AFA 2013: I ♥ ANISONG ELISA (Interview)

ELISA

Photo Credits:  Project Harata

ELISA is a singer and model from Kanagawa Prefecture. She entered the music industry through a modelling contest in high school. Known for her wide vocal range, she has performed in Japan's largest anisong festival, Animelo Summer Live for four consecutive years since 2008.

Valvrave the Liberator 2nd Season ED: REALISM

Image Credits: SUNRISE/VVV Committee, MBS

This year, after a 16-month-hiatus, ELISA is back, singing the ending theme songs for Valvrave the Liberator. Like angela, ELISA performed in I ♥ ANISONG: Valvrave Night, with this concert being her first in Singapore.

Read on to find out more about her in Project Harata's interview!

Note: As this was a round robin interview,  we would like to credit the various media entities who were in the same group as us!

~Cheryl

AFA 2013: I ♥ ANISONG angela (Interview)

Atsuko and KATSU from angela

Photo Credits:  Project Harata

angela is one of the most popular Anisong bands in Japan, known for catchy theme/ending songs, such as "KINGS", the theme song of K. They made their debut in 2003, with "明日へのbrilliant road", the opening of Stellvia, and this year marks their 10th anniversary! Together with other Anisong artistes like T.M. Revolution and Elisa, angela performed in AFA'13 I ♥ ANISONG : Valvrave Night.

Read on to find out more about them in Project Harata's interview!

~Cheryl

AFA 2013: Guest Cosplayers Angie and Ying Tze (Interview)

Angie as Kotori from Love Live! and Ying Tze as Enoshima Junko from Dangan Ronpa
Photo Credits:  Project Harata

At AFA'13, Project Harata had the chance to interview guest cosplayers from Malaysia, Angie and Ying Tze who are also known as MMK meidos Ringo and Mio! They are rising cosplay stars in South East Asia known for their handmade costumes and amazing portrayals of characters. Both of them juggle their studies while going to international events.

Read on to find out more about their cosplay lives!

Note: As this was a round robin interview,  we would like to credit the various media entities who were in the same group as us!

~Cheryl

AFA 2013: AFA Cafe Experience

Picture Credits: MMK Facebook

AFA Cafe
(Moe Moe Kyun Cafe + Atelier Royale)

Event: Anime Festival Asia Singapore 2013

Organised By: Sozo, Dentsu

Date: 8th - 10th Nov 2013

Location: Suntec International Convention and Exhibition Centre

Link: http://www.animefestival.asia/

For lunch, we headed down to AFA Cafe with Jimmy (representing Tokyo Otaku Mode) to check it out! Click to read about our experience there (with a short bonus clip!)

~Emi

Anime Festival Asia (AFA) 2013 Day 2 & 3 (Part 2)

Event: Anime Festival Asia Singapore 2013

Organised By: Sozo, Dentsu

Date: 8th - 10th Nov 2013

Location: Suntec International Convention and Exhibition Centre

Link: http://www.animefestival.asia/

Continuing on from Day 1, here's a summary of Day 2 and Day 3! 

If you have not seen part 1 of our coverage, click HERE.

Or copy and paste this link: http://projectharata.blogspot.sg/2013/11/anime-festival-asia-afa-2013-day-2-3.html

~ Cheryl 
(with tiny inputs from Emi in greyish purple)

Anime Festival Asia (AFA) 2013 Day 2 & 3 (Part 1)

Event: Anime Festival Asia Singapore 2013

Organised By: Sozo, Dentsu

Date: 8th - 10th Nov 2013

Location: Suntec International Convention and Exhibition Centre

Link: http://www.animefestival.asia/

Continuing on from Day 1, here's a summary of Day 2 and Day 3! Even after walking around the event repeatedly, I have to say I was kept entertained with the many stage performances and booths!

~ Cheryl

Event Update: Anime Festival Asia 2013 presents 3 Days of Japanese Popular Culture Extravaganza

Artistes at the media preview yesterday

Photo Credits: AFA

Singapore, 8 November 2013 – Anime Festival Asia, South-east Asia’s largest premium experiential festival for Japanese Popular Culture returns for its 6th year today. For the first time, exhibition grounds, stage and concert halls are open for all three days from 8 to 10 November 2013 at Suntec Singapore Convention and Exhibition Centre. Jointly organised by Japanese investors Dentsu Inc & Zepp Live Entertainment, and Singapore-based organiser SOZO, Anime Festival Asia 2013 expects to welcome over 80,000 local and overseas visitors.

Anime Festival Asia (AFA) 2013 Day 1

Event: Anime Festival Asia Singapore 2013

Organised By: Sozo, Dentsu

Date: 8th - 10th Nov 2013

Location: Suntec International Convention and Exhibition Centre

Link: http://www.animefestival.asia/

Project Harata headed down to Suntec on the first day of AFA for a media preview! Unlike previous years, the exhibitions were open on Friday as well, and it was already quite crowded (The SAO booth was mostly empty by 3pm)!

~ New Junior Writer, Cheryl
Emi is busy with studies so I will be covering the event this time! よろしくお願いします！

Event Update: Anime Festival Asia 2013 Singapore

Event: Anime Festival Asia Singapore 2013

Organised By: Sozo, Dentsu

Date: 8th - 10th Nov 2013

Location: Suntec International Convention and Exhibition Centre

Link: http://www.animefestival.asia/

Looking forward to Anime Festival Asia (SG) tomorrow? Check out some of the offers that they will be having at the event!

(Note: These updates were gathered from AFA's Facebook as well as Sony's Facebook Pages)

~Emi

AFA SG 2013 Announcement!

SOZO has just release the website for Anime Festival Asia (Singapore) and announce the lineup for the concerts. Fan of the invited guest prepare to shell out money for tickets~!

Event: Anime Festival Asia Singapore 2013

Organised By: Sozo, Dentsu

Date: 8th - 10th Nov 2013

Location: Suntec International Convention and Exhibition Centre

Link: http://www.animefestival.asia/

Check out the announcement below!

~Emi

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