Somehow we became aware of a very special event that brought together anime fanatics, cosplayers, comic maniacs and lots of other (more or less strange) people from all over South-east asia at the Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre today (and yesterday): Singapore Toy Game Comic Convention (STGCC) 2015! Not being so sure about what to expect, the 19 Singapore Dollars entrance fee happened to be a cool investment. I had never thought that so many people invest so much time and ambition to collect anime or action figures, drawings and prints, or even clad and make up like their favorite anime star. It was particularly surprising to me that Asians, usually very disciplined and somewhat shy, like to dress up like monsters (men) or sexy dolls (women) and obviously have big fun being watched at and being photographed by strangers.
The base of every convention seems to be the Star Wars segment. Even 40 years after the first movies, you meet Darth Vaders, Yedi knights and lots of Stormtroopers and Clonetroopers - enough to shoot a scene. This is also the right place to buy lightsabers and be instructed how to use them.
Another well represented segment is horror figures. The more movies of this type you have dared to watch, the more familiar "faces" you will discover among the visitors. As I am not a horror fan, I was done with Saw and some of his sinister companions.
I would have expected to see a lot of Lord of the Rings characters, but these seem to be too difficult to copy. Only a bunch of elves was so nice to adopt me (20 cm taller then them) for a photo.
An then we have anime. Mostly women seem to invest lots of time and effort for an hour of fame as their favorite anime star - be it a naive schoolgirl, a house maid with blue hair and a gas mask, or a sexy Yoline. What a pity that I couldn't value many of the efforts because I do not know these anmine characters.
One of the highlights of the show was the Singapore Cosplayer competition. Fourteen local Cosplayers competed mainly for fame, because the "prices" between 100 and 1000 SG$ were not too impressive. After standing in line for some time to secure a good place at the stage, we cheered at elaborate robots, blinking Samurais, a "fiddlesticks" monster, and other creepy figures that I certainly don't want to meet in the wild - especially not the extremely well-done "Immortan Joe" from the current Mad Max movie that had to content himself with the third price...
While the jury struggled to find the three best Cosplayers, some kids got also a chance to present themselves (or what their parents wanted them to present) on stage. The most funny performance was a lightsaber fight between a ca. two year old and a ca. five year old.
Getting interested into this pastime, we did a little research afterwards and found out that some Cosplayers are really serious about it, arrange artful settings for their usually homemade costumes and publish professional photos.
What I learned? There are many worlds out there.
P.S. Yes, we also took many selfies.
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