The Best of Anime 2010 was held last 19th September at at the SMX Convention Center. The convention was a was a co-located event of the Manila International Book Fair, and featured activity pavilions with different themes — including anime, manga, cosplay, gaming, photography, and much much more. The event was organized by Prime Trade Asia.

One of the booths that attracted the most number of onlookers was the The Japan Foundation Manga Library — staffed by two Japanese teachers who dressed up as meido-san for the day. They also folded tiny origami souvenirs and wrote out guests names on tanzaku or colored paper for convention participants to take home.

Also swamped was the booth manned by Cosplay.Ph, who were on hand to assist Prime Trade with the cosplay competition.

      

      

As with most local events, the main draw of the afternoon was the cosplay. The competition drew a respectable 75 contestants, but that number is nothing compered to the number of cosplayers camped outside the hall chatting with friends and posing for photogs.

Inside the hall, some of the highlights of the competition was a fairly large number of child cosplayers, who donned costumed from Haruhi, ToraDora!, and Final Fantasy VII. Also wow-ing the audience were costumes from Iron Man 2, Spawn, and The Transformers.

      

      

However, my personal favorite was the paired performance of the two divas of Macross Frontier Sheryl Nome and Ranka Lee (and yes, “Sheryl” is male). The choreography, lip-syncing, and overall flair the two cosplayers had during their performance was outstanding and humorous at the same time — fantastic!

The evening was capped off by an outstanding performance by the 2010 J-pop Anime Singing Contest Winners Himitsu Heiki, who performed a medley of hits from Tenchi Muyo, High School of the Dead, and Getbackers. The band will be performing again on Cosplay Mania X alongside J-pop stalwarts Neotaku, so we hope to see you guys there as well.

      

      

Overall the event went smoothly enough, but there are a few things that still need some improvement — the first of which is space outlay. Due to the large number of interactive booths (and the inevitable crowd that gathered in front of them), walking space was extremely limited. Thankfully the spillover of attendees and cosplayers was accommodated by SMX’s concourse area, but one has to think that if this were held at the SM Megamall Megatrade Halls it would’ve been a complete disaster.

Another thing that looked like it could do with a bit more polish was the crowd control around the stage area during the cosplay ramp. A number of non-affiliated photographers who lacked proper credentials were able to make their way past the marshals to take prime spots in front of the stage — which is a serious breach of protocol and security. However — thanks to the quick thinking of one of the marshals, these people were politely asked to leave the area and return to the general viewing areas.

All in all, it is not a bad first attempt, and there is plenty of room for improvement. Congratulations to Ms. Irene and the team at Prime Trade Asia, and we all look forward to The Best of Anime 2011.

Thanks to Prime Trade Asia for the invitation.