The night before EOY, my friend who was supposed to go with me ended up cancelling out on me, which got me highly tempted about not going, but in the end I did. Unfortunately, EOY didn’t quite live up to expectations

all the contestants… *almost*

*few photos in this entry, photos come in another entry*

Good and bad points were plenty

Ticketing

They issued tickets and stamped a UV stamp on you for the bouncers to check. But what’s with the double, they should only do one. I saw people getting re-stamped just by showing their tickets. Hey, at this rate, I might as well buy one ticket and distribute it amongst my friends and all get stamped.

And what’s with opening the event to a free for all at around 4. Apparently it’s been a tradition since past years, but I didn’t see it happen last year. Never mind those who came early and paid $12. What about those who came at 3.30 and paid.

Layout and booths

They expanded outside the conference halls this time round for the booths. Good in terms of space, bad in terms of overall atmosphere. From a photographer’s point of view, there was no way I could pay attention to what’s happening inside and outside the halls at the same time. Heck, I felt that most of the better cosplayers were hanging outside, like the naruto group. Hurh hurh. haha.

There were some interesting booths though. Photoshoot booth was definitely a plus point. Odex booth was a minus point. I could see spiderwebs starting to grow around their booth.

Emcees

Actually, I thought they were quite good. Especially in comparison to last years. Good in terms of knowledge and jokes. Yeah.. jokes were lame I know.. but at least I laughed. Being able to recognise the cosplays that came on stage was a major plus point.

Cosplayers

I thought there weren’t any outstanding ones. Fairly boring and disappointing compared to Cosfest. Though obviously the community is definitely growing. Once again, we need more updated cosplaying. Don’t keep doing the same old thing again! (I’ve very thankful there were NOT a bunch of bleach people though)

Overall

I think the fact that I nearly fell asleep stoning in front of the stage at 3pm says alot. I think because of the layout, the atmosphere was really bad. Although I do think that much of the criticism that I’ve read are pretty unwarranted. One has to remember that Cosfest is more professional and more for the public, while EOY is more of the community and Volunteers (ie, more cozy)

Met up with some of the anime bloggers. At a pretty late time though… haha. Some guy took asked me to join Tsubaki and Umehiko for a photo. Turns out Tsubaki has no idea who that guy is either.

All in all, I think my feelings are that Cosplay is a very group event thing, even if you’re just a photographer. Doing it alone is just plain boring, as compared to say watching anime. -shrugs-

Overall, I’ll say the community is growing, but I thought that this year’s EOY wasn’t as good. Much of it due to the layout and atmosphere.

Other reports of the event.

Tsubaki
Bj0rn
Darkmirage
DRM
T.H.A.T.
TJ HAN
Rdrake
Zer0

Photos all hosted on zoomr, original sizes available for download, click around, leave a comment if you need help.

Photos of cosplayers will come in a later post. I’m still uploading all of them. All are originals, so they are large in size, and takes too damn long to upload.