Been meaning to post on Saturday evening, however it became such a mission for me to upload the photos on my Wordpress online, I realised this is not gonna be an easy 5 minute job…. And finally here I am.

This is something I dont’ see that often. For the past 15 years since I live in the ‘land of the long while cloud’, anime was word that’s unknown to many general people of NZ and certainly the contrast was incredibly obvious between my adopted country and home country of Malaysia, where anime is seen as a common household product in the neighbourhood of 20 million plus people. Here, to get a manga book was certainly a rarity for these and the closest thing you can ever find them (which I vaguely remember) is from a Taiwanese shop that sells parallel imported goods or from Taiwanese high school friends I used to went out with, and they get the latest trends of manga imports.

Now fast-forwarding the clock 15 years later…. Things have changed. It has changed a lot.

Thanks to the introduction of Pokemon and Dragonball Z into the NZ youth market towards late 90s, the anime space was exploding that was never seen before. It broke all barriers and soon many new young New Zealand fans are spreading the word of ‘anime’ in the community like wildfire. They learn many things about manga, otaku, shonen, doujinshi, cosplay and the culture of Japanese animation so quickly. I feel like I’m no longer a visitor to my new found homeland anymore.  Everything I do here is almost like being back at home! And what better way for them to get into this pop culture phenomenon, is to have our very own local anime convention centre in the Southern Hemisphere, right in the heart of Auckland City.

It’s probably our first anime convention centre ever in New Zealand’s history. At least, that’s what I found from this link at AnimeCons.com. So New Zealand has come a long way with this and we see a rising number of young fans that mould in very well in this array of ‘Japan-esque’ fun everything from dressing up your favourite anime characters as for eg Sailor moon to owning your very first 1/1 scale Mobile Gundam model! (I was kidding about the 1/1 scale part. Lol.)

Nevertheless, my curiosity for discovering the world of anime in New Zealand never dissipates so I decided to venture out on the quest to see just how much New Zealand as a whole learnt much about anime.

And after the first two hours of almost non-stop (well not really, I had to recharge my parking fare every hour (long story) so I had to rush out and rush back in) photo-taking, and a few hundred of photos later, and countless hours of uploading, here’s the entire album below.  Broken into 4 categories.

NZ Doujin Overload 2009

Local Doujin convention centre in New Zealand

10 Photos

Local Anime and Cartoon Artists in New Zealand

Talented NZ anime artists showing off their drawing talents

26 Photos

Cosplay and Dance

All the cosplays, dancing 'Japanese' high school girls and music etc...

30 Photos

Anime Videos, Models and Merchandise

DVDs, Gundam and Mecha Model Merchandise etc..

82 Photos

This is great start for New Zealand.  As I walked around the room, letting my curious gaze linger from one desk to another, prying on the marvellous artworks by these bright intelligent artists, who clearly show their desire and passion in drawing, I sense something’s good is bound to happen for these talented young guns.  I asked every person I met on each desk about their age and how long they love to drawing, and you hear the same answer over and over.  14-18 year olds love to drawing since they were little kids getting their first drawing pencils and continue to excel their ’scribbling’ into great works of anime/manga art.  They’re incredible, I tell you.  (which you will soon see after you look into my album).

They got a number of cosplays going on there from Japanese high-school outfits to one guy dressing up as Vincent, a character  from Final Fantasy VII.  Plenty of dances going on too (which I need to find the time to upload,  if I’m lucky enough to be busy).  And last, but not least, there’s a section of all mecha toys and models that I could finally find (YES!!!) in our local shores, ie no need for E-bay buying anymore for sure.   Apparently, NZ market is actually small so having a NZ as a young market for youth products like this is a foregone conclusion.  There’s still potential for this before we could rival our so-called “big brother” of the Oceania region and their much bigger show of anime. (see Youtube clip below).

At the end of the day, I did not go home empty-handed, for I certainly did make lot of purchases, if anything not overtly-exorbitant like buying myself a 1/1 Gundam model and put in my frontyard! I’m planning to post this on another page as there’s a lot of great material including magazine of Japan’s wonderful world of modelling hobby.

So stay tuned.

Source: AnimeCons.com

Related posts:

1. Anime 2010 and beyond: In Reverse?
2. Japan: Anime Industry – still more grim news on the homefront
3. Japanese’ anime industry in doldrums – 2B Pencils are now the size of a toothpick.
4. Anime Industry – Too late to save? What’s left for otaku and the rest of the world?
5. Japan’s Anime Industry: Taking a fresh look into making ‘tangible’ business