Or the one where I got to see SCANDAL perform live but showed up too late to get an autograph. Alternatively, it is also acceptable to refer to it as the one where I still had yet to buy an external flash for my camera and ended up taking shitty photos.

Oh wait, that applies to all of them. Bazinga. How about we just call it the one where it was AFA X and I went there.

Everyone does event report these days and, given that I am no longer a young lad, I cannot hope to compete with the new-age style of live blogging and instant Tweeting when it comes to delivering the event reports.

So screw that shit. I’ll do this event report my way (late, irrelevant and full of digressions). With blackjack! And hookers! Actually, screw the report.

FFXIII: what I bought a PS3 for

My heroic tale began one fine Sunday morning two days ago. I woke up before noon and loaded up Valkyria Chronicles on my PS3 for some hawt turn-based/real-time hybrid tactical strategy. (What is VC’s proper genre anyway? Please do not say JRPG.) I was at chapter 15 and I was about to face Selvaria for the first time since she handed me my ass with her god-mode exploit many missions ago.

Selvaria’s boobs: what made my PS3 purchase worth

Then I remembered that I had to make my way to Suntec Convention Centre for AFA X and the SCANDAL/angela/May’n concert at night. At the exact same moment, a tropical thunderstorm warped itself into my immediate sector. On a tangentially related note, I own a very tiny umbrella.

Fast forward an hour or so, I collected my awesome-looking plastic ticket from the ticketing counter and made my way into the stage area of AFA X. Strolling casually into the event hall, I saw May’n and SCANDAL’s Haruna greeting their fans on stage. And then it was over. I realized that I had made it there just in time for the last 30 seconds of the meet-and-greet session. Laziness is the bane of my existence.

What followed was about three hours of standard convention fare. I shambled aimlessly around the exhibition hall and cosplay area a few times, took a bunch of under-exposed photos that looked perfectly fine on my camera’s useless LCD screen and almost accidentally stepped into the Borders clearance sale next door (those book nerds really know how to party).

It’s blur not because I suck at photography (I do) but because it’s Three Dee

It’s a Segway, except smaller and Japanese

Maaya :3

The concert itself was pretty decent.

My seat was right at the front, so I was like less than ten metres away from the performers on stage. There was a group of hardcore Japanese angela fans next to me who brought (presumably) handmade towels with the word “angela” sewn on. They all carried luggage cases and were flying home right after the concert.

Angela performed Shangri-La. Twice. You can say that it was a literal “encore”. Ba dum dish.

Interestingly, the rest of their set list was mostly Fafner pieces. Perhaps they were under the impression that Singaporeans wouldn’t know anything else. Kind of disappointing since I didn’t really care for Fafner beyond Shangri-La and Separation. That said, they did bring Asu e no Brilliant Road and it was awesome. It’s been so very long since Stellvia… Good times.

Right after angela came onto stage, a bunch of people with seats in the back rows ran up to the front and crowded around the fence between the seating area and the stage, thus significantly lowering the value of my prime location, much like subprime mortgage foreclosures in the neighbourhood. Fortunately, the bailout arrived just before SCANDAL came on when a pair of AFA coppers chased the squatters back to their ghettos while menacingly brandishing light sticks. My view of SCANDAL’s performance was thus glorious.

Left to right: Tomomi, Rina, Haruna, Mami

Since photography was prohibited, I can only show you stock photos of SCANDAL. Tomomi (vocal and bass) has a really high-pitched voice that I find mildly disorienting. Haruna (vocal and guitar) has the typical lead vocalist kind of vibe and energy. My (completely baseless) impression of Mami (guitar) is that she looks like she’s smoking pot all the time. Finally, I have no opinions regarding Rina (drums) because she’s always hidden behind.

SCANDAL performed quite a number of songs from their Temptation Box album (Everybody Say Yeah!, Houkago 1H, Aitai, Girlism) and some of their older stuff (DOLL, SCANDAL BABY), before ending with Shoujo S (from Bleach) and Shunkan Sentimental (from FMA), probably the only two songs that more than 90% of the audience listened to before Sunday.

I love Shoujo S but the performance was pretty bad because the chorus was completely inaudible. Shunkan Sentimental was better and Aitai worked pretty well. Temptation Box is a great album.

Also, since I sat right at the front, 90% of time SCANDAL’s pop-rock beat was basically pounding my internal organs into a fine mesh via the giant subwoofers. It was still good though. Even Houkago 1H was tolerable but I still can’t stand Tomomi’s voice.

Haruna’s vocal was definitely not quite the pitch perfection found in studio recordings, but hey it’s rock so it doesn’t really matter. It’s really too bad SCANDAL didn’t/couldn’t work their ballad single Namida no Regret into the set list. It’s easily one of their top three songs. I suspect they can’t do the song well in a live. (Please do not kill me for blasphemy.)

I have to say that Mami is probably my favourite SCANDAL girl because she looks so stoned and calm even while playing the guitar. She may not be the prettiest but she’s ever so zen.

This is the face I imagine Mami (background) to have all the time

The concert closed with May’n. Interestingly I actually watched Itsuwari no Utahime for the first time ever right before the concert because I bumped into a 1080p raw on YouTube while googling, so at last I finally recognized Universal Bunny. Unfortunately, May’n’s performance (at least from my perspective) suffered quite a lot because of the insane level of bass. I couldn’t really hear much of her singing. Oh well.

And of course, I only found out after the concert ended that the autograph session was in the afternoon during the meet and greet. Getting SCANDAL’s signature would’ve been pretty cool, but I suppose this is fate. I am learning to be zen too.

Hmmm… Come to think of it this is probably my last AFA ever (for the foreseeable future). If the world doesn’t end and nothing unexpected happens, this time next year I should be chilling around Palo Alto in California, a state almost exactly the size of Japan but without the four distinct seasons.

Maybe I’ll show up for an Anime Expo or two.

AFA X, the third Anime Festival Asia, will be held on 13 and 14 November at its usual venue at Suntec Convention Centre. As per usual, a small press conference was held this morning to announce some of the details. Here’s the quick low down on the most important bits that I sat through two hours for:

Confirmed guests

• Milky Holmes
• Kana Hanazawa
• Kaname (cosplay competition judge)
• Danny Choo
• Gou Nakanishi (attending the industry event)

New programmes:

• Screening of Gundam 00 movie and Suzumiya Haruhi no Shoushitsu
• Butler Cafe

Confirmed performances

• May’n
• Ichirou Mizuki
• angela
• JAM Project
• Scandal

There’s also some unannounced exclusive COSPA merchandises, but the rest of the line-up appears to be SOP (standard operating procedure, not Sons of Patriot) — maid cafe (though it’s now a school uniform cafe), merchandise showcases, cosplay competition, etc.

I have to say that the biggest coup this year is probably either SCANDAL (the next ZONE?) or JAM Project. Personally, I absolutely adore angela ever since Uchuu no Stellvia. I had a hunch that they were one of the guests when Gou Nakanishi (producer of Soukyuu no Fafner and producer for angela) was listed as one of the speakers for an industry networking event that takes place one day before AFA proper.

The concert itself is split into two days as per last year, with JAM Project and Ichirou Mizuki on day 1 and the SCANDAL, angela, May’n on day 2. I suspect the two movie screenings will also be similarly divided, with Gundam 00 on the first day (to fit in with the whole manly robot theme), but that’s just my speculation.

Ticketing information is all up on the official site. It seems that this year the organizer is breaking the tickets down into even more tiers. I’m currently eyeing the concert ticket for the second day… SCANDAL is pretty cool (I mean really, it’s basically a real-life corporate-owned K-ON!) and angela is just incredible all the time.

And here’s a cover of K-ON!’s “Don’t say lazy” by SCANDAL.

Still no Maaya Sakamoto of course. Just as yosou.

I just woke up with a throbbing headache. I feel like I’ve spent the past two days walking. Of course, this comes nowhere close to the time when I queued overnight in the winter rain for Comiket 73 and fell asleep on Big Sight’s ice-cold wet concrete floor. That was just crazy.

AFA 09 has finally come and gone. I went for both days of the event and managed to get a decent feel of the whole thing, though I did end up spending most of that time chatting with people and taking pictures of cosplayers outside the event hall. I also managed to catch the concert by May’n and Yoshiki Fukuyama, a pretty worthy climax for my AFA experience.

On the whole, I think AFA 09 improved from last year. The use of space in the event hall was much better and the level of industry participation was also noticeably higher.

Unlike last year, there weren’t any odd empty spaces in the booth layouts this time, partly because the stage area was expanded and isolated from the rest of the event hall. This made the concerts more professional and authentic, but on the flip side made the whole event seem less lively. On-stage events in the afternoon, such as the regional cosplay competition and the live-dubbing session by the K-On! cast (most of it anyway), drew considerable crowds away from the main event hall.

Ideally the huge black curtain separating the stage area from the rest of the event should only be there for the evening concerts, but I guess that’s logistically infeasible.

Bandai had a pretty prominent exhibition area celebrating the 30th anniversary of Gundam. There were some event-exclusive and early-release Gunpla models too. I spent 15 minutes watching a video on the construction of the 1:1 Gundam that was recently assembled in Odaiba. It’s pretty amazing to watch these engineers and technicians put something like that together from scratch. Watching them fine-tune the speed of the Gundam’s head rotation and adjust the positions of the jet exhausts makes me feel kind of funny inside. I think the next closest thing I can think of is watching Disney Imagineers at work.

You know, the feeling that after these people have grown up, gone through college and become professional engineers in various fields, they can take the serious stuff they have learnt and use it to create something born from childhood wonder. It’s magical.

Danny Choo had a booth collaboration with Good Smile Company where all the usual (figurine) suspects could be found. He was also helping to promote Otacool, a book published by Kotobukiya that compiles photos of “otaku rooms” from all over the world. It’s like a printed copy of the internet! I think it’s about time someone did something like this for epic 4chan posts that are of historical significance to serve as primary sources for future O-level source-based questions. (“What is Anonymous and what do they not do?”)

I have this one. Yay!

Interestingly, COSPA has decided to set up a South-East Asian branch, COSPA SEA. Damn it man. It’s already hard enough as it is to wear a COSPA shirt to a local event without bumping into someone else wearing the exact same shirt. Back in the old days we had to physically fly to Japan to get our COSPA shirts and they were like rare Epic loot. Young anime fans these days have it too good. *Swings walking cane around wildly*

I hereby proclaim Shirt.Woot the next indie mass-market apparel trend for geeks. Considering they still do not ship to Singapore and will unlikely do so in the near future, our bought sense of individuality should be safe for some time.

Tatsunoko Production

Local comic Freedom Formula — soon to be a major Hollywood production

Hottarake no Shima — Production I.G.’s new family-friendly box office release

During Production I.G.‘s presentation on Friday, the speaker mentioned that the studio was founded by people who, having seen how girls are drawn to men who do sports, poetry, etc., decided that they want to make anime that can help them score with chicks. (I imagine telling a girl that you were responsible for a scene in Kill Bill can be quite a turn on.)

And having successfully achieved their primary goal, many of them are now happily married and starting families. Hottarake no Shima (Oblivion Island) is the result of that transformation. Heh.

Summer Wars — coming to a Cathay cinema soon

Storm Lion booth babes

Animax Asia live broadcasting

Doujin merchandises

Doujin posters

Moe Moe Kyun maid cafe

Danny drew quite a crowd when he went into the maid cafe in his Storm Trooper armour. All the maids were fighting to serve him. ;)

Reine Hibiki (illustrator for Marimite light novels) autograph session

And finally, the cosplay photos. I know I say this after every cosplay event, but AFA 09 has finally made me decide to buy an external flash for my Canon 400D. Eventually. Yeah.

A familiar face

GO GO POWER RANGERS

Hetalia will be the cause of WWIII

She’s Japanese

That reminds me. Speaking of K-On!, there was a live on-stage dubbing demonstration by the seiyuu cast on Sunday. Four of the girls were present. Guess who was missing? It was Yoko Hikasa, the voice of Mio. The audience was noticeably shocked and confused when this was finally revealed.

The session still went great and watching the voice actresses do their job was pretty interesting. The fans, once they got over the initial shell shock, responded quite positively. As a bonus, I found it amusing to observe the reactions that took place immediately following the unexpected revelation. In fact, I was kind of waiting for it to happen. I am a bad person. :(

Okay, so we all know that I’m probably never going to buy an external flash and when the next cosplay event comes around, I’ll be back here posting under-exposed and out-of-focus photos again. Damn my lack of willpower.

I missed the concert on Saturday but managed to catch the one on Sunday. Although better than last year, the acoustics still left much to be desired this time. Most of the vocals were hard to make out over the loud synthesized pop tracks and the booming bass speakers that were pointed right at me.

May’n performed a few of her latest non-anime songs before ending off with Northern Cross, Lion and Iteza Gogo Kuji Don’t be late. The crowd, being who we are, reacted much more favourably to her Macross F songs. Yoshiki Fukuyama’s performance was more audible, partly because he has a louder voice and partly because he played his own chords on a guitar.

The best part of the concert was of course the two duets May’n and Fukuyama performed for the encore. Fukuyama did an impressive rendition of Diamond Crevasse on his guitar and sang along with May’n during the chorus, and May’n did a surprisingly good job with Dynamite Explosion from Macross Dynamite 7. Personally, I was looking forward to a Totsugeki Love Heart duet, but I guess I shouldn’t be greedy. Music — the one good thing about Macross 7.

That about concludes my AFA 09 coverage. Now I shall pray to the great Cherokee gods for Maaya Sakamoto to come to AFA 10.

Having been to similar conferences in the IT industry, I didn’t have high hopes for this one. Often, it’s a bunch of really boring people in suits talking about how Asia is an emerging market and Singapore is poised to be a regional hub. AAC on the other hand turned out to be a rather pleasant surprise.

I stepped into the Suntec Convention Centre auditorium on Friday morning with great reservations. I was nearly half an hour late and the keynote address by Mr. Tsuguhiko Kadokawa, CEO of Kadokawa Group, was already coming to an end. I entered quietly through the back door, just as I did the numerous time I was late for lecture in school, and resigned myself to inevitable death by boredom which, no disrespect to Mr. Kadokawa, was only made more certain by the last few slides of his presentation.

The first speaker was Mamoru Hosoda, the director of Tokikake and Summer Wars. A prior glance through the list of speakers had given me the impression that he was going to be one of the few interesting speakers for the day. This rare spot of optimism was quickly overturned when it became apparent that instead of a personal presentation, the format was going to be a mock interview conducted by ANN’s Justin Sevakis.

I was puzzled by this arrangement because all it did was to add an additional layer of interpretations to the whole process as Justin was asking the questions in English… The interpretor was pretty bad and half the time Hosoda was answering different questions from the one asked. It wasn’t the engaging presentation I had hoped for.

Justin Sevakis and Mamoru Hosoda on stage

Hosoda mentioned that Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo was made for Japanese high school students and he didn’t expect it to do so well overseas. His main sources of inspiration are Hayao Miyazaki and Disney and he sees Pokémon to be the first to show that anime do not need to be adapted for local tastes in order to succeed globally. I’m not so sure about that one…

Edmund Shern, CEO of local media company Storm Lion and the founder of the ever popular Imaginary Friends Studios, went on stage with a few guys from Production I.G. to talk about their latest collaboration, Titan Rain.

Titan Rain

Given that Storm Lion was only incorporated last November, it’s pretty amazing that their comic series Freedom Formula has already been picked up by New Regency to be made into a live-action title distributed by 20th Century Fox. And considering the large number of collaboration requests from Hollywood studios that get rejected by Production I.G., Edmund must really know his stuff. Mitsuhisa Ishikawa, president of Production I.G., mentioned that he decided to do this with Storm Lion because it presented a creative vision as opposed to a profitable business proposal. Hollywood, take notes.

Edmund Shern and the Production I.G. guys

Of course, while it’s great that a Singapore media company has managed to find a place alongside the big industry players, I suspect this has more to do with Edmund’s personal experience than the local scene as a whole. Time will tell.

Mr. Phoon Chiong Kit, deputy chairman of Imagi International Holdings Limited, gave a talk about why he believed Astro Boy has failed rather badly in the box office. The title of his talk is “Distributing Animation Across Markets and Cultures” and frankly I thought it was going to be a real dozer, but I was proven wrong. It was actually pretty interesting.

Apparently Astro Boy did pretty good in China, flopped in the US and was dead on arrival in Japan. Over 80% of the viewers in the first week of its release in Japan were older men instead of the targeted teenage audience, which on hindsight is not that surprising. He speculated that the movie didn’t do well in US because it is an unknown franchise and looks kiddish to older audience but is perceived to be too violent and full of adult themes to actually draw in kids. It did better in China because Astro Boy is a recognized classic there and the audience does not have the same expectations that the Japanese audience has when it comes to staying true to source materials.

Astro Boy adapted for Hollywood sensibilities

I think the fact that Imagi is a Hong Kong company may have something to do with it too. Given that Chinese authorities have an annual quota of twenty on the number of imported foreign films, there’s a artificial lack of competition when it comes to box office sales. I wonder if Astro Boy was considered a local film and given certain preferential treatment.

Shiro Sasaki, CEO of Flying Dog (a division of Victor Entertainment), gave what I feel was the best presentation of the conference. Flying Dog manages many of the big names in anime music production, such as Yoko Kanno, Yuki Kajiura, Akino Arai, ALI PROJECT, Round Table and my all-time favourite Maaya Sakamoto. Looking at the number of titles for which Sasaki is credited as music producer (Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Cowboy Bebop, Noir to name a few), it is no exaggeration to say that he basically shaped our entire perception of what anime music is all about.

He did a presentation on Macross Frontier where music plays a particularly important role. For each Macross title, Flying Dog looks for fresh voice talents so that the audience associates the songs with the characters instead of any established singer. The talents are then developed in parallel to their fictional counterparts using various real-life promotional events that mirror those found in the anime until eventually they become established enough to release their own work. This is standard industry practice now, but Sasaki and Victor have been doing it since the original Macross.

Sheryl Nome’s blog

I think the commercial success of Sheryl and Ranka in Macross Frontier points to the inevitable future of all-digital idols. When a future iteration of Hatsune Miku eventually successfully navigates its way through the uncanny valley to emerge on the side of ultra-realism, real idols will be out of work for good. Considering how precious little is real when it comes to idol marketing, it’s really the next logical step.

Danny Choo did a presentation on his Mirai Gaia ecommerce platform which is interesting as usual, but I think I had already heard most of it before.

Kotaro Sugiyama, creative czar of Dentsu Inc., presented on Dentsu Japan’s past and recent unconventional advertising campaigns, including their recent idea to build a giant Gundam in Odaiba to commemorate 30 years of Gundam and the viral Big Shadow campaign for Blue Dragon on Xbox 360. Their folllow-up plan is to build another Gundam in Paris(?!). Although most anime fans would not have heard of the advertising company Dentsu, they are actually a huge player in the industry. AFA itself was created by Dentsu’s Singapore branch.

Vince Shortino, president of Crunchyroll Kabushiki Kaisha (their operations in Japan), talked about how Crunchyroll managed to convince Japanese right-holders and turn itself from an illegal den of pirates to a fully-licensed online business model.

The Crunchyroll presentation was very thought-provoking, mainly because it mirrored my views from two years ago at the time when the Odex crackdown appeared to be a foreshadowing of a wider industry backlash against fansubbing. Unfortunately, Odex, despite its wealth of industry connections, was and continues to be stuck in the comforts of the status quo and did not have the right combination of ideas, resources and luck to take advantage of what it saw as the doom of creative media. Crunchyroll, a California-based startup with all the right experience (or lack thereof) and can-do optimism that has been the heart of the Silicon Valley’s numerous successes, managed to do just that in spite of having to start from a difficult negotiating position, given that they were perceived to be a huge source of piracy back in 2007.

I pitched this exact idea (online streaming of the latest shows paid for by a combination of subscription and advertising) to Peter Goh, the CEO of Odex, back then and was given a long lecture on how it was impossible to obtain such concessions from the Japanese studios and how I was young and naive (or something to that effect). This seems to be a problem with the mindset of a lot of local businesses — we as Singaporeans are just too used to toeing the line. It was “impossible” to get Japanese support for an online streaming service, but only because no one seriously tried it until Crunchyroll. I hope Odex learnt a lesson from this, but I doubt it.

Crunchy roll iz in ur industry, destoyin’ ur bizness model

Interestingly, there was a short discussion after Vince’s presentation and one of the invited participants was Mr. Steve Tan, a digital IP lawyer from Rajah & Tann LLP. The very same law firm that represented Odex in its aborted crusade against illegal downloaders. It doesn’t take a genius to imagine what his main points were. He started going on about how right holders can only successfully defend their properties if they band together and launch a legal “blitzkrieg” against illegal downloaders, a transparent reference to Odex’s failure due to it being perceived as acting on its own accord. Vince tactfully shot him down by pointing out that it is the advancement in technology that has made past distribution models obsolete and not any intentional evil on the part of the consumers. Forcing fans to return to less convenient means of obtaining anime through legal threats will only drive them away from anime and the only way to discourage illegal downloads is to make legal ones available. It’s a self-serving argument to be sure, but it’s a valid one.

However, I do find it somewhat ironic that Crunchyroll offers anti-piracy tools to the content owners that indexes other video-sharing sites looking for infringing materials. It makes sense from a business perspective because it gives added value to its corporate customers, but the elephant in the room is that such tools would’ve been used against Crunchyroll itself had they been made available to the studios in 2007.

Enforcement essentially prevents any new competitors from following its footsteps, giving Crunchyroll virtual monopoly over the streaming model, and I think there is some conflict of interest for Crunchyroll to take an active role in targeting infringements on competing sites. It’s not necessarily a bad thing and in the long run, should this new model prove viable, established distributors with sufficient capital can still enter the market (like how Microsoft successfully forced its way into console gaming). It’s just too late for the rest of the garage startups.

AFA preview event during the lunch break. Photo provided by Alafista

AAC was on the whole a very meaningful experience with quite a few pleasant surprises. Well, I’m off to AFA now. Hope it will continue this positive trend and outshine my humble expectations. ;)

I just got home from the press conference for the second Anime Festival Asia and got a feel of what this year’s AFA09 will feel like.What feels like not too many daybreaks ago, a young innocent boy travelled through time all the way from 1989 to witness history unfold one fateful September day yesteryear with the birth of Singapore’s first anime convention. Now we are all grown up. *Sniff* It’s all so beautiful — a quintessential coming-of-age story.

But I digress.

This year’s Anime Festival Asia (AFA) will take place on 21st to 22nd November at the Suntec City convention hall (in Singapore) as per last year. In additon, there will be a one-day corporate event called Animation Asia Conference (AAC) on the 20th for industry sharing and shoulder-rubbing. So there’s something for not just the kids and the young-at-heart, but also suits looking to expandify and integratize their regional new-media social networking portfolios. Making up words is fun.

Reiko, the bilingual MC, speaks better English than me

The suits

Here’s a bullet-point breakdown of AFA09 announcements so far:

• Confirmed performers:
  • May’n
  • Shoko Nakagawa – all-round otaku idol/blogger
  • Ichirou Mizuki
  • Yoshiki Fukuyama – JAM PROJECT! FIRE BOMBER!
• Regional cosplay competition – auditions to be held in various countries.
• Danny Choo – showcasing Mirai-chan merchandises, giving talks, and moving to some Stormtrooper groove.
• Bandai stuff – Gundam 30th anniversary, Power Rangers, Harumika, Cook Joy, BAKUC.
• Moe Moe Kyun maid cafe – a cafe. With maids.

It definitely looks like the event is growing (literally in some sense), particularly the industry networking side which has expanded from a corner of the event hall to its own day. And of course with almost three months left to the actual convention, there will no doubt be more announcements coming in the official AFA09 website.

The maids

A random Minuki (Trucy Wright) cosplayer

Personally, I’m a lot more excited about Yoshiki Fukuyama than Shoko-tan. Although as with May’s performance last year, I doubt that the event organizers will be able to secure screening rights for Macross 7 footages, given the legal shit-storm that is the franchise’s international distribution rights — a sobering warning to all aspiring creative talents on the danger of selling out too early. What a pity. The songs were the only thing that made 7 fit for viewing and they worked great too.

Bandai’s Cook Joy — It’s like Cooking Mama in tangible 3D

It appears inevitable that this blog will eventually become nothing more than a collection of distilled madness and PR mouthpiecing. Although the Gundam Unicorn series airing next spring may provide some rejuvenating blog fodder… But I digress again.

So anyway, I’m sure I’ll be seeing many of you at uncomfortably-close range come November at AFA09. (Please wash your hands and have a breath mint.) In the meantime, maybe it’s about time I get an external flash for my timeworn Canon 400D.

Over. Singapore’s first anime convention is. It’s been an eventful two days and I’m quite happy with the way it ended. Now we can start looking forward to next year. Also, I just woke up and my head hurts.

Pre-Event

The convention area is divided into a few zones. The white rectangle at the bottom right is where the staff and invited guests rest. You can read up on more background information about the event from my past entries.

Again, the invited guests were May’n, Yasufumi Soejima, Koji Morimoto, Kunio Okawara, Ichiro Mizuki. I uploaded a YouTube video of the Q&A session on Saturday.

Crowd

The queue got better later in the day

Graphite drawing competition organized by NUS Anime Club

The stage area was always crowded whenever there was any performance. My 17-50mm lens couldn’t get any picture of what went on. There was a cosplay competition on the second day.

It’s a sign

Ultraman vs. a furry teddy bear

Also, since I was using a DSLR with no live preview, I had to shoot blind while holding it above the crowd.

Displays

Genius Party concept art

Koji Morimoto

There’s a display for Studio 4°C’s Genius Party. Koji Morimoto was there on Saturday for an hour to sign GP merchandises.

Animax Asia showcasing LaMB, their first in-house production

Yasufumi Soejima

LaMB is Animax Asia’s first in-house production and it is being produced right here in Singapore. It’s a one-hour sci-fi anime movie with storyboard by Yasufumi Soejima, a former GONZO animator.

I want this… D:

The figurine displays drew a constant crowd. Although the whole thing was handled by a local distributor, there were Japanese representatives from Good Smile Company and others around, and apparently they were quite impressed by the turnout. Bodes well for the future. ;)

Event limited 1/60 Exia Trans-Am mode

Airbrushing demonstration

Those of you waiting for episode 8 review can make do with this

Bandai and Gundam have quite a presence at the event because Bandai recently set up an Asian branch in Singapore. No questions were asked about why there were so many Gundam 00 fans in Singapore when the show is not available here. *cough*

Imaginary Friends Studios’ display at NUS Graphite

Pepper

Pepper too

There were many pieces from Imaginary Friends Studios on display both at their own both and at the NUS Graphite booth. IFS is a Singaporean art studio with an impressive repertoire and has many major foreign clients such as Electronic Arts (e.g. Mirror’s Edge), Intel, Nokia, DC Comics and Penny Arcade.

I bought a copy of their latest release, The Pepper Project, which is a compilation of artworks featuring Pepper, the mascot character created by Artgerm aka Stanley Lau, the head of IFS. I got him to sign my copy.

Some works from Collateral Damage Studios

Yes May’n signed it

Anime showcases from everyone’s favourite company

Hehe

Seriously though, Odex did a decent job

Local distributor Chuangyi Comics

Some manga-related displays

Cosplay

I apologize for my poor photography as usual… I should really get around to getting a Speedlite. If only some kind soul would donate a 580 EX to me. My birthday is in January by the way. :D

Awesome

It’s running away

This can only mean one thing: giant cockroaches

Miku got a haircut

Concert

Ichiro Mizuki performed on Saturday night and May’n performed on Sunday night.

I didn’t attend Mizuki’s concert but I heard it was pretty awesome. I did watch him perform during rehearsal on Friday and during the cosplay competition on Sunday. (He was one of the judges.)

Waiting for May’n

I did attend May’n’s concert. It was one of the most awesome moments of the past year and a perfect end to the event. Her stage presence is truly captivating and her vocals are the real deal. I was standing right at the front and the atmosphere was just perfect. Sheryl Nome was on stage.

Unfortunately, photography was banned during her concert so I don’t have anything for you to see, especially since I was at the front where all the staff members were…

Okay just kidding. I have obtained some top secret photographs taken by other people. Many Bothan spies died to bring us these pictures. Not that you can see much in them.

The MCs

Camera LCDs

Pictures taken by LianYL of RIUVA. Please arrest him instead

May’n’s dancers, Junko and Mizuki

Picture taken by Double. Please arrest him instead

Picture taken by Windbell. Please arrest him instead

By the way, the Sheryl cosplayer (first picture in this post) was actually a Diamond VIP ticket holder who went on stage to shake hands with May’n and receive a signed board.

And yeah, I had a Diamond VIP ticket too. Also, vicious rumours of my snubbing of May’n are competely untrue. The reality is that I did shake her hands, but at that very moment Jim (extreme right), the design director for AFA08, introduced me to May’n’s manager (centre right) all of a sudden as “the guy who translated all the interview questions” and I ended up in a deer-in-the-headlight situation with me fumbling for words while attempting to bow and greet simultaneously. As any reasonably sane deer would do, I fled. orz

So yeah. I didn’t snub her. I merely ran away. >_<

People love to spell my handle as two words :(

I was asked to join Dentsu, the event organizers, for supper after the whole thing ended because I had been translating all media interview questions for the various invited guests, and the people at Dentsu wanted to thank me. May’n was there too! She signed Crazy Crazy Crazy (her debut single) for me. :D

It was worth all the time I spent on doing translations during my final year A’ Level exam period. orz

Next

What’s next? I’m sure many of us will be looking forward to the next Anime Festival Asia if it happens. Personally, I think the chances of that are quite good. From what I heard, representatives from various Japanese studios were quite impressed by AFA08, so no doubt Singapore will be receiving plenty of good publicity when they report back home.

Looking forward to next year.

P.S. Gundam 00 episode 8 post will be delayed this week due to Post Event Syndrome.

A press conference was held today at the Japanese Association of Singapore to announce the inaugural Anime Festival Asia (AFA) to be held at Suntec City conventional hall on 22nd and 23rd of November. The event is organized by I-Promo and the Singaporean branch of Dentsu and it is sponsored by Bandai. The official site is up at afa08.com. You’ll probably read about it in tomorrow’s news.

Yes, Singapore is finally going to have a real anime convention!

What is it?

AFA is intended to be a regional event that celebrates Japanese pop culture. The long-term goal is a large scale event on par with TAF and Anime Expo, but the current target is 80 thousand people over two days.

After a recent shift in policy, and the appointment of Doreamon as Japan’s Cultural Ambassador, soft power through pop culture is becoming a larger part of the diplomatic toolset of the Japanese government. Although it is kind of funny to picture a bunch of serious-looking Japanese politicians in suits talking about promoting anime, we shall put that aside and accept this. So anyway, as part of this renewed effort to export the hikikomori phenomenon to an international market, the Embassy of Japan in Singapore is building a Japan Creative Centre here to brainwash Singaporeans with moé propaganda. Awesome. This happens to coincide with the Singapore government’s desire to turn this country into a regional media hub, which is a euphemism for an outsourcing animation factory, and everyone is happy.

But I digress. AFA08 (pronounced “ah-far-oh-eight”) is original conceived as a pre-event to the opening of the JCC. It will feature upcoming animation, merchandises, cosplay and performances, some of which is making quite excited about November, almost enough to make me forget that that’s when my A’levels will be. Take a look at the AFA08 website for information.

Why should I care?

I know, I know. We’ve all been here before. “Anime” conventions in Singapore are generally not very appealing to real anime fans. Lack of content and local commercial presence means that the organizers often have to turn to non-anime stuff, ostensibly to appeal to a wider target audience, but mostly just to fill up the booths. But AFA08 might just be different. Here’s why.

Guests

There will be Japanese guest speakers and performers appearing on the main stage during the convention. Currently only Kouji Morimoto and Marimi Sakurai from STUDIO 4°C are named, but more will be announced on the website. (i.e. the organizers want to do it like Anime Expo) I can’t give any specific names because everything was totally off-the-record, but let’s just say that the “song performances” listed in the programme booklet will not be performed by some random guy they found in the park. The names that were unofficially floated around were highly intriguing, to say the least. ;)

Exclusives

There will be exclusive merchandises (including figurines) being sold during the event. Bandai has already confirmed that some limited edition Gunpla will be available, although they are saving the juicy details for a later date. Several other hobby and toy companies will also be involved, but again I can’t name them. All I can say is, this could be the first local event where I end up spending any money.

Organizers

Bandai Asia is a major sponsor, and of course it has a lot of ties with its parent company in Japan and…Sunrise. Dentsu is one of the largest advertising companies in the world, and no doubt its Singaporean branch benefits from Japan-side connection. The event has been in planning for more than a year (I first heard about it last year around this time) and from the looks of it, it is going to be the most well-funded and resourceful attempt at organizing and sustaining an annual anime convention in Singapore.

Also, I could tell that the event organizers were credible because they read my blog, and my Code Geass entries in particular, lol. This will definitely be an event to look out for if you see yourself as more than a casual Naruto viewer. I’m pretty excited about it. :P

Details

Date: 22nd and 23rd Nobember
Time: 10:00am to 9:00pm
Venue: Suntec International Convention and Exhibition Centure, Halls 403 and 404
Ticket: $5 for one day, $8 for two days, children under 6 free