Continued from BOA 2013 Day 1 Event Report

Day 2 at Best of Anime 2013 brought even more music and cosplay, including thrilling performances by J-MELO host Joe Inoue, and Thailand WCS Winners JiakiDarkness and YukiGodBless. Since this is Joe’s second visit to Manila, his fans were expected to turn up in droves, but what really caught us by surprise was the fan reaction to the mini cosplay concert of Yuki and Jiaki, who performed Gurenn no Yumiya from Shingeki no Kyojin.

The performance was so well-received that the event hosts organized a quick photo session for the cosplayers’ fans, who literally stormed the barricades to get close to the duo from Thailand. Excited screams followed the pair at every section of the mini meet — an assurance to the organizers that yes, Jiaki and Yuki are welcome to an encore performance in the future.

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Also thrilling the crowds was were the day’s cosplay competition, including the Best of Anime Cosplay Competition and the WCS NCR Finals. In the end, The Best of Anime Cosplay Competition went to last year’s champion and mini-mecha maven Bolen Lareza, whose Daimos costume drew stomps and cheers from the crowd. She has kept her crown as Champion and has extended her reign to a second consecutive year, which means that cosplayers — kids and adults alike, have another year to work on unseating her from her throne.

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Extremely disappointing though was the turn out of the WCS NCR Finals, which only yielded three contestants — two of which were disqualified at the onset (one for going beyond the allotted performance time, and another for not personally crafting the costume they were wearing). The slot therefore went to the last remaining cosplayer who had fulfilled all the competition rules. However, I do have to hand it to the organizers for sticking to their guns when it came to craftsmanship, as the best-looking but obviously-commissioned costume did not win the competition as a last resort.

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Not to belittle the efforts of the winning cosplayer, but default wins are not an ideal way to select the Philippine representative to an international event. My advice (and the organizers are free to ignore this), is to allot a minimum number of participants in order for the selections to push through. If online photo contests are able to implement this rule, why shouldn’t an event as big as the WCS? In the end, the goal of everyone is to present only the best that the Philippines has to offer to the international audience.

BOA has continued to improve by lengths and strides. From their program offerings to their merchandise on offer, we have nothing but high hopes for their future events. We are looking forward to another great event from them in 2014!