Mega AnimeFest - Apr. 11, 2008
Review by Red Comet
This animefest was held on April
11, 2008 at the Atomic Comics Mesa SuperStore.
OK, here's a review of the Anime Fest at Atomic Comics in Mesa on April 11th. I did more summarizing the events than listing the good/bad points... but there weren't many bad points to list. Yes, I thought it was a very enjoyable event.
The first main event of the day was the anime pictionary game. The teams took turns sending someone up to pick a character at random, and then drawing said character for the team to guess. My team didn't do too good, but it was still fun. Then the maids of Cafe Moe performed some dances for us - and in between the performances they 1)led us in some games of jankenypon 2)taught us some Japanese and 3)answered some questions about themselves. Next up was an anime murder mystery game (similar to the board game Clue), but I didn't enjoy that as much because I had trouble understanding how to play it. I think some of the other people thought it was pretty fun though. At the same time there was a Lolita and BJD (Ball Jointed Doll) tea party. Although I was dressed as Rau Le Creuset from Gundam Seed, I stopped by for a while after the anime murder mystery game. In addition to the tea, there were cookies, candies, and even some fruit. Next was one of my favorite activities, the iron cosplay competition. We were given a theme (Dranonball Z/GT) and told to construct a costume with scraps we were given in 30 minutes. The costumes were - in order from first place to third place - Vegeta, Krillen (my group), and Goku. Unfortunately, the anime game show never took place (I believe the panelists for that had trouble getting there on time). However, these panelists (two people from an anime convention panel group called panda cubed) were there to put on a panel called "Your Anime Sucks". Here the audience named various different animes and they playfully made fun of it. I still remember when I asked about Gundam Seed, the two panelists said Char or Zechs was hotter than Rau (they couldn't quite agree on who, though). Later was the costume contest. I entered because I thought they wanted as many participants as possible, but as I suspected I didn't win anything (my costume was partially pre-made clothing, and some of the participants made their whole outfit from scratch). And there were a good number of participants in the contest (18, if memory serves) - some even put on a little performance. After dealing with some technical difficulties involving the sound system, the final event of the night took place. A performer called Maja sung (in English/Japanese/Spanish) about anime and video games and such. Most memorable line (for me): "If you though Samus was a man you ain't never beat the game". A very nice performance to end the day with. And although I did not participate in the gaming tournaments, I assume they went well as well. The puzzle fighter tournament never took place as not enough people signed up, but I believe the other tournaments proceeded as scheduled.