Anime Festival Asia (AFAX)

I was not too eager or excited to attend the event as I don't really like cosplay and I don't want to see real humans ruin my 2D imaginations :p It was more of curiosity that drove me to go since this was my first time attending this kind of anime event. The entrance fee was $8. Add another $7 for the stage access. The event list was pretty ambiguous so I was not too eager for the other events too. In the evening, there was a concert and the ticket started with $55 for standing audience. I was not bothered about it because I thought the singers were not famous. Actually the singers were quite popular le lol...

To be frank, I was pretty disappointed. The exhibition hall was quite 'empty' meaning that there were not that many people rent the space. Considering that I hardly have time to follow the latest anime, I expected that there would be not many things I would find interesting and I would go home empty handed. When I attended this kind of event, I would always want to come back with something le :( In the end I only bought $8 worth of Saint Seiya Zodiac "coins". I was so happy.. but when I came back to open the thing, they are actually not COINS. They are just some lame plastic stuff... I don't even know what it is meant to be or how I can display it. Grr...

The entrance ticket and the 'wrist band' for stage access

The sign for Cancer is 69? How does 69 represent a crab? Haha..

There was one cute cat hat which I wanted to buy. I decided to look around for more interesting thing. There was nothing else interesting and when I returned to the cat hat shop, it was all gone :( Bleah. 

Below are some interesting displays that I took photos :)

Chopper. My friend's favourite!

Cool car with the AFA mascot

Saint Seiya Collection. $80+ per piece. Would love to have them all if I also can get the display case and diorama

More Saint Seiya stuff to drool on

Let's talk about cosplay. Honestly I am not a fan of cosplay but I have to applaud these "crazy" people for really putting so much effort for their hobbies. "Crazy" in a good way because the things which they created really made those props during Rag day seem trivial. I surprisingly find the cosplay competition quite entertaining to watch. Unfortunately, the audience was not really 'high' to spice up the atmospehere. Anyway I think it is very cool for these people to be able to go overseas, compete and win competitions etc just from their hobbies. Not to mention that many of them were very confident in posing and acting as their characters also up to the point of letting strangers even took photo of them. That was amazing!

My stand is still: some things are better left to imagination. Haha that's why I think my favourite cosplayers were the Red and Green Power Rangers. Lol.. It was because they wore a mask.. But after I saw that they got a bit of flab and when they turned around, the underwear mark was seen, it was quite disgusting and ruined my childhood memories haha

But the most shocking discovery today was that there were many guys cosplaying as FEMALES! They wore dress, wig, fake boobs etc, but they forgot one thing: their face! Gosh.. Seriously although there is term "crossplay" to describe cosplaying of character of an opposite gender, to me guys dressing as girls will always be CROSS-DRESS! Bleah.. There were quite a lot of them that by the end of the day, before saying this girl is chio or not, I would be more careful. Never know that they would be guys LOL.. Now I honestly doubt my ability to distinguish guys and girls hahaha...

In conclusion, I have answered my curiosity. Just some pointers for this kind of events in the future:

1) Come in the morning since there would be less crowd. You will have more chance to take photos and to shop. I was surprised that by lunch hour, many things were already sold out :( including the stuff I wanted haiz

2) Act like tourist. Lol! Just be thick skinned and take photos of the things you like

3) Don't think too much. When you see something nice, just buy before they are sold out.

4) Don't wear too nice unless you are cosplaying.

The last one is very personal. I still have 3 vests from Korea that I had no chance to wear so I decided to wear today. I bumped into 3 friends there and the first thing they asked me was "Are you cosplaying?". I was like -_- I thought I was wearing something normal. Haha.. Oh well actually on the way out, I saw someone wearing something like I wore, but he wore blond spiky wig ba haha..

Overall it was a pretty interesting day. For sure, I don't expect that there are that many otakus here. I think it's the event organisers who earned the most from the entrance fee. But the way these fans bought the souvenirs were also rather scary. And in the end, I still cannot decide, which is crazier: screaming fans over some boybands or cosplayers??

The big question is: Will be back next year or for similar event? Lol to be honest, the pulling factor for me to attend is the merchandise. Unfortunately, since I hardly have the time to follow the latest manga and anime, there would not be anything interesting for me :( So it will depend on my mood :p

I don't normally put my pictures here but well, it's a bonus for today :p