To start off chronologically, the day started with me being later than Dneo (-_-;;) which was a bad start. Arrived at City Hall at ~9.10 to meet up with luminodrake and Carillus my SWR BFFs (I told them you were very sad about being in sabah herrick) who are taller than me and pretty cool people, because they got custom made Touhou shirts to wear for that day. Carillus is a bit like Marcus Ting haha. Dneo did not get to make friends at this juncture because he does not play SWR and thus I ended up doing most of the talking.
Got to Suntec and LONG QUEUE IS LONG. Got directed by the securitydude to the WRONG QUEUE and thus wasted an hour in the wrong one, where serados/junwei joined us, letting Dneo have someone to talk to. Screamed overly loudly (ie HAHA WHATTHEFUCK) at a fail Ranka carrot cosplay that walked past and was shushed.
Afterwards, got in the CORRECT QUEUE with the aid of lumin and was thus able to enter at 10+. What joy. Met up with Dhuran and his friend Colin who helped me to buy my LBEX pencilboards, which I shall provide pix of for fun.
Yes, I know the pic is fail quality. Something's wrong with my autofocus. Against a backdrop of History EE material.
Carillus attempted to get pencilboards and failed miserably because the KKnM queue was LONGASFUCK and they were all sold out. Rofl.
The first part of the first day was pretty much nothing interesting, walking around finding people I knew online to talk to (from sgab mostly) and amazing Dneo with my many internet connections. Basically, much time was spent at the MBAA machine watching Dneo noob around with Hisui. Gratz, rubbish throwing is now top tier.
Nothing much else was done, besides walking around and chatting with different groups of people. Small review of the booths here:
Gundam Display - Some pretty awesome stuff there as they were competitive entries, I guess for good pictures probably find other animebloggers or I'll try uling some of the fail stuff I took sometime.
Toy n Toys Figurine Display - The more well know names i.e. GSC, Maxfac, Alter, SquareEnix. A lot of nice figurines to admire, especially the set of Figmas =D
Chuangyi booth - Only took a quick glance, but seemed to have a pretty nice selection
Gaiaonline - FUCK THAT SHIT
Manga Kissaten - A bit weird to have such a place in a convention, didn't seem to have much business. D:
NUS Anime Club Booth - Graphite entries and some other artwork featured here. Plenty of great artwork here, as well as more white paper for graffiti.
CDS Booth - I didn't preorder the SW/Nanoha stuff, but am sorely tempted to for EOY. However along with the NUS booth had some nice stuff featured, beside it was some yaoi doujin booth or something lolwut
IFS Booth - AMAZING art. Even though I don't know much about them except that they designed some of the DotA loading screens, the few pictures there were seriously awesome.
Odex booth - featuring Shitna, Torafaila, Code Trainwreck, Shit Beat, and Casshern Sins. And selling Domo kun stuff (wtf?) well, at least they tried.
Studio 4(deg)C - Studio behind DMC. Koji Morimoto was having a autograph session there. Juen bought one of their books to be signed. Although sadly I know way too little about such a legendary group of animators, I must say it was pretty cool to see Morimoto-sensei there. He doesn't look at all like someone who would be behind DMC, lol. And by all reports he's quite an awesome dude (besides doing DMC) I'll probably go read up more on them in future, it is quite newfaggy to not know about them. Now I feel ashamed for not knowing them, sigh.
[Small edit: something fucked up in my original post resulting in the first half being cut off. and i can't remember what i wrote exactly. zzz fuckyoublogger nevermind no one saw it anyway so i'll just try to rewrite]
The highlight of AFA has to be Ichirou Mizuki (better known as Aniki)'s concert. Like Studio 4degC, I didn't know of him before AFA, so I guess one of the good things about AFA will be introducing me to his work and songs. However, Cleon/Herrick/Sera told me about him so I went to the concert with at least a bit of knowledge. And he blew away all expectations I had. Every song was filled with GAR, and his aura of manliness was palpable. After listening to the recorded ones on Youtube, I think he sounds even better live. There's no real need for a setlist, except that it was mostly his more well known songs such as Captain Harlock and Mazinger Z OP. He does know how to work the crowd as well, as expected of someone with 40 years of anison behind him. The atmosphere was great with people hyped up and singing along Mazin GO Mazingerrrrr ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Besides being a great singer and performer, he struck me as someone who did not let all of it get to his head, as he did so because of his passion. He interacted with the audience quite a lot, and always had a witty quip ready. Truly it's been my privilege to see Aniki perform up close, and I must say it's something I won't easily forget. If he somehow comes to SG again (with JAM project hopefully) I'll definitely want to pick up a VIP pass or something again, because he is fucking awesome.
Towards the end he came down into the VIP area and started circling the area, brushing the hands of the fans. As he came close to where we were, I was blocked by the 2 girls from pushing forward against the fence, and thus I fail. ): However, sera got to touch KAMI NO TE and thus is now filled with manly spirit.
The night ended off with an encore and the autograph session. I was sorely tempted to just jump the barrier and scream ANIKI but I decided even though he might think it was GAR the security probably wouldn't. On a post-concert high, Sera and I checked the Toy n Toys booth and found that Revoltech Yotsuba and Mass Production Eva were on sale, much to our delight and thus there went 30 bucks each.
In summary, AFA isn't really that great of a convention though. Prices jacked up (1 buck for 1 game of MBAA) and a bit of organizational failure. However, the concert made up for everything and I think while it does have its faults, being the first time such a convention is organised here, it will continue to improve. I did enjoy myself thoroughly though, since I had people to talk to and stuff to buy. It's just that I realise the rest of the people, who are less hardcore, will probably find less stuff interesting there.
On the subject of Aniki, here's a link to an interview which he did: http://naka-dashi.org/index.php/2008/11/interview-with-ichirou-mizuki/#more-1360
He's truly someone I have gained respect and admiration for after AFA.
Day 2 post soon.
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