AFA 08

AFA 08
 

I have just gone to the press briefing of AFA 08 in Singapore at the Sun-Tec centre. And introduced us to the stars of the show.

AFA means the Anime Festival Asia, and is the first annual event in South East Asia. Which is looking at Japanese Pop Culture, from Animation, Games, Toys, Manga and lots of other great things from the culture life styles from Japan. This is a family event, and expected to have a great turnout.

So the stars of the show, other than the Animation, games and toys, are:

May'n,(taken from May Nakabayashi) Japan's Latest Pop diva, who's singing voice of the Character Sheryl Nome, in the animation series 'Macross Frontier', she will also be singing at the show on Sunday, looking forward to it, she pretty cute, lol. She caught the singing bug from the age of 3 watching, animation shows, and loves the passion put into the shows and that gives her the passion to sing. And a strong belief in yourself! In 2005, she made her single début with Crazy Crazy Crazy. Her second single, Sympathy, was also released later that year. This is the first time she has sung outside Japan, and a great performer for this festival in Singapore.

Ichirou Mizuki, who is a respected artist, with a 40 year career, as an Anime themed song singer. He is known in Japan fondly as Big Brother or respected Older Brother, or 'Aniki' in Japanese. Mizuki-San, began his journey into music in 1968, and did his first Anime song theme in 1971 for Genshi Shonen Ryu. When he first started, doing Anime themed music, he was looked down upon by his peers and fans, for they saw what to them, was he seems to be taking a step back in his career to do Anime themed music? But he felt that Anime had the spark of child like fascination, a spirit, that gives him a sense of happiness, and has given him a lot of joy over the last 4 decades.

He has preformed 1200 songs, which include themes for 'Mazinger Z', Captain Harlock' and 'Masked Raider' a Tokusatau production which uses live action, but literally means 'special effects'. Think Live action Power Rangers people. He also does the opening credits song for Bionic Commando Rearmed, which you can find on XBox 360 Market Place and PS3 Network! This man has been a super star for a good time and showed it when lining up for photographs, but talking to the crowd and posing with a signature point, like Elvis. He is not called the 'King' for nothing ya know?

We are introduced to Kunio Okawara, who is the Gundam Mechanical Designer. For those of you who don't know what Gundam is, it is a Meta Series involving giant robots, or Mecha, which was created by the Sunrise Animation studio, in 1979 and is a subsidiary of Namco Bandai, a pretty large game manufacturer, in Japan and sell across most of the world, on way or another.

Okawara-San, designs and builds these robots, and are turned into plastic model kits for us to build and are very collectable, but mostly for the show, which he covers from robots, ships and other mechanical objects. He was 31 years old when he started making these, sought after and well love designs.

Yasufumi Soejima, is well know to to the Animation world, with his work on the Animatrix, his work being 'The Second Renaissance', and also his work on Linkin Park's music video, 'Breaking the Habit' which won the MTV Viewers Award in 2004. He is inspired by the script, when he starts to find which art direction an animation should take, but if there are no restraints, he will evolve present day objects with in his animations. He is a story board artist, who I had the pleasure to see working Live at the show!

He worked with the studio Gonzo, where he was a 3D CGI director and production director, from 1999 to 2007, he as also worked with SEGA and as 3D director for the Final Fantasy Unlimited.

He is presently working on LaMB, based on the award-winning script by new Filipino writer Carmelo Juinio. LaMB is the first animation production under the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) and Sony Pictures Entertainment Networks (SPE). Part of an Asia Joint Production Fund. He is working with director Ryosuke Tei in the production at Imaginary Friends animation studios.

LaMB follows protagonists Jack and Eve's fight against planet Cerra's ‘Lamination' system of imprisonment. This is where criminals are kept in laminated suits to remain productive but not free members of society. The story is set in the future, where Cerra is a discovered world after we left Earth, and since resources are rare, recycling is needed, including prisoners.

It is to be released in 2 ½ hour parts with a final 1 hour show in early 2009. They are not just stopping there, as this will be a multi-media, multi-platform production, though web based content, graphic novelization though mobile phones, and much more. I think the work on LaMB,is really amazing, and a lot of credit goes to Tei-San's and Soejima-San's hard work and dedication. Thought with all animations it is a team effort!

We then get to meet Kōji Morimoto, an Anime director, who also worked with the Wachowski Brothers, on the Animatrix with the animation Beyond. He founded Studio 4°C with Eiko Tanaka and Yoshiharu Sato. Eiko Tanaka was a producer from Studio Ghibi producing My Neighbour Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service, she also worked as a producer on Beyond and The Second Renaissance. Sato-San is a key animator on many projects, not just in Japan. He has worked on The Tigger Movie, The Hunchback of Notre Dame 2 as well as Kiki's Delivery Service, to name a few.

But back to Morimoto-San who was an animation director on Otomo-San's land mark feature Akira, and if you don't know about that film, you would not be reading this article in the first place.

He also worked on Neo-Tokyo, Fist of the North Star, Macross Plus, Mind Game and Tekkon Kinkreet.

He is going to be talking about his much awaited Genius Party Beyond, which is a series of short animation stories and is a follow on to the previous Genius Party short films. There are 5 in 'Beyond and 7 in the other. From the graphic work on the show floor they look very interesting, and use many different types of styles of animation!

Well that's the 'Stars' of the show, the show floor has been broken down into 7 segments!

Akiba Town where the sale of all that is linked with Anime, from Manga Toys, Action figures (or dolls to Kev, but they are very, very, pretty, dolls, some of them are even very, sexy too, lol) I got my eye on some Ghost in the Shell stuff! Tochikoma! But only saw the one, boo! And some of the sexy stuff too, LOL. But lots of collectables!

Music, J-Pop concerts from the above mentioned on the Main Stage, where we got our press preview. And Anime Live

The Anime Block Busters Area which will showing the above works as well as some work from other Animators, the one I am looking forward to is The Sky Crawlers, made by the same people that did Ghost in the Shell series! Code Geass, D. Grey-Man, Shakugan No Shana, Casshern Sin, Tora Dora, Gundam 00, and Skip Beat.

The Arena where there with be arcade games will be played, the Street fighter IV comp. is looking like it could be good fun to watch. Other arcade machines there are Tekken 6, King of the Fighters 98 Ultimate Match, Midnight Club 3 and Initial-D Drift Racer 3, and I assume some comp. will be going on with them too, well I hope so, will I try and enter, not sure as these are arcade machine racers, and I am outta touch, but I will look into it?

I did not see any others set up but I will see what tomorrow brings?

The Industry Zone where Soejima-san will be talking about various discussions concerning the animation industry, also Dentsu will be show casing Maple Story Anime series, and a talk from HIS Travel who will be setting up tours to Japan, which will cover Anime hotspots as well as Anime convention that may be going on there!

Mangaka Zone which will show case art work from popular Manga Titles, which will follow Shonen Jump's 40th Year Anniversary World Tour. Other Manga there, Naruto, Death Note, D,Grey-Man, Dragon Ball, One Piece and many others, I even saw a load of Pokemon story stuff!

And we have Planet Mech which will show case loads of Gundam Models, that have been commissioned to top Singapore modellers, I have seen some of this stuff and it's great, I use to be a modeller myself when I was younger, and even won some prizes! So the stuff is that good!

There will even be 168 entrants in 16 categories for Cosplay, and looking forward to that, I like people who dress up one in a while, lol.

And there will be a world première of the Crystal Version of the Limited Edition Nineball Seraph, from the series Armoured Core, plus talk of a Mystery Figure? Ohhh!

Anyway as I saw them set up the show floor, I was looking at some amazing stuff that will be sold, from talking money boxes, Shoot your alarm clock and many other things!

I am looking forward to this weekend, lol. I hope I did not miss anything out, and did any errors with names, but I think it all looks good! Will post what pictures I do have as soon as possible. And I would like to thank all hosting this event, as well as Florence Ang from Red Dawn Communication and Promotions, she has been amazing sorting me out Press Passes for almost all the event I have gone to in Singapore, Thank you Florence!

I am sorry to say I did not catch the MC's name or the Main Man, hosting the event, I will try to correct that, asap!