The recent Anime Festival Asia ‘08 has sparked controversy and delight alike across the anime community in the region. There have been instances of hatred, love, and mixed feelings all portrayed after the event, both in blogs and in forums. Though I am not a fan of the latter, due to my extensive experience in them in the past, I have seen what little of the possible miseries people might read of, or be subjected to, in forums. Still, I am not interested in any of that. If we all truly want this event to prosper, what we need is not rabid hate or love directed at the organizers, or internal bickering.

What we really should do, is get together, think on the good and bad points of the event, and send constructive feedback to the organizers. Has this gotten you interested? If so, read on.

I admit, when it comes to what is known as “blog drama”, I have been, in fact only recently too, at the forefront. Yet, I am not the type that actually likes it that much. For such an event too, drama, hatred, or love (in other words, subjective views) should be steered clear of, and instead, objective opinions should be presented. The organizers do not want to see your rabid fanboygasm feedback, or your intense hatred in word formation – what they need in order to improve on their weaknesses, and build on what they are already doing well, is your well-meaning and especially constructive (therefore objective as well) feedback.

Is it really that difficult to achieve this? There have indeed been many blogs swinging back and forth, especially regarding the matter of how “fans were treated” after May’n’s concert. Allow me to say, I indeed had no interest, one way or the other, in May’n or Aniki, but that was not because I had any kind of emotional feeling towards them; the convention just interested me in other ways. I am sure this convention meant something for everyone – whether it was May’n, Aniki, the cosplayers, the booths, or just a general look at what is perhaps quite the integral part of Japanese culture for those who are either casual watchers, or even people who are ignorant of what Japanese culture is or may mean. For me, this AFA was therefore a closer look at what a convention could be in the future if done well, and a chance for the locals and regional folks that came down to take a look, to ask for a bigger, better, and more organized event than what it already is. Not taking anything away from the current event either; in its own way, it was indeed good. However, I do have feedback, that I hope is constructive enough for the organizers to work on.
 

Nonetheless, I have gone far off-track. For my full feedback, you can skip right to the end of this post. The rest of this post other than the end will consist of what I, and others, did during the 2-day convention.

Before I begin though, I must give my thanks and appreciation for all of the pictures taken during the 2 days of the respective photographers, because my camera cannot do internal shots well. Thus, I asked for the gracious and kind help of quite a few photographers. Thanks to Setsuna-san, AK, Squee, and Wcloudxkumo for the wonderful pictures presented in these and other posts. Individually, I will also give further thanks if photos from other sources are used, and they will be thanked in each post, for without them, I would be unable to cover this event as I am doing now. Here we go.
 

Above, these two photos were taken by me, the last two out of the three that I took, and the first was shown in the preview post for my AFA coverage and report. The first shows the ticketing booth, the first thing that greeted me when I arrived around 7:30 AM. Earlier, YuKi-To (a co-writer on this blog, and who will be covering the next two parts of the report here) and Feidamu had arrived before me. Team Blue had earlier planned amongst some of its members to be there early, and I was no exception, though I took longer as I had certain stuff to attend to that I had no idea would take as long as they did, but I arrived fine and proper.

The queue was still pretty small when I arrived, perhaps around 20 people or more. Fei and Yukito were, for some odd reason, in the ticketing queue as opposed to the preregistration queue, which, as far as I knew at the time, they had signed up for. I stuck outside the fencing (in the second picture, those people sitting by the side that seem to be in a queue by themselves are all for the preregistration booth) and luckily it was the right decision. Fariz and Fuzzy (the Kyouran Kyodai) arrived not long after, and in tow came Biggu Gai, NanoPulp, and Chibihien.

By this time the crowd was growing exponentially, as can be seen from the photos below. Setsuna-san and e-jump, along with Wcloudxkumo (Jon) arrived not long after as well, and Setsuna was pointed in the right direction to queue up for the May’n VIP pass.
 

This queue however, is small compared to what is available at Wonder Festival and Comic Market (commonly abbreviated to Comiket) in Japan, especially the latter. One person, I forgot who, likened the queue to the toilet line at Comiket. It was a good analogy.

Being among the first 20 or so preregistrations at my booth (the line split up into two opposite directions, one for each of the two booths available for preregistrars), I was able to get to the entrance of AFA early. While waiting, we experienced the order in the early morning that was to be followed by what I only know from other sources as possible chaos. There were a few crew members who were keeping order in the line, and early on, the old uncle was indeed doing a good job. I believe though, his instructions later caused confusion for many, when the lines grew too long, but I will leave this for later discussion. All that matters now is that I got near the entrance, and so did the rest of us early birds. Here are some shots of the area around the entrance, below.
 

Shin (same blog as Setsuna) had somehow managed to weasel his way to a media pass, and happily waved it before us and went in something like 40 minutes ahead of us. Gordon and AK arrived later and I believe there were a bunch of people with the latter. They jumped in after getting the tickets to the front of the queue with us (we had no problems with that), and at ten, all of us surged forward after presenting our tickets to the doorgods that be, and moved into the convention itself. E-jump went earlier ahead, and Setsuna, though having the same pass, was unable to do the same due to confusion at the reception. He did not mind much though. Shin had already informed us by phone that the figures were the same stuff and nothing much was mentioned regarding unreleased figures.
 

Team Blue members and e-jump at the entrance. Aside from the guy all the way at the right of the picture, all of us were facing the camera. I am not going to bother with identifications. Setsuna took this picture while he was with us.

Quite frankly, I will not bore you with details, and I am covering the figures in another post. Suffice to say however, that what mainly drew me to the convention were figures. Nothing much else, aside from the cosplay and perhaps a few stage events, were of much interest. In an hour, I had finished walking three rounds of the convention. That is right, three. I also bought nothing throughout both days of AFA. Loot did not appeal to me, though I was indeed moved by the actual FREEing Bunny Asakura Ryoko on display, but I will leave that for the Figures post (which is coming next week).

The highlight of the day’s events was not just the beginning of the convention and seeing what it had to offer, but also meeting up with other bloggers. There were many other bloggers than the several I have mentioned, and non-bloggers too, along with press. Here are some random pictures of the crowd before I continue. By the way, spot the Team Blue members in the picture below. There are at least two of them.
 

If I am not wrong, this was taken sometime after the event opened, with the crowd largely still not within the grounds. These cosplayers you see mostly stayed outside, though some of them went in indeed. I missed the Kon cosplayer however.
 

I wonder, could the guy with the camera in the picture also be catching a shot of the current camera snapping him?

Somebody quite possibly caught in the act of trying to snap some nice from-top photos. Actually, thanks to Kurogane for identifying this person (who was with us at times) as Aoshimaru, who happens to be covering the event for either a magazine or something to that effect called Anime Shrine.
 

No seriously, I missed this. Oh man I have no idea how I missed it. Then again I was not paying much attention to the booths, but LOL. The number of skewed thinking and ideas about this is probably the same as the number of atoms in the period at the end of this sentence. Well done, Five Star Stories. In fact even your name gives food for thought. Hmm…

We settled near the stage area around 10:45 AM to 11 AM, for the few of us. There was a reception area near us, but as with all events and conventions, we naturally assumed that it was for people with at least a media pass, until AK decided to go there and feast himself. Amazed, I decided to gather up the “army” and went over to inquire. Indeed, it was a free-for-all. Unfortunately, with the size of Team Blue, it led people to realize that all the food there was for free, and the frenzy that followed was despicably large. Quite frankly, I was disgusted at people taking more than one helping. I only took one, I can tell you up front. One strawberry-topped cake, one chocolate-topped cake, one yakitori, and one egg tart, with one cup of tea. But obviously, locals being the way they are, they just cannot help themselves when it comes to freebies. The food was gone in a matter of minutes. At least we were early enough to catch the “wintrain”.

While we were there AK decided to take some pictures of the food, while he also helped me and Setsuna take an awesome picture below.
 

For Tytania! If you do not know what Tytania is, please see this. Yes we were drinking tea. I believe it was Liptia Lipton. Also, if you were around the reception area while the food was around and you heard someone shouting “For Tytania!”, that was me. Y I so osm? This picture contains me and Setsuna, I believe it may not be too hard to figure out who is who.
 

Gordon brought his Kagami figma, and here we see her laughing at the food someone has picked.

By 11+ the refreshments area had been cleared, and we sat at the stage waiting for Kurogane and others to join us for lunch at noon. Double and CI also showed up, along with Jinyamato, who had a hard time contacting Kurogane. In the end we started moving once he had arrived, and at the entrance we lost sight of him again. It turned out that he had somehow drifted off with another gang or something, and when Jinya tracked him down, we had gone on ahead with the assurance that Jinya would know where we were.

In the end, Jinya brought him to the wrong foodcourt. Oops.
 

Still it was roughly a group of 24 strong that met at Koufu Foodcourt nearby at Marina Square. I know, that is quite the big group. Some faces I had never even seen before. Jon introduced us to someone new, his nick is TP, and he soon mingled with the group. I think encouraging more mingling, knowing more people, and stuff like that is important, and conventions and events do help a lot in such an area, giving many people a large reason to turn up, and of course, to meet up as a side bonus. This must have been the biggest meetup yet, since the formation of Team Blue in May/June period, considering even those who are outside of the team.

After lunch, we moved back to the event. People went around taking pictures of cosplayers, but I felt the first day’s cosplay was…hardly there. Not to mention I failed to see all those outside I think, Hexlord was telling me about how there were 30+ cosplayers on the first day, when I met him on the second.
 

A great shot of double photography. Spot the pun in the previous sentence.
 

And finally, it appears the toilets are used as the emergency exit. This brings to mind, as Raven (who took this shot) puts it, the image of you flushing the toilet as an “emergency exit”. Gawd. I love conventions.

I left at 4:30 PM on Day 1, since I was hardly interested in anything else. On Day 2, I have no pictures, but nothing much else of interest happened except cosplay, so I will leave that for the cosplay posts. Suffice to say I was walking the entire Day 2 except for something like 15 minutes when I sat down to rest in the late afternoon. I was hunting for cosplayers, and still missed Lenneth, who told me she was coming. Argh. I hope Hexlord passes me the photo for her cosplay on Day 2. I went home only at 7 PM on Day 2 thanks to the rain, and also met up with Hexlord, his friend Sean (whose blog I cannot find) and 0ne. Nothing to say for Day 2 really, but it was great meeting up with more new and old faces. I must say, AFA has been quite the experience just for meeting up with other bloggers alone. I am thankful for all these people for accommodating my assholism and meeting up with what could be one of the worst people they ever met in their life. Too bad I did not see Impz, but all is good.

Now for the feedback. First, I will give YuKi-To’s feedback, then I will proceed on to mine.
 

YuKi-To:

Event Layout

- The layout of the booths did not seem to be well-planned; although there were not many booths, it still felt cramped in certain areas.

- Some of the booth merchandise were so close to another booth that customers often went to the wrong cashier.

- Figure booths should have emphasized on popular bishoujo figures and Gundam sales or to be more accurate, conducted surveys to identify which types of merchandise are more popular. Look at how much unpopular stuff were left, such as the armored core limited edition.

- Some staff did not have knowledge of the goods they were selling, thus customers were unable to properly make a purchase at times.

CosplayMania was insignificant

- Maybe you could introduce a participant voting or rating system in addition to judges’ decisions.

- Introduce individual cosplay category awards for non-group cosplayers as well, as it is not fair to individual cosplayers that they were not recognized just because they did not join the group cosplay teams.

- Have lucky draws in conjunction with voting/rating.
 

Panther

Quite frankly, my feedback is more geared towards the organizers. I feel they are the ones who can make the event a true success. I understand some things are beyond their control, such as with individual booth owners, and stuff like that. Therefore, with that in mind, allow me to point out some things I felt could be improved.
 

1. The early morning wait was fine, but I do believe the crew could have been better briefed as to how to handle large queues and lines of people waiting. They should have also been clearly told which booth for what people, what each booth meant, and why the queues should remain instead of squeezing everyone to either of one booth. What was the use of preregistration, if, say, everyone gets to buy the tickets at the same time as the preregistration folks? I do believe “skipping the queue” was a major factor in getting people to preregister. I saw almost none of it – the smart ones were the ones who queued up early.

The solution here would be to open normal/standard ticketing later than the preregistration booth, and to clearly brief both the crew and the ticketing booth people how to go about organizing the queues and selling the tickets at the right time. Standards should be clearly set to avoid a collapse of the queuing system and indignant people who had preregistered only to find out they were being shuffled into the standard ticketing queue after the early morning queue had “maxed out its capacity”.
 

2. The venue was small, but that could be because, as a first event, you were unable to get a bigger place. I admit though, it did feel cramped in some areas, but if you can get a bigger exhibition hall, because this one was considered to be a success in certain circles, I would ask for better organization of all the booths. Frankly, putting the seminar area right next to the arcade area was one of the worst calls, I felt. This was because the arcade machines were loud, and when the competition for the arcade games occurred, the emcee for the competition was likely a competitor for the people hosting seminars and speaking at them. The stage area right next to the arcade area was another nitpick, but it was forgivable compared to the arcade being next to the seminar area, because the stage area had louder sound systems compared to the arcade.

A good solution here would be to plan carefully to avoid such overlooked mistakes in future. What is more, I hope for a bigger venue, so that you can have more space to plan with. Certainly, this depends on how many in certain circles, especially current and future sponsors, see the first event, and whether or not they think it a success, so all I can do is hope that you will push for a bigger venue, but I will be fine with the best you can get.
 

3. Refreshments were free for the public to take, judging by the way they were cleared on Day 1. I will admit, if you read this entire post, I was one of those who took, but I had the decency at least to take only one helping. What is more, it is a perhaps unstated rule that refreshments were meant to be for people with media or VIP passes, that is to say, they gained the right to these refreshments as people who are covering, or being an important part of the said event. Allowing the food to be open to the public serves no purpose; what is worse, it deprives those who have the right to such food, of their rightful refreshments. One could argue that the refreshments were even a privilege for those holding media/VIP passes, but I disagree.

Obviously, the solution here is to tell the staff that only those with media, VIP and the like of such passes are allowed access to the food. I felt guilty, seriously, when I saw someone with a media/VIP pass, he was a speaker at the seminar I believe, being the only person with a media/VIP pass who ate the food. I mean, where were the rest? Oh wait, the food was gone thanks to the hordes of people attacking and inconsiderately taking second or even third helpings. The next point is very related to this one.
 

4. Please make media passes harder to get. Quite frankly, I think media passes were too freely given even for a first time. I hope that the organizers will take steps to ensure that the media pass should be given only to rightful people with the right requirements or reasons to hold them. As a blogger, I can well understand if I was not to be given a chance at it if I had not attended your previous panels, as well as not talked about anything before the event regarding the event itself. But some people did the same as me, yet all they did was apply through the official site, and in all honesty, they too easily got the pass. Plus, if you make it too readily available, it defeats the purpose of having such media passes.

Again, the solution is obvious – have a set and unbiased standard for giving out media and VIP passes. If possible, a case-by-case basis for certain media pass applicants may be used. I do believe a fairer standard can in all fairness be implemented smoothly and easily. It is all up to the organizers to make this happen.
 

5. It was quite well understood, from almost the start, that the convention was geared towards the general public, most of whom have no idea what anime, or even Japanese culture, is about. By and large, the largest percentage of people that turned up were the curious. But even so, the official requirements surrounding cosplayers were, I felt, too much. I see no need for cosplayers to submit their costumes in order to get them approved beforehand just for free entry. I mean, I understand that indecent cosplayers may indeed stir some controversy, but could it be considered that cosplayers too have their own dignity and know their own limits? Because of this, fewer cosplayers turned up than anticipated, because they were unwilling to pay to enter the convention grounds. Of course, there was always the external area for them to exhibit their cosplay, but, in all honesty, I felt the requirements were still too much.

Perhaps these requirements can be lowered, inasmuch as they run concurrent and not in opposition to existing policies regarding decency, and other concerns you might have. Certainly, with due respect to the organization, the cosplay competition could also have been expanded upon, even with time limit constraints. Cosplay remains a large part of Japanese culture, as well as anime culture, and to give it only a minor point amidst the other onstage events of note is akin to placing what could be a unique marble inside a sea of dull ones. The cosplay event, as far as I know, drew a larger crowd than any of the other stage events.
 

That being said, I would like to commend the organizers and the crew, in the entire event (except for the concerts, which I did not attend and therefore have no comment on, one way or the other) quite a good job well done for a first time. I hope to see the organizers expand on the strengths and lessons they have learnt, and bring to us an even better and smoother AFA ‘09. Cheers.
 

**********

And that ends Part 1 of my AFA coverage. Up next, YuKi-To will talk about the booths that were at the convention, and right after that, he will cover the onstage events, before I return to give you a view of the figures and the models that were on display at the Toys N Toys booth, and finally, the cosplayers. All of this will take some time to get up, so do bear with us in the meantime. For more coverage done already by other blogs within and without the Team, check out the aggregate post over at Team Blue’s blog.

Related posts:

1. AFA ‘08 Report Preview
2. Comic Fiesta 08 Mini Coverage
3. AFA Cosplay Part 1
4. EoY 08 – The Happenings
5. Toys & Comics Convention – Day 1