Some lovely anime wallpapers for your home?

Bandai had Kabuto at the event. Should have stolen his costume =P

Animax gave fans a chance to try out their own dubbing, and maybe talent spotting as well.

Lovely fashion show by the gorgeous girls from Kuro Bara.

Anime songs karaoke anyone?

Mamoru Hosoda, the director for Summer Wars during an autograph session. He was really approachable and took time to speak to the 15 folks who got the chance for an autograph.

Gigantic domo-kun plushie. I think it cost like $200 but I have no idea how anyone could have brought it home.

Ota-cool book signing session with Danny and the lovely Filipina cosplayers Alodia and Ashley Gosiengfiao.

Time for concert! I really like the large “I love anisong” helium ballons.

Gurren Lagann: Pierce through the heavens!!

So any of you naughty boys and girls took some photos for your personal collection?

There was a huge turnout for his cosplay panel session and the event hall was filled all the way to the end. Thanks to the media pass and I was able to avoid the crown and capture shots for your viewing.

Kaname shared quite a few different topics on cosplay, including character selection, costume selection, makeup, and posing. I never knew there was so much preparation work to be done beforehand.

Did you know that Kaname had cosplayed over 20+ characters and 34 versions?! He shared that in order to have more variety in his character selection, he had to maintain a neutral body shape so that his arms would look slim when he relaxes but looks muscular when he flex his arms.

On the topic of costume selection, Kaname shared that he prefers costumes which allows him to reveal some masculine parts such as his arms or back. One disadvantage would be that it is very chilly in the winter ^^

There was quite an elaborate discussion on applying makeup. I had no knowledge of makeup at all so I was clueless about what was the difference between an eyeliners or eyeshadow.

In the next section, Kaname revealed that he was still learning to sew his own costumes. He would be interested to learn from anyone who was experienced in this area. I’m sure there will be many female fans who want to be his personal tailor at that moment.

Finally Kaname shared on the different type of poses: Action, Still and Professional Photoshots. For action poses, sometimes it might be useful to move about with the photographer trying to capture all that motion with a fast shutter. For still poses, it was important to bring out the mood of the character. He also shared on some of the dynamic poses that he had to do for professional photoshoot for magazines.

Kaname then gave a great final messages to all his fans and cosplay enthusiast. He shared he had only started cosplaying 2 years ago and he was very touched (he had some tears of joy) to see so many people outside of Japan sharing the same passion as him.

Anyway, the Tokyo Figure Show Singapore was a great showcase. So here’s a big thanks to Danny and the kind folks at GoodSmile Company for bringing the figure show to Singapore.

Shokotan has updated her blog that she has landed in Singapore and her first meal is a plate of yummy chicken rice (it looked like the food court in Marina Square).

Mr Tsuguhiko Kadokawa [角川 歴彦], Chairman and CEO of Kadokawa gave the keynote speech on how Japanese content are being spread all over the world with globalisation.

The most anticipated segment was when Mamoru Hosoda [細田 守], director of “Summer Wars” and “The Girl who Leap Through Time” came onto the stage. He gave some interesting insights on how to create anime blockbusters, and he shared that he is a big fan of Hayao Miyazaki since elementary school and was subsequently inspired to produce anime. For a young director that created two successful blockbusters, I thought that he was very modest. Folks can still catch him during his interview segment on the first day of AFA09 (11am-12pm).

Next up was a session whereby StormLion announces their latest collaboration with Production I.G. – Titan Rain. The CEO of Production I.G. was also present (fourth from the left), and he was an interesting guy that spoke with lively gestures.

Mr CK Phoon then came up on stage and shared some interesting insights on distributing the recently released adapted animation of Astro Boy in three different countries: China, US, and Japan. He was a great presenter and shared that the movie was received very well in China but performed poorly in US and Japan. He then ran though why the movie was a hit or miss in each of the country.

Shiro Sasaki, CEO of Flying Dog then share with us how music sountracks can injection new dimensions of storytelling into an anime series. His company is quite impressive and manages talents like May’n, Fiction Junction and Maaya Sakamoto. He shared on why they had decided against using well-known singers in the anime series Macross Fronter. By using a relatively unknown singer, fans would have the better experience of beliving it was Sheryl Nome singing to them instead of some well-known singer like Madonna.

Soon it was mid-afternoon, and time for some yummy grub. Many folks also took the chance to network and exchange business cards.

After lunch, DannyChoo got onto the stage and did a great presentation on his mirai platform and consumer generated media. Thanks to his exciting slides on oppai mousepad and itasha, nobody fell asleep.

Mr Kotaro Sugiyama, Senior Vice President, Head of Solution (Strategy) / Creative Department, Dentsu Inc then came onto the stage and shared with us some of the amazing marketing campaigns that were conducted by Dentsu. I was quite amazed to find out that they were the ones responsible for conceptualising the Life Size Gundam and Honda x Ultraman Stepwagon CM.

The final speaker for the day was Mr Vince Shortino, President of Crunchyroll Japan branch. He shared on the challenges Crunchyroll faced when trying to obtain licences from the various publishers to stream anime online. I totally agreed with his viewpoint that by being able to deliver subtitled anime to fans in a timely fashion, it would reduce illegal distibution of fansubs. Fansubbers would no longer see the need to fansub an anime that is already subtitled and available legally.

The final panel session saw those on stage continuing the discussion on how to engage the anime fans while protecting the intellectual property rights of the production companies.

Overall, I was happy to have attended the Animation Asia Conference 2009, and the sessions were well-paced. I would have prefer if they actually let the audiences ask some questions during the panel discussions, especially since there is a moderator on stage. The only glitch for the event was that the translation was done poorly and thus I ended up missing some segments of what the Japanese speakers had to say. I do hope the organisers will continue the conference and bring in more great speakers for next year ^^

The guests were invited to leave their signature on AFA-kun. Mamoru Hosoda left a very lovely signature on the left leg of AFA-kun. Not really sure but I think he drew Natsuki Shinohara from Summer Wars. And here’s Mizuki-san adding his final touches to AFA-kun.

So how many of you are heading to the event tomorrow? If you are looking to have a quick chat with me, just drop me an email using the contact form in the header. Alternatively you can try spotting me whereby I would be wearing a black project miku t-shirt and carrying my 5D Mark II ^^

Top row:
- PG Gundam 00 Raiser Preorder
- HGUC Unicorn Gundam (Unicorn Mode)
- HGUC Unicorn Gundam (Destroy Mode)

Bottom row:
- MG Zaku II MS-06J [Ver. 2.0 Extra Finish Ver.]
- MG Gundam RX-78-2 Ver. 2.0 [Mechanical Smoked Ver.]
- MG Impulse Gundam [Coating Ver.]
- BB Senshi Knight Gundam, Commander Gundam, Rekka Musha Gundam

The MG Impulse Gundam [Coating Ver.] looks really cool, maybe I would one for myself if I manage to squeeze into the queue at Bandai’s booth.

The event guides will also be handed out on the day itself so there’s no need for you to print out a copy ^^

As for myself, I would be there for the full 3 days (including AAC’09) so I’d need losta rest beforehand.

I thought the segment about flying lightstick was kinda funny. Wonder what would happen if people just started throwing lightsticks at each other.

So how many of you folks have already purchase tickets to see the concert? ^^