Waicon 2010 – Day 1

I attended my local anime event “Waicon”, and had the most fun I had for quite a while. The event was held over a weekend and had many stalls selling anime goods and art work as well as hosting many interesting seminars, competitions and mini events such as the popular cosplay competition.

This year was particularly special as there was a special event where Eminence, a symphony orchestra from Sydney that specializes in performing Anime and game music, was invited to play at the event. As I’ve been interested in learning music lately, this was a great opportunity to check out professionals playing music from anime and games that I liked.

The orchestra is particularly famous as they performed and recorded the soundtracks for popular movies in Japan such as the upcoming Disappearance of Haruhi movie sound track as well as music for a number of video games.

In addition, Japanese composer Mitsuda Yasunori who is particularly famous for his compositions for Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross also attended the event.

The first day at Waicon started waiting in queue to enter the event area. My friend and I bought the pre-sale tickets to enter, which ended up being a mistake, as it seemed that most of the attendees did the same, so there was in fact a larger queue than expected in the preorder ticket queue than there was for those that purchased the tickets on the day.

Ack! I guess I should of arrived earlier. orz

Anyways, I was waited in the queue with my friend, and we eventually got our entry tags to get in.

On the way in, I took a couple of photos of the entry gate.

When I got in, there was already quite few people checking out all the stalls.

Photos of a few of the stalls.

The pencafe stall where some of the artists from pencafe sold various goodies like doujins, posters, sketches, bookmarks, stickers and so on.

Some other drawing/art stalls. The sun was quite bright, so unfortunately the lighting in some of the photos didn’t turn out right.

After a quick browse through the stalls and meeting up with friends, I went to the gundam workshop to take photos of the Perth Gundam Competition entries hosted by Tokyo Underground.

There were a lot of really awesome kits on display and I was quite impressed at the level of the model builders in Perth. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the competition but this shows that there are a lot of hardcore gundam modellers in Perth. Next year’s competition will be something to look forward to.

This Zaku is build by a friend of mine who ended up winning two prizes! Congrats Nic!

Here are some photos of the actual gundam workshop. It was free to participate and you were given a free kit upon entry. The session was an all day session.

A few more shots of the traders at Waicon. We has the first appearance of maids in the con. It seems someone started a group to try get a maid cafe happening at all the cons. In this con, they delivered roses and sold maid related outfit accessories.

There also were quite a few stores selling figures and other goodies imported from Japan. I had a good time checking out what all the stalls had for sale.

Cosplay Competition:

I took so many photos that I don’t know what to comment apart from the fact that my camera that I bought for my trip to Japan is really damn good in low light. I was suprised that many of the photos were usable despite how dark it was there.

The cosplay competition was as usual, the highlight of the con and the entries were very entertaining. There were a number of really talented people that practically performed on the stage as well as many really cool outfits.

A number of people from Pen Cafe are really passionate about Tekken 6, so when one of them spotted a Lily cosplayer, we searched everywhere around the con to find the cosplayer and ask for a photo.

She entered the cosplay competition on the 2nd day and it seems that it’s her first time cosplaying. I have to say it’s a really good outfit for a first attempt. Congrats!

Pen Cafe also has a few Higurashi fans too, so we spotted this cosplayer of Hanyu and asked for a photo too! (^_^;)

I spent the rest of the time walking around the con, talking to people, buying lots of goodies from the stalls.

After the first day of the con, there was a break for a quick meal before heading off to watch the eminence symphony orchestra. After it finished, I bought a couple of their CDs and managed to get signatures from the Eminence performers and Mitsuda Yasuda.

Although at Waicon I typically say that the cosplay competition was the highlight of the con, this time, the eminence performance was hands down the most enjoyable part of the convention.