Wonder Festival Summer 2014

Today was Wonder festival's summer edition. I went alone this time (last year I went with a friend who cosplayed)

I streamed the first 1h30 minutes,(until my phone battery died) and you can see it here:

I took a lot of pictures in the first part of the event, until my Camera broke.... I don't exactly know what's strong with it, the lense seems wobby now, and the focus seems to be stuck, I'll have to get it fixed before comiket....
You can see my full gallery here (Google+ version / Picasa version)

I'll go over my favourite figures from the show here, most of it from the artisan halls. One thing you should know is almost all of the figures you see at Wonder Festival are resin kits that you have to assemble and paint by yourself, so even if the figures look awesome, your end result might not be as good (the opposite it also true, sometimes the kit seems good, but the artist may not be a good painter so their result might be bad while yours could be better).
I've never painted one, but my previous tries with D&D characters were pretty bad... so I'm a little scared, so I didn't buy many kits, and I stayed away from any expensive ones.... I bought a couple cheap ones to try, so if I can do it fine, maybe I'll buy getter ones next time.

I'll start with the corporate booths, since I went over there quickly and there's really only two fig that really got my attention:
1- Misaka Mikoto, Maid Bikini 65cm version (that's huge)

This figure was made to celebrate ToAru Majutus no Index's 10th anniversary, Dengeki is releasing this 1/2.5 scale figure made by Griffon Enterprise and TEAM GENESIS. It goes for 400$ though, so even if I love it, I probably won't be getting her.

2 - Unicron Head

Nothing much to say about it, except that it look pretty nice, and bring back terrifying memories.This villain was pretty scary I mean.... if could eat your planet.... what the hell can you do against that? Unless you're lucky and he tries to scare you instead of eating your planet, and they revealing a bunch of weakness that wouldn't have happened if he just ate the damn planet....

Most notable Kits:
1- Neptune

This is the only kit that, even if it was expensive, I would probably have bough anyway.... if it wouldn't have been sold out. I'm not a big fan of Neptune, but this figure is so cute, and nice, and the pose looks so cool. I can't even explain what makes it look so great for me, but it was my top figure at this summer's Wonder Festival

2- Flandre

That twisted crazy look just looks so great.

3 - These 2 Miku (I think)

The colors look amazing, especially on the pink one. The background are also a really nice addition, The sakuras on the first one and the start on the second one make these 2 figures something I could just look at for hours.

4- Asuka with LED

This figure was spinning around on the display, and it looked really good. I took shots from other angles too, but due to the focus on my camera dieing, they are all out of focus.

5- Those cute witches

Of course you'd have to have seen the show to understand why these cute witches are so awesome. The bottom one represent the many ways to kill a witch, as displayed in Witch Craft Works's ending: http://youtu.be/j-3Fgrn7Rls
The top one I think was from an insert between 2 parts of an episode, I'm not sure, I don't remember, but it got pretty popular and a gif was made out of it

That's it for my top figures. I also went to the cosplay area, but since my camera broke, I don't really have any really awesome cosplay pictures, you call see all my cosplay pictures here: (Google+ / Picasa)

Even if I don't think I can build them well, I bought a kit that was cheap, nice and looked easy (looked...) to try, I hope it's gonna turn out well

And I got myself a super awesome umbrella!

That's all for my Wonder Festival post, hope you enjoyed it!

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!