Popcult Helsinki was again great. One of my favorite cons in Finland. Popcult Helsinki differs from other Finnish cons from it is not an anime con. Popcult Helsinki is a con for Western things, like Disney, Star Wars, Game of Thrones and so forth. As all other cons I go to are about anime and sometimes games, it is refreshing to go to a con where the con is not about those things.
This years Popcult was propably one the hardest cons I have gone to in these 11 years I have been going to cons. Both of the guest of honors were interviewed at the morning. Guest of honors were this year Antti Pääkkönen, propably the most well known Finnish voice actor, and Rosi Kämpe, only Finn who draws for Marvel. Both of them were interviewed at morning, Antti Pääkkönen's interview was at 12:30 and Rosi Kämpe's was at 10:30. As it tooks over an hour to get there where I'm from, I had wake up really early, especially at Sunday.
I managed to be at the con so early that I saw both interviews, and both mornings I woke up at five AM. I have always been a big fan of voice actors, and Antti Pääkkönen is my favorite from all Finnish voice actors. He can change his voice so easily and sound completely different, which is something I really like. Far as I know, he had dubbed most of the Finnish dubs that have been made and therefore holds the record of being most productive voice actor here in Finland. His presence was really calming and he talked a lot about his work as a voice actor and and a theather actor. I really liked his interview, and I liked that at the background they showed characters that he voice acted.
After that I hanged for a while, considered that I would go to see a lecture about Captain Marvel, but decided not to. I don't know her character from the comics, just saw the movie about her and thought it was pretty mediocre. That's why I decided not to see the lecture, her character did not really interest me that much, but as an afterthought, I kinda regretted that I did not go to see the lecture, it was propably interesting even though Captain Marvel is not one of my favorite Marvel characters.
After that I went to see a lecture about Disney's female characters. Lecture was about were they damsel in distress or heroes. Lecturer decided to show the characters chronological order, from oldest to newest. That's why we did not see newer characters, like Judy Hopps or Kida that I kind of wanted to see. But the lecture worked with older characters as well. Eventually about half of the characters they showed were damsel in distress and half of them were heroes. I agreed with all the lecturer said so no complaints here. The lecturer said she propably makes a part two, and that I'm willing to see.
I also met a guy called Joni at the con. We met outside where he said my goth style is pretty cool, and I told him his full body knight armor was also pretty good. He asked if I wanted to go to eat, and as I had not eaten for almost ten hours, I decided to go with him. The con was kind of far from everything, and there was only one restaurant. It was an Asian restaurant and I have never been in those, as I cannot eat fish and I kind of expected seafood was the only thing they had. I was pleasantly surprised, when they had other things too, and I ordered chicken with black bean sauce and rice. It was really good and my first exprerience with Asian restaurant was pleasant.
The next day was pretty exhausting as I had to go to the con so early. I woke up at five and at eight I was ready. I accidentally went to the same train as Joni, and he showed me the tram to the con.
Rosi Kämpe's interview was pretty cool, she talked about her work for Marvel and how she draws Spider-Gwen. Again, they showed her work at the background. She also was very pleasing and she really seemed to like her job as an artist for Marvel. She talked how some artists for Marvel draw on paper, and they have to store it at their house, as they have thousands of pages. She drew with computers, which I understand. Overall, her interview was pretty nice.
After that I decided to go to see a lecture about musicals and why are they so dark. I kind of did not get why they were called so dark, when the lecturers introduced musicals like Cats which is not dark at all, even though Grizabella is banished. But they mentioned some of my favorite musicals like Cats, Tanz der Vampire, Jekyll & Hyde and Phantom of the Opera. Overall the lecture was pretty good, even though they introduced the musicals quite fast.
Then I went to see a lecture about Harry Potter. The lecture was about the differences beetween the books and movies. This lecture was the best one of the whole con. Unfortunately the lecturer was given only 45 minutes for his lecture. He even said he could do a three hour lecture, which I would gladly watch. He pointed out literally all differences beetween the books and movies, and even I, who has read the books and watched the movies countless times, did not notice everything.
Unfortunately he had so little time that he had to rush to the end and did not get to say everything he wanted. Overall the lecture was good, and I hope that he gets to do a longer and better lecture about the same subject.
Then for a while I went for a Harry Potter meeting. The meeting was good, I got to chat with the people, but I could not be there very long since I had to to see Antti Pääkkönen's Q&A.
The Q&A was nice, and in Kibecon there was this place where you had to guess 10 of his characters just from the voice clip, and then you could ask a question and the people there would write it down if you guessed them all right. If I remember right, I got 8 right, but did not recognize SpongeBob SquarePants, because when I watched it as a child, the show was shown in English and also did not recognize Miguel from Road to El Dorado because I have been so little since I watched it last time.
The con was good, and I will be visiting it next year. Sorry no picture of me this time, I did not feel like taking selfies.
