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Animax Youth Festival 2008

Dropped by One Utama last Sunday to take a peek at the Animax Youth Festival 2008. I’ve had bad experience with heavily commercialized Cosplay events previously like the one organized by Maxis Hotlink earlier this year. So I didn’t exactly set my expectations high for this event but since it was backed by Animax, I thought I could give it a shot. The crowd turnout was rather low. There were very few cosplayers as well, only 10 signed up for the competition, so I guess they’ve got pretty good chances at winning something at least.

The exhibition was split into 2 areas, the stage area where the cosplay event was held along with the PS3 gaming stations showcasing MGS4 and GT5 and the Seventeen magazine Model Search photography stage. While another had stalls which won the Animax Entrepreneur competition, an artist alley, a Japanese snack stall and as well as an Anime screening lounge. There weren’t any doujinshi or anime crafts stalls that you’d usually find in other anime events, in fact, there isn’t any Gunpla or figurine stalls. AnimeTech had a booth selling DVDs, CDs and some Transformer merchandise. Nothing much of interest there.

Back to the stage, the Cosplay competition only started at 4pm. We have characters like Sakura Kinomoto and Li Syaoran from Tsubasa Reservoir, Eriol from Cardcaptor, Uruhara Kisuke from Bleach, Captain Bravo (haven’t heard of this one), couple of Naruto characters as well as Reno from FF7. I think the cosplayers this time were just ok, nothing that really caught my attention anyway. Overall the whole event doesn’t have that otaku feel going for it, maybe it was the lack of cosplayers in general or the doujinshi/merchandise stalls that you’d usually see in other events.

View the full gallery here: Animax Youth Festival 2008

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