OZINE FEST 2013 - A visit done by two cavemen!

Belldandy
Arwin Palac Photography

The Ozine Fest 2013 is a 3 day event featuring Japanese pop and Anime culture right smack in the heat of summer (and school is out!). The event featured Cosplay competition, battle of the bands, an art contest (which was pretty much open for anyone and anytime which was cool), karaoke contest, the famous and unique Maid Café, and Indie artists! The event also featured a meet and greet with Aza Miyuko (a South Korean Cosplayer) and Jinri Park (who beautifully cosplayed Jamie Robinson from Voltes V – taken back for quite some time)

Hosts Kristell Lim and Liui Aquino

What me and Arwin like about this event that Japanese pop and anime culture still had a strong following! We both felt ancient cavemen coming out of our rocks after 8 or so years (yes, the last cosplay we have attended was during college)! Impressive enough, how it was 8 years ago - the people, the happy faces, cosplayers allowing us to take pictures of their artworks -- has improved! This simply shows that there is indeed a strong following and place in the heart of Filipinos for such culture!

The battle of the bands was one of the things we tried to watch from start to finish, however due to the limited time, we were only able to watch a few bands on Day 1 and Day 2. All bands showed awesome control of music (and yes, this was one of the moments we realized we were ancient cavemen) playing later tunes like Shunkan Sentimental (from the band Scandal, anime Fullmetal Alchemist : Brotherhood) to more older tunes like Anata Daka Mitsumete’ru (from Yoko Kobayashi, anime Slamdunk).

Chii!!!
Arwin Palac Photography

As we roamed around outside the hall, we were able to find beautiful and handsome cosplayers displaying their art. What caught our eye the most (which Arwin also dubbed as best cosplay portrayal) was Chii from Chobits (an anime that featured persocoms “robot droids” and humans coexisted), it was an alluring sight to see! Other favorites we have are Suzumiya Haruhi (Arwins favorite) and Belldandy (Kookies favorite)

Suzumiya Haruhi
Arwin Palac Photography

Overall, the 3 day event reminded us why we loved anime and Japanese pop culture, it was something you can relate to, it is fun to have and it was something everyone can share! With this in mind, we look forward to the next Japanese pop and Anime culture event!

Photos

For high res photos, visit the Arwin Palac Photography flickr stream

So San Tayo? Welcome to Ozine Fest 2013!

Extra stuff : Me and Arwin were joking about meeting Slender man (known more of as a game character, slender man was a myth which featured a tall faceless man wearing a dark suit). In the game, the objective was to run away from Slender man and not get caught. As we were joking about slender man, low and behold, he was right behind us. So whoever you are cosplaying Slenderman, thank you for making one of requests come true ^_^

San Tayo Team for this event