More Taiwan adventures: Fancy Frontier
So, Fancy Frontier is the local bi-annual (I think?) comicket in Taiwan, held at National Taiwan University. Although there was that one major mishap (orz), the con itself was great fun-- it's quite different from cons in the US! Sort of like the artists' alley expanded into the size of the dealer room; it is nice that people care so much about fanart and doujinshi; if only the same extreme adulation existed in the West...
The first and second floors of the con, respectively. It only takes place in two big rooms, but each is totally packed with hundreds of tables. At times, it was extremely difficult to navigate; twice I was stuck between two tables for about 15 minutes with no traffic flow whatsoever, when shoving is almost useless (once in a K-On! section and once in a Hetalia section). This would be how I got my wallet stolen on the second day.
Perhaps the images don't portray the scope well enough, so a few pics of the upstairs area:
That's a LOT of little black heads.
Hetalia is the huge thing this year-- rows and rows of tables just with Hetalia doujinshi. Taiwan is probably more popular here than America is back home; a lot of doujin features her (surprising, given that I would think most fans were fujoshi). There was even a history of Taiwan in 4 volumes. She's paired with Japan a lot, which actually kind of irks me; I don't like that, they aren't compatible and nation-wise it makes sense but is awkward. Asian countries (but not Korea?!) are popular, as is... England for some reason. America is shafted unless paired with England (but America's such a cool character!)
I took a lot of cosplayer photos of course =w= Ahh, a lot of the cosplayers are really attractive! I don't think there were hardly any costumes that were not well-made-- it's true that not every cosplayer was hot (*coughmalecrossplayercough*), and not all of them looked like their characters (*coughfemalecrossplayerscough*), but I don't think I saw a single bad costume quality-wise. And some of them were wonderful~ I would say that about a majority were physically attractive to some extent (curse you skinny Taiwanese girls!) and almost all of them were female. Interestingly, while at home one generally approaches passerby cosplayers and asks for a picture, in Taiwan almost every pic I took was joining a bunch of people who were taking pictures sort of like a photoshoot... In fact, cosplayers just wander around the courtyard waiting for people to take their pics. It does make approaching people less awkward! Everyone says thanks, which is nice.
A sampling:
Utena group; haven't seen Utena cosplay in... never?
Hetalia-- Asian countries. This group would not be the last...
Somehow, those boots don't look right on Prussia...
The place was littered with Taiwans. Tons of Hong Kongs too, but...
Yeah, pretty much mostly Taiwan. I love this pose =w= Not going to bother posting all my Taiwan pics. There were just way too many.
The other thing everyone and their mom was cosplaying was girl!Ciel from Kuroshitsuji. I don't blame them, it's one of the most gorgeous costumes.
Pretty sure this is a guy, hahaha.
I didn't like the female Ciel here-- her expression is so ugh in some of the other pics I took-- but I looooooved this pic. So cute!
Grell and Madame Red!!! This Madame Red was definitely the best, I wish I was gorgeous like that =w=. (LOL Roberia girls in the background)
Haven't seen anyone do cosplays of these before =w=
I have to say I think this was one of my fave cosplays I saw at the con. She looks EXACTLY like Ranmao, even the expression. She's so perfectly stick-skinny! (...Her expression was better in-person, I feel though....)
Vocaloids~ Tons of those too. And girl Kaito? Round-faced Asian girls~ (I saw an Akaito somewhere but couldn't get the pic =( )
Rin and Len~
Also, Aku no Musume Rin and Len! Their take on the outfits was quite nice, very lovely. There was another pair that was even better too!
K-On!'s Hirasawa Yui. She was surrounded by a WALL of sketchy guys taking her pic. One thing some popular cosplayers do here is have a friend who does a countdown after a photoshoot's been going on for a while, and after that, no more pics. I'm surprised there weren't a ton of K-On! cosplayers given how immense it is...
Toradora!'s Aisaka Taiga. There was a better one wandering around (and a Minori), but I didn't catch them, so I had to have SOME pic of the Tenori Tiger. This one wasn't that bad though, got the hair curl thing right =w=
I don't really like Gundam 00 but these cosplayers totally captured the characters' girly Yun Kouga-ness ^^;
Kou Shuurei from Saiunkoku!! Very fitting for a Chinese-language con. I think she was a little frazzled after a long day, but... it's Shuurei and she's awesome so I had to beg for a pic. ^_^
More in my photobucket album at http://s22.photobucket.com/albums/b328/minakichan/Taiwan 2009/ ^_^
Returning to the comic market... The booths are a lot smaller than I'm used to-- maybe 3-4 feet of table space. Artists don't have huge portfolios here; most sell a doujin or artbook and maybe some postcards or a poster. There are a lot with cool trinkets like notepads, pins, stick posters, paper bags, shitajiki... the variety is awesome.
One thing I don't like is their bundling schemes, and that there aren't enough posters. Booths will have huge, gorgeous posters of the image they use for doujinshi covers, but you actually can't buy the posters... Sometimes I'd rather have a picture on my wall than a book in my hand, you know?! And it's shocking to me because posters are so easy to produce cheaply and sell at an inflated price, while books are a bit harder... Another thing people will do is bundle products together-- get a doujinshi and a mini-poster for 200NT, or a bag and a bunch of extras for various prices, but sometimes they don't let you split the bundle, which is silly. If they charged more per-item for an individual item than for combining them in a bundle, they'd make more money and I'd be happy to pay the difference...
A lot of artists seem to ask others to sell their doujin for them, so many table have an amalgamation the same products. I'm pretty sure these people make a lot of money. Also saw the booth for a Korean artist who was selling things at A-Kon, which was a surprise.
This is more common with female artists; it seems that the male artists have better business practices in general... but a lot of the girls look like teenagers so maybe it's understandable?
Anyway, the products are very high quality and CHEAP! A doujinshi is about 150NT here, while my Heroica doujinshi I charged $10 for... (exchange rate is 32NT = 1 USD) But shockingly, posters are so dirt cheap! While wallscrolls are still about 500NT/$15USD, regular printed posters can go as cheap as 50NT-- about a dollar and half. That's the price of production in the US-- maybe lower, given the quality! Some of the huge gorgeous posters could easily go for $15-30 back home. I feel bad buying these things, it feels like I'm ripping the artists off, hahaha, especially since almost everyone is SO talented! It makes me feel bad! Although there are some especially amateurish artists, most are on par with maybe the top 5% you'd see in an American con's artist alley. To be perfectly honest, I think I'd rank in the 25-35th percentile here.
Overall, I spent $45USD on what would be $200USD of merchandise back home.... Of course, I lost $200USD from getting my wallet stolen on Sunday morning, so that didn't really work out for me...
Pics of my swag!
The catalog, filled with thumbnails from the artists. I'm sure the ones in Japan are bigger...
I bought someone's personal artbook (one I saw on devART) and a really cute K-On! one. Also, two Taiwan-centric Hetalia doujinshi.
Since everything's so cheap, I didn't really hold back. The posters are huge! The most expensive one I bought was the miko one-- the mascots from this year's Fancy Frontier-- and that was still 100NT, or about $3. Wish I could have bought more...
Overall, getting pickpocketed sucks, but I would so go again, it was a wonderful experience! Although getting shoved by sweaty people kind of sucks, the cosplay and the great products and cheap prices are hugely enviable.
The first and second floors of the con, respectively. It only takes place in two big rooms, but each is totally packed with hundreds of tables. At times, it was extremely difficult to navigate; twice I was stuck between two tables for about 15 minutes with no traffic flow whatsoever, when shoving is almost useless (once in a K-On! section and once in a Hetalia section). This would be how I got my wallet stolen on the second day.
Perhaps the images don't portray the scope well enough, so a few pics of the upstairs area:
That's a LOT of little black heads.
Hetalia is the huge thing this year-- rows and rows of tables just with Hetalia doujinshi. Taiwan is probably more popular here than America is back home; a lot of doujin features her (surprising, given that I would think most fans were fujoshi). There was even a history of Taiwan in 4 volumes. She's paired with Japan a lot, which actually kind of irks me; I don't like that, they aren't compatible and nation-wise it makes sense but is awkward. Asian countries (but not Korea?!) are popular, as is... England for some reason. America is shafted unless paired with England (but America's such a cool character!)
I took a lot of cosplayer photos of course =w= Ahh, a lot of the cosplayers are really attractive! I don't think there were hardly any costumes that were not well-made-- it's true that not every cosplayer was hot (*coughmalecrossplayercough*), and not all of them looked like their characters (*coughfemalecrossplayerscough*), but I don't think I saw a single bad costume quality-wise. And some of them were wonderful~ I would say that about a majority were physically attractive to some extent (curse you skinny Taiwanese girls!) and almost all of them were female. Interestingly, while at home one generally approaches passerby cosplayers and asks for a picture, in Taiwan almost every pic I took was joining a bunch of people who were taking pictures sort of like a photoshoot... In fact, cosplayers just wander around the courtyard waiting for people to take their pics. It does make approaching people less awkward! Everyone says thanks, which is nice.
A sampling:
Utena group; haven't seen Utena cosplay in... never?
Hetalia-- Asian countries. This group would not be the last...
Somehow, those boots don't look right on Prussia...
The place was littered with Taiwans. Tons of Hong Kongs too, but...
Yeah, pretty much mostly Taiwan. I love this pose =w= Not going to bother posting all my Taiwan pics. There were just way too many.
The other thing everyone and their mom was cosplaying was girl!Ciel from Kuroshitsuji. I don't blame them, it's one of the most gorgeous costumes.
Pretty sure this is a guy, hahaha.
I didn't like the female Ciel here-- her expression is so ugh in some of the other pics I took-- but I looooooved this pic. So cute!
Grell and Madame Red!!! This Madame Red was definitely the best, I wish I was gorgeous like that =w=. (LOL Roberia girls in the background)
Haven't seen anyone do cosplays of these before =w=
I have to say I think this was one of my fave cosplays I saw at the con. She looks EXACTLY like Ranmao, even the expression. She's so perfectly stick-skinny! (...Her expression was better in-person, I feel though....)
Vocaloids~ Tons of those too. And girl Kaito? Round-faced Asian girls~ (I saw an Akaito somewhere but couldn't get the pic =( )
Rin and Len~
Also, Aku no Musume Rin and Len! Their take on the outfits was quite nice, very lovely. There was another pair that was even better too!
K-On!'s Hirasawa Yui. She was surrounded by a WALL of sketchy guys taking her pic. One thing some popular cosplayers do here is have a friend who does a countdown after a photoshoot's been going on for a while, and after that, no more pics. I'm surprised there weren't a ton of K-On! cosplayers given how immense it is...
Toradora!'s Aisaka Taiga. There was a better one wandering around (and a Minori), but I didn't catch them, so I had to have SOME pic of the Tenori Tiger. This one wasn't that bad though, got the hair curl thing right =w=
I don't really like Gundam 00 but these cosplayers totally captured the characters' girly Yun Kouga-ness ^^;
Kou Shuurei from Saiunkoku!! Very fitting for a Chinese-language con. I think she was a little frazzled after a long day, but... it's Shuurei and she's awesome so I had to beg for a pic. ^_^
More in my photobucket album at http://s22.photobucket.com/albums/b328/minakichan/Taiwan 2009/ ^_^
Returning to the comic market... The booths are a lot smaller than I'm used to-- maybe 3-4 feet of table space. Artists don't have huge portfolios here; most sell a doujin or artbook and maybe some postcards or a poster. There are a lot with cool trinkets like notepads, pins, stick posters, paper bags, shitajiki... the variety is awesome.
One thing I don't like is their bundling schemes, and that there aren't enough posters. Booths will have huge, gorgeous posters of the image they use for doujinshi covers, but you actually can't buy the posters... Sometimes I'd rather have a picture on my wall than a book in my hand, you know?! And it's shocking to me because posters are so easy to produce cheaply and sell at an inflated price, while books are a bit harder... Another thing people will do is bundle products together-- get a doujinshi and a mini-poster for 200NT, or a bag and a bunch of extras for various prices, but sometimes they don't let you split the bundle, which is silly. If they charged more per-item for an individual item than for combining them in a bundle, they'd make more money and I'd be happy to pay the difference...
A lot of artists seem to ask others to sell their doujin for them, so many table have an amalgamation the same products. I'm pretty sure these people make a lot of money. Also saw the booth for a Korean artist who was selling things at A-Kon, which was a surprise.
This is more common with female artists; it seems that the male artists have better business practices in general... but a lot of the girls look like teenagers so maybe it's understandable?
Anyway, the products are very high quality and CHEAP! A doujinshi is about 150NT here, while my Heroica doujinshi I charged $10 for... (exchange rate is 32NT = 1 USD) But shockingly, posters are so dirt cheap! While wallscrolls are still about 500NT/$15USD, regular printed posters can go as cheap as 50NT-- about a dollar and half. That's the price of production in the US-- maybe lower, given the quality! Some of the huge gorgeous posters could easily go for $15-30 back home. I feel bad buying these things, it feels like I'm ripping the artists off, hahaha, especially since almost everyone is SO talented! It makes me feel bad! Although there are some especially amateurish artists, most are on par with maybe the top 5% you'd see in an American con's artist alley. To be perfectly honest, I think I'd rank in the 25-35th percentile here.
Overall, I spent $45USD on what would be $200USD of merchandise back home.... Of course, I lost $200USD from getting my wallet stolen on Sunday morning, so that didn't really work out for me...
Pics of my swag!
The catalog, filled with thumbnails from the artists. I'm sure the ones in Japan are bigger...
I bought someone's personal artbook (one I saw on devART) and a really cute K-On! one. Also, two Taiwan-centric Hetalia doujinshi.
Since everything's so cheap, I didn't really hold back. The posters are huge! The most expensive one I bought was the miko one-- the mascots from this year's Fancy Frontier-- and that was still 100NT, or about $3. Wish I could have bought more...
Overall, getting pickpocketed sucks, but I would so go again, it was a wonderful experience! Although getting shoved by sweaty people kind of sucks, the cosplay and the great products and cheap prices are hugely enviable.