Yea, you heard right. Anime Festival Asia will have its own Maid Cafe this year. Moe Moe Kyun’s Maid Cafe has a special hand picked team of maids to help make your experience an unforgettable one. This unique dining experience is evolved from Cosplay restuarants and features waitresses dressed up as maids who will greet you with “Okaerinasaimase” or “welcome home master” (or, “mistress” in some cases) in english.

The food that they serve is generally western or sometimes Japanese. Signature dishes include omelette rice and curry rice.

Who wants to buy me a beer at the Maid Cafe at AKA09 this year?

Anima Festival Asia 2009 is the largest convention of it’s kind in Asia and it looking to be an absolutely amazing time this year.

It is being held from November 21-22 in Singapore at the Suntec International Convention and Exhibition Centre.

There’s lots to do at AFA09 including: the Akiba Town Marketplace, Regional Cosplay Contest, Anime Blockbusters, and they even have a maid cafe! They are also flying 4 top notch artists to come in to entertain you which include Yoshiki Fukuyama, Aniki, Shoko Nakagawa, and May’n. These artists will all be at NAN09 to rock the house.

Renowned Cosplayer Kaname will be helping judge the regional cosplay championship and will have his own panel session.

There will also be an online Gundam modeling competition to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Gundam franchise. The contest will be put on by Bandai (the main sponsor of AFA09), AFA, and one of my personal hereo’s Danny Choo.

Danny Choo will be presenting at Anime Festival Asia 2009 as the best Japan blogger of 2009 promoting Japanese culture to english speaking people.

Anime Festival Asia 2009 should be a blast, anyone planning on going?

There were some great cosplayers at Anime Evolution this year, but like always there were about 30 clouds, 5-6 Yuna’s, a couple Rikku’s,  at least 10 Vincents, and I’m pretty sure I saw a sid (I hope that dude doesn’t dress like that on the reg). However,  I most definitely did not see any Moogles .. :(

Moogles, as I recall are the staple of the Final Fantasy franchise, and have been around much longer than any Clouds, Tidus’s or Sepiroths.

Next year I will be sure to make the trip down to Anime Expo, as they seem to have a better idea of real cosplay outfits (sorry Vancouver).

I should mention that I I own a small American Eskimo named “kupo!” who proudly sports a Moogle Pom on many an occasion (I really love Moogles!).

Anyways, here are some great pics of Pixelated Girl in her Moogle Outfit at Anime Expo 2009 in Las Angelas.

Hope you enjoy them!

The event details are below, I’ll definitely be attending, and hope to see some of you there!

Saturday, July 18th 2009
7:00pm – 11:00pm
Ayden Gallery
88 West Pender Street
Vancouver, BC V6B‎
(778) 891-4310‎

Domo-kun says hi

This year, Vancouver’s Anime Evolution had its eleventh year at the Vancouver Convention Centre, rather than its norm of SFU or last year’s UBC. It warranted a change of atmosphere, but so did the increased amount of attendees. This year’s guest list included the many star studded, from Cybersix to Storm Hawks to the coveted Reboot, with panels of webcomics and artists and all the things an anime convention brings to us aside from the actual anime.

The opening ceremonies kicked things off with a demonstration from Academie Duello’s longsword and rapier fighting, followed by an introduction of the band MINXZONE and then the incredibly crowd pleasing performance of Thriller by the cast of Death Note. Introductions and a little improv by the 404s, immediately followed by a marriage proposal and a finale of painting in a Daruma doll’s eye to start everything off.

So this year held the usual crop of the 404s, returning artists, dealers and returning guests. Things were considerably well run and new events included the Lolita Fashion Show, Speed Dating, a lot more diversity in the games plans and this year’s bands Paris in Tokyo, CJ Li, Soul Candy, Eve, MINXZONE, Locus and x:Enders.

The turn out itself is remarkable and the sheer amount of excitement crowded even the high ceiling main and dealers’ rooms, the latter of which much more spaced out and accessible. Incredible cosplays held the majority of attendees, a sight to behold at the tourist-busy North area of the City Centre. This year’s placement also held a lot of convenience–public transit, food–and public exposure, which was just about as interesting to watch as all the events, panels and viewing rooms.

Despite the change of date from August to the second week of June, this year was considerably notable for positive advances in Anime Evolution’s developments. Cheers.