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The AXN Anime Festival 2001 Organized by: AXN Date: July 7, 2001 Venue: Atrium of SM Megamall Manila, July 7, 2001. At least 1,000 Pinoy 'animaniacs' experienced an adventure like no other at AXN's annual Anime Festival held at the Atrium of SM Megamall. Asia's only action and adventure channel organized the event in association with Columbia Tristar's long awaited movie release of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, the state-of-the-art movie animation of the popular Final Fantasy Series. All roads led to SM Megamall last Saturday, July 07. By 11 am, the hall was dazzling with about 50+ costumed people milling in the area. They had showed up to compete for the COSPLAY event. Unbelievably, a multitude of anime fanatics, curious onlookers and passers-by ogled and filled the venue to the rafters, even bigger than last year's crowd. Exquisite and a wide array of designs were found in an area, which was devoted to a tattoo parlor. Queues were abound as people excitedly lined up for temporary tattoos of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and other AXN anime characters. A mind-boggling exhibition of the "The Making of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" also drew a large crowd. The movie is creating a big hype nowadays because of its incredible state of the art Computer Generated Images (CGI). Members of the audience went home happy when a lot of them won goodies by participating in a specially created Final Fantasy board game. For the purists, the Final Fantasy Playstation challenge, which was the origin of the movie. Drawings of talented and budding artists were displayed as entries to the AXN's regional anime action strip contest at the venue. Of course, alongside the kids and adults in costume, was the star of the Anime Fest, Mahiro Maeda. Japan's premier illustrator and director of the TV hit Blue Submarine No. 6 flew in specially from Japan to judge the Cosplay competition and to make his fans happy. He signed autographs and demonstrated the art of animation. As one watches Maeda-san, he made it seem easy to create those illustrations! The highlight of the event was clearly the Cosplay contest. 119 contestants registered, dressed as their favorite AXN and Final Fantasy anime characters. Dudes and babes from Samurai X, Blue Submarine No. 6, among others, seemed to have come alive at the site. At the end of the day, the winner was determined by a panel of judges and audience votes.  JM
Chua will represent the Philippines in the AXN Hong Kong Anime Festival,
part of Hong Kong Comics Festival and Cyber Carnival in July. Dressed
as Saito Hajime from the series/movies Rurouni Kenshin, JM walked
away with a 3-days/2-nights stay in Hongkong with a friend, plus a
lot of other prizes."We are extremely pleased that this year's on-the-ground Anime Festival was a tremendous success," said Ms. Daphne Chua, AXN Marketing Executive. "The enthusiasm of our fans today is a clear indication that the range of activities we are offering have hit the right note with them." After all the events, the NeOtaku band performed for the audience. Colors and lights mixed and dancing on the Atrium area at the SM Megamall was in full swing. There was also a party for all anime fans at El Pueblo for AXN. Fans now eagerly await for next year, when the next AXN Anime Festival commences. More information on AXN's anime Festival can be found at www.axn-asia.com Here are a couple of pics that i have taken during the event. Enjoy! (pictures are only thumbnails. whole images will come soon.) |
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