Report on Anime Festival Asia 2008

The Anime Festival Asia 2008 was held at Suntec Convention Hall 403-404 on 22 and 23 Nov. This report is based on my visit on 22nd Nov. It seems that cosplayers do not have to pay in order to enter the venue but I'm not sure on this point though. There weren't as many cosplayers as I expected (or they were in the cosplayers resting area?). There were many characters who I do not recognize but I saw at least 3 Suzumiya Haruhi cosplayers around. There was also Mr. Naruto and Mr. Ichigo from Bleach. I couldn't see any Tenipuri cosplayers though.

Anyway, be prepared for the long queue. The organisers only allowed online booking for people who buy tickets for both days so I had to join the queue. Well, if not for my visit to the Liang Court Kino, I wouldn't have known about the event but I wouldn't say that my expectations are met though. In fact, I left the venue after 1 hour or so.

Pardon me for the quality of the photos. I took them with my handphone and was quite surprised to see many people armed with professional cameras and flashlights whatsover. Guess I wasn't such a "serious" anime fan after all. :P Lighting wasn't too adequate for some areas while for some, the spotlights made it difficult to take a picture without a light spot.

First of all, I headed for the Shonen Jump 40th anniversary world tour. This was supposed to be the main highlight of my visit BUT I was very disappointed.

On the website of AFA 08, I quote the following:

"Co-organized by Chuang Yi Publishing, AFA08 will be showcasing exclusive artworks from Shonen Jump’s most popular Manga titles such as NARUTO, DEATH NOTE, D.GRAY MAN, DRAGON BALL, ONE PIECE, PRINCE OF TENNIS and more, in celebration of Shonen Jump’s 40th Anniversary!"

However, what this actually meant was one piece of colour drawing for the titles mentioned above and a coloured original drawing for one particular chapter in Dragon Ball! And mind you, the so-called exclusive artworks aren't that special after all. They've appeared before in various forms before. At least I can safely say that the Tennis no Oujisama picture appeared in one of the fanbooks and the picture book before. There goes the novelty of these exclusive pictures! There was also one short introduction on the story and author. Frankly speaking, I felt cheated. This wasn't what I expected.

Tennis no Oujisama a.k.a. Prince of Tennis - One of my favourite Top 3 characters is not here! What riles me more is that this is not a recent illustration too! Aargh!






And here's Death Note with L conspicuously missing from the lineup! Light, Ryuk, Mikami, Near and Mello are featured. Luckily, Misa isn't around. (You should know how much I dislike seeing Misa by now ^__^)








I nearly couldn't recognize this picture since the characters are not featured prominently. This is from D.Grayman. There are some other pictures of this series at another section of this event.





This has got to be one of the better pictures in this section because of its eyecatching colours and high resolution. Here's the picture from Bleach. Well, I don't watch this series (I heard it's still going on) so I don't have much to comment. I did see someone dress up as Ichigo though.




In terms of colour vibrancy, this should be No.1. Coming from One Piece, which is still ongoing and one of the top 10 animes every week in Japan.






Another long-life manga, NARUTO. Just like what happened to D.Gray-man, I had problems identifying it from afar.







Last but not least, Dragon Ball. As there was an entire set of drawings, I will only post one photo here. Anyway, I only took one photo so I do not have more to offer.






After visiting this section, I passed by the Animax booth where there was supposed to be an authograph session at 4pm by one of the creators from a new series to be shown on the channel. I didn't stay too long there. Animax was featuring three animes i.e. XXXholic, Darker than Black and Bleach. Much as I like Animax for bringing in a lot of latest series, I don't think I will ever subscribe to it. I simply don't have time to watch TV. I only watch TV during weekend nights so there's no point for me to have that channel. By the way, do they show it in the original track or show the dubbed version?



Next comes the highlight for a lot of people. Exclusive figurines from various companies are on show in the glass cabinets and everyone was furiously snapping away. It was hard to wait for a space to take the photos. For a start, here's Doraemon. Who's the yellow figure on the left though? I must say that Doraemon was the first anime I watched, no doubt it was dubbed in Chinese and shown on early Saturday. I believe it is still running on our local TV channel.

And coming next are some figurines from Death Note. Both in real-size and chibi-format, but from different companies:

In real-size format, Light, L and Misa are featured. Misa is shown as blindfolded as in when she was imprisoned by L. Closeup shots only available for Light and L:















The chibi-versions...I thought the Misa and Light figures didn't look good so I didn't take a close-up shot.






Last but not least, there's Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu... The reflection is really bad here. Using glass cabinets is fine but the organisers should not use see-through cabinets. When taking pictures, it is inevitable that we will also capture people who are walking on the opposite aisle. Coupled with lights from the ceiling and flashes, the effect on the photos isn't too good. It would have been better to use opaque surfaces at the back of the display.




At one corner of the exhibition hall, there are several arcade game machines where a gamer contest is being held. I couldn't get inside that area as it was rather packed. I could only see racing game machines like Initial D and Wangan Midnight at the outer side of the area. It appears that you have to use tokens to play these games but I'm not too sure as to how they decide the winners for this contest. There was a bigger screen at the inner part of this corner where an emcee was standing on an elevated platform. I think that could be the highlight game of this event.



ODEX, the anime VCD distributor now infamous for its lawsuits against anime downloaders, also had a corner peddling their stuff. What caught my eye wasn't their merchandise but rather the gigantic three-part panels which had an introduction of some of the new series like Skip Beat and Code Geass. Well, I watched only one episode of the anime and didn't really like it but it seems that the manga might be a better bet. I may just pick up the manga of Skip Beat one day. The D.Gray-man panels were also done up pretty nicely. Frankly speaking, if I want to buy animes, I will buy the original DVDs from Japan no doubt they don't have subtitles. I don't need them anyway. It's just because I feel that buying the originals is the best way to show support so I don't want to buy from indirect distributors. And the originals are much better in terms of content and packaging. That being said, the prices are of course much more expensive than the local versions. Of course, I can't deny that the presence of vendors like ODEX would have helped in boosting anime's penetration into the general market.

The three-part panel from D.Gray-man. A description of the main characters and story.







The reverse part of the panel.











Another side on the reverse side of the panel.








Last but not least, there's a feature on Sky Crawlers which is going to be shown from next Thursday in cinemas. I don't like the character design but it seems like ths story could be quite good. When they were screening the production introduction, I couldn't recognize Kikuchi Rinko who is voicing Kusanagi Suito. I could recognize Kase Ryo who plays the lead Kannami Yuichi though. I'm still thinking whether I should go and watch this movie. At the feature site, there are some model fighter planes and the making-of DVD from Japan on sale.

In conclusion, this anime festival was seriously lacking in some major areas:

- Focus on Gundam
It just feels as if the whole event is about Gundam, Lots of Gundam stuff on sale. Even though the website says that they will be bringing Akihabara to town, the limited range of merchandise is disappointing. I am sure Akihabara has more to Gundam. As such, I had nothing to buy there.

- 40th Shonen Jump exhibit
Cheated. It wasn't what I expected at all.

- Cosplayers missing?
I read from the website that there was supposed to be a cosplayers event at 2pm but I didn't see many of them. Just where did they go?

- Lighting and layout
It was quite dark at some spots so the spotlights on some of the exhibits were a hindrance when taking photos. The two-way glass cabinets wasn't such a good idea. Layout of the booths wasn't too good. Some sections had very narrow aisles while some like ODEX had so much space to themselves.

In short, if this is going to be held next year, it would be best to:
- have merchandise which are as extensive as possible. Anime is not just about Gundam or the lolicon genres. If Animate could set up a big booth here, it would be nice.
- allow online booking of tickets. The corridors at Suntec City aren't that wide so queueing up is troublesome and a squeezy event.
- not make empty promises. It was extremely disappointing to see exhibits which do not live up to expectations.