April 25, 26, and 27 - Ozine Fest 2014 was held in SMX Convention Center. This was my second attendance to an anime convention. I attended the event ALONE, even the first one. I have no friends...well technically there are, but some of our interests don't match up and they are not as hyped as I am when it comes to anime.
Okay, let's go back to the Ozine Fest! It was a three-day convention, but I only attended on the third day. I thought that I wouldn't go there because of some circumstances.
The entire convention center was packed! It was swarming of anime lovers like me. I had to fall in line from the outside of the gigantic convention center until to the second floor just to buy a ticket. It took me around an hour. Lesson learned: PRE-ORDER A TICKET WHEN YOU HAVE THE CHANCE.
Kirino from Oreimo wearing a wedding dress
Nendoroid versions of Neptune from Hyperdimension Neptunia and Asuna from Sword Art Online
Kuroneko from Oreimo
Misaka Mikoto and Shirai Kuroko from Toaru Majutsu No Index / Toaru Kagaku No Railgun
Yoshino from Date A Live
I had the urge of stealing these figures from their glass prison. Who doesn't like genuine figures of their favorite characters in their room? These figures are quite expensive. Are you willing to buy these figures that have a price of around Php 2k-4k ? I can only afford bootleg versions of Nendoroids that are 4 times cheaper than the original ones. *sob *sob
Ozine Fest 2014 souvenir tees
I bought one for the price of Php 350. I think it's rubberized, so I'm REALLY AFRAID of putting this shirt in our washing machine. I saw some guys wearing this shirt already at the event with the girl as their front of their shirt. Why am I saying this? The part where the girl is supposedly the BACK part of the shirt!
A t-shirt booth in the convention
TOMODACHI- Means friend in Japan, and it's also a name of a group of t-shirt makers from Thailand! At the event, they sold tees with different characters from Kantai Collection, Nisekoi, and much more, including their mascot character, Tomo-tan. I bought a tee with Shimakaze of KanColle on it (the third picture below the Tomodachi) for Php 700. The paint is not rubberized, so I guess it's safe to put it in the washing machine. The quality is good, and I didn't regret buying one. Thanks TOMODACHI!!! Here's their Facebook page by the way: https://www.facebook.com/tomodachiTShirt
Of course, how can you call it an anime convention without COSPLAYERS?! I built up my courage to take photographs of cosplayers unlike before. I have to admit that I'm actually an introvert, so socializing with random people is quite a challenge. I took a number of photographs, but I never had the chance to take a SELFIE with my favorite characters.
Before you see these photos, I want to remind you guys to have some respect on the cosplayers. Sure, some of them don't look like the characters they were portraying accurately, but cosplaying is all about having fun. We cosplay these characters because we love them! I hope you enjoy. :)
No-Face (Kaonashi) from Spirited Away wanted to give me free gold.
Superheroes from the west were also here
Some of the girls from Attack On Titan
Keima Katsuragi of The World God Only Knows along with Jafar of Magi
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Mirai of Kyoukai No Kanata
Elizabeth of Gintama having a sword fight with Ichigo of Bleach
Jill Valentine and Claire Redfield from the Resident Evil games. There was the zombie guy from the movie Warm Bodies in the event as well, but I didn't have the chance to take a photo of him. Maybe these two were trying to kill him, so that's why they were at the event.
Kotori/Efreet and Tohka from Date A Live
Who says fat people can't cosplay? Here's an awesome cosplay of Ursula from the Little Mermaid
The lovely Queen of Yandere, Yuno Gasai of Mirai Nikki
Mako and Mikisugi from Kill La Kill
Cosplay of game characters: Corvo Attano from Dishonored and Ezio Auditore from Assassin's Creed 2.
Steve and the skeleton archer from Mincecraft
Jack Frost from Rise of the Guardians and Queen Elsa from Frozen were walking together in the Mall Of Asia.
Asuna of Sword Art Online
Random guy waiting to get noticed by senpai
I already went home after a few hours. It was a good call because I saw a photo of a lot of people filling up the SMX grounds in Facebook. It looked like it was hard to walk around with all the people. There was even an incident about an employee shooing away bystanders who only went inside the convention center just to take photos with the cosplayers and not for the event. I looked into it and understood both sides of the coin. Both sides are at fault too, including the event itself.
The ones who were shouted and shooed by the said employee felt ridiculed. Employees should be nice to their customers even how irate they could be.
The building was packed! Imagine one employee dealing with 100 people. There are only a few of employees doing front line work in the convention center, and there were around a thousand of us. They didn't have time to take a break or even eat lunch with all the people coming in. They were doing crowd control for our safety by removing these bystanders who didn't bother buying their tickets and enter the event.
The Ozine Fest 2014 seemed to be a successful event, but I hope next time they would be a little bit more organized, and reserve a larger room. A friend of mine told me that they only just crammed and made actions for the preparation of the booths in such a short time. They announced the Ozine Fest several months ago.
My legs were already tired and felt sore. My main purpose of going to the Ozine Fest was to buy a new bootleg Nendoroid (don't have much money to buy original ones), but I didn't find any of my liking. So I bought something else instead. The Ozine Fest 2014 souvenir shirt, KanColle shirt from Tomodachi, bag tags with the characters Kirino from Oreimo, Maria and Kobato from Haganai, and pin badge with the characters Eren of Attack On Titan and Ryuko Matoi of Kill La Kill.
Overall, the event was fun, and I'm looking forward to attend the Ozine Fest and more anime conventions!
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