Wonder Festival Winter 2013

This weekend I went to the 2013 Winter Wonder Festival in Chiba (next to Tokyo).
This is an event mostly about figures, pretty much like the comiket(smaller) but instead of fan drawn doujinshi, they sell fan sculpted figures, called Garage Kits (there was also some props, weapons, jewellery, but most of it was figures and dolls).
Some of these works are incredible, and it's impressive to think fans made them.

While this event is a lot smaller than Comiket, it's still a lot bigger than any Anime convention in Canada (and probably US too).
I went there with a friend who was cosplaying so I didn't walk around so much.
I looked at every merchant in the area close to the changing area for cosplayers while I was waiting for her to be ready. This includes the 18+ section.
You can see all my figure pictures here : Wonder Festival Winter 13 figures
but here are some of my favourite figures from what I saw:

You can see the pictures from the 18+ section here, but BE WARNED THEY WILL PROBABLY SHOCK YOU so please don't complain about it here, just don't watch them if you're not open to the perversion of Japanese otaku. Wonder Festival Winter 13 NSFW.

Apparently, Wonder Festival is also a really big Cosplay event. The area for cosplay was bigger than in Comiket, and I think there was more people too. The way people take picture was also different, there was a lot more lines waiting to have a 1 on 1 photo session with the cosplayers, instead of the gigantic mobs of photograph of comiket. While it may sounds better, in fact it just means less picture and more repetitive efforts from the cosplayer. One of my surprise was to see how many Kigurumi was present at the event. There were some at Comiket too, but there was really a LOT at the Wonder Festival.
For those who don't know, a Kigurumi is this:

 A lot of people think they are creepy, and don't like them. Most people who thinks like this mostly think like this because it's impossible to know if the one doing the character is a girl or a guy, because they usually don't speak, wear a false skin, and a mask.
Personally I love them, it's the closest you can get from the Original work most of the time. And yet it can permit you to do cosplays that would be impossible otherwise.

Because I was with a friend, and because of the very long lines for pictures, I didn't take as much as I would have liked, but you can see my pics here: Wonder Festival Winter 13 Cosplay
Here are some of my favourite cosplays from the event:

Overall the event was fun, but really frustrating. Right now I'm on a thigh budget so I couldn't buy anything, but everything looked so nice... It was frustrating to have to just look and not buy. If I would have bought what I wanted I think I would have wasted more than 1K on stuff on that day...
I'm guessing there's also a summer edition of this if this one was called "winter" so hopefully I'll have money then!

Awesome Week-end in Tokyo!

This weekend I finally really started "Living The Dream", I finally started doing what I came here to do, and that means, enjoy what only Japan can offer!

Saturday there was a Live concert from IRON-ATTACK!, IOSYS and HALOZY + Digital Wings in Shibuya. I bought the ticket a while ago, and while I expected it to be great, it was probably better than I expected!

First up were Halozy + Digital Wings + 3L.
At first they were... not interesting, The Male Vocalist and Keytard player just seemed... not into it so much, Momo, the lead female vocalist seemed like she was really inexperienced and probably ... shy? After 2 ou 3 song, they switched singer, the second singer was a lot better, less "kawaii" but she had a good voice and good scene presence. I also started noticing at that time one of the girl was doing Para-para of all their songs on the right side of the stage (I was on the left) It's a nice touch. After that They switched singer again and 3L came in. She's really impressive. She's really small and has a really good voice. Her style was a little extreme with a flower covering half of her face, but she was great. Later Momo came back on stage and I think she felt more secure with everyone there, and had more scene presence. The second part of their prestation was solid and I really enjoyed it.
Since the headliner of the show was IRON-ATTACK, I didn't expect this kind of music in a metal show, but I like it anyway so it was fine!

Second up was IOSYS, and this is the part that surprised me the most. Since it was a metal show I was pretty much expecting to see Minami doing only instrumental songs from his metal albums, but no! They did a lot of classic and popular song by IOSYS, mostly metal and rock, but all Vocal arranges. They had 山本椛 (Momiji Yamamoto) there to do the Vocals. She is wonderful on stage. That's what I call stage presence! she played with the crowd, answered our calls and spoke to us, she was just Awesome! On Guitar was void and of course Minami. Minami's tapping skills are really impressive, and he was just in face of me so I got to appreciate it from up close! The Bass was しんしん(shinshin), and there was unfortunately no drums, they were per-recorded. They played metalized versions of a lot of Popular IOSYS songs like 断罪ヤマザナドゥ！(Danzai), キャプテン・ムラサのケツアンカー (Captn murara's ass Anchor), 真夏にハジケるインドアヴァンパイア , and a really nice Metalized version of チルノのパーフェクトさんすう教室 (Cirno's perfect Math class) And this is where Momiji shined the most; usually this song is sang by Miko, but Momiji did it wonderfully, and her scene presence during that song was just incredible. Whenever the crowd was singing "BAKA! BAKA!" she was doing hand sings toward herself as if saying "come on! bring it to me! Call me baka!" and the she would do Cirno's answer with so much energy and charisma, it was ... AWESOME! (I need to find more words!).
I really feel bad that I forgot what other songs they played, and I knew and loved all the songs they played too, but I forgot =/.
They had an encore, but I think they really didn't expect it, so they told us, because they have no drummer, they have to play one of the songs with pre-recorded drums again, and made the crowd chose between Cirno's perfect Math Class or Captn Murasa's ass Anchor. It was split 50/50, but in the end they decided to play Captn Murasa's ass Anchor but with Minami doing some of the vocals.
IOSYS part was really awesome, and I was really pleased I finally got to see them live!

And finally came IRON-ATTACK!
I don't remember the name of every band members, sorry, but there was 2 vocalist, 勇舞(Isamu Mai, singer from Lightning) and まいなすいょん(minusiyon). While minusiyon was good on stage, Mai was just incredible, he literally owned the place. He has so much energy and power in his voice. He represent metal at it's best. On the guitar IRON-CHINO was just incredible. His shredding skills are on par with pretty much any other guitarist I've seen so far (that includes Guitarists from bands like Rhapsody, Sonata Arctica, Stratovarius, Kamelot and a bunch of others).
They didn't play my favourite song (Into the shade) but they played a whole lot of their most popular songs. They started with Burn in Hell (the Title song of the Album this show was promoting) they did at least 2 of Marisas' songs (Sparking, Star Dust) or maybe more. Star Dust was the greatest moment of the Night for me, I love this song so much! They the encore was Poltergeist if I remember well, which was pretty epic too. The whole evening was really great!

 

Picture of Minami and IRON-CHINO before the show

After the show was over I got to speak with Chino, he's such a nice guy! He introduced me to Mai, but my lack of Japanese made it a little akward. I spoke quickly with Minami to congratulate him, and I tried to have a conversation with Momiji, but... god I need to get better at Japanese soon! She was really nice though, I think she understand my feelings ^^;

All this took place on an incredible 21 degree day in February!

This would have made my weekend awesome even if I slept all Sunday long... but I went to Comitia, a Doujinshi event for original works, with my new friend Jiyu. The best way to describe this event is... like a mini Comiket (around 1/6 of comiket's area, and only 1 days instead of 3) with only original works allowed, no fanart. While the event itself was nice, (and made me waste way too much money) the greatest thing was that I got to meet and speak to Renji "Range" Murata. This guy is my favourite artist. I love his drawing so much! For those of you who don't know him... SHAME ON YOU!
...
He did among other things the character designs of Last Exile and Shangri-La, please visit his website http://www.pseweb.com/
I bought his latest book "Long Voyage" and posters and he signed it for me!

He's also a really nice guy... everyone is nice :D

Here's a pic of my Comitia loot:

And that's pretty much it for my weekend.
Next week is Wonder Festival!
Expect a lot of pictures!