" in a way I love for usable products like these.
Thanks for reading all of this, or even just part of my report as it got obscenely long. I can't wait for the next convention in five months!
