Manifest 07: Day 3

Well, here it is, the final part of my report on Manifest 2007. As you might be able to tell this is for the third and final day of the event.

The third day started a bit later than I would have liked but I still managed to get to the campus around 10:30am. So I missed the screening of

Nagasarete Airantou but that didn't matter too much since I've seen most of the series already. Mostly I like seeing comedies at Manifest because I can enjoy everyone else laughing at the same stuff as I do! What I was in time for was the Hare Hare Yukai dance competition at 11am. Oh, and there was yet again a large queue for passes, although not not as large as the previous two days.

Unfortunately what I did not realise is that the competition itself was in the PLT and the mass dance was to be at the Economics Courtyard. So I ended up completely missing the competition but managed to see the mass dance, which took place at about 11:30am. In the mean time I had front row seats for the final performance of the festival by My 6 Cents Worth who were belting out all manner of anime themes. The Pokémon theme actually got played twice. the band's performance in general was excellent and they had a few people dancing around – including a great performance from a "dancing Aizen".

The dance itself was quite impressive. As a guess I'd say there were more than 50 people taking part, which already makes it the largest Hare Hare Yukai dance in Australia. I wonder if the numbers will increase next year or if everyone will have moved on to Motteke! Sailor Fuku by then. If you want to see what it looked like plenty of people were taking photos, including myself – you can see mine below.

After the dance it was time for some more spending so I headed back to the trader's hall. There was nothing new of course but it was marginally less crowded than Saturday morning (which is nuts). I also went back in the afternoon for a final look around and I ended up buying a ridiculously overpriced, yet downright adorable, Yakumo plushie and a subscription to Animavericks, a locally produced otaku magazine. I got the subscription for the "freebies" they were giving away with it – an old Madman Bleach poster that I missed getting at Animania. The magazine looks alright so it will be interesting to see what future issues have in it.

I ended up leaving the campus to head down to the city for lunch, as well as to do more shopping at JB Hi-Fi and Minotaur. I got volume 5 of Chibi Vampire manga, volume 3 of the Chibi Vampire novels and the first two volumes of Welcome to the NHK, along with the Cowboy Bebop movie on DVD.

Back at Manifest the highlight of the day for me was again the AMVs. On Sunday, rather than a competition, the AMV screening is a showcase of what the organisers think are some of the best works from the last year. Again, there were quite a few videos I had already seen but I didn't mind seeing them again. I was happy to see Skittles! in the line up and even happier to see it go down very well with the crowd. The announcements of the winners from the previous day were done right at the end and everyone in the theatre was ecstatic to see Plunder Propaganda again. I'm so glad that it's been put up for download now! (Update: In case you don't have an account on animemusicvideos.org you can find Plunder Propaganda on YouTube.)

The Iron Chef competition was a lot of fun as usual. The judges seemed to be less harsh this year but that might have something to do with the extremely high standard of the entries. Some of the contestants were quite creative with the Naruto manga scans. From the sounds of it it was an extremely close call for the judges and I don't envy them for having to pick a winner from this year's selection. I know the videos from EvilTom, lockstock and xpaperclip are available for download and I'm sure some of the others will be in the near future.

Following Iron chef was the closing ceremony, which featured some video from the festival and concluded with a plea from the organising committee for more people to sign up to MOC. Apparently this year's problems with queues was partially due to the fact that they simply didn't have enough people to effectively organise the event. If you want to see Manifest grow then you should think about joining MOC.

Although there were still a few panels left, as well as the karaoke events, I was far too tired after a weekend of little sleep and lots of walking – not to mention having a brain on anime overload – so I just went out for dinner with my friends and headed home. My thoughts overall on the event are extremely positive, as per last year. The AMV events alone are something to turn up for but having a ton of merchants available in the ones place (rather than requiring traipsing all over the city), being able to check out new anime with a crowd of fellow otaku and seeing all the cosplayers out in force make it truly something special. Manifest is one of things I look forward to all year (although my wallet doesn't feel that way) and I hope that it can be even better next year.

Now, I'll leave you with some personal photos from the festival but if you need an even better fix for cosplay action then you should check out the collection of photos from participants on the Manifest forums.