Anime Festival Asia 2008 (AFA08) was a total blowout! This event is the first major anime event of Singapore focusing on anything anime and i was totally impressed with the event. This post will be mostly about the booths and CDS. Photos highjacked from Naka-dashi members, Darkmirage as well as members of SPLifeArts.

We went early on friday to put our goods before the press conference. The first impression after stepping into the hall, wow the hall is HUGE!#@$! There weren’t any shoppers around so it actually looked rather quiet… but we all know it’s the calm before the storm… Saw many bloggers i know in the local community as well as a “couple” cosplaying Macross F’s Alto and Sheryl… Where’s my Ranka?!

Members of CDS: WaHa, me, Tragic_comedy and Xeph setting up the black shop!

I took a walk around and looked at all the exhibits before the rabid fanboys come charging in on the next day. Photos by dodgethis, but what i’ve seen nontheless.

Studio 4°C showcasing their animation Genius Party and other stuffus. GO TO DMC!

In cinemas soon! The Sky Crawlers! AKA Sasuke (Naruto) Clone Flying Pewpew Planes!

Sharon setting up her booth for the Legendary KKnM. Complete with caht-ching cashier machine and bebebeep nets dialer

After setting up, we got our booth’s photos taken from C.I., and other members of the blog/press if i recall correctly. I remember the event director Shawn Chin introduced us as the first group to set-up amongst the doujin groups (well there’s only 4 booths and 2 booths were from Malaysia =.=”’)

The Strike Witches scroll posters, which fooled 0ne into thinking that it was offical products! LoL The Fool’s Progress indeed~

The following morning’s queue was just as impressive, if not, more impressive then STCC’s turnout! DD= This is almost like the length i would expect (for one doujinshi) in Comiket. When will CDS pull such a crowd by itself *sniff*

The queue to get in is so long, i can only see a mass of heads at the front!

For this event, we’ve prepared quite a big number of goodies in comparison with our previous events. First of all, the main attraction of the booth, the Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha THE MOVIE 1st and StrikerS (last part) SET-UP! and Next-Generation doujin prints with our very first doujinshi, Burning Arisa Za Movie 1st!

Photo by Darkmirage. See our bling bling “secret” print?

Following that, the other star item under our belt, the Strike Witches Intel Recon doujin scroll posters. We were also selling Superscenic as well as the Lamento print sets in our sister booth over at Graphite’s NUS booth. We also did some rather last minute artwork in celebration of May’N’s performance in Singapore.

Photos by Darkmirage, edited for viewing pleasure. Ignore those two people who got their heads cropped =X

In actuality, we printed the Macross Frontier fanarts “lifesize” for publicity and following that, auction. HOWEVER, due to THIS:

May’N’s Signature Holy Crap! I’m keeping this in my Otaku den forever!

The crowd number that went through our booth area was just insane! We sold our Intel Recon in something like, 1 hr. The crowd went on and on, and we sold out our whole stock of the A3s in a flash! The initial turn out was just humongous! Everyone was walking around with a new purchase or a bigass DSLR!

Some dudes looking at our items early in the day. Lookie the SW scrolls aren’t sold out yet. CO2 manning the booth for the most part (Slackers-’R'-Us)

There was a steady stream of people and the traffic was just humongous. Heck, almost none of us sat down at the event booth during the two days! The crowd spiked during the peak hours of 2-4pm and there was a signing session just beside our booth as well, attracting more people to take a look!

Wow look at these homies lookin at da goods, people!

By the end of day 1, we’ve sold 80% of all our stocks available. What the heck, that’s even more crazier then STCC! We brought in the rest of our stuff for the next day. The crowd just gobbled up everything we had by 3pm the second day.

Of couse, being an anisong fan, i also joined the rest of the gang in watching Aniki’s concert as well as the spectacular May’N’s concert (i’ll leave it to dodgethis’ article to explain how i felt). There, i met Matsumoto-san, apparently another doujinshi artist from The Great Land. Interestingly we hit off rather well after the concert. Maybe we had common thoughts about the concert or maybe it’s the soul of drawing that made us understand each other easier. I look forward to meeting him in Comiket in future as well as being web friends (of couse that would be the best way i practice japanese as well wwwww).

We are Still accepting orders for our prints so do come down on Saturdays at KKnM if you’d like to order. Do note that the item price will be the event price and no long the preorder price that was offered before AFA (just add $10 to the preorder price).

In the meantime, do check out the other blogger’s blogs about AFA08:

All in all, the event was a smacktacular success and i had tremendous fun in this short span of two days. It almost seemed like my entire Otaku life was fulfilled in just two short days. Of course there are things that can be improved on, but i would leave that to AFA09 to see the results. For any feedback you’d wish to have for the AFA08 Organisors to prepare them for AFA09, do send an email to them at contact@afa08.com

CDS will be participating in EOY, Comifest as well as the up and coming SOYA (if circumstances allow). So please do drop by and visit us at these events!