Asianim 4

Belgians love their anime so a week after FACTS we have Asianim.
The fourth edition of the Asianim festival is taking place on the 24th & 25th of October in Luik/Liege at the Palais des Congrès. The activities of the festival will be focused around 3 themes:

1 - Traditional Japan

• martial arts demonstrations -Karaté – Aikido – Jujutsu – Kobudo- by JAPAn asbl
• Sumi-e –traditional painting- by Suely Shiba
• Shogi, Japanese cooking  by Passerelle Japon
• Go by Club Go Liège
• Tessen demonstration –fan fighting- and painting on silk by “l’Orient en Occident”
• Viêt Võ Dao demonstration –Vietnamese martial arts-  by Vovinam
• Tea ceremony
• Bonsai  exhibition by Bonsai Club Liège
• Origami by BelOrigamo
• Calligraphy by Mrs. Manda
• Go

2 – Contemporary Japan

• an Avatar village
• Dance Dance Revolution booth
• AMVs
• anime projections
• movie projections – 20th Century Boys on Sunday
• Video Games – console, arcade, pc
• Inflatable Sumo
• various fanzines
• cosplay competition on Sunday at 14:00
• Jpop/Jrock/Visual Kei Concerts on Saturday

13:00 – Guren

14:00 – Pinky Doodle Poodle

16:00 -Bernard Minet

3 – Commercial

• 23 different vendors

Aside from this there will be Speed Painting and contests, karaoke, quizzes by Bulle Japon.

Practical Info

1 – Food & Drinks

Asianim announced it will provide reasonably price sushi. Menu should look something like this :

• Sushi €1,5
• Pack of 6 sushi – €7,5
• 2 Maki – €1,5
• Curry Rice – 4,5
• Sandwich – €3
• 0,33 soda can – €1

2 – Tickets

Pre-sale at Fnac and Slumberland:  €7/day , €12/weekend

At the entrance: €8/day, 15€/weekend

3 – Hours

From 10:00 to 18:00

All in all

So they seem to have all that I’d expect from a anime event in Belgium : cosplay, concerts, merchandise, games and touch of traditional stuff. Why tamper with a proven recipe, one might say. Other might say that we’ve seen it all before. However, I believe that, like myself, the ones attending Asianim are looking forward to learning another origami figure from the guys of BelOrigami or practicing their Shogi / Go or one of the other activities they’ve enjoyed at other events.

After FACTS,  I’m hoping to find the “manga for €1 booth”, which showed up at Animansion and Made in Asia and maybe some other reasonably  priced goodies. Assuming that the 3 years of experience will show, Asianim should be the best Belgian anime event so far.

See ya on Saturday if you’re heading there.

Asianim

It seems that the first week-end of November is going to be a great day for cosplay Along side NijiKon in Bucharest , the far bigger Asianim is taking place Liége.

At it’s 3rd edition, Asianim will take place at the Palais des Congrès de Liège.

A glance on the activities section is enough to entice  any  person with a soft spot for japanese culture:

• Cosplay,
• manga drawing contest,
• DanceDance Revolution  -for your own amusement or for the amusement of others and maybe for prizes as well
• video games – to be played on: PS3, Xbox 360,  Wii and “vintage” ones Nintendo, Mega Drive, Néogéo et PC Engine
• guests (Junko Kawakami , Keiko Ichiguchi et Jean-David Morvan)
• martial arts demonstrations — with the help of: Japan Asbl, Team SK de LIEGE and La Mante Belge
• Origami, Haiku, Go, Mah-jong – brought by “Le Clan Takeda”
• Tea Ceremony, (japanese:) cuisine, languge ,caligraphy , the wearing of a Yukata – with the help of Passerelle Japon
• the art of growing a bonsai  by Bonsai Club de Liége
• role playing ( bleach, naruto and one piece mentioned)
• inflatable sumo  )
• purikura booth
• fanzines
• anime projections (titles to be announced)
• amv booth
• j-music — with support from Abunai and Higashi Music
• concerts : AciD FlavoR
• snacks and drinks (sushi/sashimi/tea…they didn’t mention anything about sake thought)
• manga on sale — by Slumberland bookstores and also “used” ones from fans

Now if all that isn’t worth a trip to Liége I don’t know what is!

Tickets are already on sale  at Slumberland bookstores across Belgium. Prices being 7€ / day, 12€/week-end. Concents are 10€ apart from entry fee.

see ya there!

Nijikon 2008

So looking at my tag surfer I noticed that people have started googling “nijikon”. Despite not having attended last year’s edition I heard plenty of it at OtakuFest.

So it’s official, for any of those you looking , Nijikon 2008 is taking place on the 1st and 2nd of november at Children’s Place in Bucharest.

The official website is up and running . The program wasn’t been offcially announce but there will be amv’s, gaming aaaaand COSPLAY competition. Hopefully the turnout at OtakuFest will encourage more to join. I’ve peeked around the local otaku forums and, aside from the usuall yume crew, it seems quite a few people are joining in .

The increase in cosplay activity in Romania, or at least the intent to, is much due to the mangashop.ro . I am unrelately looking for some cosplay supplies of my own and their stuff seems to be quite of good quality. as for the prices, as far as manga and wallscrolls go, cheap. I don’t actually know how much shipping is but as long as they ship it from Romania by regular mail they price should be more than fair.

I was very sorry to not have been prepared for the OtakuFest event.

I’m guessing you can expect regular updates on this at bakaism.net along side the official website.

So , go , cosplay and have fun!!!

Otaku Fest II day 2

A day late . What can I say I more relaxed post for a more relaxed day such was the second day.

Less people, less heat, less commotion but in a good way .

At Suburbia they were suppose to have Paprika from 1pm to 3 pm . When I got there around 1.30 something was just ending. Either Paprika only lasted 30 min or they skipped it. We got in exchange some Japan’o'rama and ended up staying at the second part of Sakura Project .

At Atelier 35 people were relaxing making paper toys, the kind you got with the 3 issue of Otaku Magazine.

At K G & O G supposedly we had some movies or such . Saw no such thing, however I did noticed that quite a few of the Alien toys were gone, hopefully for the artist, gone in the “sold” meaning. Also the Coplay’ers got the courage to cross the road and migrated to this location as well.

If anyone knows how the cosplay contest turned out, drop me a comment, I’d really like to know who won.

As for the Sakura Project competetion winners *drum roll* :

3rd place:

2nd place:

1st place:

oh, almost forgot… thumbs up for having Aya Kato albums on sale and Atelier 35 and K G & O G

here’s some more pics from day one , check out my photobucket album for more pics and in better quality.

Temari . Finally, a cosplay’er with attitude!

grand exit for out little Sakura, she she jumped off the stage

Our Ken-chan walked on stage to the Stones “Has anybody seen my baby” …no Yachiru cosplaying girl

all of the gang

we also had a girl doing face paint, the hit of the day one was Gaara’s love kanji

one of the workshops at atelier 35

manga at Kollector Gallery

Otaku Fest II — day one

Good Good Good Good!

Much better than I expected.

First of all the locations: all active, all reach able, all full, all freakin’ sauna hot. All the seats in the viewing are at Suburbia were taken by 1 pm, when I got there and the place became just packed when it came to showing AMV’s from the Sakura Project.

Atelier 35 and had an active crowd with all the places at the SideKicks and Pisica Patrata Workshop taken, walls covers with fan art, local creations and such and free drawing area. Also featuring much welcomed ice-tea (5 ron a cup) and trinkets booth.

The shop with the long name ,aka Kollector Gallery and Ollie Gang Shop, featured some odd toys, 3 Wii stations , offered a few managas for sale aaaaaand…. not so cheap but cool clothes .

Tech wise all the projection worked, we had sound…so thumbs up even if they were not my cup of tea (or my style of anime).

As for the AMVs , I still think they are over rated:P , however some of them where good and the one where they mixed the humor bits in were funny … be it even in that totally wrong way of mixing old Vacanta Mare sketches with anime.

Cosplay cosplay!!! More than a surprising turn out. Just think how many people could have turned up if they would have given us like a month’s notice … . And we got to see most of the cosplay people on stage with music at Suburbia, which was all in all cute.

oh, my vote for the cosplay event got to Mr. Sandal-Hat, Kisuke Urahara and on another side note : cosplay is not for kids, this is not a pageant!!!

The Viusual Arts Workshop was the only thing that went missing however with all the other stuff going on it wasn’t missed too much .

What a delight it was too see the streets covered with anime people :X

Oh , and one for the “to reminisce about in a few year” some police officers dropped by (at least 5-6 of them) inquiring if we are attending and “emo manifestation” ( !?! =)) ) and picking on the organizers and demanding us to clear the road (and by road I mean the are where you can’t get in unless you bribe some one , cause it’s an pedestrian area…but when pedestrians don’t let cars by in the pedestrian area …well the police chases us off —and if it’s not a pedestrian area then someone give me the legal quote so I can freakin’ put my car there).

Did not stick around for the music side of the evening. The 5 hours in sauna type heat got the best of me.

SO thumbs up for day one of Otaku Fest II , will surely attend day II as well. Many thanks to my school mate, 2D for the company and pix.

Pix on this Blog by 2D

Otaku Festival II

Seeing how exciting this sounds I’d almost ask for a drumroll with the anounucement that on the 17-18 of may in Bucharest the second edition of the Otaku Festival will take place. However considering the 1 week head’s up promotion the organisers are giving I wouldn’t get so excited just yet.

I mean the festival’s website was launched on the 5th , so less than 2 weeks before the event and when googling “otaku” “festival” “bucharest” and other combinations on the theme you do not come across it. What I did come across was a bunch of blog, news and such anouncing the before mentioned even and most were posted around the first of may.

Allow me to doubt the turnout at the event when I bearly found it and trust me I am on enough newsletters to know from minute one. Good thing the Suburbia people caught it. And seriously, someone on some blog was bitching that they are only 15 cosplayers at the contest. Hello!!!! ya’ only give people 2 weeks notice at best to get together a decent cosplay outfit??? That is so not enough to so scavange for bits in bucharest or to order one of the net!!! And someone’s already enterned Matsumoto!!!

Oh yeah, about the festival. It will happen in 3 locations at once Suburbia Club, Atelier 35 si Kollector Gallery&Ollie Gang Shop(that’s gotta be on heck of store with such a name) . Now this would be the second thing that sends my “failed event” sensors tingling . Judging by KYE which had several activities at the same time in the same place and how those guys bearly pulled it off. Hey, maybe I’ll be wrong

As for the activiries : cosplay, as mentioned before, games, AMV’s and weird music ( no I am not being judgemental but we’re talking about J-goths and game boy beeps ) . Better yet look at it yourselves . I’d post it here but so don’ like the format and am so too lazy to copy it.