Supanova: Brisbane 2013

Greetings Minasan!

It's been quite some time since my last post but I'm back to tell you about my day at the pop culture convention, Supanova. A quick run down for those who don't know about Supanova. It's a pop culture convention that is run in Australia in most major cities including, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, and most recently the Gold Coast which is right next to Brisbane. They consist of stores, art galleries, performances and hosts a variety of celebrities. All of which come from various Western mediums such as TV shows, movies, comics etc as well as a large portion being from Japan. I'd say that the larger part of it is Japanese related with a lot of anime stuff, such as figurines, DVDs, models, art books, Cosplay competitions as well as showings of the latest anime. Of all the venues, the Brisbane one is the largest by rank of attendance. We went on the Sunday so I presume it was more packed the Saturday.

Here, we're waiting outside in the line to get in. Fortunately, we didn't get rained on this time! However, it did rain sometime during the day. My friends who rode their motorbikes there weren't impressed!

Up near the building with the glass wall is the entrance.

While outside, we had a run in with the cast from Sailor Moon. The guys were very kirei!

They proved very popular with photographers.

One of the best stores at Supanova is Zombster, From what I can tell, they deal in all legit merchandise and have a massive stock of Gundam models to choose from as well as many figurines and Art Books. Best of all is that their prices are generally quite reasonable. Their store in Toowong is always a pleasure to visit.

We had a run in with one of the imperials patrolling the venue. Fortunately he didn't cause us any trouble. Unfortunately, he wasn't dancing.

A ran into a store my friends and I have visited a few times in the past called Anime Excess. The man running it actually remembered us and we got talking about figure collecting and all the old type of figures he's ordering in for his store. I appreciate this because there's a lot of figurines I've missed out on from older series because I was simply too young to collect them at the time. So it'll be great to see what he gets in stock! He's very friendly and treats returning customers very nicely. :)

Here's some general shots of some of the stores

I purchased a plush Totoro from here last year.

It looks really empty in these photos but I assure you that 99% of the time it's really packed!

 Some very lovely looking and very expensive Ghibli figures.

They have some anime swords here but never Squall's Gun Blade!

While we're on the topic, look at who I ran into! Unfortunately he wasn't selling his.

The Sailor Moon figures are obvious fakes. You can see the Saber figure I purchased (although, this is a different one at a different store)

One thing that bothers me about Supanova is the abundance of bootleg merchandise, particularly figurines. There's a lot of bootlegs mixed in among the official stuff and it makes it hard for people like me to avoid them. Although, a lot of the time they're obviously fake. I'm not sure if it's something Supanova officials care about and don't catch it or if they turn a blind eye in order to keep as many stores attending. In any case, I'd like to see less bootlegs around Supanova. At the very least, if they would at least label them as such that would be very welcome!

After a long weary day, we had a much needed rest on the side of the wrestling rink.

My purchases for the day included, a Studio Ghibli Porco Rosso art book, Asa figurine from Shuffle!, a Saber figurine from Fate Stay/Night, and Rin Tohsaka figurine also from Fate Stay/Night. I also picked up From Up On Poppy Hill by Studio Ghibli on Blu Ray and am looking forward to sitting down and enjoying it. (I still haven't taken off the shrink wrap almost a two months later!)

The highlight of the day was being able to meet Joe Flanigan (I use the word 'meet' lightly as being more of a very brief moment with him). However, I got to see him on 3 separate occasions, the first of which, I got him to sign my Blu Ray box set of Stargate Atlantis which now sits (more so) proudly on a shelf displayed in my room. I also got a photo with him. The final time I saw him was when he signed it for me after he had finished the photo shoot. I'm planning to frame it on the wall along side the photo I got last year with Cliff Simon and Rainbow Sun Franks. While it was great to see him, it wasn't quite as exciting as seeing those two. I think it was the rush of the spontaneity of the whole thing. Here they were, walking off stage right towards me when I just asked if I could get a photo. The rest is history, I think the planned nature of the whole ordeal this time kind of downplayed the whole event. In any case, I thoroughly enjoyed being able to meet Joe Flanigan and hope to meet more of the Stargate cast in future years. Soon after I got my photo, we made our way home.

The Brisbane Supanova is the largest one in Australia by attendance and continues to grow every year. Hence the opening of the Gold Coast Supanova last year in April. It seems as though people can't get enough of it!

Supanova Gold Coast 2013 April 20th

Original Posting - 20/04/2013

Okay! Here it is, the Supanova Gold Coast post!

Getting there.

Where to begin. I guess I should just start describing the day. First of all, my friends were an hour later picking me up than they said they would. hahahaha stopped in at Mcdonalds for breakfast and got the southern bbq sauce on my muffin instead of the normal. (ewwwww) Then the rest of the journey there was rather long and uneventful.

Arriving

Getting closer to the place we ran into a stop start traffic and there were a lot of road works going on as preparations were being made to build a tram line for the upcoming Commonwealth Games in 2018.
We got there about 9:45, 15 minutes before it officially started and they opened the doors. Luckily there was plenty of parking left for us. We got inside the doors after being lead around aimlessly by the Supanova staff for a while. I guess it was pretty much the same as usual. Stores of anime and other geeky stuff, there was the whole 'art gallery' section, people in costumes such as Asuna from Sword Art Online (didn't get any pictures though :(

Seeing stuff....

Unfortunately for me, there wasn't really any figures I was that interested in this time and if I was interested in them they weren't interesting enough for the prices being asked. But anyway, I ended up buying the 2nd half of the second season of K-on!! with the box on Blu Ray from the Madman store even though I guess I could have got it cheaper elsewhere (ended up leaving it in my friends car...) and I purchased a hard cover art book of Spirited Away. (which has some pretty interesting stuff!) This has made me want to collect more of the Studio Ghibli art books.

My nephew would have died if he saw this.

We went to the Madman theater to pass sometime before going to see the the Cosplay competition. My friends had a good laugh seeing Bakemonogatari due to the fact we had watched it already a few years ago. And my other friend and I had a good laugh at the dubbing of Infinite Stratos and also how the main guy for some crazy reason hated the fact that all the girls wanted to be with him.

Then we went to the Cosplay competition. It was brought to the audiences attention that the host had said fantastic a lot last year (something I somehow missed) and then all the different people came on. I had my parents camera this year armed with the Telephoto lens so I was able to get some real good shots of the cosplayers this time! Unfortunately my friends got bored of it halfway through and I ended up leaving with them. So I didn't get to see all the participants. There weren't many cosplays of characters I liked from what I got to see. There was however Char! Although he had forgot his mask!

Leaving

Anyway, didn't get any awesome pictures of celebrities and I this year unlike last time. To be honest, the celebrities there was mostly boring really. Wasn't that great a selection of them. Anyway, time to go. The place was closing and it was time for some more fun.

Dreamworld

We also went to the After Dark Dreamworld event they had on and got to see the view on the Giant Drop at night and we also saw the first 10 minutes of Star Trek Into Darkness that was being previewed at the Dreamworld Cinema. I must admit that the first 10 minutes had restored my faith in the movie a bit. I didn't think the trailers were that great and was disappointed after the first one was so good. I'll definitely look forward to seeing this one when it comes out. The view from the Giant Drop was awesome, all the lights were so pretty. Unfortunately I didn't bring the camera into Dreamworld so there's no pics of that. It was pretty cool seeing Anime cosplays in Dreamworld. That is something I'd like to see more of, not just at Dreamworld but everywhere!

Well that's about it. Besides the part where my friend bumped into the car in front of us (I still think he drives a manual better than I do) nothing spectacular happened on the way home. And like usual, here's a slide show!

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Supanova! Gold Coast is Coming!

Original Posting - 15/04/2013

Going to Supanova (Yes, it's spelled/spelt that way) on the Gold Coast this weekend!
Hope to get some cool pics of it up. Sorry I didn't get anything up before, that week turned out busier than I expected. Saber Golden Caliburn and Kira Yamato G.E.M. just got paid for recently so I'll hopefully post something about them when they get here.

Supanova Brisbane 2012!

Original Posting - 11/11/2012

Well I went to Supanova in Brisbane last weekend! My friends and I ended up going on the Saturday and it was raining all day which was pretty lame because the venue has things split up in different building so we had to go through the rain to get to different sections. I also missed the cosplay competition this time. :(

The venue for the Gold Coast one earlier this year is a LOT better than the show grounds because everything is contained in one giant structure which makes finding things easier and you don't have to worry about rain. There's also toooonss of parking underneath at $10 for the day which is handy. OH! And Mcdonalds is close by too haha.

This was the Art Gallery building. Those air conditioning vents were incredible when they actually had them on.

One of the Gundam displays for the competition. I'd say this is the best one there by far. Maybe I should make an entry one time.

Some wrestling ring. Wasn't all that exciting. This was the building where they had all the stores. Hopefully next year they'll put the stores back in the regular building which is a fair bit nicer.

My favourite gundam hehe.

Anyway, it's still worth going to the Brisbane one. It's great to see all the anime merchandise on display and seeing people dressed up in their costumes and hanging out with friends even though we tend to kind of go off and do our own thing lol. I managed to pick up a large plush Totoro for my nephews first birthday and later on decided that I had to have one myself so I went back and got a second lol. I also decided to purchase the Vampire Knight Box sets that Madman sell at the conventions. I'm a sucker for collectors boxes of anime especially since Madman mostly use fatpacks now. I also got my first dakimakura of saber as well. It's amazing how much they managed to squash such a huge pillow down into a little packet. I was a bit worried until I opened it that it wouldn't actually be all that big lol. I found it interesting how I got a few comments on my Saber T-shirt because I didn't think it'd stick out much at the show. Someone even wanted a picture of it lol. I didn't take too many photos unfortunately, there wasn't really all that much that stood out that I thought needed a photo. Looking back on it I probably should have taken more general shots of stores and the venue itself. Anyway here's some of the few photos I took.

Sorry about the lack of Athrun photos, it's been raining or overcast here lately so it's taken a bit longer than I thought to find a sunny day!

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