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！)