I was in an apartment somewhere in Malaysia, sitting on the floor of an under-furbished room with two vicious felines plotting the death of my sleeping bag. The stench of cat feces permeated the air, but fortunately my nose was blocked.

You have read the event coverages of DaiCon, the anime convention held in Cyberjaya, Malaysia last weekend. Now you can read the exhilarating story of how I spent my weekends at DaiCon and saw Minori Chihara live, based on the true story of the past three days of my life.

July 10, Friday – 1330 Hours

It is D-Day. Our destination is the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, a world-renowned airport recently rated best in the world (in the 15-25 million passengers category). Bring it on. But not too hard.

I am meeting up with TJ Han at Changi Airport’s relatively-new budget terminal. In the dark and seedy underbellies of Terminal 2, I board a shuttle bus with ridiculously low ceiling. As it approaches the budget terminal, I take a moment’s pause to marvel at how closely this humble airport terminal, built to serve the budgetary needs of cheap-ass American backpackers and third-world virgin flyers, resembles my factually-baseless mental image of what airports in Cuba look like. It is awesome beyond my wildest imagination.

July 10, Friday – 1445 Hours

The “boarding gate” or, as I like to call it, the “featureless corridor that leads to a door which opens up to the tarmac”, has a grand total of 5 plastic seats, the kind you find in the waiting lounge of rundown public health facilities. Our plane, a Tiger Airways Airbus A320-200, stands motionlessly on the tarmac like a stuffed dead bird (thank the secular cosmic forces of the universe it wasn’t an A310). The machine that reads our boarding pass is, on closer inspection, basically a cheap computer on wheels with a USB (or god forbid, serial) barcode scanner.

And that is the exact moment when I fall in love with the budget terminal.

July 10, Friday – 1520 Hours

Watching How I Met Your Mother on my venerable iPod touch. Barney is upset that his friends call him Swarley when in fact he should be upset with his mother for naming him after a gay dinosaur.

A homely-looking (budget) flight attendant takes orders for overpriced beverages served in styrofoam cups made of pure environmental rape. The exorbitant price tag of three bucks for a cup of coke is really Tiger Airway’s self-sacrificing initiative to save the world.

Aww, Robin and Ted would make such a great couple. I take a moment to reflect upon the cruel realities of life before dozing off for a bit.

July 10, Friday – 1700 Hours

We are stuck in this long immigration queue in this building that looks like a poorly-refurbished warehouse. Every other queue is moving faster than ours, an unexplainable phenomenon waiting for its Nobel prize-winning theorem. New faces mysteriously appear in front of us in the queue from time to time. Apparently the queue is moving so slowly that the people in front of us got married and gave birth to two daughters and a son during the time it took for us to turn the last corner.

July 10, Friday – 1730 Hours

It took us a while to realize that this horrible place we are in is actually KLIA’s equivalent of our budget terminal. That was a close shave. My impression of Malaysia rebounds significantly from the abyss of negative infinity.

July 10, Friday – 2100 Hours

After many various other trials and tribulations involving a long bus ride around the entire rural outskirts of the airport runways and a ride on the KLIA Transit rail service, we found ourselves in Putrajaya, a planned city in the middle of nowhere that perfectly juxtaposes its modern amenities with the vast areas of trees and hills that surround them, reminiscent of China’s many new industrial parks and universities. It’s like finding a Hilton Hotel in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Or one of those Soviet-era mega-projects that never go anywhere.

Finally, we reach Kurogane’s house, where we are to spend the next two nights. I find myself sitting on my sleeping bag in an unfurnished living room inhabited by two cats. Aww. How cute. I love cats.

July 11, Saturday – 0030 Hours

One of the cats has just killed a moth on my sleeping bag and is slowly mutilating its dead carcass into dozens of pieces. Not so cute. I am sleepy.

Chewing on a juicy moth. Yum

July 11, Saturday – 0400 Hours

I am still not asleep. The cats take turn to pretend rape each other, a violent and noisy process which involves them jumping onto my sleeping bag from time to time. Aww… How… cute… I… love… cats… Sleep… Murder… those… fu…

DaiCon

Now, instead of going into the boring details of what did or did not happen at DaiCon, I shall just give my general opinions of the whole event and whatever else results from the random firing of my neurons because the entire experience kind of merged into one continuous march of the living dead who lacks sleep. So let’s do this PowerPoint style, doubleplusquick.

Commendable efforts.
Before I get down to business, let me first start off by saying that the event was better than I expected, mainly because I didn’t expect much. It was quite incredible for an event organized by a school anime club. Now on to the unpleasantries.

The location of the event was terrible.
I hold the urban elitist belief that such events should always be held in the city centre so that you can pad the crowd numbers with curious onlookers and lost tourists who make the event area more lively.

TJ Han had to climb a mountain just to get his media pass

There was not much to do.
The event items clearly catered to existing fans of anime, and yet at the same time did not provide much in-depth content for the truly dedicated. The lack of real industry support is glaring, with the only professional presence being maintained by Hotlink Youth Club, a local mobile service whose name sounds a lot like a dating chatline, and Dell, a faceless multinational PC manufacturer who seeks to ruthlessly crush its oppositions like many East-Asian ruling political parties.

Mass-produced PVC figurines were pretty much the only things I took pictures of

Too much focus on Minori’s concert.
I’m probably not expressing a very popular opinion here, but I believe that the vast sum of money spent on Minori’s concert could have been used for a lot of other things. Half of the event hall was taken up by the concert area and the other half felt more like a sideshow than anything. Of course, given Malaysia’s weaker anime industry presence, it may very well have been the case that even throwing more money at the problem wouldn’t have solved anything, but still… Does a seiyuu concert opened only to ticket holders (and fake bloggers with media passes) really serve the purpose of promoting anime? Hmmm.

It’s Minori

Minori sang well.
Unfortunately, she has bad songs. This is a sad reality for many J-Pop singers with great voices. Just look at May’n before her stint under Yoko Kanno…That’s what she said! (Although I kind of liked “Crazy Crazy Crazy“) Also, the sound system was bad. The lack of proper acoustic design in the event hall did not help either.

Moving stage lights were made of Satan’s hellfire.
They burnt a permanent pentagram onto my retinal. The disclaimer at the bottom of DaiCon’s large banner made so much sense after the concert.

“EMINA will not be responsible for any epileptic seizures caused by the extremely exciting nature of our events.”

The MC tried too hard.
I felt embarrassed on her behalf. How noble of me.

TJ Han finds Minori’s hairdresser attractive.
Unfortunately, someone else hit on her first. Smooth.

Event-organizing involves a lot of politics.
It’s a stepping stone to becoming the next Obama, really. What do you think he did as a community organizer in Chicago? He ran an anime convention, duh.

Indirect kiss is only cool in anime.
In real-life, it’s just a way to spread H1N1. It’s also kind of creepy, but whatever floats your boat. Still, it was probably not the best idea in the world to make a blog post about your first indirect kiss with a somewhat well-known mid-tier voice actress. Hell hath no fury like a seiyuu otaku scorned. They can do terrible things to you, like leave angry comments on your blog or sign your email up for porn mailing lists. The horror. *click*

The Rest of It

That’s about all my thoughts on the subject matter of DaiCon actually. I have plenty more on Malaysia and its transportation system, but you know the kind of blogger I am — I just hate digressing from the topic at hand… Oh, did I tell you how I only found out last night that one of the cats that had been terrorizing me in my state of semi-comatose was actually a male? Yeah.

Oh yeah, we actually met up with Owen S and Faye during DaiCon. I didn’t know them before that since I am not an anime otaku and I don’t run an anime blog; I am just a lost soul walking though this surreal world that exists beneath the surface of what most agree to be reality.

Also had supper with Silencer, who happens to be the president of the university’s anime club. This is what we ate:

Over. Singapore’s first anime convention is. It’s been an eventful two days and I’m quite happy with the way it ended. Now we can start looking forward to next year. Also, I just woke up and my head hurts.

Pre-Event

The convention area is divided into a few zones. The white rectangle at the bottom right is where the staff and invited guests rest. You can read up on more background information about the event from my past entries.

Again, the invited guests were May’n, Yasufumi Soejima, Koji Morimoto, Kunio Okawara, Ichiro Mizuki. I uploaded a YouTube video of the Q&A session on Saturday.

Crowd

The queue got better later in the day

Graphite drawing competition organized by NUS Anime Club

The stage area was always crowded whenever there was any performance. My 17-50mm lens couldn’t get any picture of what went on. There was a cosplay competition on the second day.

It’s a sign

Ultraman vs. a furry teddy bear

Also, since I was using a DSLR with no live preview, I had to shoot blind while holding it above the crowd.

Displays

Genius Party concept art

Koji Morimoto

There’s a display for Studio 4°C’s Genius Party. Koji Morimoto was there on Saturday for an hour to sign GP merchandises.

Animax Asia showcasing LaMB, their first in-house production

Yasufumi Soejima

LaMB is Animax Asia’s first in-house production and it is being produced right here in Singapore. It’s a one-hour sci-fi anime movie with storyboard by Yasufumi Soejima, a former GONZO animator.

I want this… D:

The figurine displays drew a constant crowd. Although the whole thing was handled by a local distributor, there were Japanese representatives from Good Smile Company and others around, and apparently they were quite impressed by the turnout. Bodes well for the future. ;)

Event limited 1/60 Exia Trans-Am mode

Airbrushing demonstration

Those of you waiting for episode 8 review can make do with this

Bandai and Gundam have quite a presence at the event because Bandai recently set up an Asian branch in Singapore. No questions were asked about why there were so many Gundam 00 fans in Singapore when the show is not available here. *cough*

Imaginary Friends Studios’ display at NUS Graphite

Pepper

Pepper too

There were many pieces from Imaginary Friends Studios on display both at their own both and at the NUS Graphite booth. IFS is a Singaporean art studio with an impressive repertoire and has many major foreign clients such as Electronic Arts (e.g. Mirror’s Edge), Intel, Nokia, DC Comics and Penny Arcade.

I bought a copy of their latest release, The Pepper Project, which is a compilation of artworks featuring Pepper, the mascot character created by Artgerm aka Stanley Lau, the head of IFS. I got him to sign my copy.

Some works from Collateral Damage Studios

Yes May’n signed it

Anime showcases from everyone’s favourite company

Hehe

Seriously though, Odex did a decent job

Local distributor Chuangyi Comics

Some manga-related displays

Cosplay

I apologize for my poor photography as usual… I should really get around to getting a Speedlite. If only some kind soul would donate a 580 EX to me. My birthday is in January by the way. :D

Awesome

It’s running away

This can only mean one thing: giant cockroaches

Miku got a haircut

Concert

Ichiro Mizuki performed on Saturday night and May’n performed on Sunday night.

I didn’t attend Mizuki’s concert but I heard it was pretty awesome. I did watch him perform during rehearsal on Friday and during the cosplay competition on Sunday. (He was one of the judges.)

Waiting for May’n

I did attend May’n’s concert. It was one of the most awesome moments of the past year and a perfect end to the event. Her stage presence is truly captivating and her vocals are the real deal. I was standing right at the front and the atmosphere was just perfect. Sheryl Nome was on stage.

Unfortunately, photography was banned during her concert so I don’t have anything for you to see, especially since I was at the front where all the staff members were…

Okay just kidding. I have obtained some top secret photographs taken by other people. Many Bothan spies died to bring us these pictures. Not that you can see much in them.

The MCs

Camera LCDs

Pictures taken by LianYL of RIUVA. Please arrest him instead

May’n’s dancers, Junko and Mizuki

Picture taken by Double. Please arrest him instead

Picture taken by Windbell. Please arrest him instead

By the way, the Sheryl cosplayer (first picture in this post) was actually a Diamond VIP ticket holder who went on stage to shake hands with May’n and receive a signed board.

And yeah, I had a Diamond VIP ticket too. Also, vicious rumours of my snubbing of May’n are competely untrue. The reality is that I did shake her hands, but at that very moment Jim (extreme right), the design director for AFA08, introduced me to May’n’s manager (centre right) all of a sudden as “the guy who translated all the interview questions” and I ended up in a deer-in-the-headlight situation with me fumbling for words while attempting to bow and greet simultaneously. As any reasonably sane deer would do, I fled. orz

So yeah. I didn’t snub her. I merely ran away. >_<

People love to spell my handle as two words :(

I was asked to join Dentsu, the event organizers, for supper after the whole thing ended because I had been translating all media interview questions for the various invited guests, and the people at Dentsu wanted to thank me. May’n was there too! She signed Crazy Crazy Crazy (her debut single) for me. :D

It was worth all the time I spent on doing translations during my final year A’ Level exam period. orz

Next

What’s next? I’m sure many of us will be looking forward to the next Anime Festival Asia if it happens. Personally, I think the chances of that are quite good. From what I heard, representatives from various Japanese studios were quite impressed by AFA08, so no doubt Singapore will be receiving plenty of good publicity when they report back home.

Looking forward to next year.

P.S. Gundam 00 episode 8 post will be delayed this week due to Post Event Syndrome.