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.

So all the cards are finally on the proverbial table. In addition to whatever was announced during the first press conference, the final details for Anime Festival Asia 09 was released this Wednesday (or last Wednesday depending on your preferred usage) during a blogging conference (hurray new media?). Being really short on free time these days, it naturally took me three whole days to write this post. You know you are getting old when you no longer care about first post.

Refer to my previous post for the prior announcements. The new details are as summarized below:

• “Live” performance by Hatsune Miku. You can see how it will look like here.
• Live dubbing by K-ON! seiyuus
• Showcases by Tatsunoko Productions and MADHOUSE Studio
• COSPA retail presence
• Weiβ Schwarz Grand Prix (it’s a moe anime TCG game)

In addition, the anime song performances will be split between the two days of the event, with Ichirou Mizuki, Shoko Nakagawa and Hatsune Miku on day one and Yoshiki Fukuyama and Mayâ€n on day two. The concert tickets are priced at S$188 for two days and S$108 for one day. You can also purchase regular entry tickets to the event for S$15 for one day or S$25 for two.

I think the most interesting thing to me is probably the joint performance by Yoshiki Fukuyama (who performed as Basara, the lead singer of FIRE BOMBER, in Macross 7) and May’n (who performed Sheryl Nome’s songs in Macross Frontier).

Think about it: quite a few of FIRE BOMBER’s songs are duets. The AFA organizers aren’t wiling to confirm anything, but it’s not inconceivable for May’n to assume the role of Mylene and perform a few classic Macross 7 pieces with the great Basara himself. That’d be awesome. If it happens anyway. Planet Dance!

Still, the ticket prices have gone up this year. Since I have effectively zero income right now and still have an expensive college education to save up for, choices will have to be made with the utmost prudence. Hmmm…

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.

Cosfest VII was held over the weekends at Downtown East. It is an annual cosplaying convention, home to the Singapore qualifying round for the World Cosplay Summit in Nagoya, Aichi, along with other animé-related events and competitions. Also, the cutest Haruhi cosplayer ever. :O

Cosfest VII was held over two days. I was busy on Saturday so I had to miss the anime song karaoke competition. Apparently the winner Rika (a 2006 performance by her) sang Nico Nico Douga Gasshou Kumikyoku in its entirety. You can watch a low-quality recording on YouTube.

As usual, there were too many Bleach and D.Gray-man cosplayers for my taste. I guess it’s up to people do decide what they wish to cosplay as, but it’s becoming a textbook example of conforming to be different. I think good cosplays are a form of self expression, and cookie-cutter costumes somewhat defeat the point of the entire ritual.

I have nothing else to say, so here are the pictures.

Awesome

It’s a girl

We are all special!

涼宮ハルヒの週末

Annhilating targets

I wish I had a proper external flash

意義あり！ Objection!

I’ve taken this exact composition at least five times before

The only good game on NDS until the next Gyakuten

Exia deploys some kind of energy wave weapon

This is not LotR

Sometimes I can’t decide if Pita-Ten was over or under-rated

There was no Miku :(

wtf

This is no cosplay. This is the real Ayu

Uguu~

Usagi-su

Tony Stark makes a surprise visit

I can never tell these people apart

Zero idea what this is

The hair colour is really authentic

That’s not the paper aeroplane Alto folds

FFVIII is guilty pleasure

アニヲタが溢れた世の中に絶望した

マクロス７に絶望した

å†çœŸã‚’きれいに撮れない僕に絶望した

C-C-Combo breaker

最近のくそアニメに絶望した

As usual, the rest of the photos are in my gallery. Cosplayers depicted, feel free to contact me if you want the original 10-megapixel JPEG. But that won’t happen because my photos suck. :(

I dropped by the inaugural Singapore Toy and Comic Convention today to see the CosCon cosplay competition. As expected, the number of cosplayers who turned up was significantly smaller than those of dedicated cosplay events in Singapore, such as Cosfest and EOY.

I was planning to give this event a pass because I could tell that cosplay was going to be a really tiny afterthought, and the event itself was targeted more at general nerds and toy collectors, as opposed to hardcore otaku who have crossed the line of no return, devoid of souls and cash, loyal minions of the queen of the underworld.

You could tell that this was not my comfort zone by the high Star Wars presence in the hall, so strong it was that those attuned to the way of the Force could walk to Suntec City from City Hall station blindfolded, guided only by the scent of fellow Lucas worshippers.

Long, long ago, George Lucas was in love

Awesome cosplay by a really thin smurf

The Guest of Honour, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew

I loved Star Wars as much as the next geek, but it’s just not my cup of tea when it comes to life-destroying addictions. Considering the fact that anime and cosplay were probably not going to be a prominent part of the programme, it was my original intention to stay at home today.

Luckily, my common sense was temporarily overpowered by a series of coincidences that can only be described as Haruhi’s divine will, and, against my better judgement, I decided to show up at the convention hall with my Canon 400D, the premier lowest-tier DSLR for cheapskates who want to appear professional in the eyes of the ignorant regular folks with their child-size compacts.

This photo was taken from a restricted area

I say luckily because despite being a general waste of my precious afternoon which I could have otherwise spent watching the original Macross (Lin Mingmei ^^), there was one cosplay which made it worth my effort. (I’ll leave you guessing which one…)

Alright, enough nonsense. On to the photos.

It offends my sensibility that FFVII characters can fly with one wing

The vibrating cat of doom!

Okay fine it was the Hatsune Miku cosplayer. Surprisingly, she came in first place in the competition. I say surprisingly not because her cosplay wasn’t the best, but because the contest was determined by voting and I didn’t think Miku’s character would be popular enough (compared to Naruto and Crisis Core).

It’s quite cool cause the lights on her arm bands actually light up. Also, the Miku cosplayer told me that she reads my blog and actually discovered the wonders of Vocaloids on this very site. It brought a tear to my eye knowing that I helped to change the world for the better. Heh. (Wonder what she’ll be cosplaying as for Cosfest next week.)

Sadly, the organizers placed the cosplayers in the most poorly-lit corner of the entire hall, which, along with the fact that I had to depend on 400D’s internal flash, meant that I managed to produce some of the crappiest cosplay photos I’ve ever taken since my pre-DSLR days. I really ought to cough up 500 bucks for a Speedlite some day.

And on a closing note…

Everyone’s favourite anime company

I attended Xbox 360’s 2nd anniversary (in Singapore) party last night (April 3rd). It’s basically a small invite-only event for developers to showcase some of the upcoming titles to local bloggers and an excuse to have cake. I’m not exactly sure why I was invited, but apparently someone from GameAxis recommended me to the Microsoft PR people.

The party itself was basically just a series of presentations by employees from various companies like EA and LucasArts. The entire thing consisted of only about 40 odd people. Everyone kind of knew each other, so I was kind of out of place since I have just about zero involvement in the local gaming scene. I was actually approached by someone who reads my blog which, considering its quality in recent months, was somewhat surprising.

Anyway, I’ll just take a quick run through what was covered during the event:

Ninja Gaiden II

No, no one from Team Ninja was there, but the Microsoft people did have a playable build of this animated bloodfest on-hand. The graphics and animation are all top-notch. It looks like it’s going to be a hit as expected, but it’s not my type of game.

Will be out in midyear. (I think.)

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

You play a previously unmentioned Sith apprentice of Darth Vadar who is charged to eliminating the remnants of the Jedis after the coup. During the game, you will eventually be presented with moral options that will determine whether you break free of the dark side.

The people from LucasArts Singapore were there with a playable build of the game. I have to say that it looks very, very awesome. Everything is super fluid and your force powers can affect just about anything that’s not part of the ground. You can use force push to bend metal doors with the physics engine doing real-time calculation of the metal warping. And you can even bend a door back to seal off the enemies behind you after you pass through.

Of course as with past games you can throw your enemies around like rag dolls with your force powers, but now you can choose to fix your cameras on the options you throw around to get a rocket view of the projectile’s path of destruction. Not to mention that you can actually throw TIE fighters around…

After watching the LucasArts people demo a fight scene with a giant Rancor, I think this may just be the best Star Wars game ever. (Or maybe I’m just easily impressed.)

The Force Unleashed will be released on 16th of September in USA, 17th in Asia and 19th in Europe. (I hope I remembered that right…) Apparently this is some sort of exclusive revelation, but I guess the rest of the bloggers present at the event should’ve blogged about it by now. Heh.

Grand Theft Auto IV

Nothing much. They showed the demo video which is already available online publicly. Interestingly though, the Microsoft people assured us that GTA will finally be available in Singapore, due to a new video game rating system which they managed to convince the MDA to adopt. I guess they don’t want a repeat of Mass Effect.

Dragonball Z: Burst Limit

A playable Japanese demo was shown and the fighting effects are surprisingly good. The camera moves in and reorientates around the 3D plane when you have some combo or power attack going.

It really has to be in motion to work…

Alone in the Dark: Central Park

Frankly, I don’t like horror games. I can’t stand them. Call me a wimp or whatever, but I just don’t find them fun. The environmental interaction looks like it has some potential, but the short gameplay demo didn’t really showcase much of it. I guess some people are probably looking forward to this. Midyear release… I think.

Dead Space

EA’s first foyer into the sci-fi horror genre (or something like that). EA didn’t have any playable demos for this, so I can’t really form any opinions about this in terms of content and gameplay…

… But at the risk of reaching a hasty conclusion, I’d say that this looks uninspired. The game from EA basically admitted it himself when he said that it’s like Doom.

EA also talked about some other games, like UEFA 2008 and Mirror’s Edge, but it’s quite clear that the guy didn’t really have much to show off. The EA guy was also the only one who used Powerpoints… (I mean, seriously…)

I’m actually quite interested in Mirror’s Edge from DICE, the studio responsible for the Battlefield franchise. The game is basically parkour inspired urban running set in an Orwellian future.

Free Stuff

There was a lucky draw at the end of the event and someone walked home with a Halo Xbox 360. The rest of us less-fortunate bloggers got a swag bag instead.

Man, what am I going to do with a wireless controller when I sold off my 360 ages ago?

P.S. The cake is a lie.

For some reason, I was coerced into helping to publicize for this event that is happening at the National University of Singapore (NUS) next week. All the really cool stuff takes place at NUS. Anyway, NUS Comics and Animation Society is having some kind of…bazaar or something from 5th to 7th September. It’s really kind of hard to tell from the name. Yeah.

There will be a whole bunch of anime-related dorky activities which you can read about in greater detail in the promotional poster. The location is NUS LT 27 and you can get there via bus 95 from Buona Vista MRT. Also, I won’t be there.

Sadly they didn’t win. I don’t remember the name of the winner, but she performed a song from DN Angel that was neither the OP nor the ED. I thought she sang very well too, but the song was meh.

BEST COSPLAY THIS YEAR

Okay, with that out of the way, continue reading for the rest of the cosplay pictures.

And yes I was wearing my ROD T-shirt on Sunday.

Congrats to those who spotted me. You won! There’s no prize, though.

Anyway, there are still a lot more pictures that are not included above. You can see them all in the gallery:
Day 1 Gallery
Day 2 Gallery

Now I shall go take a rest… Feel free to contact me to request for the original pictures (10 megapixel JPEG).

Head to the gallery for more cosplay pictures from the event (including the SOS-dan group). Also, a whole bunch of Danny Choos and a red balloon! Weee.