Anime Shrine

Culture Japan X Good Smile Company Brings You MoeKanji!

AnimeShrine — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 12:49:50 +0000

Danny Choo announces collaboration with Japanese hobby maker Good Smile Company to release Japanese kanji learning flash cards.

TOKYO (MAY 5th 2012) – Danny Choo, Producer of the worldwide TV series “Culture Japan,” today announced his collaboration with Japanese hobby maker Good Smile Company to release “Moekanji” – a set of 87 illustrated cards to help individuals learn first grade Japanese Kanji which include the “On” and “Kun” readings written in hiragana.

The Moekanji cards feature the mascots of Culture Japan which include “Mirai Suenaga” and characters of the TV show and website “Culture Japan” and are illustrated by the Japanese illustrator Ikkyuu.

Moekanji also has collaboration cards which include the Nitroplus mascot character Super Sonico.

Pre-orders are currently being taken for Moekanji which retails for 2500 yen (about 25 USD). Moekanji is due to hit the shelves at the end of May 2013.

Danny is also collaborating with Japanese online Hobby Retailer AmiAmi where a Kanji Wallscroll will be given away with all pre-orders taken at AmiAmi.

Moekanji is the second product in the “Moe” learning series and follows on from the hit product “Moekana” which teaches individuals the basic Japanese syllabary Hiragana. Even though Moekana was aimed at non Japanese to learn Hiragana, Moekana became the 2nd best selling anime product in the Amazon Japan sales rankings.

Special Message from May’N!

AnimeShrine — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:54:14 +0000

As a teaser for the upcoming Animax Carnival Malaysia 2013, here’s a message from the guest star herself, May’N!

Animax Carnival Malaysia 2013 set for Sunway Pyramid

AnimeShrine — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 02:28:28 +0000

Event to be graced by Japanese J-Pop and ‘Ani-Song’ Star May’n

Singapore / Kuala Lumpur, 5 March 2013 – Following last year’s successful Animax Carnivals in Malaysia, Taiwan and the Philippines, Animax (Astro Ch 715), Asia’s first channel specializing in anime, is set to bring its signature event back to Kuala Lumpur. To be held on 16 and 17 March at Sunway Pyramid, Animax Carnival 2013 will be graced by Japanese guest star, J-pop and ‘Anisong’ (songs featuring in Japanese anime programs) diva, May’n (Macross Frontier, Shangri La, Accel World).

Starting from 10am on 16 March, at the Blue Concourse of Malaysia’s first themed shopping and entertainment mall at Bandar Sunway, Subang Jaya, Animax will offer Astro customers and all visitors to Sunway Pyramid a weekend of traditional and modern carnival games and fun activities from Japan.
“We welcomed more than 8,000 visitors to the inaugural Animax Carnival in 2012, and we are pleased to bring the event back bigger and better this year. Just as Animax serves up great anime programs to viewers of all ages in Malaysia and across Asia, Animax Carnival will offer something for everyone in the family, and make for a fun and engaging weekend to ring in the March school holidays,” said Mr Ricky Ow, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Networks, Asia, Sony Pictures Television.
Headlining Animax Carnival Malaysia 2013 is a special showcase by Japanese songstress May’n who is best known as the singing voice of character Sheryl Nome in the hit anime series Macross Frontier. From 1pm on 16 March, Day One of the event, May’n will be making an exclusive appearance and performing ‘live’ her latest hit ‘Chase the World’, the opening theme song of Animax’s new anime series Accel World, coming to Astro’s video-on-demand service this month. She will also be singing ‘HEAT of the Moment’ and ‘Kimi Shinitamo Koto Nakare’ which featured as the opening theme song in anime series Shangri-La.
Following May’n’s performance from 3pm, Animax will celebrate the launch of its latest, third season of hit anime series Fairy Tail (premiering 13 March, airing Mondays to Fridays at 7.30pm on Animax), with a screening of the ‘Tenrou Island’ arc episodes of the long-running series at the Animax Carnival Malaysia stage.

On 17 March, Day Two of the event, Animax’s Fairy Tail extravaganza continues into cosplay as the event will be the stage for some of the most colourful local cosplayers to show off their Fairy Tail costumes. Cosplay contestants will have to be at their best in putting together and donning the costumes of their favourite Fairy Tail character and perform to compete for prizes worth over RM10,000. Catch the cosplay contest semi-finals from 1pm and the finals from 4pm.
Off stage, the event lives up to being a carnival as attendees can try their hands at new and traditional Japanese carnival games through both days. These include ‘Wanage’, tossing of hoops over small toys; ‘Syateki’, shooting toys with a toy rifle; and ‘Darum Otoshi’, using a hammer to knock the layers off a multi-layered doll without it falling over. Participants who complete all carnival games can get their ‘Game Card’ fully stamped to win prizes. In addition, visitors can get a unique anime themed picture of themselves as a memento of Animax Carnival Malaysia.
Day One on 16 March, Animax Carnival Malaysia 2013 is open only to Astro customers from 10am – 6pm, and open to the public from 6pm. Astro customers should present their January, February or March 2013 Astro bill to redeem admission tickets for four, with the first 500 Astro Variety Pack customers entitled to a special gift. Day Two of the event is open to the public from 10am to 10pm. See https://www.animax-asia.com/carnival2013my/event or look out for the Animax Carnival promos airing on Animax (Astro Ch 715) for more details.

Comic Market 83 – Report

AnimeShrine — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 08:32:42 +0000

Comic Market, or more known throughout the world as Comiket is an event that is held twice a year in Japan where aspiring artist as well as well established ones converge to the Tokyo Big Sight convention centre in Ariake to sell their works. We were lucky to visit the 83rd edition of this event.

Comike goers arriving at the train station around 6 in the morning

Held every August (Summer Comike or 夏コミ Natsukomi) and December (Winter Comike or 冬コミ Fuyukomi), this is the world largest self published comic, well, market, with crowds easily reaching up to half a million people during the 3 day it’s held. We attended the Winter Comike, held on the 29th, 30th, and 31st of December 2012. To really understand the scale of this event, the largest anime based event in Malaysia, Comic Fiesta, is only 1/10th the size of Comiket in term of space used. One might even be intimidated the first time they attend this event, as this writer can attest to.

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The queue waiting for the halls to open around 8am. The halls would only open at 10am

An attendee reads a paper as he waits for the queue to move

Officially the event would only start at 10am each day, but since majority of the stuffs sold here can only be found HERE, the crowd starts queuing since the first train arrives, usually around 5.30 to 6am in the morning. While police as well as Comiket itself forbids goers from queuing overnight, there were still some people that did that. And this is not an easy thing, especially in December. For starters, it can reach as low as 3 degrees Celsius, and since Ariake is situated on a reclaimed land by the sea, you are consistently bombarded with icy cold wind making it a very uncomfortable wait. We our self waited for around 4 hours on the wet and cold ground just to get in the hall. To maintain order Comiket committee members (with bright pink caps) would brave this cold as well, taking care of the lines and making sure people are queuing up in an orderly fashion. Mind you, to manage a crowd this size is not an easy job, and it really interesting to see them managing it. Also an interesting thing to note is that once you are in queue, you can leave your bags and go to the toilet or find a place to eat. No one is going to steal your stuffs, or take your place in the queue. You won’t see that in Malaysia.

The comic market catalog. You NEED this

Catalog booth, where patrons can buy the catalog

The comic market is separated into three distinct places, East Hall, West Hall, and West Hall Upper. The East and West halls are where the doujins are sold, while the West Hall Upper area is where the commercial booths are situated. Each day, the doujin groups, or more commonly known as “circles” are changed, hence it’s mightily important for you to know which day the circle you want to go to will appear. For this, you need to get the Comiket Catalog. This 2000 yen book is akin to a yellow pages, with maps, table layout as well as the names of the circles that will appear during each of the three days. You can visit comiket without buying one, but you will have no idea where to go if you don’t. It’s a must buy, so that you can plan your purchases easily beforehand.

East Hall, view from the outside

Visitors making their way to the doujin booths

One doujin circle owner who gave us permission to take his picture

The basic premise of going to comiket is queue, queue and more queue. Once you make your way inside, you would think that you can just go to the booth of your favourite doujin circle, and just buy what you want. But sadly it’s not that simple. If the circle that you are going to is famous, then you multiply that idea of yours with around 1000 more people, and you end up with ANOTHER queue, usually outside the hall going to the booth. We queued around 45 minutes just to get to buy some doujins from Ume Aoki (mangaka for Hidamari Sketch, as well as character designer for the Madoka TV series), and then another 1 hour queue just to visit Tony Taka’s booth. You can easily waste your days queuing at Comiket just to buy something. Hence that’s why usually attendees also comes in their OWN circle, which will split their members to buy from different circles, hence saving time for everyone. If you look around Comiket, you can see these veterans shouting orders to their members on which circle to line up next, and how much they need to buy.

Queue outside the commercial booth hall

Expect to queue for an hour in the rain if you have to

Placards. This not only tell you where the line starts and which booth the line goes to, but also tell you how many items are left

Kyoto Animation Shop

Some eroge event with a real life girl which drew a really large crowd for some reason

This is basically the same thing for the commercial booth, and even much so. Since the commercial booths are selling really limited edition stuffs, for example artbooks, the lines can be much longer. One unique thing about the lines are the staffs would usually hold a placard. This placard does not only tell you where the line starts, but shows the items sold at the booth, and the price of each items so by the time the line arrives at the booth you are ready with the money to do the transaction. Also the placards will slowly be updated, around every 30 minutes or so, telling people if a certain items are sold out. This is so you won’t have to queue up to the booth just to find out the things you wanted have already finished. The queue can easily take 1 to 2 hours, and if you are unlucky, you might have to queue in rain, as we did during the second day.

Cosplayers, and photographers

A placard showing where the cosplay area is located

Cosplayers were also aplenty at Comiket, but interestingly they are barred to enter the event hall in their cosplay costumes. This is so that they won’t disrupt the traffic with people asking them for pictures. Instead, Comiket has given them two locations for the cosplayers, as well as photographers to gather and take pictures. But be warned, if you wont have time to visit the cosplay section if you are going to the event proper, hence it would be a great idea to allocate one of the three days for you to visit the cosplay section if you want to

It was really an awesome experience

visiting this place, and honestly the Malaysians complaining about the Comic Fiesta long line? That is nothing compared to Comiket. We wish we can visit this event again, this time much more knowledgeable, and much more ready, time wise, as well as money wise. It’s not cheap buying all those doujins

Anime Shrine Japan Trip – Comiket Teaser

AnimeShrine — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 11:30:02 +0000

Comiket! The holy grail for all anime/manga lovers. And yes, we were there! We will be posting an in depth report once we get home from Japan, but for now, some teasers

Anime Shrine in Japan Day 2 – Akihabara

AnimeShrine — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 09:15:05 +0000

Day 2 in Japan, and if Comiket is considered the Mecca of Japanese animation culture, then

Akihabara would be it’s Medina. Since it will be Comike tomorrow, we limited our visit quite a bit as we will come here again after

new year

Anime Shrine in Japan – Day 1

AnimeShrine — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 16:21:08 +0000

we are spending our end of the year in Japan this year in conjunction with Comiket! For

starters, we will be posting some pictures from our first day here

Comic Fiesta 2012 – 10 Years of Awesomeness

AnimeShrine — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 04:46:57 +0000

Seems that Lowyat.net is not the only thing that celebrates it’s 10th year of existence this year. Popular non-profit otaku gathering cum anime convention Comic Fiesta also turns 10 this year. And what a 10th version it is. Over 25,000 visitors visited Comic

Fiesta at Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre this year.

Not only that it has larger halls this year, Comic Fiesta also roped in some big names, such as celebrity otaku Danny Choo, figurine maker Good Smile Company, card game company Bushiroad as well as regular names such as Codemasters. Other attractions includes Doujin booths where local artists sell their artworks based upon characters popularised in Japanese modern culture as well as Western ones.

Stage events went up a whole lot of notches as well with appearance of big names such as Supercell’s redjuice, mangaka Yoshimi Kurata as well as the sibling gospel group, bless4. redjuice and Kurata answered questions from fans about their work, mostly Guilty Crown for redjuice and Aji Ichimonme for Kurata. For bless4 fans meanwhile, they were treated to a mini concert by the group during the first night of the event. bless4 even asked to high 5 everyone that went to their concert that night, certainly making the day for most of the fans.

Other than that, there are also the obligatory cosplay competitions that always have attracted hoards of crowds wanting to see the cosplayers perform their skits. While the quality might not be as good as regional cosplay competition, it’s fun nonetheless. There are other group performers as well featured on the stage, mostly indie bands that sing Japanese songs for a massive karaoke orgy session. Alfred and Shaun, always a yearly fixture as MCs made sure that everyone had their sides in stitches with their fast and sarcastic jokes.

One can go on an on about what happened at Comic Fiesta this year, but sadly it’s something that can’t really be

described in words. You need to visit the event to actually appreciate how these fans, working without pay mind you, had managed to pull of something this big, just for other fans to have fun. And for that we sincerely would like to congratulate them for 10 years of awesomeness. May it become even a larger success in the future.

We will be bringing some more private interviews with the VIPs in the future, so stay tune for that as well.

Comic Fiesta 2012 – Day 0 Preview

AnimeShrine — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 15:05:20 +0000

We managed to sneak in Comic Fiesta hall

just now, and took some pictures of the place and some stuffs that you might be interested

in tomorrow during the real event itself. More after the break

bless4 to appear at Comic Fiesta!

AnimeShrine — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 06:57:09 +0000

Just another week left before the largest

sweaty otaku gathering in

Malaysia, and we have some news that popular Japanese/American vocal ensemble group, bless 4 will be appearing at Comic Fiesta!

According to their website, bless4 will be appearing, altho at this time we have no confirmation of which date and time of their performance as of yet. But one of the committee did confirm that this news is true.

If you are fans of bless4, or Aquarion, please do come by Comic Fiesta this 22nd and 23rd December, that is if the world does not end first.