Stepping through the gates of Melbourne Show Grounds over the weekend and you would have been met with the bristling of excited laughter, a vista of endless queues puncutated with faces, wide -eyed and open fawned at the sight of a samurai showdown.
It could be argued that two white guys dressed in hakamas, not wielding japanese steel but chinese plastic, can hardly be called a showdown but try telling that to the gentlemen locked in combat. Unsurprising really since not even ten metres away a group of scarlet ninjas mingle with a cerulean bug-eyed alien as some gloomly vampires hungrily drool over the latest merchandise.
Some of these elaborate costumes take months of sweat and threads to fashion. Those who are sartorially inclined tend to be lured to the challenge, when asked why she liked to make costumes and dress-up as characters, a girl dressed as Sailor Moon replied “because it’s fun…plus i enjoy the challenge of the costume making process, especially because i only cosplay as characters i like.”
Such was the Melbourne Anime Festival, where hordes of enthusiasts converge to revel in cosplay, internet memes and occasionally even some anime. Anime(animation from Japan) is an increasingly popular diversion from western film and television in Australia. Subsequently, Manifest has grown over the ten years it has been operating and moving to the Show Grounds has definately been a positive move. It has allowed for more space for the various activities, so it wasn’t as cramped as in previous years.
Avi Bernshaw, a convener for Manifest says: “Manifest is finally grown up and we’re bigger, better and we have got more adult content. We’ve looked at our demographics and we’ve noticed something very startling, being that Manifest is a very old convention by the standards of Australia and many of the attendees we have grown up with the convention and are here ten years on. That means we have a large amount of people in their late twenties and early thirties.”
Over three days, the festival offered a variety of activities such as screenings of classic and popular titles such as Macross and Ghost in the Shell, an art exhibition for local talent, videogames and panels. But it isn’t any old anime convention as Avi Bernshaw explains,
“Manifest is a convention based around doing things not just consuming things. There’s more than just buying stuff at traders, although we do have that. We have things like cosplay chess, cell painting workshops, zoids constructa-thingy-jigga mecha, manga drawing classes, learn to shop in Akihabara class! So come along to Manifest if you want to have the full otaku experience, but please bring deodorant.”
Aside with a few problems with VLC media player in the panels and the majority of the Street Fighter IV Tournament contestants not bothering to show up, the festival ran relatively smoothly.
However given the range of activities it seemed that relatively not many people were interested in the screenings or panels, opting to watch kareoke, cosplay or other tangental events. it seems weird admist the din of internet slogans and surrounded by Pocky that people attending an animation festival weren’t that interested in seeing animation.
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