the folly of youth

World Cosplay Summit Australia preliminaries: finalists
L-R: Misa-Misa and Rem from Death Note, Touya and Yukito from Tsubasa, Al (grownup human form) from FMA, Ryuk from Death Note, and the One Piece ship!

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My siblings and I dragged ourselves out of the house at 9 am today to attend Animania ‘08, Australia’s biggest and bestest anime and manga convention, and upon arriving we were presented with a little guidebook that had something called the Animania Passport Tour at the back. It involved checking in with six different info desks, doing tasks at each of them to collect stamps, and then collecting a special limited edition freebie! (with exclamation mark!) after all six stamps had been acquired.

So feeling unusually gung-ho (and egged on by having spied a table labelled “PRIZES” with rows of very lovely and expensive dolls on them), we embarked on a quest for stamps that grew, over the next couple of hours, progressively more horrifying; we started from deceptively tame tasks like drawing pictures and striking anime poses to walking round and round the ginormous hall twice over to count the number of sunglasses hanging about, to singing Naruto and Doraemon theme songs in front of a crowd, and finally to the pinnacle of humiliating super-special last tasks, wearing chocobo suits on the dance floor (I kid you not; no, there are no pictures, thank goodness).

The karaoke bit was particularly annoying - there was a list of 10 songs and they’d randomly assign you one, and among them, coincidence of coincidences, was “Ikenai Taiyou”! Which my sister and I were really hoping to get (my brother had been assigned Naruto’s GO!! earlier), but we got a song from Suzumiya Haruhi which we both didn’t know… and in the end, thanks to time constraints, we were chucked in together with a group doing, of all songs, Doraemon. After we’d practised the Suzumiya Haruhi song to perfection too. Pffft.

So after all that effort, we received… a limited edition yellow Animania 2008 wristband, of which there are only 100! In the world!

et voila - I apologise for crappy webcam quality

(Apparently the dolls were for the other competitions. Go figure.)

“And now,” said the guy who gave us our wristbands, obviously dying of laughter at our dumbfounded horrorstruck faces, “you have to ask yourself: was it worth it? Say yes! Say yes!”

It was a massive facepalm moment. Yet thinking back, I have to say, this harebrained Passport game was what turned your everyday run-of-the-mill convention - where I’d normally just stroll round, watch the Karaoke (but not sing), watch the dancing (but not dance) and watch the art desk (but not draw) - into something really special for my brother, my sister and me… and we’re probably never going to let each other forget it. (”Remember when we all wore chocobo suits? Most embarrassing moment of our lives!”)

I’m still wearing this lousy yellow wristband as I type. It’s not even very nice, but it has been one hell of a memorable day.

6 comments

LcT says:

August 24 2008 @ 11:56 PM

what do you mean there aren’t any pictures? CHOCOBO SUITS ZOMG!!!!!!!

cui says:

August 25 2008 @ 9:42 AM

ha, i mean exactly that, there are no pictures of us in chocobo suits and there will never be. for which i am GLAD.

christie says:

August 25 2008 @ 1:30 PM

That sounds DAMN FUN!!! I wish I was there. : ( : ( : (

cui says:

August 25 2008 @ 6:03 PM

on hindsight, it was probably the funnest anime convention i’ve ever been to although i do think singaporean cosplayers just look better, because they’re asian.

shirlene says:

August 25 2008 @ 11:11 PM

that sounds AWESOME!!! and Ikenai Taiyou is totally making my day.

steffy says:

August 26 2008 @ 2:58 AM

sydney is cool. perth sucks :p

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