Animax Youth Festival: Day 3

August 10, 2008 by linkinstreet

The last day of the Animax Youth Festival went without much hitch today. As expected there were a lot more visitors today compared to the last two days, mostly as families were on an outing and the cosplayers were making their appearance today.

Anyways, I did a typo yesterday, as the GameAxis GT5 challenge did NOT offer a PS3 but a PSP instead. Most of the visitors flocked to their booth to watch the games that was showcased there. Working together with Sony, they put up 4 PS3 consoles and a PSP booth showcasing games such as

• Gran Turismo 5 Challenge (Drive 2 laps of Suzuka with a Honda S2000)
• Guitar Hero
• Monster Madness
• Metal Gear Solid 4

But talking to Fat Cat Lim (GameAxis’s co-editor), they are a bit peeved about the lack of tables and the limited time that they had to set up their booth (they wanted to bring the Logitech G25, but can’t with the limited space available to them).


FatCatLim. Yeah, I know what you are thinking

This was also echoed by Ahmad Sharizal and Shazley, two anime fans who came to visit the event. According to them the event was not good enough to attract their main core target, the youths, and only random visitors was there, undoubtly curios about the cosplayers and their clothings.

Talking about the cosplayers, I had time to talk to some of them about the cosplay event. Jared aka BMJ, who cosplayed as Franken Stein of Soul eater said that it was not too bad, but they had expected more people to come. Looking back, the cosplayers do SEEM a bit short on numbers, compared to other events that I had covered such as ACGC and such. This was agreed by Jennifer Thum, who cosplayed as Maka also from Soul Eater (my god, what with me and this Soul Eater fetish?). She said that the event felt too rushed, and in between the performance and waiting, there was nothing much that they can do, and it was too tiring for them. The area allocated was too small, and they would have prefered a resting area for them to sit down. The time it takes for them to judge and announce the result was also critisized, as it was a tad too long. For them it was a good thing that they added the cosplay competition but they feel that there was not enough exposure about the event beforehand. True, as some of the cosplayers knew about this just one week before! Thus they really would have loved if the event was announced much earlier than this.

There was also a special performance by an aspiring singer, Aizudeen who was looking around for an Open Mike Night when he was invited by Animax to come to the event. Currently studying in Japan, he hailed from Penang but lived near Bandar Utama. Asked about the event from the perspective of a person who lived in Japan, he was quite impressed by the quality of local cosplayers, and the event was quite interesting as he never knew that these kinds of events existed locally. But as with other people at the event, he felt that it needed more attractions. And oh, he crooned some songs by Spitz much to the delight of the spectators

Interview with Aizudeen:

Interview with the first place winner, Jennifer Thum @ Mintos and BMJ

The highlight of the day would certainly be the cosplay competititon results, and my Soul Eater fetish was right, as Jennifer DID take the first prize (and RM1k). Congratulations!

Overall it was a good event by animax, as they did say that this won’t be purely an anime event, but for youths. But like mentioned above there are some things that they could have made better, like the cosplay competition. The layout was also quite confusing with the main stage and the display booths was seperated by a Peugot Showcase, and as a result there were not many people going to see the booths. If Animax would like hold an event like this in the future, I would propose they do it at MidValley, as it’s more well known with teenagers and easier for people to go too (I and another friend had the awful experience of riding the wrong bus, wait, the right bus, just going the wrong way from Kelana Jaya LRT and ended up in Putrajaya which means that we missed the cosplay event ;_;). We hope that Animax can learn from these shortcomings and in the future make an event that everyone can be proud of.

A shot of Aizudeen’s performance:

Posted in Anime Events, Anime News