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Southeast Asia’s largest Japanese pop culture event, Anime Festival Asia Singapore (AFA Singapore) 2014 (organized by SOZO, Dentsu and ZEPP Live), was held at the Suntec Singapore International Convention and Exhibition Centre over the span of three days, from Dec. 5 to 7. Since the first AFA Singapore in 2008, this year’s convention marks the seventh annual run. With 5,000 more visitors than the previous year, the seventh annual AFA Singapore hosted a stunning total of 90,000 visitors, and ended with roaring success!
The “I Love Anisong Concert” was the main event at the convention, in which 13 popular artists and artist groups from Japan’s anime song world participated. The event was a giant hit, raging with excitement throughout the entire three-day span of the convention. Particularly spectacular were the performances on the last day of the concert by the popular rock band, Flow. This was Flow’s second time at AFA Singapore. During FLOW’s first visit to AFA in 2012, due to time constraints, they were regrettably only able to perform a few songs. At this year’s AFA, more than making up for last time’s regrets, they gave an all-out performance that completely blew the roof off and filled the entire venue with the audience’s roaring cheers.
The convention also hosted the world’s very first NicoNico Kunikaigi event, the global version of Japan’s popular event NicoNico Choukaigi. Highly popular NicoNico Douga performers from Japan took the stage and caused local fans to scream and swoon. Taking the mini stage was the lead actor in Death Note: The Musical, to be performed in April of 2015, the role of Light Yagami, Hayato Kakizawa. Continuing the Death Note theme, former AKB48 artist Tomomi Kasai dressed up as everyone’s favorite heroine from the series, Amane Misa, and performed songs such as “Ready or Not” and her own new song “Ima Sarasara” for the local fans.
Also participating in this year’s AFA was Moe Tsurumi, the goodwill ambassador from the hot idol group that debuted with Pixiv, Conquistador del Arcoiris. Attending the second day of the event in her cute witch-themed stage outfit, she did us the favor of assisting us with the report of the event.
Being a fan of anime herself, Moe Tsurumi was in extremely high spirits at her very first AFA Singapore. Speaking of which, the idol group she is in, Conquistador del Arcoiris, have performed their first solo live performance at Shinjuku Blaze in Tokyo on Jan. 11.
The exhibition area also hosted a ton of exciting booths which were lively with crowds of attendees, from the booths of popular anime goods manufacturers from Japan where goods were being displayed and sold, to karaoke and game corners that involved the participation of the attendees.
On the second day of the event, a survey corner was set up by Japan’s largest advertising company, Dentsu Inc. Many attendees gathered around to take the survey, with one reason being that participants received the popular item Sushi Socks from the Tokyo Otaku Mode Premium Shop for free for completing the survey.
A selection of the results of the survey are as follows.
At the press conference which took place the day before the convention, Dec. 4, Shawn Chin, representing SOZO, an organizer of AFA, disclosed a business partnership with Japan’s largest anime festival, Anime Japan. Very soon in 2015 between April 30 and May 3, Anime Festival Asia Thailand 2015 will open its doors in conjunction with Bangkok Comic Con in Bangkok, Thailand. Mr. Chin further expressed his eagerness to expand AFA to more countries, and his belief that AFA will be able to help spread Japanese pop culture across Southeast Asia in 2015 and in the future as well.
This is a Tokyo Otaku Mode original article.
