Anime Festival Asia Singapore (AFASG) 2016 Thoughts

 Abit late writing this post up due to a bit busy short after my return but i am glad that i managed to attend this year's AFA. I have been yearning to go to this convention ever since i was in Sydney and probably AFA is one of the reason why i went to Sydney's SMASH in the first place. For this year's Anime Festival Asia i attended two out of three days and find out AFA is rather different than my expectation for better or worse.

  My first impression as i enter AFA and take a look through the exhibition is that AFA looks like a bazaars for anime stuff rather than a complete convention. The event also got quite lots support from the big-shots of the from Japan. Considering Kadokawa or NHK made a direct presence to the event promoting their stuffs. Compared to SMASH! from Sydney AFA's Venue is probably half as big and there are not much to do outside shopping which is still understandable you can enter the venue starting from $13 whereas SMASH! cost three times as much but in return they have more activities other than shopping.

 In terms of the Fanartist circle, the booths are not as many compared to SMASH! considering the latter had room dedicated for the fanarts stuff and in terms of quality AFASG's fanart contents are slightly better if not about the same. Just like SMASH! most of the artist circle made mainstream stuff like which for Singapore happen to be: Kancolle, RE:ZERO, Overwatch, Love Live and Pokemon. But at least AFASG got one Artist circle that make Mecha stuff even though it is Gundam for now. One thing i am not too fond of about artist circle practice nowadays is that most of them cater only to mainstream stuff leaving those non-mainstream but decent series barren of content. I do understand this kind of venture is rather unprofitable even in Japan but it would be better if there were more diversity. Probably i will discuss about this topic in the future if i didn't forget

DAT Gunpla Bargains

 Compared to SMASH! AFA definitely wins the shopping department simply because reasonably priced items and variety of things to spend your money on. Just like your average anime convention AFA's stuffs in general are overpriced. However there are plenty of good deals if you are observant enough. Over my 2 days visit i noticed that many booth do price cuts on second day already and probably Sunday had even more. In the end i managed to go some shopping spree and some of the stuff i bought are Fukubukuro or Showbag which are random stuffs jammed into which i think most of the stuff are junks(but perhaps somebody got lucky). I also tried some Lotteries which is difficult to get the good stuff but odds are better than showbags and this year i happen to spend too much on Ichiban Kujis. The Gunpla section in AFA actually have really good deals from $15 for Real Grades to $30 MGs. The best deal from the Gunpla section is probably MG Zeta 2.0 which you can get merely for $50.

  For this year's AFA i was rather busy inside the exhibition so i dont take much shots for cosplayers which are mostly posing outside the AFA entrance. While there couple good cosplayer out there, i can say AFA's cosplay qualities overall are not as good as SMASH! which have better amateur Cosplayers.

Despite i think AFASG is not as good as SMASH! i still enjoyed the event afterall since i get to meet JAM Project, winning freebies and even find a fellow volunteer from SMASH! I think AFA could have been more than shopping for instance they could always put Karaoke booths and dedicated gaming section. I will post my loots later and i hope there are even more better things to purchase in the next year AFA.
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