AFA X — Anime Festival Asia 2010, is one of the largest Japanese pop culture events in South East Asia. The event features merchandise, exhibits, and activity centers. AFA X is also the home of the I Love Anisong concert series, the AFA Regional Cosplay Championships, and the Cool Japan Summit for businesspeople and professionals.

A hotly-anticipated event, tickets have been available for weeks via Singaporean ticketing service Gatecrash. However, due to several misses by the service, a majority of convention participants opted to purchase tickets at the gate. This unfortunately resulted in an extraordinarily long queue — starting from the fourth level of Suntec extending all the way to the second level.

Inside, the venue was surprisingly well-planned. There was just enough room inside to move about despite the crush of people outside. The booths were grouped by category: merchants on one section, doujinshi artists on one section, and industry booths on one section.

I particularly liked the application of that old Japanese con standby: the queue control signs. Two employees of a shop hold up signs indicating the beginning and the end of the merchandise queue, plus info on how much time it may take for your to get from one end to the other. By controlling the number of people in a booth at any given time, shoppers are given ample room to browse the displays and purchase items, and the shops are less likely to lose merchandise from shoplifters and other unsavory types.

      

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The event’s two cafes — Moe Moe Kyun (for maids) and Atelier Royale (for butlers) were situated next to each other to the rear of the events hall. Next to them were Akiba Mini-stage and the Canon photo-booths — which were tucked off into the corner together, attracting a large crowd to what would otherwise have been unusable space.

Lastly, a large booth selling AFA merchandise was set up next to the through-hall that connected the merchants floor to the Stage Hall next door. The Stage Hall is the location for headline events like the AFA Regional Cosplay Championships and I Love Anisong.

Later in the evening, the first of the two I Love Anisong concerts was held, featuring performances by virtual diva Hatsune Miku, anisong super unit JAM Project, and King of Anisong Mizuki Ichirou. Concertgoers were divided in to two sections: a premium reserved seating area near the stage, and an open standing area closer to the rear. Both sections has clear views of the stage, which were further assisted by four large video screens showing live images from the performances.

I had a pretty good time on day one — mostly from scoping out the merchants booths as well as enjoying the sizzling performances by JAM Project and Mizuki Ichirou at I Love Anisong. I especially liked the solo performances by the individual members of JAM Project (to showcase their own hits outside of their work with JAM Project), as well as their song number with Aniki Mizuki Ichirou.

      

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That said however, there are a few things that bothered me. First and foremost was the horrific line at the ticketing booths — which could have been prevented if Gatecrash performed as well as they were supposed to, if the local resellers advertised on the official site were given ample passes to sell, or if guests were allowed to purchase passes from the ticketing booths at the event gate on Friday afternoon (I ran into some people on the concourse section of Suntec hoping to do just that).

Another thing is the lack of uniform shirts and lanyards with large format passes for the support staff. Especially with first-timers, finding people to ask information from is very important, and I really felt bad for the newbies walking around looking lost. I also pitied the uniformed Suntec security staff who had to stand in as walking info-booths since they were highly visible compared to the convention staff — that was clearly not part of their original job description.

Last but not least, is the lack of dedicated space for cosplayers to promenade in. I know that the event does not make it a priority to set aside a space for cosplayers to display their handiwork — since the concourse area outside the con pretty much sets itself up for that. But with other events going on at the concourse area at the time, AFA organizers should have anticipated the lack of promenade space and opened up additional halls to contain the crowd (which eventually the Suntec people did out of desperation).

I’d like to reiterate though that these points of contention are very minor, and overall I had an enjoyable time on the very first day of AFA X. There’s still lots to talk about on our second day event report, including our comments on this year’s Regional Cosplay Championships, and first-hand account of the goings-on inside Atelier Royale, and Side B of the I Love Anisong concert featuring angela, SCANDAL, and MAY’N.

Continued in Day 2.

Thanks to everyone at AFA X, SOZO, and Asia PR Werkz for the media passes to the event.