Anime Festival Asia 2008 Mini-Gallery (Day 2)

Picking up from where I ended off in the last post, I shall start with more pictures of the exhibits from the anime booths.



Particularly interesting was the showcase exhibition of Genius Party Beyond from Studio 4°C. Below, you can see some of the stills and pre-renders from what is presumably part of the storyboard used by the various titles. Look at the attention to detail! Koji Morimoto, founder of the studio, was also on stage to talk about his works, the latest being 'Dimension Bomb' (which was visually stunning by the way, albeit a little abstract).

(The train station gives me 5 Centimeters per second vibes)






Following that, we have more figurines! First up, we have chibi Death Note characters, the same Vocaloids (かわいい！） as taken on Day 1 and Chun Li.





Up next is non-chibi Death Note characters and some ecchi thingy based on a certain someone's request. (Thanks for the Lenalee poster by the way!)




Last but not least, Mickey and Minnie! (Sadly, I did not see any Kingdom Hearts versions)




Unfortunately, due to class and lunch, I missed the cosplay competition and only arrived in time to take the last shot of them on stage. Nevertheless, many of them stayed on and hence, I actually have some pictures for show. Would probably have more if I wasn't so darn lazy with the camera XD

In the first picture, you can see Ichirou Mizuki, guest singer and one of the judges for the competition. I was not around for his concert on the first day, but I heard that it went pretty well.




There were characters from popular anime such as Macross Frontier, Bleach, Naruto, Gintama, Code Geass and too many others to name. If I am not mistaken, the obliging Ranka Lee cosplayer in the first picture below is the same one that I will be mentioning later. Interestingly enough, some actually cosplayed as a Menos Grande from Bleach instead of the more humanoid-looking characters :)







Finally, the main event for Day 2 would undoubtedly be May'n 'Live'. If you don't know who she is, she's the one who sang the songs for Sheryl Nome in the popular anime entitled Macross Frontier. If you are still clueless, wiki's yet another good friend. Since photo-taking and recording were technically not allowed, I'm contemplating removing the next few pictures after a while so enjoy them while you can. The quality of the pictures are really horrible though, so I doubt anything can be seen anyway. (I need a new cam!)

Anyway, she did mention that similar to her anime counterpart, she hopes that her voice can reach out to the real world and save it through her music.

Here's the tracklist of songs that she sang at the concert, in the order that she sang :

1. Welcome to My Fanclub's Night! (Sheryl on Stage)
2. What bout' My Star (Sheryl on Stage)
3. Infinity
4. Yousei ('Fairy')
5. Diamond Crevasse
6. Northern Cross
7. Iteza - Gogo 9ji - Don't be late (Sheryl On Stage)

Nakabayashi's voice 'live' was really good, with my only complain being that the backing track was not loud enough at times resulting in her voice drowning it out occasionally. I was hoping so much for a solo rendition of Lion, but alas, it was not to be. There was hardly any time for shouts of 'Encore!' to go around before she disappeared from stage.





[Northern Cross]



[Diamond Crevasse]



Post-concert, it was time for those who had purchased the VIP Diamond Pass to her concert to receive their pre-signed autographs and handshake. It was really amusing when the Ranka Lee cosplayer went on stage for her turn as May'n had this cute, surprised face upon seeing her! (I think there was a Sheryl Nome cosplayer who went up as well, but since I wasn't there at that time, I can't describe May'n's reaction then)




By the way, if anyone's interested, May'n has been blogging about her time here as well as some of her thoughts about the 'Live', so head over to her blog and take a look :)

Anyway, that's all the coverage for AFA08 and hopefully they'll be able to organize it again next year!


             (さよなら！)

Anime Festival Asia 2008 Mini-Gallery (Day 1)

Here are a couple of pictures of the random (or not so random) stuff that I took during the first morning of AFA 08 . . . I apologize if they are too blur to be seen clearly. On a side note, I did not take pictures of any retails booths or the arcade on either day, so they would not be appearing here =p

Greeting everyone near the entrance is the huge figure of Gundam Exia : エクシア、目標を駆逐する！ The next thing that caught my attention was the long line of people queuing up to purchase Gundam Model Kits, presumably the limited editions of Exia ?




Yup, you can feel Bandai's large presence . . . many different Gundam Models were put on display.



Next up, a whole ton of figurines were being displayed, such as Hatsune Miku, EVA, Fate/Stay Night etc. (The Tamagotchi booth banner does not count as a picture of a retail booth!)






Not many of the figurines exhibited were available for sale . . . a pity. Still, I probably can't afford those that were in the retail booths anyway, such as Bunny Suzumiya Haruhi with her guitar, Bunny Nagato Yuki with her guitar, Code Geass Knightmare Frames, Maid Rider from FSN, EVA Asuka, EVA Rei so on and so forth, but I digress.






I am pretty sure most people would recognize the following few figurines from Square Enix. We have Cloud, Tidus, Cloud, Yuffie, Cloud, Sephiroth . . . Ok, I don't exactly favor Cloud, it's just that they had more figures of him on display compared to the rest! (And that's not counting another 2 of him on his motorbike that I did not upload)








Holy utility belt, Batman! I sneaked a glance at someone else taking a picture of this same Batman model using a more professional camera, and it turned out almost like some movie still with a sepia tone added! The wonders of having a better camera -.-



Also on display were several art pieces from individuals and studios, probably from a local competition ? They were all pretty interesting and worth a look. Even pieces from current-season anime, such as Kannagi, were on display. The renders/art from Imaginary Friends Studio were particularly impressive! (The last 3 pics from the set below)







Following that, we have a showcase from Shonen Jump's 40th Anniversary Exhibition. I didn't take all of them though, so stuff like DragonBall is absent.







Last but not least are several images taken from the anime booths, organized by everyone's good friend. *cough*O...EX*cough*. Basically, these anime booths provide information and character profiles from the various anime that they represent. These range from older favorites such as Shakugan no Shana, D.Gray-Man and Code Geass, to current season ones such as Casshern Sins and Toradora. Each booth also has a TV screening clips from their respective DVDs.







Spot the odd one out!






Also, there was an exhibition booth providing information about the anime film, The Sky Crawlers. Although I did not take many shots of it, you can watch it in GV Cinemas from the 27th of November.



I did not stay for long on Day 1, so hopefully there'll be more to write about when Day 2 comes round! Can't wait for the mini-concert, heh.