Here’s Part 2 of our ongoing AFA report! Covering the stage events of the day (with the exception of the concerts)!
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Stage Events
Within less than a day, it is possible to walk one complete round around the grounds and visit almost every areaseveral times over. If you had planned to make the convention a full day affair, there are better things to do than to visit booth X for the upteenth time in a day.
Fortunately the organisers made use of the convention’s enormous stage, with stage events for the most part of the day, though the interest level of these events vary.
Leading most of these events were a pair of male and female MCs. Both of them were billingual, seemingly fluent in both Japanese and English with most of the conversations switching back and forth between the two languages, useful considering the number of Japanese guests at the convention. I can’t recall the male MC’s name as there was nothing interesting about him other than that he seemed a little bit “fish outta water” and his penchance for pronouncing “Code Geese”. The female MC Reiko was more memorable as it was often her whointeracted with the guests onstage. she also participated in singing during Aniki’s concert on the first day and as a result had somewhat of a sore throat the second day. In all, both were pretty professional, as expected of an event of this level.
Power Rangers with SOS-dan cosplayers
Anticipating a healthy share of younger convention goers, some event line up were geared more for children. This included a few repeated Tamagotchi and Power Rangers live shows which included phototaking sessions with hired help dressed in full mascot gear or appropriate costume. Probably great fun for the kids I guess. Also a quick preview of Bandai’s Sangoku Den Gundam model kit line, whose chibiesque designs leave no doubt as to their target audience. There was also the ineractive game 5 second stadium starring 5 second man, in a display of Japanese milking power ingenuity making a game out of making people accurately time 5 seconds (“with their heart!”).
Bakuc Champion – Perfect Zeong
Several Competitions also conducted their prize presentation ceremonies at AFA. Bakuc the gundam modeling competition whose finalist entries were on display on site presented the awards to top winners in the different categories, including a special prize from Kunio Okawara, the visiting mechanical designer behind many legendary Gundam designs among tothers. Competing art competitions Mangaka and Graphite (organised by NUS Comics and Animation Society) also held their prize ceremonies on the two seperate days. And of course there was the cosplay competition which will be covered in the cosplay section later in this report.
Graphite Competition Prize Ceremony
There were also a few screenings at the stage. Most dominant of them was the screening of the Gundam 3D animation OVA “MS IGLOO” of 6 episodes screened seperately, presumably supplied by collaborator Odex. Screened dubbed in English, the dub itself was pretty good, but the 3d charaqcter models were contorting their faces in ways that did not really match the words. Good effort nevertheless.
There was plans to have a full screening of Genius Party Beyond, put that was cut short as the preceding event ran overtime. Fortunately visitng director Koji Morimoto managed to reach a satisfying compromise. This is detailed in our next part on the visiting guest speakers.
