Yes, yes, yes!! Another anime festival, this time in India itself, that too New Delhi! And I got to meet some real legends there! I was waiting for this day from, I don’t know how much time. And day 1 itself was successful （●＾o＾●）

The day started with two sweaty guys in scorching heat, wrapping entry bands to the wrists of excited people (Ok, that was…….unexpected).

Inside, the preparations were still going on and the workshops got delayed a little.

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The first workshop was a talk by popular illustrator from France – MEGA. He is such a sweet guy. The two lessons he taught us through his experiences are – Be Passionate and Be Humble. Also, one can easily tell from the content of a speaker, how much research has the person done, and man, to keep his audience engaged, he took Indian examples. Might be that Sachin Tendulkar is famous across the world, but anyway, his talk was entertaining.

On the top of that, he critiqued all the people’s work there. Not once he discouraged anyone. He is probably going to be busy tomorrow giving advice again to the works of people. He didn’t hesitate to provide his gmail address too. I am gonna add him on g+. And Gosh! There are so many talented people out there (not that I didn’t know that before)

So where was I? Yeah, next workshop was works of Daizen Komatsuda himself. We were basically shown a clip of Kill la Kill and then how storyboard is drawn, how parts are animated from keyframes and all. He started by saying a few words in Hindi!! Interesting session! Then came questions and answers. I went to take autograph, but before that, Mr. Jiro Ishii caught my eyes.

I was asked by a friend of mine to get his autograph too. Thank God, I did some research beforehand. He asked me if I really knew who he was and I shouldn’t take his autograph but Mr. Daizen Komatsuda’s. I did, for once give up and went to the line where people were standing to ask  Daizen Komatsuda san questions. But I again went to him. He again asked, “Me?”, this time in English. (I died of cuteness overload there (✖‿✖)) Then he questioned me if I knew his the most famous game. He signed it accordingly. And then photo! Yay!

As jolly as Jiro Ishii san looked, Daizen Komatsuda san seemed to be as conservative. I wish I knew who the third person was with them, I would’ve taken his autograph too. They were taking our pics in their cams too. Hope they keep mine one forever. Somehow, I was the first person to ask for the sign of everybody there. Daizen Komatsuda san started drawing my character with his pen. For the first 15 seconds I couldn’t even make what he was doing. But then people around started praising him and all and I got to know what he was actually doing. Then we took photos and yes, I bought a lot of manga for my friends.

In the end, before I left, the last talk I attended was on very intriguing topic – Garo magazine by Dr. Ryan Holmberg. This one needs some elaboration actually. Dr. Ryan talked about Garo’s birth and recent demise and touched upon the history of manga, especially the ones which were more related to life in Japan and such.

The whole environment is good and the volunteers are very helpful. Indian animecon hasn’t grown to that level yet that there are a lot of stalls or a lot of things related to Japanese culture are there. But for a person who has never seen a manga in real life (read: most of the Indian manga fans before the introduction of translated manga by e-tailers recently), it is indeed a heaven of three days.

I was actually expecting a little more in terms of food and all, but given that they’re organizing it for the fifth time only, and I haven’t attended the last ones and The tickets are pretty reasonable and the guests, (I don’t think, you can get a better lot than that. It’s a huge achievement!), I don’t want to complain. There are still two days left, so hopefully, it improves a bit.

With that, looking forward to next two days……….

PS – Ok, I just realized that the pics are too big in size. For now, please bear with me. I’ll upload the smaller print as soon as possible.