AFA09 Singapore

hmm , i'm after saw this event's
FESTIVAL ANIME ASIA 2009 at Suntec Convention & Exhibition
on November 27-28th 2009 same with event's our moeslim ,eid adha

Anime Festival Asia 2009, or AFA09 for short, was held over 2 days in Singapore at the Suntec Singapore International Convention & Exhibition Center. The event is in its second year running and is meant as a celebration of Japanese pop culture. And I’m sure it has been a tiring two days for organizers, exhibitors and visitors alike… I know I am. I trekked the event for 2 days and the aftermath are sore legs and the following field report of my experience this year.

.

Anime Festival Asia an event focusing on Japanese animation and popular culture, ones again returns at 2009. AFA2008 was a highly successful event that attracted many people even from other countries..

.

One addition this year is the Moe Moe Kyun Meido cafe. It is a good idea although I didn’t try it out as I find the prices of the food a tad too expensive for me. Probably would have been good for the experience, but oh well.

As like last year, one of the attraction of the festival is the anime concert. The theme this year is I Live Anisong and the organizers invited a strong cast for the concert this year with the likes of Ichirou Mizuki, Yoshiki Fukuyama, May-N and Shoko Nakagawa, a.k.a. Shoko-tan, and not forgetting Hatsune Miku. But poor me have no money to attend.

I did however, manage to catch Shoko-tan in person during her autograph session.

It was really tough jostling with so many people around trying to take photos of her and the security guards looking to push everyone away…LOL… I manage a few shots eventually though they didn’t turn out very well. >_<>

There were plenty of live stage events throughout the two days event though. And kudos to the organizer, I feel that the live stage was a big improvement from last year with bigger arena and better content.

This year’s event were also swarmed with cosplayers. Even though I do not know much about cosplaying, I do feel that there are major improvements in the quality of the cosplays this year compared to last year. And I also ended up taking loads of photos of the cosplayers. I had intended to do a separate post on the cosplayers but I guess these lot will do. ^^.

.

Sorry, I just had to post that last Gundam cosplayer … LOL … I guess some cosplayers are hit hard by the economic crisis. ^^” Anyway, jokes aside, while it was hilarious, I thought it took a lot of courage to do something like that knowing that you will probably end up as a joke.

Due to the limitation of the exhibition arena, the cosplayers actually spilled over and started to gather at the level 3 foyer where there was huge space. Needless to say, it was also swarmed with photographers. Thus, it was really hard to make eye contact with the cosplayers when taking the photos. It is especially so for my point and shoot camera to jostle for attention against the DSLRs. ^^” That said, many of them did try to make as eye contact with as many photographers as possible.

There were many K-ON cosplayers, as well as Sheryl Nome and Ranka cosplayers. My favorite of the lots this year would be the Black Rock Shooter cosplayers. Their cosplay were all really great and it must have took them ages to do the gigantic Black Cannon.

Overall, I thought the event was pretty good and probably slightly better than last year. I just wish that more space could have been allocated to the exhibition arena. And hopefully, next year, maybe more figure exhibitors and makers like Alter would be invited. And of course more idols and seiyuus. Onegai shimasu.

Hope all who was at the event enjoyed the occassion. Looking forward to AFA10. Ja, mata ne! ^.