The sixth edition of the Made in Asia convention, an event all about Japanese anime, manga and other asian culture, took place last weekend at the Brussels Expo. For the first time, Made in Asia ran a full three days and I was fortunate enough to attend the convention each day.
Seems that each year anime events usually have a surge of cosplayers from a specific series or franchise, whether it be in Asia, America or Europe. Noticed that cosplay from “Sword Art Online” saw a huge boom when the anime aired last year, but this year’s edition of Made in Asia was definitely all about “Attack on Titan”.
There were dozens of cosplayers in the signature uniforms from “Attack on Titan” and even a few titans too.
This franchise also seems to appeal to female cosplayers, in fact the majority of “Attack on Titan” cosplayers I saw were girls, who for once do not have to go around scantily clad to be dressed as characters from their favorite series, something I can actually appreciate.
There were only a few booths from trustworthy stores for those interested in purchasing anime figures, with Archonia, La Cité des Nuages, Kingplayer and of course Good Smile Company.
The booth from La Cité des Nuages seemed rather small this year, but Archonia was present with a large booth although they mostly had manga, artbooks, DVD and BluRay for sale compared to a modest selection of figures. Archonia was the only store I spotted that also offered manga translated in English though.
Next to the fansites, artists and other cultural oriented booths, the majority of the sales booths focused on specific trinkets, some of the more shady booths unsurprisingly had bootleg items for sale.
For the manga fans, there were several large stores present at the event, offering a large selection of manga for sale, there was even a booth specialized in yuri, yaoi and hentai manga. However, since all those were French language editions, they did not appeal to me personally.
Another highlight of the Made in Asia weekend was that I got to meet up with the comrades from Shadonia again, they had a lovely booth with several display cases filled to the brim with figures as well as a case dedicated to Dollfie Dream.
They also held an informative workshop each day about counterfeit figures and provided good advice to fellow fans and figure collectors.
Was able to participate in the Dollfie Dream display at Shadonia and brought Ayuko on Friday, Shizuku & Akiko on Saturday and Kyouko on Sunday.
The glass paneling of the display case made it ideal to safely showcase the dolls to the public but alas rather tricky to properly photograph due to the reflections, so was not able to snap as much good photos as I would have liked of all the cute Dollfie Dream gathered for display at the event.
You can see more photos from the 2014 edition of Made in Asia on Flickr.
