Kemin Mangapäivä 2026 - My voice almost called it quits

 Hello y'all!

Okay, okay, I admit: this post has been in my drafts for like over three months now, so it's finally time to actually write this. I have a few reasons for postponing this though: work has been incredibly busy for the last couple of months and on top of that I was preparing for entrance exams (or well, rather an entrance exercise in a form of an essay) so I could get into a Master School - and I did! ❤
But well, that's not the topic of this summary - Kemin Mangapäivä (Kemi's Manga Day) 2026 is, so let's get into the topic! 👀

(Note: it's been quite a while since the con so I don't remember everything clearly at this point. These days I'm also on SSRI meds and while they do a fantastic job (also known as have a good neutralizing effect on my mood etc.) they also cause me fatigue, brain fog and difficulties with writing. I'm slowly getting used to them but I apologize in advance if there are weird things in this summary, such as non-functioning sentences etc. This post was also written in many parts and the first parts might be more detailed than the later ones - and that's simply because I just wanted to get this summary finally out and couldn't remember much anymore. It's not like there would have been that much going on with this event since it was so small though, but... Anyway, you have been warned that this might not be the most pleasant reading experience. And truly, I am sorry for that.)

Once again, pictures for this blog post were taken by Shiro Samurai, thank you~!

Event poster ft. mascot Fuyumi! The mascot was designed and drawn by Nette Nikula 💚

I woke up in the morning around 7 am, completed my morning routine and drove to library where I was supposed to complete the final preparations. The first task in line was to put some signs up - well, that was already partly done since I was able to put on some signs up already on Friday so it didn't take that much time. When I was basically ready it was time to let the artists' in to set up their tables; we wanted to provide them as much time as possible before the con would open its doors to the visitors. Unfortunately a couple of artists had fallen sick with a very short notice but that couldn't be helped, Mangapäivä was held in the middle of a winter flu season. Heck, me, myself and I barely got any voice out of me! D:

When I was checking that everything went smoothly I noticed I had gotten a text from Shiro Samurai. His mother had picked him up in the morning and he would soon arrive at the library - and with him would also arrive a mountain of stuff we were planning to sell at the con's flea market! You see, a couple of months before the event people from Matsucon's flea market, namely Matsukirppis, reached out to me and asked if they could have a Matsucon promotion booth AND the flea market this year. After a discussion with Sanna, one of the main organizers of Mangapäivä, we gave them a green light. I'm still more than happy about this collaboration! ❤

Matsucon's flea market and promotion booth.

After dumping all that stuff into my office we went upstairs where the library staff's break room is. For me it was time to drink my morning coffee, for Shiro Samurai it was a time to become a jedi - or, well, change into a cosplay costume, which happened to be a random jedi. The dressing room upstairs is the only one with a full-body mirror so I guided him there. I had texted Johanna, one of my coworkers that would be working at the children and young people's department during the event, beforehand and told her that there would other people sharing the dressing room with us and made sure that she was okay with it (she was). The other library staff members working that day were Olli and Antti, the former being a veteran with Mangapäivä stuff.
When I had poured that dark elixir of life down my throat it was also time for me to put on my cosplay costume. I had decided to cosplay Marigold again - her costume is comfortable to wear (even when you need to run back and forth in a big building) and since she is my own character whose make-up changes depending on her eye color aka mood aka which circle lenses I have available lol I don't really feel any pressure about doing my make-up. When I was putting on my costume Johanna showed up and put on her own whimsy outfit - it's always nice to see colleagues getting genuinely interested in your hobby ❤

I had asked Shiro Samurai to put the price tags on our flea market stuff meanwhile and when I went to my office I saw that he was basically ready, so we went to drop our stuff at Matsukirppis. The pin workshop would be hosted in the same room since it was spacious enough and since the doors weren't open for visitors yet it was a perfect time to ask Sanna to teach Shiro Samurai how to use the pin machine. 

There were also coloring pages! The pin workshop table is the one on the right.

Soon after that it was time to get the show on the road! As everyone probably knows by now, I tend to be quite anxious in the event mornings and even more so if I have been one of the people organizing it. This time made no difference but I was soon proved wrong: the event venue started to fill with congoers in no time! 

I had also been in contact with Sallukka who would act as a cosplay judge with me again. They texted me that they would arrive soon and so we went to wait for her near the entrance. The Artists' Alley was already getting pretty crowded - always a good sign!

People hanging out near the entrance.

An overview pic of the Artists' Alley.

An overview pic of the smaller part of the Artists' Alley.

Pretty soon Sallukka arrived at the con venue - with Joni in tow - and it was time to start the pre-judging for the cosplay competition! 
This year we ended up having 7 people participate to the competition, but I must tell you: things weren't looking too bright just a couple of days before the event. It's not that easy to get people to participate in cosplay competitions anymore, especially not in smaller events, and this year a few smaller cons have had to cancel their cosplay competitions altogether because there were simply not enough people to take part in those. I totally get it if competing feels like it's too much - I seriously do. It's not that easy to go to the stage and be observed by people, and on top of that compete against other cosplayers. That's why I quite often say that people going to that stage have already won - if not the 1st place, then at least they have overcome their fears and gained stage experience, and that's a win in itself ❤

The pre-judging went well and after that it was time for me and Sallukka have a short break, during which I ate my lunch Saarioisten roiskeläppä ftw and checked how Shiro Samurai was doing. The pin workshop sure seemed busy! I also did a round in the lobby, taking in the con atmosphere... And corrected an oopsie since the stuff needed for the competition had been accidentally set up in a wrong auditorium D: Luckily that was easy to correct; it's not like we would have had any fancy set-ups in the first place. 
Oh, and I also checked how the café and MiSu Boba's pop-up stand were doing! The café, unfortunately, wasn't as crowded as we had hoped for, but each batch of the bubble teas sure sold out quick!

If you ever visit Kemi, you absolutely need to get their bubble tea, it's so good!!

The café.

The café area. It wasn't this empty all the time though!

When I was in the lobby I spotted Nina, the event coordinator of the city. She had a day off but had promised me that she would help with stuff if needed - and an urgent need had popped up just a few moments before that. This year we had background music during the cosplay competition and I desperately needed someone to be the DJ so I asked her and got a green light immediately. She basically saved me there; it would have been nothing short of a nightmare to try to do that myself and host the competition at the same time. Like, thanks but no thanks.

Soon it was time for the competition to actually begin. We gathered the contestants together and headed upstairs to the corridor leading to the stage of the big auditorium. Or, well, we also checked out the stage after which the contestants queued up in the corridor to wait for their turn. I asked Sallukka to stay with them and send them to the stage when their turn was up - after all, I was going to be on the stage and host the whole thing, and even though I consider myself to be quite efficient worker I can't be at two different places at the same time lol.

Because a video tells a lot more than my words, let me just link it here! The credits of the video and editing it go to Iiro Väyrynen, thanks a lot!

...there is something that you can't hear from the video though and that's my voice trying to call it quits. I don't know what was going on, probably allergies or so, but my throat had been itchy and my voice down for the good half of the day hence why I had tried to avoid speaking in the morning as much as possible so I could host the competition. Never again anything like this, please - it wasn't a pleasant experience since I was very afraid that I'd lose my voice before the competition was over! D: 

The honorary mention on the left and the winner on the right.

After the competition there wasn't that much con time left so I decided to do two things: check out the Artists' Alley since I really hadn't had time to do that before (didn't end up buying anything tho #mywalletwasonadiet) and take a picture with friends~! You see, Johanna was still a bit sad that we didn't get to take a group picture at Kemin Mangapäivä 2025 so this year I had promised her that we would make that happen. And it did! ❤

Friends <3

After the photo it was time to start cleaning up the event venue and pick our unsold stuff up from the flea market. Unfortunately we didn't sell much, but hey, at least a couple of movies got sold! From what I heard many other people were luckier than we were, so I sure do hope that this collaboration will continue in the future too - seemingly the flea market found its target audience 👀
When this was done it was time to change to an ordinary outfit and go home. I must admit that I felt pretty tired so I slept for a while before going out for a couple of drinks with Sallukka - those were well deserved.

Personally I feel that this year's Mangapäivä was better than last year's. Of course now I have a bit more experience about organizing a cosplay event at the culture center of Kemi so that likely plays a part, but in my honest opinion this year felt a bit more... Relaxed in a way. That might be because we decided to make the program as simple as possible - for example there were no panels at all, thus less scheduling and technique stuff. 
Next year the event date will be later in the year, likely in autumn, because in March we are going to host a big cosplay event at Kemi Areena. Right now we are trying to decide a new date for that though; we accidentally put ourself on a collision course with Tampere Kuplii. Oops ^^"

But yeah, that's all I have to say about Kemin Mangapäivä 2026~!
Next up will be my Kummacon summary - about time since the next convention I'll attend, also known as Mericon, will be held in a couple of weeks and Kummacon was held in May... Yeah, I should be a bit more efficient with writing these blog posts too lol.

Until next time.

-Firith

Kemin Mangapäivä 2025 - Back in business!

Hello everyone and welcome to the second con summary of the year! ^^ 

Canva was strong with this one.

(All pictures of the post are taken by Shiro Samurai, thank you very much - I seriously wouldn't have had time.)

I think the title pretty much tells it all - Kemin Mangapäivä was held on 8th of March at Kemin kulttuurikeskus for the first time in 10 years! This event was quite popular back in the days but for several reasons it got buried under the sands of time until now. 

The story behind the resurrection pretty much goes like this: as I have mentioned several times, a bit over a year ago I moved to north because I applied for a vacancy (a librarian) here and actually got the job. Very soon I learnt that Outi, the person behind Kemin Mangapäivä AND Kitacon all those years ago, was still working at Kemi's children's cultural center. It took one phone call to arrange a meeting with her and Sanna (her colleague) - and in that very meeting we decided to host Kemin Mangapäivä once again and wake it from its slumber!

...and the decision was made in the beginning of January, literally two months before the con itself.

I would like to state that even though there were quite a few hiccups along the way - typos in the con program, problems with our social media account etc. - things went smoothly considering the time we had for organizing the event. In this summary I probably won't go into too much detail about things that need to be done for a convention when organizing one but I'm actually considering writing a post about those in the future. 

But yes, let's continue with the summary!

I woke up around 7.20 am. - Kulttuurikeskus is literally a two-minute drive or a ten-minute walk away from my apartment so yes, I wasn't really in any rush. I took a shower, grabbed the stuff I needed to take with me and drove to Kulttuurikeskus. I was there around 8.30, which meant I had plenty of time to put up to information signs. My colleagues Ilkka and Olli were already there and while they mostly didn't participate in the event stuff they also took care of the visitors and customer service! Ilkka had also promised to act as a second judge in the drawing competition that was held within the drawing workshop, hosted by Shiro Samurai. 

I was ready with the signs in about 30 minutes which in other words meant that I could enjoy my morning coffee in peace - and that turned out to be the last peaceful moment of the day lol. My third colleague Johanna - who was specifically there for the event and to help with the customer service - arrived at work during our morning break and I was able to give her the needed instructions. After this it was time to start putting on my costume of the day, namely Alicia. 

The entrance to the event venue.

I would also like to point out that even though there are not many people in the pictures below we had plenty of visitors. The lack of people is simply because Shiro Samurai took the pictures before he started hosting the drawing workshop/drawing contest which means it was in the very beginning of the event. 

When I was putting on my costume I got a message from said host who informed me that he had arrived at the library - literally when I was in the middle of doing my eyeliner lol :'D I told him to look for Outi to fetch the pens etc. he could use at the workshop and then Ilkka who would have the papers for drawing. I also told him I would check up with him soon and returned to doing my make-up which actually turned out okay-ish. When I checked the clock though I got a small heart attack; it was already almost 11 am! I felt the nausea hit me but tried to ignore it - I knew it was just my nerves acting up and I tried to soothe myself with some prep talk. Not sure how well I managed but because there was no time to have a meltdown of any sort I just... Kind of had to get my shit together and just roll with it lol. 

The children's and youth department of the library. At the end of the corridor is the gaming/hang out room where the drawing workshop was hosted - and yes, there are also gaming consoles!

The adult's section of the library. A sight like this - in a much smaller library but anyway - made me want to become a librarian. I was a kid back then so yes, profession-wise I am where I always wanted to be.

I practically ran downstairs to check up with Shiro Samurai. He had basically everything under control so I went to check up with Outi and Sanna who were hosting a non-stop pin workshop. In the same room with them was also Matsucon's promotion table and quite a few comic character statues lol. I chatted for a while with the people in the room and then walked to the lobby where the Artists' Alley was located - and ran into Sallukka, Dongrieg and Jefu. The latter one also hosted a program at Kemin Mangapäivä (he gave tips about 2020s anime series worth watching) and Sallukka acted as a second cosplay judge, me being the other. 

Speaking of the cosplay competition: we quickly agreed to scout for participants from the venue. You see, in the Saturday morning we had two contestants. TWO. It's a bit hard to have a competition with just two participants so yes, we needed to do something about this. To be honest: even though I'm quite known to be stubborn af I even considered cancelling the competition. However, some gut instinct told me not to and I'm pretty damn happy I didn't since we actually got four more contestants to participate! Being stubborn can be either a curse or a blessing and in this case, fortunately, it was the latter one. Two of the new contestants were actually familiar faces from Kummacon - we were all a bit surprised when we recognized each other :'D 

A part of the Artists' Alley, pictured from the front door.

A general hallway picture.

Same hallway, pictured from the library's door.

Around 12 pm me and Sallukka started the pre-judging of the contestants. Each one of them were given 10 minutes to tell about their cosplay; what techniques they had used, their favorite parts of the costume, which part was the most challenging to make etc. I must say that making the decision wasn't very easy; all of them had put so much effort to making their costumes, tried new techniques and everything! However, me and Sallukka had agreed that there would only be one winner, also known as other prizes weren't given. This may have had something to do with our budget which was a very lonely and round ZERO.

It took us about 50 minutes to judge everyone - not everybody had that much to tell about their cosplay - and after that we could finally sit down for a minute. And I could eat my lunch. We didn't have that much time though; I wanted to check up with Shiro Samurai AND I needed to give some new instructions to Johanna before we would start guiding people to the backstage... Or, well, to the upstairs corridor from which we could enter the big auditorium, also known as the venue of the cosplay competition. So yes, I ate pretty quickly and then we - also known as me and Sallukka - walked to the drawing workshop. Shiro Samurai told us that there were some entries to the drawing contest; all of them just happened to be from within the same age group so he and Ilkka would have to re-think a few things, namely who to reward and the criteria for that. For clarification: originally there were three different categories based on certain age groups but since all the entries were from within the same one... Yeah. 

After this it was time to gather the cosplay contestants and go upstairs with the elevator. There were eight people in the same elevator and someone commented "Considering how much Finnish people like their personal space we make horribly small elevators" and to be honest I couldn't agree more - it was so crammed! :'D Luckily the ride up didn't take more than a few seconds and we could exit our metallic cocoon. 

We checked the stage quickly, I gave the last instructions there, the contestants formed up a queue and soon it was time for the competition to begin! To be honest it wasn't a long one, about 15 minutes or so since we didn't have any entr'acte or anything of the sort. But we managed to host it, yay! <3 I'm so thankful to all of our brave contestants (and some of them even said that they would take part next year too which almost brought me to tears, no joke), thank you for taking a part to the competition! A special thanks goes to Sallukka: I wouldn't have managed without you and it truly was an honor to work with you 💚

Oh, we also had a photo booth, the photographer being a student from Lappia! <3 Too bad I didn't have time to get a group photo with my friends even though we talked about it.

When the cosplay competition was over I noticed that Shiro Samurai had messaged me. He and Ilkka were now judging the drawings and we figured we could tag along since we were already done with our duties. 

Eventually me and Sallukka became some sort of judges for the drawing contest too. Shiro Samurai and Ilkka had decided to reward two drawings, one as a winner and one with honorable mention. If judging the cosplay competition was hard, this was even more difficult since the entries were pretty much equal in skill! D: It took us quite a while to decide the two but eventually we came to an agreement and could host the small prize ceremony. 

After that it was time for me to host my program; I had decided to act as a filler and host a same panel about cosplay memories I had hosted in Mericon 2023... As a filler xD Yes, we had some hard time first to actually get people to host programs but in the end there were three panels, a drawing workshop/contest, a cosplay competition and the pin workshop (plus the Artists' Alley which was popular even with the library's regular customers)! The third one to host a panel was Hannele from Piiri.

I was checking the time since the clock on the wall definitely didn't show the right time lol.

And after my panel Mangapäivä was officially over! I felt so damn drained tbh; even lifting a finger felt like a mission impossible. The front door of the library was already locked at this point so my duty was to check there weren't any people inside anymore and turn off the lights. I hanged out with Shiro Samurai for a while since he was waiting for a ride back home and when his mother came to pick him up I also drove home. 

And slept until I went to have a glass of wine with Sallukka. We totally deserved it.

As you can see, it was one hell of a hectic day but we made it, yay!

The date for the next Mangapäivä hasn't been decided yet but I can say for sure that the event will be organized next year too! 💚 Even though Mangapäivä will (at least very likely) be a small event in the future too we will definitely take into consideration the feedback we have gotten and do some things even better next year~!

...I mean, now we literally have a year for preparations so yes, there is actually time to do things better next time. However, I'm still very pleased with how we pulled this year through; even though I'm a perfectionist by nature I do realize that we couldn't have done nothing more. And, at least sometimes, doing your best is more than enough. This time it definitely was.

My next blog post will very likely be a circle lens review 'cause the next con I will attend is in May so yeah, no summaries before that. Already looking forward to that though! 👀

Until next time.

-Firith