Anime Festival Asia

Luckily this weekend was a stand-by weekend, or else I would not have been able to make it for the Anime Festival Asia (AFA) held at Suntec City. Remember that I got no leaves left. I already left my leaves for Whompoa Cup next week...

So I went to Suntec City at around 11.30 am on Sunday, and waited for Linxi until about 12. After that we went for lunch and proceeded to Level 4 for AFA. Surprising there wasn't any queue, and we obtained our tickets smoothly. It also wasn't as crowed as I had expected. There were still a lot of space to move about. Maybe it's because it was still very early.

Already saw a lot of cosplays even before stepping inside the exihibition hall. It was kind of interesting to see anime characters using escalators, LOL. This is actually the first time I'm seeing people cosplay, other than on TV. Sadly to say it was quite disappointing. Many people were either too tall, short, fat, or skin, and their hair length also didn't match the original character. A lot of combinations when posing for photos were also weird. The props and costume were nice, but maybe more effort could be put in, at least for those characters that I know of. But then, it is impossible to cosplay until you look exactly like the anime character. Maybe my expectations are too high, haha. =D

Some pics of cosplays:

I don't know what this anime is...

But this girl is quite cute. =)

Zabuza and Haku, from NARUTO. This is one of the more decent combinations.

A robot from Code Geass.

Don't know this one either...

But the girl on the left looks like Otsuka Ai from this angle... LOL

Unknown.

Unknown.

Naruto and Sakura. But for god's sake why are they fighting an Anbu??

Bankai Ichigo and Hinamori, lietenant of 5th Squadron fighting a mere Hollow?? Since when did hollows become so strong...

A rather cute Byakuya, from BLEACH...



Yah, cute... LOL



And a very cute Mario! =D

Why is Sasuke fighting an Anbu...

Resting cosplay personnels.

Unknown, but interesting.

Unknown.

Oh my god!! A HOLLOW!!!!! =P

He was standing very still...

Renji.

Were Byakuya and Gin so friendly? I don't think so...

This robot again.

Buahahahahahaha!!!!!!

O.o, what a great combination.

In the afternoon there was a cosplay competition. People took turns to go onto stage to perform a skit they composed which can be a short clip from the anime. To my dismay, there wasn't any NARUTO or BLEACH cosplays on stage. And many of the performances were quite ridiculous. Like, why would anime characters be singing disney songs?? In the Code Geass performance the robot took ages to climb up the stairs onto the stage. It was hilarious to see the robot doing that, 'cos usually it flies (in the anime). And furthermore some parts of the robot broke off after it went onto the stage, but they still carried on with the performance and completed it.

I took some videos of the cosplay competition. Will post them after I've uploaded them to youtube. Some screen shots:

Noticed this guy in interesting uniform...

But realised he was playing PSP. LOL

Yup, this is the robot.

Finally it's on stage...

Other than cosplays the main highlight of AFA was figurines. Yes, lots and lots of figurines. I heard that some figurines were so popular that they were sold out in the first hour. Looks like there's been a lot of competition here on Saturday... For me I'm not really particularly interested in figurines, unless I really like the design. I still feel that DVDs are more worth it than the some stationary figures.

Here's a look at some of the figurines:

Gundam.

Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous.

Miscellaneous.

Dragonball!! I used to watch this a lot.

More Dragonball heroes and villaines.

Interesting change of costume. Felt like buying this but it was too expensive...

Goku in Super Saiyajin 4!!

Mini L. If this was available I would definitely buy this. LOL

Mini Ryuk.

Batman.

FF VII.

More superheroes.

FF VII.

I believe this is Cloud (I don't play FF VII...)


This was quite interesting, I didn't know they have figurines for movies as well...

"I WANT TO PLAY A GAME." LOL

Some other interesting exhibits:

Toys.

D.Gray Man poster.

Code Geass poster.

...>< Code Geass with live person.

Interesting drawing of Deidara, and the words... LOL For those who can't see it's written "nice drawing, buy my hair covers my left eye, uh". Haha=)

Itachi. Very well drawn.

People drawing.

At 7.15 pm, the event everyone has been waiting for started: live performance by May'n. I didn't really know May'n very well. I only knew that she sang songs for this anime called Macross Frontier. But her songs were quite nice, and she gave quite a good performance. It was amazing how she carried out all her dance and stuff while maintaining her voice. This is also the first time I've seen a concert in live, and I was very excited. Now I've got another singer to support. And you know what, she's younger than me!! Born in the same year, but her birthday is in October. Haha, maybe I stand a chance?

Photographs and video taking were prohibited during the concert. And I actually FOLLOWED the rules. What a fool of me, I could have just snapped a few pics. After the concert there was this hand-shaking session with May'n for those Diamond VIP pass holders. They will also get a signature of May'n each. I wish I will also get such a chance in the future.

Took some photos during the hand-shaking session, but not very clear as I was quite far from the stage. She's quite cute, isn't she? And lively too. She shakes hands not using one, but both hands.

Good luck to May'n in her future career. Fight on!


That's the end of my AFA report. I had a thought when attending this event. Would there be such thing called J-POP festival? If there is I would be the first one to buy the ticket, and if there's a concert by ayu or ai-chan I would buy first row ticket no matter how much it costs. =D