Tokyo Anime Fair 2009

better late than never I suppose… By the way for all ye facebook readers, hit the blog instead.. the format is better than the imported notes.
http://www.bakadaruku.blogspot.com
March 21 2009
TAF09 was a winrar of epic compression. It was at the Tokyo Big Sight in Odaiba (Big Sight is an understatement… i think F@CKING HUUGE would be a better description. hell it even has travelators in it)
Basically its the event where all the big and some of the small studios In Japan as well as from other countries come together to show off what they have planned for the next year. Its a typical expo filled with well designed and attractive stands, cute and sexy scantily clad  women enticing you to take flyers promoting whatever it was they were promoting and a whole hall full of Anime Fans from every walk of life.
Basically think rAge but only anime and bigger… and in Japan.

I have not been to yank con but from what i have heard and read the vibe is different. This is a full on commercial expo.. while fans (myself included) have associated many fine and noble things with the series’ and OAVs that are released every year, the truth of the matter is they are a commodity that fatcats need to sell. It had a bit of a let down effect on me. I mean there was passion but it was not the fan driven passion that we had at the DaRC//LAN and we put into the Otaku Magazine. It was very very commercial.
They did a pretty good job too, I fully intend to buy the new Gurren Lagann DVDs when they become available… wait.. I think they are available now ( I need to check those flyers again ).
There was some experimental stuff on view show… 3d anime rocks, and there was alot of bizarre and interesting stuff coming out of the smaller indie studios.
The Koreans and Chinese had big stands but the products on show were sub standard.. hell the chinese stand looked like it had an invisible forcefield around it… like it was HUGE but everyone avoided it, myself included.

animations indeed

and they wonder why nobody was taking the Chinese stand seriously.

In addition to the anime there were alot of figurine and Merchandise promotions as well as a number of stamp rallys, Merch stalls and Avex even had a stage promoting some of the latest Jpop/anime tunes. I even got to see Misono.
All in all it was a good time and I will do it again next year.. but with a better camera, so I can take some nice shots of the promo girls (best part of any non car/military expo IMHO)
oh and don’t forget these ones :