{"id":1324,"date":"2008-11-21T23:35:39","date_gmt":"2008-11-21T15:35:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/?p=1324"},"modified":"2008-11-22T19:07:41","modified_gmt":"2008-11-22T11:07:41","slug":"afa08-press-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/2008\/11\/21\/afa08-press-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"AFA08 Press Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"caption\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/21_afa2.jpg\" alt=\"AFA08\" style=\"width:400px; height:225px;\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I attended the press preview for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.afa08.com\/\">Anime Festival Asia 08<\/a> today. The actual event starts tomorrow at 9am. The preview itself consisted of a short tour around the booths that were being set up and a press conference to introduce the invited guests.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Note<\/strong>: This post is backdated because it took longer than expected to upload a 25-minute video to YouTube&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In case you&#8217;ve been ignoring <a href=\"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/tag\/afa08\/\">all my posts<\/a> on the topic, AFA08 is Singapore&#8217;s first anime convention and it will be held on Saturday and Sunday at Suntec Convention Hall 403 and 404.<\/p>\n<p>The guests are (left to right):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>May&#8217;n<\/strong> (singing voice of Sheryl Nome in Macross F)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Yasufumi Soejima<\/strong> (director of LaMB, former GONZO animator)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Koji Morimoto<\/strong> (Studio 4\u00c2\u00b0C founder)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Kunio Okawara<\/strong> (original designer of Gundam)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Ichiro Mizuki<\/strong> (anime and tokusatsu singer)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The press conference itself is just a short sales pitch of the whole event, and you can already find all the information on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.afa08.com\/\">official website<\/a>, including the details on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.afa08.com\/toys_highlights.htm\">exclusive merchandises<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/21_afa1.jpg\" alt=\"AFA08\" style=\"width:400px; height:225px;\" \/><br \/>\nShawn, the head honcho<\/p>\n<p>There is a Q&#038;A session at the end with each of the five guests. I&#8217;ve uploaded a video recording of the whole thing to YouTube using ShakyCam\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 technology.<\/p>\n<div class=\"caption\">\n<object type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" style=\"width:400px; height:330px;\" data=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/NWxVY7FADCM\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/NWxVY7FADCM\" \/><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\" \/><\/object><\/div>\n<p>The best part of the whole thing was actually after everyone else left and they started doing stage rehearsal. May&#8217;n performed all the songs she&#8217;ll be doing for the concert. Unfortunately, cameras were not allowed for the rehearsal, so you have to use your imagination for that, or catch her actual performance on Sunday. All I can say is that she is one of the few singers who sound even better in real-life than on CD.<\/p>\n<p>Also, for no reason, here&#8217;s a picture of a Sheryl cosplayer who was a member of the press.<\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/21_afa3.jpg\" alt=\"AFA08\" style=\"width:267px; height:400px;\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Head down to Suntec City tomorrow or on Sunday if you want to see more. I&#8217;m really tired now, so I shall retire&#8230;to the world of Azeroth. Well, Outland actually.<\/p>\n<p><strong>UPDATE<\/strong>: Yes I realize that this post is really, really late. The YouTube video took years to upload overnight before failing and I had to upload it again using the non-beta uploader. Just pretend that you are reading this post on Friday night, okay?<\/p>\n<p>On another note, I just got back from AFA08 day one. I&#8217;m really tired. Will blog about the whole event tomorrow because I didn&#8217;t get enough pictures today. (I forgot to put a CF card into my camera and only managed to borrow one from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moeside.net\/weblog\/\">Windbell<\/a> just before I was going to leave the venue.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I attended the press preview for Anime Festival Asia 08 today. The actual event starts tomorrow at 9am. The preview itself consisted of a short tour around the booths that were being set up and a press conference to introduce &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/2008\/11\/21\/afa08-press-preview\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[759,748,64],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1324"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.darkmirage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}