Day 53 (Mar 21) - 2009 Tokyo Anime Fair (Part 1)

Location: Odaiba, Tokyo, Japan
Weather: 14 degrees (sunny mostly but windy in evening)
Author: Amy

Konnichiwa! I am in a pretty good mood today cause I had 12 hours of sleep last night. Ha ha!!! There is a reason behind it before you start calling me a sloth...

Anyways, I was really excited yesterday cause I went to the 2009 Tokyo Anime Fair! It is an annual event held at Tokyo Big Site with lots of exhibition stalls and booths promoting various animes. Looking at all the displays and handouts, they really spare no expense!

Welcome to the 2009 Tokyo Anime Fair! (I accidentally left my camera on highest exposure... so lousy pic)

As expected, Naruto & Bleach are featured prominently here

We met a family from Kansas on the train ride to Tokyo Big Site and made friends with the son of the family, Jacob. Since he was also headed for the Anime Fair, we decided to go together. 'Together' is a loosely used term here because we also went with Julia (a friend from Germany) and we lost each other within 10 minutes of getting in. Luckily, I didn't lose Chrissie, just everyone else. It was PACKED!

Keep an eye out for Transformers section at the very end, guys!

THE DISPLAYS

I took way more pics than was healthy for a non-otaku (I may have to convert), so I will have to split them up into categories (and possibly extra posts).

The anime companies spare no expenses in displaying their animes, characters, figurines, merchandise, etc. Let's have a look at some of the displays.

Fullmetal Alchemist on far left. Don't recognise the rest but after this fair, I think I will get into more anime!

Bishonen galore! 'Bishonen' is a term used for pretty guys. I think this display was for Weiss Krauz.

I wasn't very happy I blurred this shot. Dang! My bishies!!!

Just to show you some of the display booths.

A close-up. I love the art!

More close-ups.

This has something to do with singer Namie Amuro & Vidal Sassoon, I think.

In the bottom right corner, you can see a pic of Namie Amuro promoting her single 'Wild/Dr'

I love this poster! I can imagine the amount of effort that went behind the creation of this. I just really like the design.

Typical shoujo manga type characters. This stall may be for the younger crowd (12 years old?) because the chinese characters on the left says 'Primary School Stall'

Another anime I have never heard of but love the art. I will be researching this one for sure.

Giant eye-candy for guys.

Another cool poster. This anime obviously geared towards guys.

Chinese themed anime

Came across my beloved Naruto and Bleach

I want to take these displays home!!!

This is Naruto and Sasuke looking younger than how the manga has progressed.

Hanasakeru Seishonen anime

This one reminds me of Sailormoon. Typical shoujo type anime (for young girls)



COSPLAY!

A bit tired of the displays? How about some cosplay? (People dressing up in anime characters). As expected, skimpily dressed girls are good draw cards for booths. One can tell by the amount of guys gathered around taking pics with long-lense, gigantic professional cameras.

I joined in... (what does that say about me? In my defense, I took these pics for the guys reading the blog ^_^)

These people are actually dressed after the anime characters they are promoting

The above girl represents the anime below.

Not all are girls, there are some guys too.

And we even found some cosplayers which are not part of the fair. Cosplay was actually not allowed at this anime fair (BOOO!!!) but they managed to sneak in.

CUTE GIGANTIC BALOON DISPLAYS

Need I say more?

Totoro!

Pikachu

Dang dang Doraemon!

And here's a Studio Ghibli display. It was really pretty and intricate. It's not a picture but an actual handmade? exhibit. Little kids loved this one. They kept trying to climb in.

Aaaawwww....


TRANSFORMERS

This booth was all about Transformers and was even playing the Hollywood movie. Made me feel like watching it again, eventhough I found Shia Lebouf irritating.

I took pics mostly of the small figurines. Not many close-ups. Sorry...

The different Transformer characters.

Getting a little closer...

Top row. Must be the important ones.

I thought Transformers are from a different world? They got dinasours on their world too?

Transformers.... Disney Style!!!

Before and after.

Cutsey version...

I don't get the hype... Is it sacrilege to say so?

Next up...

- Naruto Special! + Bleach
- Fullmetal Alchemist
- Miscellaneous figurines that are probably collector's edition and cost more than my education...