Long-Delayed...

.:TOEInty Tears Up Eastwood!:.

Before The Competition

Eastwood came to life as TOEI Philippines celebrated its twentieth year with a group cosplay competition to end all group cosplay competitions.

While yes, Hataw Hanep Hero at World Trade Center was a bigger, more well-publicized event, I have to say that the stops were really pulled out at Eastwood, where we were treated to masterpiece presentations, from top to bottom.

In any case, I got there in the afternoon, after the kid cosplay competition and in the middle of the dubbing competition finals. The ones I saw were pretty good, though I really wished I would've had the chance to see how the “Battle Royale” team did...

So that being said, my partner Juno and I stood around for a while with the cosplayers before we finally got to the floats which was going to start the festivities for the evening. While there, we ended up sharing the float with two girls from the Airgear cosplay group.

Well, to be honest, one of the girls rubbed us the wrong way. She was rambling on and on about wanting to be a supermodel and stuff, and then she made it a point to remind everyone she had a boyfriend so everyone can back off from her when they approach her, which was kinda counterproductive to her cosplaying.

To top it all off, she even fainted and got her own team eliminated. I'm pretty sure supermodels don't faint before they go on the catwalk, and if they did, they really should reconsider their career... heh.


Here It Comes!

After the parade, we spent a bit of time with a briefing where we worked out the lineup of presentations and got ready for the main event. Juno was in costume, but I tried to pass myself off as one of the Voltes V guys who'd always wear cowboy clothes. Yeah, yeah. What a sneaky way to get away with not cosplaying, but whaddaheck.

The crowd was incredibly responsive. No matter at what point in the show, they were definitely hot for the presentations all night long and the crowd refused to thin out for as long as the decision wasn't handed out.

Performances were spectacular. You had awesome choreography from the One Piece guys, insane comedy from the Dragonball crew, and so on and so forth, but the crème de la crème would have to be the Zodiacs group who presented Saint Seiya in musical fashion, the second Super Robot Wars team that had lots of breakaway props they put to interesting use for fight scenes, and of course, the runaway winner by far was the Shaider team, which blew everyone away. They were a group that cosplayed for the first time, and nobody expected costumes this accurate, choreography this meticulous, and an overall presentation that completely felt like an actual episode of Shaider. The crowd was deafening when it came to them.

Michael V was the celebrity guest judge, and it was really awesome. The crowd was really into the whole presentation, and despite a long technical gaff at some point, the crowd sat there patiently. In fact, I even ended up doing Liquid Metal, which led to me cutting my thumb, bringing my total of injuries that night to two. You see, I kinda landed real bad on my foot when I got off the float before the show... heh.

In any case, the people out there were also amused when they heard the ever-famous “Some call these men the greatest entertainers on Earth...” spiel. It was a riot, as I managed to get away with that while one of the bands were getting ready.

And of course, kudos to the bands who performed as well, and special mention has to go to Neotaku and X vs. Zero. You guys are awesome.

For more pictures, do check the other entries all over LJ land about the TOEI festival, and for videos, check out YouTube, and search with TOEInty. The Shaider presentation is an absolute treat.

Congratulations, everyone!

.:Happy Feet Is A Must-See:.

Awesome, awesome movie! Well, so was “Fight Club”, and I have to thank Tita Toots, Tito Fort, and of course, Bessie Estelle for that. It was a really great Sunday...

.:New Phone. Finally:.

It's about bloody time, I guess. Thanks to my mom for that one...