T_T

The Sojourner: Anime Festival Asia 2008 needs no explanation at this time as news about it has been greatly promulgated by bloggers in Singapore. Without any doubt, those who live FAR from Singapore are banging their heads against the wall in frustration. I may be making a preemptive conclusion here but it is hard not to believe that AFA 08 will be awesome with knowledge of what will be promised during the event itself.

• Koji Morimoto, who is a respected director in the industry, is going to be there to promote his new work ‘Genius Party’
• Kunio Okawari, the man who brought you the RX-78 and many other Gundam mecha designs, will show up. Mecha fans should be creaming in their pants after knowing that piece of news.
• Retailers like Alter, Kotobukiya and Goodsmile will be there probably to feature their upcoming releases.
• May’n WILL BE THERE PERFORMING SONGS FROM THE ANIME SHOW MACROSS FRONTIER.

Everyone is excited about May’n attending AFA 08! The official website for the event states that May’n took up the role of Sheryl Nome in the popular anime series Macross Frontier so I feel sorry for Aya Endou because there was no mention of her for her contribution as Sheryl’s main voice.
ID SOJOURNER: Hey.

The Sojourner: Yes?

ID SOJOURNER: Anime Festival Asia 08 is an event held in Singapore

The Sojourner: Yes.

ID SOJOURNER: You are not in Singapore.

The Sojourner: Yes.

ID SOJOURNER: You are pretty far from Singapore.

The Sojourner:Yes.

ID SOJOURNER: What does that imply?

The Sojourner: I ought to be in a state of despair.

ID SOJOURNER: Excellent deduction.

Together: This is worse than getting A- for your midterm. Let’s cry together.

T.T <– Not tears of joy.

P.S. The header for this post was originally Animal Festival. lol

Yeah. We went back.

Because we were pretty late on Saturday, I was determined to get to the event by 4 pm so that we could catch most of the action. But due to unforeseen circumstances, the P-Meister and I went on a tour around the east area of Singapore. The two of us decided to make our decisions in which turn to take through random coin tossing. Heads would mean a left turn, tails would make me go straight. There was no option for turning right since I was driving on the extreme left lane.

I swear we passed this place more than four times.

We eventually found the venue and it was already 5.30pm. But before we entered the hall where the event was taking place, the two of us had to make a visit to the gents because of a long drive prior to arriving.

The venue, known as Downtown East, is a chill out place for the regular Singapore family during weekends. So quite a few non-anime fans, simply curious people, were checking out what was going on. And the first thing that was humourous to me was the fact the nearest washroom had a shared makeup area that branches off to the respective sectors for the gents and ladies. Because one would have to pass through the common makeup place, I chuckled at how some regular folks were surprised by the presence of anime fans who were visually uncommon in their attire aka cosplayers.

The event was taking place mainly in two areas, the hall where the competitions were taking place, and just outside the hall where the cosplayers would loiter around for DSLR wielding warriors to take shots of them.

Speaking of DSLR users. This picture is SO accurate about my feelings when I use my puny digicam next to them.

Entering the hall, I was blasted away by a sudden burst of squeals and screams when the Bleach cosplayer on stage blurted out the word ‘the fans want yaoi!’. So ID Sojourner suddenly had control over me and I was screaming ‘HO YEAH! YAOI!’. Personally I wonder why did ID not scream ‘FUCK YEAH! YAOI!’ instead. So I was actually quite excited to witness how the crowd was getting restless and the partner on stage giving suggestive hints about how they ought to appease the agitated mob. So that lead to more ‘HO YEAH! YAOI!’ from ID.

Sad to say, Singapore has yet to embrace the yaoi paddle culture so I was sorely disappointed over the absence of rabid fans wielding paddles with the word ‘yaoi’ written over them. So unlike some who are abhorred by such a phenomenon, I would actually kill to experience it once. But sorry to say, even the craziest fans here in the Singapore anime community are still relatively meek as compared to the awesome stuff you get in say America. Never actually saw anything that was significant in qualifying as a reason for why we can’t have nice things but then I was pretty late upon arriving for Cosfest so there might be a chance that I had already missed those moments. So the fans and the cosplayers were pretty docile and friendly from my observations, and yeah no trees were harmed. Or maybe I was just blind.

DID SOMEONE SAY YAOI??

P-Meister was entrusted with the task of shooting the cosplayers while I ran off, just like Saturday, to begin my dungeon exploration. He has a knack in accosting the cosplaying folks but most of his photos tend to have an awkward object ruining the aesthetic feel of the shot. We decided not to use most of his shots since most of them had a dustbin, a yawning bystander or a leg just next to the cosplayers. And while I was loitering, I served as the P-Meister’s additional eyes in spotting cosplayers whom we would want to take pictures of.

The event was not just all about cosplay as there were booths for some to sell their fan art. And because the booths are arranged around the peripherals, I found it hard to navigate through those that were closer to the walls of the hall since people tend to crowd near the corners to rest.

It was not long before the event concluded, since we were late, and the winners of the Cosplay competition were revealed. And to wrap things up, a massive group Caramelldansen performance. I was amused when I saw those big swords from Bleach oscillating vertically from the midst of the dancing cosplayers on stage. Yeah so everyone was pretty excited and even some of the people from the audience joined in as well.

OH SHI

Anyway, these are some of the more presentable pictures that the P-Meister took. Not that I am complaining though.

Dear Anime Fans, today, me and Sojourner went to Downtown East (some place in Singapore) for an event none other than the Cosfest 2008. Oh, did I forget to mention, I’m in Singapore at the moment, till 28th of July where I’ll be going to Germany. Well, today was pretty fun but tomorrow will be better. There are many cosplayers of whom we had taken pictures. As Sojourner’s camera doesn’t have an anti-shake function, I apologise for the poor pictures but I did all i could to make the pictures good. Anyway, there were quite a number of pretty faces I’m glad to say. Here are the pictures. Be prepared for a picture spam post. The pictures would be put small so you can click on those which you want to view at a larger size. Enjoy… kekeke.

Click to enlarge smaller pictures.

At the End of it All! – P-Meister’s Thoughts

At the end, there was the Anime Karaoke and Anime Voice Dubbing Competition. In my opinion, the Anime Karaoke was ok. What really disturbed me was the Anime Voice Dubbing Competition. Whilst I’m a person who prefers fansubs to dubbing due to the different honorifics sometimes inserted etc, this dubbing tried to mix some Japanese words with English. It turned out really unnatural. The terrible volume control din’t make things any better. This is something I’m sure Otaking would have something to say about.

Besides that, I loved some of the costumes. Many of which are made nicely. Three of them that caught my eye were Gundam Exia, KOS-MOS and a girl with a white beautiful gown(pardon me for I don’t know your anime/game origin). Other personal favourites were KOF (Whip and Leona) and Misa from Death Note and Maka-Soul from Soul Eater. I was happy that the cosplay had a pretty wide range of characters and not dominated by a particular group. Others did well too, but I apologise for not mentioning. However, there were plenty of cosplayers from the anime of Bleach and Naruto. They seem to turn up at every event. Fortunately, they were different characters and I’m glad they realised that Kage Bushin in a Cosplay Event isn’t fun at all(unless he’s your twin brother). Their cosplay quality was done well too. Good work cosplayers.

And while we were at the event, the Sojourner just simply handed the camera to me and ran off. That made me wonder what in the world was he up to.

Ah, I see people are flaunting their skills on the ‘Graffiti Wall’.

You drew me again! Crazy fangirl!

Huh?

….

So this is what he was doing after vanishing.