A Japanese Pop Culture Extravaganza!

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This event has actually went already, but because I know some people might be particularly interested in, somehow I have one young, just married woman in my mind 😉 I want to tell some more about it.

I was so happy and satisfied when we found AFA08 (http://www.afa08.com/) festival and realized it was supposed to be held here, in Singapore! This Celebration of Japanese Pop Culture festival was organized between 22/11 Sat - 23/11 Sun. The festival took place in Suntec City Hall near Raffles Marina and the day we went there was early Sunday morning. We didn't have book tickets in advance ( they were already gone when we realized that!) so we were afraid that we couldn't get in. Luckily there was tickets still left to buy from door.

I have never been a real "serious" fan of Anime or Manga, if you know what I mean, that I like from those things, especially drawings and paintings done with that "special" manga style. The movies are also great. But there, at Suntec City Hall we saw real Anime and Manga professionals, the people who have been spending all their lives with those things and were still so modest, too modest to even being in photographs..

There were painters, movie directors, shop sellers, collectors and people just passing by since the festival was pretty cheap to get in ( just 2,5 €). I was amazed to see all those winner paintings and drawings done by hand or computer ( there had been some competitions beforehand). The best part of the festival was definitely the cosplay show. It was advertised coming straight from Japan and now organized first time in Singapore. With my poor camera I didn't get good photos to publish but the main idea of that show was that groups of people were presenting some parts of e.g. Anime or Manga in real. For example parts of Hitman or Final Fantasy, ok, the rest I hadn't even heard about..but doesn't matter, the show was great and the area in front of stage was packed of people. Miracle also happened hence I didn't buy anything from there ( believe it or not), but things were so expensive. However Anniina's Domo found finally home.

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Photos

2nd prize
The theme for Graphite ‘08 will be “Festival: Colours of Life”.

Coldfish
Graphite ’08 and Mangaka 08, one of the winners

Plenty of people
We were not that lucky to have chairs