Once a year Anime fans from all over the world descend on Tokyo Big Sight in Odaiba for the huge Tokyo International Anime Fair, filled out with cosplayers garbed as their favourite cartoon characters, live banjo shows and coming movie previews, gundam statues, huge parade balloons of anime favourites, stalls selling pillows printed with manga stars, scarcely dressed sword-wielding plastic models, unicorned robots, and a lot of cheerful people spending money, posing, and taking photographs.
Full Metal Alchemist
The Anime Fair opened to the public on Friday 20th March, finishing up the next day, with 1000 yen for the entrance fee. Su Young and I went along on opening day to explore and shoot whatever kooky coolness we might be able to find.
TAF 2009
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This is a huge Totoro balloon hanging from the ceiling. Totoro is the main characte from the Miyazaki movie ‘My Neighbour Totoro’. I’ve never seen the movie, but have heard it is one of Miyazaki’s best. Every time I’ve been to Tsutaya video rental store to pick it up, all the copies are already gone. That’s quite impressive seeing the movie was made back in 1988.
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This is a sort-of maid, advertising some product. All the cos-players must’ve been briefed to expect photographers, as they all had their poses prepped and were happy to pose. Much more fun than ‘stealing’ photos from street cosplayers in Harajuku.
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Anpan man! ‘Anpan’ means ‘bread roll filled with sweet bean paste’. Anpan man is a super-hero who does super-hero stuff, and afterwards gives them a bite of his sweet bean paste bread head. Is that true? Probably not, I just made it up. I’ve never seen this cartoon.
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Pink-haired French maid, advertising something.
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This is some big bird I saw in a few places- a symbol of something perhaps?
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I felt a little lewd as this girl posed, holding her tail up coquettishly.
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This is Doraemon- he is a very popular robot cat cartoon character. He has a ‘dokodemo door’ which allows him to go anywhere in space or time. I guess he has adventures, but I’ve seen his cartoon.
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This guy rocked.
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Intense. I have no idea what show he is from, but the guy inside the suit was a great performer- he had both of us laughing as he grabbed us and posed us for photos
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A stall-holder hugs her female-print anime pillow. She was actually trying to hide behind it as I snapped this photo, but just wasn’t quick enough. They don’t call me the fastest draw in the East for nothing!
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A dude hugs a male-print anime pillow. He wasn’t trying to hide. I guess they are hugging these things to show how OK it is to hug them. I don’t know why they’re both going girl-girl, guy-guy, maybe we were just in that zone of the Fair.
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Maid!
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Chinese kimono, for Chinese Anime.
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Attention!
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The Full Metal Alchemist robot in close. Why does it have a unicorn’s horn?
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A creepy stalker cut-out.
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Blue Maid hands out something.
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Rabbits! I’ve seen these guys sometimes randomly on MTV or something, in little cartoon skits where they do something like drive along a road. It’s odd but fun.
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Nice ear-pin.
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Some dude, flashing chest.
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This thing freaked me out. It’s face looks like a spider’s face.
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And what is this? Ugh. Are those wings? Spider’s legs? What is with the ridiculous legs and red and blue shoes- completely don’t match the freaky body. This thing scared me. The little kid seems to dig it though. It’s smiling to draw us in but it’s smile is only painted on it’s spewing hole- with which it’ll wrap us up in spider-silk and spew digestive juice on us until we’re nicely tenderized. Ugh.
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Military styles are popular.
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Classy maid?
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As promised, nubile girls with out-sized eyes and big swords!
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Stern. Not great photos ‘cos the alcoves they were in were weirdly yellow-lit, and I don’t have a macro lens.
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Ow, momma!
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Sexy/kawaii.
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Just kawaii.
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ATOM!
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ATOM is some kind of robot kid, he can fly, I guess he has adventures. He was born one stop away from where I live- Takadanobaba.
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Some dude with that same bird behind him.
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Some other dude.
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May look like a small model but was full-size.
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Me with awesome dude- he totally struck this pose. I cracked up immediately after this- actually while doing it I suppose.
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SY with spider-freak. I was watching its spewing hole very carefully to make sure it didn’t try to swallow her down.
And that is everything. We only hung out for about an hour, as long as it took to wander up and down the whole place and take shots. There were plenty of lines to join to queue up for something, but who cares about those, I’m sure they’d be unimpressive to non-fans.
That left us in Odaiba at about 3pm. We got kind of giddy and wandered round in the bright sun for a while goofing off, racing each other up stairs, me carrying SY, generally acting like odd little kids. After a while we went to eat at Bubba Gump in Toyosu, which has great cajun shrimp buckets, and after that we saw Valkyrie at the cinema in Toyosu- a movie we both enjoyed.
Anime!
TOKYO
You can see all MJG’s Tokyo content here:
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Comments 18
Nice job on many of those. I particularly liked the Blackjack cosplayer…the person with the white hair and scar over half their face. An old but good favorite!
Wow, thanks for the great pictures ! :]
“some guy” “some bird” “some dude”
Wow… don’t know much about manga or anime made before 2003, do you?
Author
Thanks for the info Donna, glad you liked many of those photos, and blauereiter too, cheers. qqq you’re right, I’m not a manga or anime fan myself- I don’t know much about it either before or after 2003.
Why is Awesome Dude’s head on fire?
all great pics. Wish I was there!!!!!!! would have been a great experience
the more i look at the yellow spider bird’s face, the more creepy it gets.
-Totoro is an aminzing movie. it’s holds a really innocent charm to it.
Looks like it was fairly interesting Mike.
>>I don’t know why they’re both going girl-girl, guy-guy, maybe we were just in that zone of the Fair.
Ha! laughed out loud when I read that, and saw the guy with the guy pillow. Guess it doesn’t matter which gender pillow the guy hugs, it’s pretty much a lose/lose situation for him…
Wow, you’re actually quite a cutie yourself aren’t you!!! (sorry SY). 🙂
Love the Totoro and Anpanman 🙂
The bird is a phoenix, from the anime “Phoenix” by legend Osamu Tezuka, who created Astro Boy.
Great pictures as always!!
Good job showing us what it is inside the show! By the way, if there’re any anime you should watch, make it be Doraemon and Totoro! It’s incredible, the ideas they come up with in these shows, and sometimes you’ll wonder why the real world couldn’t be more like in the shows!
Author
Awesome dude’s head is on fire Tornadoes because he’s too awesome for real life, ha ha ha. No, really.
Spider bird may actually be the mascot for the 2016 Olympics Miki- which has just freaked me out to the point of no return I think. Can I return from here? Hmm, only if they banish this foul beast back into the vile hole from which it batted its wing/arms.
Kelly- Oh, behave! 😉
Totoro I can now agree is an amazing movie- took your advice Leongsoon and Miki and watched it with SY the other day. She of course has seen it 10+ times, but was happy to watch it again. I was laughing in delight a whole lot, repeating the lines, exultant with the final catbus ride. What a sweet movie. My favourite part? She falls on Tororo and he makes this yawning burbling sound that sounds nothing like ‘to to ro’, but Mei goes- ‘Totoro?’ Ha! Excellent.
It’s really interesting the way you saw the Anime fair, as you aren’t a fan per se. XD
As you were only an hour over there!
Probably there was an Osamu Tezuka restrospective or something because the panel behind Blackjack portrayed many of his works, as Atom/Astroboy is an Osamu Tezuka’s work.
I’ve never seen a male body pillow print, that was elightening.
Thanks for sharing your pics!
The big bird hanging from the ceiling is from Phoenix, an Osamu Tezuka work. 😀 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(manga)
“The Full Metal Alchemist robot in close. Why does it have a unicorn’s horn?”
He’s not a robot, it’s a suit of armour & the little boy’s spirit is bound to it cause he lost his body. 🙂
Author
Maye- Right, it`s odd for me to venture into these places and be surrounded by fans. I find it all a bit weird, but also compelling. It`s cool people get into it so much.
Sarah- Thank you madam!
Janelane- Great insight, thanks. Sounds very odd to me, but am sure it can make for some great stories.
Wow very nice looking photos!
I especially loved that you took one of a character from on of my favorite game Valkyria Chronicles (The one that you labeled “Attention!”)
Can someone PLEASEEEEE find out the name of the “Awesome Dude.”
I’m not familiar with anime at all but that costume of the character is beyond awesome! Please! Thank you! :)))))