Anime Festival Asia 2011: Day 3 (Nov 13)

Continued from AFA Day 2...

I really hate my body clock. @_@

Barely shaving 4 hours of sleep, I woke up feeling haggard and with body pains due to mine not being used to walking around for hours in a mecha costume. But instead of working on fixing the costumes (the Zakus need major adjustments, we didnt test-run them to be worn for almost two hours and the, erm, crotch armor for both kept falling off) I decided to melt off the pain by dipping in a bathroom tub full of warm water.  The water felt really good, I actually slept in the bathtub for an hour! Im glad my body was too long for the tub as my head was clearly above the water and over the rim, but I ended up looking like a crinkled raisin when I got out.

Since this was our last day and our scheduled flight out of Singapore was around 5:40pm later that day, we already packed our things and prepared to check-out the hotel by lunch.  With the help of Melo and Dom, along with our roomies Rotch and Rael, we carried our bags to Suntec and arrived at the designated area assigned to us backstage.

Before going backstage, we bumped into some friends who were already in their cosplay costumes like Leanne and Judith (im not sure what you guys were cosplaying, sorry ^^;;) and of course, the Tux Team as well.

Remember I mentioned that Melo and Dom helped us in carrying our costumes to Suntec?  Yes, they were already wearing those costumes.  XD

Anime Festival Asia 2011: Day 2 (Nov 12)

Continued from AFA Day 1...

My body clock was my worst enemy that morning.  No matter what time I've slept, I always wake up at 6am, despite sleeping past 1am that morning thanks to the room romping pajama party at the 12th floor earlier that night.

I spent the next hour fixing the costumes while trying my best not to wake any of my roomies.  By 7am Jewel was awake and left the room 30 minutes later to pick up our AFA tickets at 8am.  Rotch and Rael left later at around 8am to take a walk leaving me by myself fixing and preparing the costumes for later.  I used one of the big boxes, and with the rope we brought along, fashioned it into a crude backpack.  Then Jewel, Rotch and Rael came back around 10am, and before leaving, decided to have a very heavy brunch before dragging the costumes to Suntec.  We decided to eat at this food court where Jewel and Rotch decided to eat a claypot meal and Rael and I some Indonesian fare.

Claypot Meals Pork "Liempo" and  Sausage

Awfully bland Pepsi Twist :P

Claypot cooking intrigued me.  Its basically putting a rice topping meal over a super hot clay pot, practically burning the bottom rice portions into crunchy flakes (or slabs, depending on how long you let it burn before tossing it around).  Jewel was immediately addicted to them, and Rotch swears to it like manna from heaven.  Im not a big fan of burned rice slabs so I opted for the softer Indonesian food, which unfortunately slathered in super hot spicy sauce.  And to make matters worse, all of their canned softdrinks were bland! Its because the Singapore government regulates the sugar levels of the food they consume, which includes Pepsi products. Either way I was meant to be doomed in this culinary challenge.

Anime Festival Asia 2011: Day 1 (Nov 11)

It's been a week since we got home and until now I still don't know how to start writing down the experience without being tempted to type everything down in CAPSLOCK.  It's been a whirlwind of an adventure from start to finish.

Me and my wife Jewel had been playing around the idea of traveling to Singapore last May, just when Cosplay.ph's Tournament of Champions was gearing up for its debut on June.  We thought this year would be the best time to do it since we would be witness to our first AFA event with following our Philippine Representative for their Regional Cosplay Competition.  Cosplay Mania, Cosplay.ph's annual cosplay-centric event, will become the final showdown for TORCH finalists, with the winner to be sent to Singapore.  Three months before AFA, we decided to do something radical for a change: why not cosplay in Singapore, and in mecha of all things so we can show our support for the Philippine Team and show the other ASEAN cosplayers talented Filipino cosplayers can be.  Our choice of cosplay being Custom Zakus from the Gundam UC universe will be foretold in detail in another entry titled "Pretty fly for Mono-Eye: The making of Zaku cosplay", so for now this entry will be about our experience in AFA in general.

All we need now are zombies! 

We're way too early

My stuff on our way to Customs

Her stuff at Changi Airport in Singapore

AFA'09: Thoughts and Observations

(Note: The review below is based on viewing the You-Tube videos of the AFA'09 skits and not in any way should it be mistaken or assumed that I personally attended AFA in Singapore. Feel free comment. The usual etiquette regarding posting/commenting applies.)

This year's AFA'09 came and went, and the winner picked out and given the grand prize of a trip to Japan and a sewing machine. The winner was the Singapore Team: Gundam 00 Emotion. My congratulations to them, one of the duo being Clive Lee (aka Mirage_cld) who was a regular visitor of the Mecha Cosplayers HQ thread of FilCosplay. Again our congratulations from us metal heads of cosplay!

Its a good thing, for those who didn't have the time and money to attend AFA'09 in Singapore, someone was kind enough to record and upload them in You-Tube. So to Zerartul, i personally thank you from the bottom of my heart for your generosity. So to everyone, here is the compiled recorded skit links of AFA'09 (click here).

AFA'09 was also the second time Filipino cosplayers were represented in an international competition, the first one being the Hong Kong Gaming Convention back in 2001, where JM Chua came cosplaying as Rurouni Kenshin's (Samurai X in the Phils and North America) Saito Hajime. He earned the right to represent the Philippines by winning the AXN Cosplay Competion two months earlier. And surprised everyone (and himself) once again by winning the Hong Kong Cosplay Competition.

In AFA'09, the Philippine team was represented by the Gosiengfiao sisters Alodia and Ashley, coming as characters from Witchblade the Anime.

(click image to watch video performance)

Watching all of the videos, at the same time chatting with some friends and fellow mecha cosplayers, I've probably seen and realized fully why the Singapore Gundam 00 Emotion team won the competition. I have a few theories, and maybe I'd email Clive if my observations were correct.