Waicon 2009

Last week, I went to an anime convention called “Waicon 2009” held in Perth, Western Australia. Despite the fact that I am passionate about anime, this was actually the first time I had been to a local anime convention. (^^;)

Previously, I have been to some anime events in Japan such as Comic Market 73, World Hobby Festival, and Jump Festa, so I really wasn’t sure if it was worth going to a local anime convention. Now that I’ve been to one, I can say for sure that it was definately worth going to. I had a really good time at the convention. I wasn’t really expecting much from it, but it was suprisingly professionally run, despite being an amateur run convention and turned out to be one of the best weekends I’ve had in a while.

Waicon was held in the Perth Convention Center. As I often pass this building on my way to work from the bus port, it’s actually a place I know quite well.

Given that I didn’t really know many other people in Perth that shared an interest in Anime, I decided to make 50 Otaku business cards to give out during the convention to help me socialise and increase the number of local anime-liking friends.  I actually came up with the idea about midnight the night before when I was about to sleep. (^^;)

At first, I had a pretty boring design, but slowly I managed to keep adjusting it until I ended up with a nice design that I liked. As I like collecting figures, I decided on using a figure picture as the background image and put my blog details and email address.

Over the two days, I managed to hand out 32 of the cards. I am hoping that those people do find the time to check out my blog. If you are one of those people, please leave a comment and say hi. (^_-)

For the first day, I woke up early and arrived at the grounds at about 2 hours before the official opening time. There were already a small number of people lining up, but it wasn’t a particularly a long queue. As there wasn’t any queue near the registration desk, it didn’t take long at all to buy a weekend pass and to sign up to PANIC, the anime club that hosted the event.

Despite there being only a few people waiting around, there were already more people in cosplay outfits than I had initially imagined.

The weekend pass cost me $45AU. At first I thought the entrance fees were rather excessive, but now that I look back at it all, it really was quite cheap given that I really enjoyed myself over the two days full of entertainment.

As the opening time of the convention approached, the number of people arriving increased, and the queue started to look more like the queues I was used to in Japan. The registration desk itself was quite packed.

When the convention opened, all the early people attended the opening ceremony. Essentially they introduced the event and encouraged everyone to take this opportunity to socialize with each other.

When the opening ceremony finished, I went around to check out the stalls selling anime related goods. My first priority was the “Empire Toys” stall. Empire Toys is the main anime store in Perth, and at the convention, their stall sold cheap figures and manga. As I like to collect figures, the figures they had on sale were the main attraction for me.  As a result, I ended up buying 18 figures in one go in the first few minutes into the convention. (^_^;)

Given that the figures were sold at only $25AU each, it was extremely cheap. One of the staff members from the store who recognised me even gave me a huge $50AU discount because of my large purchase. Thanks Empire Toys! In the end, I spent about $375AU on figures there. I only bought the figures that suited my tastes, and fortunately for me, that meant almost one of each of all of the figures. The figures were extremely high quality and all of them are originals imported from Japan. I don’t know how exactly they got reduced to such low prices, but from experience, each of those figures would normally cost about $70-$100AU each.

Apart from figures, I also bought quite a few art prints, posters and sketches. I too would like to be able to draw awesome pictures like these artists, so I figured if I had some of their original artwork and displayed them in my room, it would help motivate me to draw more and improve. At the moment, I am thinking about how to display them and even thinking of framing one or two.

After all my shopping, I went to some anime-related panels and workshops. They had a huge number available, but the ones that I could make it to were the “Bootleg panel”, “Fan fiction panel”, “How to draw manga workshop” and the “Gundam workshop”. As some were hosted simutaneously, I couldn’t attend everything I wanted to go to, but regardless, I had a great time and was quite satisfied with the ones I went to.

The cosplay at the convention was quite interesting. I have seen cosplay in Japan at the Comic Market and Jump Festa events before, but somehow, the Aussie cosplay has a somewhat different feel to it. It seems that one of the main motivators for cosplayers here is the Cosplay competition. Many people dress up in cosplay to compete by performing various skits and plays in front of an audience, entertaining the fans and having fun. I have to admit that the cosplay competition was the main highlight of the convention. It was fantastic.

Out of the people that attended the convention, it seemed that almost half the people attending dressed up as one of their favorite characters. I was suprised at how passionate the attendees were about the anime they liked. As for me, It makes me feel that I have a way to go before I’d join in, but I did feel that I was missing out in the fun. (^o^)

Anyways, during the weekend, I took quite a few photos of the cosplayers. I decided to put them up on Flickr for everyone to check it all out. Not all my photos turned out very well, but I cleaned up and uploaded what I could. To view the images, click on the image below and if you like, leave a few comments and tell me what you think.

Also if anyone sees themselves in one of the photos and doesn’t want it to be online, please let me know.

Click the image above to view the cosplay photos

After the convention finished, I was pretty tired from a lack of sleep. Since I wanted to make the Otaku cards, I ended up sleeping late, and I also woke early both of the days to get in early a the event.

I spent a bit of time after the convention organising the figures I had bought and looking for a place to store them all as well as taking photos of my shopping. Apart from that, I spent a while copying my photos to my computer, cleaning up some of the photos, tagging them and preparing this article.

I found this first experience at a local anime convention a very enjoyable experience. I suggest any other people who haven’t been before to definitely give Waicon a shot.

  
Anime related goods bought at Waicon

By the way, this year the number of attendees was over 3000 people! Apparently that is over twice the number of last year. It defintely makes me feel a lot better to know that there is a large number of anime fans in Perth. (^_^)