The previous post covered the dealers that were present at this year’s Doll Affair event. Now, we’ll take a closer look at the displays that they had. These are mostly owned by the dealers themselves with a few other extras.. I didn’t go around photographing dolls belonging to individuals as you’ll see plenty of them from their own shoots posted up on forums like Den of Angels.

If anyone can shed any light on the makes of each of these dolls I’d be most grateful.

Angel. Candy-Rock

We’re now into the third year running for the great BJD event, The Doll Affair. Following last year’s run, it was again held at two of the meeting rooms at Suntec Convention Center, which meant ample movement room for attendees without getting a nose full of dolly (except for around the dealers’ tables).

Event details

Suntec City Convention and Exhibition Centre

Meeting rooms 303-305

Level 3

No long queue snaking around the corridors of Suntec before the event, fortunately. In fact I arrived around 1 pm and paid for admission in around 3 minutes. The event opened about an hour later and I went to some book sale upstairs to kill time.

AFA 2009 Day 2′s stage activities did not interest me as much, but it seems like the turnout of cosplayers was much higher than yesterday. Most were hanging around on level 3 again rather than the actual event hall. As usual, this post is useless without photos, so here we go.

Spotted this cute pair hanging out around the Animax area.

One of my favorite websites on Japan pop culture, Akibanana, has opened a real brick and mortar maid cafe in Singapore!

Branding itself as a cosy space for restless souls to come home to and find others with similar otaku interests, their outlet is called A87 Cafe & Bar, located in a shophouse in Tanjong Pagar, and it just started operating in December 2009. They’re doing quite a bit of documentation on their website; here’s a writeup on how it all started, and their first day.

From the photos it appears that they’ve gone with a real Japanese maid cafe interior with all the classroom-style seating and colorful decos. I’d love to check out their menu soon.

Here’re the details.

A87 Cafe & Bar
a: 108 Tanjong Pagar Road
t: +65 62222 087
e: A87@akibanana.com

Opening hours:
Weekdays & Sunday 12pm – 1am
Friday & Saturday 12pm – 3am
Closed on Monday

Day 1 had a pretty sizeable turnout of cosplayers although I was more interested in the stage events on that day. Managed to get some good shots though.

A very daring cosplayer doing Final Fantasy’s Jecht. He actually painted himself that color.

The Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s Japanese Tsubasa Club has just announced their 2010 Start-of-Year cosplay event. Buzz is that it’ll be held at a larger area next year.

Here’s the summary.

Date: 30th January 2010
Venue: Ngee Ann Polytechnic (Exact location to be announced)

Admission Fee: $5 (Door) / $3 (Pre-order)

More details at their website:
http://soy-japtsubasa.net/

I reached Suntec at 10.30 am on Sunday, and there wasn’t any more queueing outside the level 4 halls. It was still crowded, but there was movement, not stationary long queues snaking around the place. Not only that, but level 3 had something like just 5 cosplayers, just sitting around. One of them was making use of all the empty space to lay out some huge black feathered wings flat on the ground. How this would change towards the afternoon.

Decided to spend some time admiring the BAKUC entries at the start of the day. I really like the one with the 1/35 figures.. it had a much more miliaristic feel than typical gundam models.

Since its first run last year, AFA appears to have mushroomed into an even bigger event this year if we go by the marketing hype; quite a feat for what is supposed to already be the largest-scaled anime event in Singapore. Just like many other similar events, it was held at Suntec Convention Center Halls 403/404 over the weekend of 21-22 November 2009.

Events management was by I-Promo Events & Marketing, SOZO and Dentsu Singapore. Major sponsors were Bandai and SANYO, and the official regional media partner was Animax. In terms of the actual goods, it promised big things and big names, like the reappearance of May’n and Ichirou Mizuki, cosplayers from around the region, and Danny Choo, who was here to host a K-on dubbing session, give a presentation, promote the Kotobukiya Otacool book, and also facilitate the Tokyo Figure Show here in Singapore. For all those of you going tomorrow, here’s a very basic guide to what to expect at the event.

Danny arrived in Singapore earlier this week and did quite a bit of video recording around town to promote the event – at the merlion, ION Orchard, Raffles Place, and so on. You can check out the AFA facebook page, his facebook page or website for photos of that.

Once again the area is divided into different experience zones. First, the outside.

Ticketing area

The hype is building up rapidly as we approach the event date – there are less than 24 hours till the doors open for Anime Festival Asia 2009.

I approached Suntec Convention Center around 11.30 today to collect my tickets from preregistration and chanced upon Danny Choo there. Didn’t manage to say hello as he and his entourage were walking so fast and purposefully (probably as he had just finished giving his presentation at the Animation Conference or a test run for that), plus the fact that I’m just one of the common folk so I didn’t feel like disturbing him.

Even before the ticketing counters opened at noon there was quite a queue. There were no less than 50 people already standing in line ahead of me.

Luckily, once the counters opened – 4 of them, the queue disappeared rapidly. It took only about 10 minutes before I had the tickets in my hand. And some lucky draw thing too – looks like there’re some good prizes in store if we’re lucky enough.

Have you ever wondered who you can turn to when trying to build something cool for your costumes? Look no further than the community of Singapore hackers that just love to build cool stuff! Anyone who reads MAKE magazine or Lifehacker will feel at home right here.

Hackerspace.SG is having its housewarming at Bussorah Street (near Bugis)  on 21 Nov  2009 (yes, it’s the day of AFA2009 unfortunately) and warmly invites all cosplayers to come and discover a community that would love to find out how cosplayers innovate and hack together with them.