Showing posts with label Manga. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Manga. Show all posts

Sunday, 10 November 2013

Otaku Day 2 - Anime Festival Asia Day 1 (Singapore)

AFA 2013 Day 1

Welcome to Day 1 of Anime Festival Asia in Singapore which held in Suntec City Convention Hall near city area. The Convention Hall has just been renovated and everything looks new. The number of booths increase but it looked smaller compared to last year in Expo. The crowd was mediocre since it was Friday so for those real anime otaku merchandises grabbing buyers it was the best day to visit since the stock of goodies and freebies were available.

I reached the Hall around 9.30am and there were already a long line. The door was supposed to be open at 10.30am but due to the long queue, the organizer opened the door half an hour earlier *\(^o^)/* I managed to get in around 15 minutes later and decided to browsed around the "Creator's Hub" aka doujinshi booth and found out some of the artists were from the neighboring countries too. Most of the items that were selling were badges, pins, postcard, posters and some doujinshi books (these items cost range from SGD3 to SGD50). The effort and love that put into the making these quality items can be seen from the excited and tired looking faces. Great Work guys ヾ(@⌒ー⌒@)ノAlong the way, I met an old face at the booth selling his artwork from a forum that i used to hangout, we chit-chatted a bit and later parted my way to meet my friend. 

There was not a lot of cosplayers on standby during Day 1 so I mostly spent my time in the main stage with my friend, watching anime screening (Gintama Movie, Little Witch Academia and Pyscho-Pass). The seats were pretty empty with an estimation of 50 people on their seats to watch the anime screening. But it was fun watching anime screening with fellow anime otaku. We could laughed loudly together without having people staring and thinking we were watching kiddy stuff. 

After the anime screening was over my friend and I parted ways as he was working night shift. I went for another round in the hall this time taking pictures of figurines from Good Smile, Bandai and Tamashii. The displayed figurines were mostly showcase from last year, Saint Seiya, Gundam series,One Piece and etc. The newer ones were Valvrare, Shingeki no Kyojin and Kuroko no Basket figures. 

Along the way, Magical Witch Madoka, Sword Art Online, Love Live and Shingeki no Kyojin had their respective booth selling official items like T-shirts, posters and etc. There was a group of hardcore idol fans that made into the facebook news page when they were bowing and praying homage to Love Live characters behind the booth area. I did not managed to get a picture of them doing it but will post the fb pic. There were other booths like Danny Choo's CJ, Toyota promoting their Na*Su*Bi mascots, anime and backing by idol group called "A応P" aka Anime Ouen Project, "Million Arthur" having pre-registration event and IE-Tan booth where I got by T-shirt.

Around 6 pm I left the hall looking half dead but with a big big smile on my face. Tell you guys the truth, I could not sleep the night before feeling so so excited like a kid going for his first trip to the theme park, in the end only had 4 hours of sleep in total. Haha very pathetic indeed ^o^


Anime Festival Asia Day 1 Pictures

Love Live! Followers (Source)

         One of Na*Su*Bi Mascot                                                                   Colossal Titan's Head
Maid & Butler Cafe

         Valerie & Danny Choo on Stage                                                                     IE-Tan


                -Valvrare-                                                                         Love Live! Booth
LiSA signing on her Booth!




Saturday, 2 November 2013

Kamisama no Iutoori (神さまの言うとおり) Manga

Short Overview
Kamisama no Iutoori means "As God says" is a manga written by Kaneshiro Muneyuki and drawn by Fujimura Akeji. The main protagonists are Takahata Shun a bored high schooler, Amaya Takeru a mad dog and Akimoto Ichika. The story starts out suddenly when one of the teacher's head grow out a "Daruma" and with this would start Shun's trials. Along the way, he would meet Ichika and then Amaya who show up in a brutal way. Akimoto and Shun will face a lot of physical and emotional trial by "Kamimaru" the main antagonist who create a lot of weird children games and in order to survive they need to win the games. While Amaya would be smiling and happily particulate all of Kamimaru's games. (This manga is not recommended for kids ^_^)

Shun & co (L) and Kamimaru (R)

Amaya & Shun

Artwork
The artwork can be very gorily and brutal at times with head getting blown off or body get cut into half and etc (sorry won't post it here). Gore aside, what I like about the artwork are the games which the characters have encounter. It might looks like an innocent old Japanese children games that can turn so crazily violent!!

Amaya after killing some innocent participants 

Don't be fool by this simple game ^_^

Overall
If you like how Gantz begins than I bet this is for you!! Shun and Amaya are like your ecstasy pills in this manga. Their crazy and risky action would excite you all the way until the manga end. In addition, especially in the case of Shun and Akimoto they would slowly shows their true inner self with each games they participate. 

PS: I would warn that the ending might be very WTF to some readers as there is no clear ending since the mangaka writes a new season with characters that do have connection with the 1st season characters. However, I do hope that he would one day connect both story as he continues to work on the story plot.

Read here: http://www.mangareader.net/kamisama-no-iutoori-fujimura-akeji
Please do support the mangaka if you like his works when the English version is for sell ^_^v

Tuesday, 29 October 2013

JTB offers 'Wolf Children' area stay

Wolf Children aka 'Ookami no Kodomo Ame to Yuki' real life location is being promoted by JTB, looks like JTB is trying to tap into anime fan by making this tour package. A bit disappointed that JTB only have limited dates for the tour package but guess it is in trial period. Hope my friend have plan to go~~ I would love to go if I am in Japan now!


I really enjoyed this type of trip by going to anime location during my time spent in Japan. I remember going to Jimbocho in search of the famous Yomiko's (from Read or Die) basement bookstore with my friend who guided me around. Well sadly there is no basement when we check the elevator (lol).


Some other famous location is Lucky Star where the anime is taken place in Saitama, Tari Tari in Enoshima Island, The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi in Hyogo Pref and other more like Hanasaku Iroha, OreImo and K-ON!.

Source: http://ajw.asahi.com/article/cool_japan/AJ201310290046
Tour info: http://toyamagurashi.com/

Manga Festival 2013 (Singapore)

An event that clash with AFA 13 !!!! I so wanna kill those organizer >=( why why of all weekend the same week as AFA!!!!!!!!! ARGH!!!! Anyway done with my fanboy nagging~~~



So what so interesting about this mini-event???  Well you get to meet with mangaka from Beelzebub, Pokemon Adventure and Say "I Love You". However, the most notable appearance of illustrator Kei Garou aka KEI who illustrated some of VOCALOID characters like Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Rin & Len and Megurine Luka is the one that I got attracted to. Lets hope I can get his signature ^^v

By the way, along the Japanese book section that distribute free weekly Japanese magazine corner, there are free anime/manga postcards being distribute! Try to get it before its finish~~~



Friday, 7 June 2013

Cure Festival 2013 (Singapore)

A very very late report on Cure Festival from me. I have been busy after uploading the pictures on my facebook album.

It was an outdoor event near the Marina Bay Sand hotels. The weather was cloudy and humid but there was always a slight brisk of wind blowing so it wasn't that bad. Except the back of my neck got burnt (>_<"). Well anyway because of the weather I should have used more flash on my picture taking or maybe edit it with photoshop.

The event was crowded as usual and a with wide range of anime character being cosplayed. Especially, being in Singapore you would expect quite a number of foreign cosplayers/visitor/photographer(?) attending the event. The main attraction would be JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Posing contest and Pitcha, Japanese Cosplayer that was one of the judge of the contest. Sorry that I didn't take much of the stage event. There were a few Kagura Cosplayers, Mirai Nikki's Yandere girl and I was surprise to see Dark from DN Angel (very rare to see DN Angel cosplayers since 10 years ago I guess).

I left early since I got other stuff to do but all in all a good and fun event. I manage to meet a cosplayer that added me on facebook last year. Hope to meet him again at other events. There was also an unoffical 2nd day for Cure Festival but I didn't attend. Seen some of the pictures and they were having so much fun.






More on Cure Festival:
https://www.facebook.com/COSFESTASIA

More Pictures I took:
Cure Festival 2013


Thursday, 9 May 2013

日本人の知らない日本語~~~

I finished reading日本人の知らない日本語 volume 1 & 2(roughly translated - The Japanese Language that Japanese doesn't know) and now going to volume 3 the last book. It is a 4-koma (Mostly) manga book about the life of Nagiko-sensei a Japanese language teacher and her foreign students. She would have trouble answering the students question about Japanese language and looking at their weird ethic and comments while in Japan.

Some of the chapter reminded me of my Language school days in Japan T__T. Good old fun days~~~ I am sure some of you guys and girls that studied in Japan language school would have a good connection with this book. ^^

  
OOoooh yeah!!! and also I got a present from my friend in Japan. Its FRAU-san from Robotic:Notes. 


WUAHAHAHA!!!! looove her so much!!!