Anime Festival Asia 2011 - Day 2

The crowds at Suntec for AFA11 - crazy, right? :)

I went to the Anime Festival Asia today and it was fun!!!!  =)  I was unable to be there early because I had to attend my Japanese class this morning.  I switched my class from the Sunday class to Saturday so that I could be at AFA for the whole day tomorrow.

And in order to avoid the long queues to buy tickets, my friend and I had gone to the AKB48 Cafe at Scape to buy pre-sale Stage+ Festival tickets about a week ago.  I managed to get to the convention hall and squeeze pass a gabillion people to get into the Main Stage area to catch the last bit of the I Love Anisong Artiste Appearance featuring Flow and Mizuki Ichirou.  But I was really there to watch Akemi Homura's seiyuu Saito Chiwa who was going to appear at 215pm.

Main Stage - actually, no photos allowed but
I didn't know that when I shot this photo.
  Lucky you can't really see anything.  :p
Kalafina will appear on this stage on Sunday. :)

We managed to get seats after the Flow and Mizuki Ichrou left the stage and hence, were able to rest a bit while we waited for Saito to show up.  When she did, there were big cheers all around.  Saito was on stage to do a live dubbing session and she used 3 scenes from Mahou Shoujo Madoka.  The first scene was in the ep when we first see Akemi Homura in her first timeline I think .... that is when she was weak and when she first met Madoka.  At that point she was in Mami Tomoe's house and having tea with Madoka, Mami, Miki Sayaka and Kyubey.  The next scene was a long one and a cool one.  It's the scene when Homura shoots Kyubey.  The last scene was when Homura talks to Madoka through the windo before she goes of to fight.  If I have time... I'll go look up those eps and scenes and post up a more detailed post.

There was also a short q&a session with the seiyuu.  Unfortunately, as no photography or audio recording is allowed, I have forgotten most of it. I do remember her saying that she didn't grow up wanting to be a seiyuu.  It was a job she only found out about later when she was still in school (?), I think maybe when she was in high school or something, I'm not sure.  Then she goes on to say that to be a good seiyuu, you don't have to study for it.  Instead, one should try and experience many things in life because these experiences will help you perform better and become the character.  Oh... I'm majorly paraphrasing here because I think I kind of rolled some of what I remembered of her various answers to a few questions into one.  There was also a question when she was asked who was her favourite character or, was it what was the character type, she liked to play most and she said that she likes to play characters that are different from her real personality.  She also felt that in order to perform a role well, a seiyuu must become the character they are performing.  Also, when she prepares for a role, she will read the script and try and imagine how the other seiyuus will play their part and how she can match their performance, or something like that.  Finally, I remember she said that there were many emotional scenes in Mahou Shoujo Madoka so when she played Homura Akemi, she would return to her home completely drained because she poured all her emotions into this character when she played it.

Please note that I wrote the above paragraph completely from memory so some of it may not be accurate.

K... I think I really need to rest now... tomorrow will be a busy day.

Not going to proof read... will fix errors later... also will post up more photos of the event and my personal haul etc etc another day.

Good night. :)