You don't even have to enter to start marveling, since the Big Sight is itself a "big sight" ^^. The area for the fair consists out of four inverted pyramids (i.e. standing on their peaks) uniting to one huge area on top. It looks really impressive, and accordingly you have to take stairs to get to the main area.
Big Sight
Another big sight was the line of people queuing up for being let in. It started way outside the building itself and continued outside almost to the station U11 in Odaiba. However entering the building you still have a 10-15 min walk until you reach the real entrance to the fair. Adding 10 minutes on the outside, you can calculate a 20-25 minutes straight walk to the entrance. Now if you imagine standing this distance in a slowly always stagnating line, you can guess that it would take at least 4 hours to get in.
By then the fair would have almost been closed. So we did not stand in line but "only to see how far the line went", went inside next to the line and checked its end. When we thought to have found the end, we of course had to check if it was really the end, so we just joined the line at the very end and waited maybe 4 minutes until we were let in (4 hours / 4 minutes) .Once we were inside the fair, we were assured that the line does indeed lead inside, but now that we are already inside, we thought we can as well stay inside and have a look around and postponed the standing in line for after the show, when there are less people ;)
The inside was pretty huge and, as you can image from the line of people outside, pretty crowded. In spite of that there was disappointingly few cosplay to be seen. Basically the only cosplay was performed from Boothgirls distributing there flyers. Accordingly the number of perverted men was also way smaller than at the Game Convention.
Hired "Boothgirl" cosplayers
and some cool full costume mascots
one real cosplayer and he was foreigner ^^
Very interesting was the corner for the art schools and newcomer Animes:
their movie looked really good
we got two Manga and the postcards from this art school
pretty cool decoration fitting their Anime
We got a lot of cool stuff for free, including three DVD with Award Winning independent Anime, three lores of Manga, a poster of Motoko from Ghost in the Shell, some stickers including a Sasuke sticker (yuli-san was very happy) and some very cool free postcards.
We recognized some familiar Anime like Death Note, One Piece, Naruto, Full Metal Alchemist and got interested in some new Anime like 図書館戦争 (Library War), Yuli will investigate in that one. Studio Ghibli also was present and seems to have remastered a very old movie called パンダ子パンダ (Panda Panda) and we found some merchandising stores, were Yuli plundered all they had with Sasuke on it ^_^.
Studio Ghibli Corner
and the remake of Panda Panda
Al from Full Metal Alchemist
One Piece
Naruto
Death Note
Ghost In The Shell Table
Some other more or less interesting new Anime to come:
an Anime based on the Game Dragon Quest
and one based on Highlander
this one didn't seem very interesting
Yuli also agreed that Baseball is boring
However this one did
There were surprisingly many attractions for little children to be found around the fair. I wanted to jump into the bird, but they told me it was only allowed for little children. I must find a way to transform myself between the shape of a child and adult for and back. Any ideas?
We even found a little space which hosted the German animation: Die Sendung Mit Der Maus, which I loved as child and still love to see it from time to time :) Yet I am surprised it made it as far as Japan ^^
Sendung Mit Der Maus
Of course where there are Anime there is merchandise. The merchandise ranged from
standard figures to
very interesting artistic puppets.
Trading Cards are also a must concerning Anime, as are
stuffed puppets.
Yuli fell over the Naruto merchandise ^_^
Ryan expected a little more, and Yuli and me also found the Comic Salon in Erlangen, the town we are studying in in Germany also more interesting. But then again the Anime Fair was just what it was, a means to present some new Anime and Anime ideas and a representation of some studios and colleges involved in Anime and Manga.
We enjoyed it nonetheless and got a lot of loot, which we eagerly searched through when coming home ^^
our loot
mika
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