Cosfest VII was held over the weekends at Downtown East. It is an annual cosplaying convention, home to the Singapore qualifying round for the World Cosplay Summit in Nagoya, Aichi, along with other animé-related events and competitions. Also, the cutest Haruhi cosplayer ever. :O

Cosfest VII was held over two days. I was busy on Saturday so I had to miss the anime song karaoke competition. Apparently the winner Rika (a 2006 performance by her) sang Nico Nico Douga Gasshou Kumikyoku in its entirety. You can watch a low-quality recording on YouTube.

As usual, there were too many Bleach and D.Gray-man cosplayers for my taste. I guess it’s up to people do decide what they wish to cosplay as, but it’s becoming a textbook example of conforming to be different. I think good cosplays are a form of self expression, and cookie-cutter costumes somewhat defeat the point of the entire ritual.

I have nothing else to say, so here are the pictures.

Awesome

It’s a girl

We are all special!

涼宮ハルヒの週末

Annhilating targets

I wish I had a proper external flash

意義あり！ Objection!

I’ve taken this exact composition at least five times before

The only good game on NDS until the next Gyakuten

Exia deploys some kind of energy wave weapon

This is not LotR

Sometimes I can’t decide if Pita-Ten was over or under-rated

There was no Miku :(

wtf

This is no cosplay. This is the real Ayu

Uguu~

Usagi-su

Tony Stark makes a surprise visit

I can never tell these people apart

Zero idea what this is

The hair colour is really authentic

That’s not the paper aeroplane Alto folds

FFVIII is guilty pleasure

アニヲタが溢れた世の中に絶望した

マクロス７に絶望した

å†çœŸã‚’きれいに撮れない僕に絶望した

C-C-Combo breaker

最近のくそアニメに絶望した

As usual, the rest of the photos are in my gallery. Cosplayers depicted, feel free to contact me if you want the original 10-megapixel JPEG. But that won’t happen because my photos suck. :(

I dropped by the inaugural Singapore Toy and Comic Convention today to see the CosCon cosplay competition. As expected, the number of cosplayers who turned up was significantly smaller than those of dedicated cosplay events in Singapore, such as Cosfest and EOY.

I was planning to give this event a pass because I could tell that cosplay was going to be a really tiny afterthought, and the event itself was targeted more at general nerds and toy collectors, as opposed to hardcore otaku who have crossed the line of no return, devoid of souls and cash, loyal minions of the queen of the underworld.

You could tell that this was not my comfort zone by the high Star Wars presence in the hall, so strong it was that those attuned to the way of the Force could walk to Suntec City from City Hall station blindfolded, guided only by the scent of fellow Lucas worshippers.

Long, long ago, George Lucas was in love

Awesome cosplay by a really thin smurf

The Guest of Honour, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew

I loved Star Wars as much as the next geek, but it’s just not my cup of tea when it comes to life-destroying addictions. Considering the fact that anime and cosplay were probably not going to be a prominent part of the programme, it was my original intention to stay at home today.

Luckily, my common sense was temporarily overpowered by a series of coincidences that can only be described as Haruhi’s divine will, and, against my better judgement, I decided to show up at the convention hall with my Canon 400D, the premier lowest-tier DSLR for cheapskates who want to appear professional in the eyes of the ignorant regular folks with their child-size compacts.

This photo was taken from a restricted area

I say luckily because despite being a general waste of my precious afternoon which I could have otherwise spent watching the original Macross (Lin Mingmei ^^), there was one cosplay which made it worth my effort. (I’ll leave you guessing which one…)

Alright, enough nonsense. On to the photos.

It offends my sensibility that FFVII characters can fly with one wing

The vibrating cat of doom!

Okay fine it was the Hatsune Miku cosplayer. Surprisingly, she came in first place in the competition. I say surprisingly not because her cosplay wasn’t the best, but because the contest was determined by voting and I didn’t think Miku’s character would be popular enough (compared to Naruto and Crisis Core).

It’s quite cool cause the lights on her arm bands actually light up. Also, the Miku cosplayer told me that she reads my blog and actually discovered the wonders of Vocaloids on this very site. It brought a tear to my eye knowing that I helped to change the world for the better. Heh. (Wonder what she’ll be cosplaying as for Cosfest next week.)

Sadly, the organizers placed the cosplayers in the most poorly-lit corner of the entire hall, which, along with the fact that I had to depend on 400D’s internal flash, meant that I managed to produce some of the crappiest cosplay photos I’ve ever taken since my pre-DSLR days. I really ought to cough up 500 bucks for a Speedlite some day.

And on a closing note…

Everyone’s favourite anime company

BEST COSPLAY THIS YEAR

Okay, with that out of the way, continue reading for the rest of the cosplay pictures.

And yes I was wearing my ROD T-shirt on Sunday.

Congrats to those who spotted me. You won! There’s no prize, though.

Anyway, there are still a lot more pictures that are not included above. You can see them all in the gallery:
Day 1 Gallery
Day 2 Gallery

Now I shall go take a rest… Feel free to contact me to request for the original pictures (10 megapixel JPEG).

The entrance to doom and horror

Warning: Pictures may be extremely disturbing to the uninitiated.

Rei and Mana

Turn right (although no one in the right mind would do that since you’d be facing the wall) after stepping through the door and you’ll see two large Evangelion posters that identify me as a level 12 Eva fanboy. Mana is hawt. That’s a not-for-sale promotional poster for the PS1 version of Girlfriend of Steel. I found it at Mandarake Shibuya for ï¿¥200. Yay.

The lair

Right across the door is where I spend 90% of my waking hours, excluding school.

Generally I do my stuff on the main monitor. The secondary monitor is mostly for IRC, Winamp and some misc. widgets.

The rig below is a Pentium 3 with a dead HDD. I was using it to run Linux, but it’s dead now. At least until I move a HDD over.

A Coolmaster case. It’s so cool that the PVC figures above it have not melted yet. In fact, it’s so cool that there’s a penguin sitting on it.

Louise stands above my Creative subwoofer.

Behind is the promotional poster for Maaya Sakamoto‘s “Kazemachi JET” single. I have the one for Yunagi LOOP too, but it was damaged when I took it down during the packing. I failed as a Maaya fanboy. orz

I have no idea why the penguin is there. It just is.

My wallet’s coin compartment has a huge hole, so I took out all my coins. That’s a Mahora school crest on the keychain.

When she’s not on a holiday, Saber sits on my desk. Gao.

Behind Saber is a wallscroll of Tama-nee. It’s a promotional item from Messe Sanoh that came with the limited edition copy of ToHeart2 XRATED. I bought it from Lashinbang in Ikebukuro for ï¿¥2,000.

And now we come to the interesting part…the shelves…

The storage area belong Kasumi is where I dump everything that can’t be displayed. I should invest more in displayable stuff, like posters.

I seem to be missing some books. Oh well. Maybe they got lost in one of the bajillion boxes during the move. Hopefully they’ll turn up one day…

My “study” desk. Do you see any studying materials around? I think not.

My laptop. It’s trying and failing to boot Linux off a Live CD. Sigh…

My phone charging. HARUHIISM FOREVER!!!

My HP printer and, uh, some CDs… Okay this is getting lame. Let’s wrap up with some shots of the posters and pencil boards that are haphazardly pasted all over the place.

Melons are nice

The princesses

The girls with guns

Setsuna-chan!!! Too bad the game sucked

This phone card costs more than any single poster

So…uh…yeah, I like Lacus

A brave issue of Megami gave up its life

Pretty bad picture due to the poor lighting (that or I just suck)

And finally…

FEEEEEEEEEEENA!!!!!!

Everyone knows that I have a thing against displaying posters with folds, but Feena is an exception. :3

BTW my room is defended by a USB missile launcher. So don’t even think about it!

View the rest of the pictures in the gallery.