SMASH 2010

If you're an anime fans out there living in Ausland particularly in Sydney, I'm sure that you would all know about the anime convention  SMASH - Sydney Manga and Anime Show. This year's convention at Sydney Townhall featured awesome guests from both the US and Japan, with the prime theme of the guest list on the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. The list featured Yuko Miyamura and Tiffany Grant, the English and Japanese seiyuus of Asuka  Langley as well as the English dub director Matt Greenfield.

The convention featured quite a range of different stands from figure shops, manga bookstores to magazine signup. As well as a gaming area which I personally didn't find very interesting, since  they were pretty much common console games with no real exclusives.

The convention was split into two floors with the main townhall featuring the event stage and the art stands while the basement contained all the figure stores and gaming area. 

There was quite a significant turn up of cosplayers this year, with hoards of people asking to take their pictures. Unfortunately my power hungry camera ran out of power before I could really get into the photography.

The Vocoloid cosplayers had definitely increased in numbers since last year with new levels of dedication, one Miku cosplayer even gone to the length of installing flashing LEDs on her headset. 

Sadly there weren't many splendid Asuka cosplayers but the one above was definitely the best with a great charm to boost.

Was quite surprised that there were Touhou cosplayers about considering how obscure it is outside of Japan. I say the above cosplay of Remilia and Flandre is the best and dedicated presentation I have seen in recent times.

 

                             

Dropped by the artist group Lilium and bought a number of splendid Touhou posters, there was significantly more Touhou goods coming from this group compared to last year. And this time they had 'H' dakimakuras for sale.

Yuko Miyamura

Finally in the afternoon they started the guest signing event, had to line up an hour early for an absolute gurantee of meeting the seiyuus. I had the guests signed the back of one of my Touhou posters but it would had been better if I had something Evangelion related to sign.

Tiffany Grant

Hanged around the convention a little bit longer before finally leaving around 5, since there wasn't anymore events besides the closing ceremony at 6. Overall I found this year's SMASH was somewhat more rewarding then last year's, even though there wasn't much difference in comparison, the presence of high level guests from Japan and the US had definitely made the convention more interesting. The improvement of this year's SMASH had definitely ensure my next year's attendance.