Anime Festival Asia - AFA 2012 (Part 2)

(cont'd from PART 1)

From as early as 7am, visitors to Anime Festival Asia (AFA) started queuing up to purchase tickets to enter the event grounds. By 9am, there was a HUGE crowd gathering outside the door waiting to get into the event grounds to purchase the limited edition merchandise they have on sale.

Image Credits:Shazzsteel

Image Credits:Shazzsteel

Image Credits:Shazzsteel

*CHIONG AHHHHHHH* 

Utter pandemonium occurred once the doors opened to the public. 

Image Credits:Shazzsteel

The 7500 square metre festival grounds with over 100 exhibitors showcased the widest ever range of exclusive merchandise available in Singapore for the first time. This includes Pokemon's first appearance in AFA12, with exclusive items from its Pokemon Centres, games, and regular photo sessions with a Pikachu character.

Image Credits: Project Harata 

Over 100 dolfies from all over the world was showcased in the festival. The festival als saw a gathering of the biggest licence holders in the region and a Japan entertainment zone featuring top Japanese artiste management companies and record labels.

Image Credits:Shazzsteel

Image Credits:Shazzsteel

Image Credits:Shazzsteel

Image Credits:Shazzsteel

The Sword Art Online booth, which sold out it's merchandise within the first day of AFA

Image Credits:Shazzsteel

Image Credits:Shazzsteel

Danny Choo's Mirai booth

Image Credits:Shazzsteel

Image Credits:Shazzsteel

Image Credits:Shazzsteel

Image Credits:Shazzsteel

Image Credits:Shazzsteel

The maids and butler cafes featured a multi-national cast of maids and butlers taking on a new school inspired theme.

Image Credits: AFA Official Website

The Project Harata team checked out the cafe (we were the first in line!) on Saturday, and was slightly disappointed to note that they were only serving dessert. We were planning to have our breakfast there T.T

Nevertheless, the cakes were delicious and our serving maid, Chizu, was really cute! She did powerups with us, and even drew pictures on our plates with a selection of strawberry and chocolate sauce and mousse. Love the taste of the mousse, it was fluffy and sweet!

Image Credits: AFA Official Website

Who are your favourite girls ? 

My personal favs are Chizu, Mio, Ringo and Kiyo! 

Image Credits: AFA Official Website

Image Credits:Jimmy Cometa

Didn't check out the butler cafe cause we didn't really want to spend $40 on just desserts and coffee. And my favourite butlers were gone! T.T The boys of this year are still cute though!

Image Credits: AFA Official Website

Image Credits: AFA Official Website

The event also hosted a large crowd of Cosplayers showcasing their costumes on the event grounds. Check out the pictures Shazzsteel caught of the cosplayers roaming the event!

Thats all for AFA 2012! Thank you so much for the chance to write about AFA for all of you guys and hope that you have enjoyed our posts about AFA! 

Anime Festival Asia - AFA 2012 (Part 1)

Held on the 9th, 10th and 11th of November, the fifth edition of Anime Festival Asia (AFA) ended with a bang, with close to 85,000 visitors visiting the event grounds. The largest showcase of Japanese pop culture in Singapore ran from Friday to Sunday, and featured concerts, exclusive anime merchandise, a maid & butler cafe as well as cosplayers.

AFA 2012: RCC Champion Team SG (Interview)

PICTURE CREDITS: JIMMY COMETA

Section 8

https://www.facebook.com/WcsTeamSingapore2012

https://www.facebook.com/Section8Singapore

Raistlin

http://raistlin03.deviantart.com/

Shinji

http://worldcosplay.net/member/3516/

Cure No. 189408

Representing Singapore at the RCC held at AFA this year, Raistlin and Shinji competed against 4 other champions from regional countries Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines in an exciting finals and emerged as champions of RCC! 

We were lucky to score an interview with the champions with their hectic schedule, so read on !

~Emi

AFA 2012: Hiko & Mikot (Interview)

Credits: Golgolak's Den

Hiko's FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/HIKOCOSPLAY

Hiko's Blog: http://album.blog.yam.com/datowan

Mikot's FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/tokimikot

Mikot's World Cosplay account: http://worldcosplay.net/member/Mikot/

Meeting these 2 Taiwanese cosplayers were a real delight! Mikot looked really different up close and personal (as opposed to his pictures since he looks so different every single image) while Hiko was a ball of positive energy! 

The first time that i'm conducting an interview in Chinese (seeing as Seren does most of the Japanese interviews), and I was pretty nervous about it! Stumbled over my questions a couple of time simply cause I was too nervous....Guess it's time for more practice! 

Without further ado, Hiko and Mikot's interview!

~Emi

AFA 2012: T.M.R (Interview)

IMAGE SOURCE: LAST.FM

Official FB Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/tmrevolutionofficial

To tell the truth, neither Emi nor I was very psyched up about this interview – it was the morning and we’d both slept late and neither of us knew much about T.M.R – though I WAS extremely familiar with the songs he’d done for Gundam SEED and Destiny and did love them. Still didn’t know much about T.M.R himself.

Anyway, we entered the hotel waiting area armed with questions and trying to gear up for the interview, before we were informed that due to time constraints, each media rep would only be allowed one question.

And that T.M.R’s team would have to scan our questions for propriety.

And that THEY would be the ones choosing which question we would ask out of the list we’d submitted.

And that they just had to pick the most redundant question out of all the ones we had – the one about food. Singapore’s food, specifically, which kind of sort of I suppose is relevant, considering the fact that this was his first time in Singapore, but when everyone else is asking deep, meaningful questions about his career and whatnot, WE had to be stuck with the stupid, banal-

Guh.

So, I felt like an idiot asking it, but there you go.

~Seren

AFA 2012: Team Shikon (Interview)

Yukari's Cure: http://en.curecos.com/profile/?ch=113662

Kaito's Cure: http://en.curecos.com/profile/?ch=35172

Yukari & Kaito are Japanese drama actors, and are well known for being the Champion of WCS 2012. 

AFA 2012: Kaname☆ (Interview)

Official Webpage: http://www.cosp.jp/prof.aspx?id=8491

Official Twitter: http://twitter.com/knm0q0

So, Emi didn’t really want to interview Kaname. Because she’d already met him so many times. BUT I HADN’T.

Hence, although he is a very prominent figure in the event cosplay scene and he’s done a billion interviews - we bring this interview to you.

~Seren

AFA 2012: Reika (Interview)

PICTURE CREDITS: GOLGOLAK'S DEN

Official Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Reika/315573555144954

Worldcosplay: http://worldcosplay.net/member/87/

Just for a bit, please allow a moment of fangirling.

…KYAH.

Oh, bishiebishie girls…

I suppose since this was my second time meeting an amazing crossplayer (first being Touya <3), my reaction to her was quite subdued. Though, I warmed up to her considerably when she said that she was a fashion designer, a profession I had seriously considered in the past (and have now dropped, but still). I was very amazed when she said that all her costumes were 100% hand-made – most other cosplayers I’ve encountered have said that they do a little of both.

~Seren