Anime Festival Asia 2011 - Day 2 - Part 2

Arrrrrgggghhhh.... it's so late again and I have to write this post quickly... no choice.  But this time it is entirely my own lack of self-control. :p  My mum was watching 大清风云 (daqing fengyun) a 2006 Mainland Chinese production on the rise of the Manchus and the establishment of the Qing Dynasty in China.  Fascinating stuff and I was hooked and started watching several episodes with my mum.  I really like history in general and China's history in particular, hence, why I am happy to go visit the Mainland even though I am terrified of getting food poisoning and the toilets sometimes leave much to be desired... but the scenery, the history, the larger then life historical figures, the legends, the stories etc etc keep drawing me back.  And next year, I am hoping that Sunsetrose and I will be able to make a trip up to Xi-an to see the amazing Terracotta Warriors.  I did go see some of the Terracotta Warriors collection in an exibition at the Asian Civilizations museum earlier a few months ago... but that is something for another post and one I really should write about someday.  But I digress... :)

Back to Anime Festival Asia 2011... :)  I wasn't able to go to the festival in the morning at all and so I got two of my friends to help me buy some stuff.  One of my friends helped me to buy the Rock Your Soul t-shirt, the Kalafina AFA t-shirt and the Kalafina lanyard.  The other friend helped me to buy the Cheerful Version Hatsune Miku nendoroid.  I actually liked the Black Rock Shooter nendoroid more but  that sold out by 10am and he couldn't get there in time, so I settled for my second choice.

The crowd on the second day at the festival was crazy.  It was so packed with people on the 4th floor there was barely any space to walk.  It didn't help that there were a lot of cosplayers in the corridor outside the exhibition halls and lots of photographers snapping photos of them.  I don't blame them though... the AFA is for otakus, cosplayers and all who love Japanese anime and pop-culture.  The venue, on the other hand, maybe getting a little too small for AFA with each passing year.

I think a lot of people were there to try and get exclusives or to get their grubby hands on the merchandise first, in case anything ran out on the third day.  Today maybe the 12th may be the second day of AFA but  it was the first day that the festival, i.e. all the booths, was open.  I know I was there for that reason and I'm sure I wasn't the only one.

AFA is nothing like the huge comicon in San Diego or like Comiket in Japan but it's still decently big as it took up 3 halls on the 4th floor of the convention centre. One of those halls was reserved for the stage where stage events and the anisong concerts would take place.  The other two halls housed the merchandise booths, the theatre, the maid & butler cafes etc.  We only had tickets to the concert on the 3rd day as I was only truly interested in seeing Kalafina and angela both of which, luckily for me, were due to appear on the same day.

The other reason why I was there was for the live dubbing session by Saitou Chiwa who is a well established seiyuu.  I rushed to Suntec without having eaten lunch after my class so that I could catch Akemi Homura's seiyuu in action.  It was really cool too and the live dubbing session was really fun to watch.  I would like to zip through the videos so that I can write down the exact episode each scene was taken from but it's getting late so I think I'll do that another day.

She was joined on stage by Danny Choo who did the translation for her.  Iwakami Atsuhiro, the producer for Fate/Zero and Mahou Shoujo Madoka also made a surprised appearance on stage.  While on stage, he answered a few questions.  One of them was about the recently announced Mahou Shoujo Madoka movies.  He said that there will be three movies.  The first two will be re-mixes of events from the series and the third movie will be new stuff, not seen in the series.  Nothing really new there for people who already got their info from the Newtype magazine.  Iwakami was also asked why they picked Saitou Chiwa to play Akemi Homura.  Iwakami said that they had already worked with Saitou on Bakemonogatari and they felt that she was simply the natural choice for Akemi Homura, hence, there was no need to audition Saitou for the part. 

Danny Choo also held a short Q&A session with Saitou.  Some of the answers I already wrote about in one of the earlier posts on AFA.  I just re-called that Saitou was also asked if she was "tsundere" like several of the characters she plays.  Saitou replied that she was more "dere dere" then "tsun".  When asked which of the many characters she had played was her favourite one, I think she said it was Natsumi from Keroro, a character she played for seven years.  She also did an impromptu performance of one of the signature lines from the anime.

At one point in time, one of Kajiura Yuki's tunes from the OST suddenly started playing in the background which took both Danny Choo and Saitou by surprise.  But Saitou recovered quickly, quipping that it was Kyubey, that Kyubey was somewhere in our presence and that knew some laughter from the audience. :)

After the live dubbing session, we decided not to stay for the screening of the latest episode of Gundam Unicorn mostly because two of us haven't watch the first three episodes yet.  So we went to the festival grounds to take photos of the several of the figures that were displayed.  I didn't take any of the cosplayers.  I was too lazy to and I was more interested in the Mahou Shoujo Madoka nd Fate/Zero, Fate/Stay Night merchandise anyway.

In the end, I didn't really buy that much as I already own several of the figures and still have a few more on pre-order.  And as the crowd both inside and outside the halls were a little too overwhelming for the crowd-adversed me, my friends and I decided to adjourn to a cafe for tea instead.  I would anyway be back on Sunday for my autographs, the stage events and the concert. :)

I'm leaving you with some photos of the Kalafina t-shirt and lanyard.  I must say that I really like it that Kalafina's name is printed with a colour gradient... my only wish was that it wasn't white.  I really don't like white shirts that much.



Alrighty, it's now time for me to sleep.  Will try and finish writing about the AFA before I leave for Japan on Thursday.   Good night... will proof read tomorrow... need sleep first. :)