Tuesday, 10 Jul 2007
Here we are, back from the Japan Expo 2007 that took place in Paris. We’re coming back, loaded with goodies and memories. We met a lot of friends there , and the atmosphere was really cool. Tons of fun, awesome cosplayers, smiles, people that pose in front of the camera, Japanese female wrestlers, pimped rides, Gothic Lolita’s, some pretty nice figures and some ugly bootlegs, a human sized gundam and some rock&roll. So let’s see that, for those who weren’t there and also for those who were there but who need another fix, Lady’s and gentlemen, served on a pixel plate, the Japan Expo 2007 review!! you can see all the Japan Expo pictures in the photo section 
click on “more” to read the rest
The atmosphere.
Following a time-line while talking about such a convention is a non sense. All that happens before your eyes is just out of time. It’s more like another planet, where being an anime fan is normal, where the national sport is to collect figures and where the fashion has got no boundaries. We walked through this strange (but funny) atmosphere for two days, between the sexy goth-loli cosplayers and the plastic monsters, between the free video games and the 20€ sushi plate. Nobody was making fun of anyone, some people were walking around with their “free hugs” signs, no fights (except on the ring), just a peaceful community having fun giving the whole place a pleasant atmosphere that even the rain, could not tame
On the figure side.
Like you might already have guessed, nothing exclusive of brand new at the Japan Expo 2007.Only Abysse Corp had some novelties in their shelves like the mirei san in red, or the Misa Misa, and some nendroids. I brought back with me a revoltech glow in the dark EVA-01 (a toy for my bigger EVA’s) and a shitload of free gundams, but that deserve it’s own paragraph. As usual, the bootlegs sellers were
there, displaying awful figures at a cheap prices, for the less rich Otakus. A gundam custom team was there too. Amazing what you can do with a lot of creativity and some paint buckets. Talking about gundam, there was a HUGE one for sale at a mere 3284.30€,but I think it was more of a joke than a regular deal.
The japan Expo free gundams
It was like christmas, but without Santa and all the red/green/golden fancy papers. we were walking around in the convention, as one of my fiend tells me how he got four free gundams, just following some guys with a huge pile of gundam boxes. Then he tells me where the boxes are. Like some pirates who just have been told where the treasure is, we start to run towards our target. As we’re thinking how clever we are to just go there and pick the free gundams that are waiting for us, half of the convention have the same idea, in the same time. Once we get there, we’re around 50/60 peoples, tearing open the boxes to get our gundams, there were so many boxes everywhere, you could just pick up the kits on the ground like they were mushrooms. We decide to get away from the madness to sort our boxes and make the complete set for 8 for each one of us. Then the security comes into play. They start to keep the crowd out of the spot where a few boxes remains and yell at the people who are still picking up the holly boxes. We just walk away, with our gundams, happy and exhausted by the struggle. This was for sure, the funniest part of the convention for me, because it was like one of those dreams that you don’t want to wake up from.
the artists
We went to the convention to have our comic book signed by it’s own author, Souillon. This guy does an amazing job with Maliki (a french webcomic) and is also working at Ankama, well know for the online game dofus. The row of people that were waiting to have their book signed was huge, we waited for three hours to have our book signed, and we were at the beginning of it. It was funny to look at all those geniuses, drawing, signing, without even having a break, in a total mess.
The lives
There was Ichirô Misuki, the 1000 anime soundtracks man, a living legend in Japan. FYI, he performed a 24 hours long, one thousand songs show in 1999, that is i believe, the longest live in the history of music. Nana Kitade was there too and did a nice show with a very weird style, and then gave an interview. I didn’t see the rest (i was too busy fighting for my gundams) but Halcali, Shuudan Star and Gari were there too.
the friends corner
from left to right BlackJack, horseXX and Krouil, me, Shad’, Merlin, Ga8tan, ViOtaku, Mega69 and someone that sneak into the picture
I met some friends that post on a french board about figures. We had a funking good time. We had a beer at the bar, talked about animes and mangas, said a lot of BS and laugh out loud a lot. It was quite funny to see all those big guys around cute figures saying things like : “Aw look at that one, it’s sooo cuuuute” well in french anyway but ….Then i saw the bakayaro team that is, as always cool and funky. Feel free to drop by their shop, their T-shirts are amazing.
The food corner
As usual in a convention; expensive, and it tastes like shit. so here’s at real scale, what you could order at the sushi-restaurant for a mere 20€.
A fucking small plate with 5 sushi that i don’t even want to call sushi as they tasted like fish flavored cardboard, with dried up maki’s. The desert was this small round plate above with something that first look like tofu, and was in fact, a weird tasteless coconut based jelly and three dry fruits. A chemical transgenic peach flavoured drink will help me swallow that horrible meal. On the second day, I
decided to take a classical menu, the ham sandwich + soda (8€, that’s not cheap either). But when I open my sandwich before i eat it (I always do that, never knows, a horrible insect or a living worm could be in there) there’s no HAM in my sandwich. OK, let’s make a point real quick; i can understand that the poor tired exploited sandwich employee forget the tomato in a tuna-mayonese-salad-onion-tomato sandwich, that sort of things happens. BUT, i can’t understand how you can forget to put the fucking ham slice in a sandwich were it’s the only fucking thing to put. So to the complete retard who made this sandwich (and I know he’s reading :D) man, go on holidays, and GET ANOTHER JOB.
The cosplayers
Like every conventions, starts from the very good to the worst. A bunch of Japanese maids and gothic Lolita’s, and a ton of schoolgirls uniforms too. Some funny ones, like chubby spider man, chubby symbiote spider man, bio man, an eva.They all were wielding their latex blades and their aluminum axes in front of the photographers. Anyway, well done, or crappy, all the cosplayers gave this convention it’s color, it’s atmosphere and it’s unique feel. Kudos to all the cosplayers, artists and the organisation that did a GREAT job with this Japan Expo 2007.
Côté Conclusion
fun : 9/10
friends : 9/10
beers : 7/10
gundam price tag : 10/10
peeping : 9.5/10
weather : 6/10
food : -300/10
pictures taken : 274
dirty jokes : 482
time to write this : 2 days
July 10th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Huhuhuhu ! Souillon qui s’est taper toutes les dédicasse, sa devait être bien fun.
Un évenement a ne pas rater (que j’ai rater, mais la prochaine fois j’irais ****ing taf !).
Bon je post aussi pour savoir quelque chose. Il y a quelque temps il y avait un article avec une tablette graphique. Mais apparament sa y’est plus >.
July 10th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
ouais car cette tablette buguait un maximum, du coup je suis resté avec mon ancienne tablette et j’ai viré le post
je te conseille la Aiptek 12000U en format A4 qui est très bien.
July 10th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
Boooouuuhhh… je ne suis même pas cité.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
et voilà, tu es cité
July 10th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Mdr ! je ne plaignais pas vraiment en fait.^^
L’illustre inconnu c’était mon fidèle… (nan. Pas toutou… tsss…) acolyte un poil alcoolique avec qui je devais aller couvrir un évènement… mais je l’ai laché comme un lache parmis les groupies de Yoshiki… depuis plus de nouvelles de lui…^^”
July 11th, 2007 at 12:08 am
comme si on y était =)
July 11th, 2007 at 12:56 am
Ter-ri-ble! Merci pour ce compte rendu qui permet à des loingtains spectateurs comme moi de rêver ^^
July 11th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Han ! T’as mis 3 photos sur les 234 et t’as pas parlé de Jack Sparrow
*mode chambrage off*
C’était excellent et pleins de trucs à voir !
Angelo les sushis fallaient les manger sans la sauce accompagné de gazon de la Japan c’est bien meilleur, comprenne qui pourra =)
July 11th, 2007 at 11:31 am
Bien joué Angelo
bonnes grosses tofs …mais j’y pense..où sont les vitrines Abysse corp?
Et merci d’avoir gardé mon anonymat, c’est sympa!
July 11th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
ben j’ai pas pris des masses de photos de fig, j’aurais du…c’est vrai qu’il y avait quelques trucs sympa mais rien qu’on ai pas vu sur la board donc….
July 11th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
cool les tofs et le p’tit resumé … mais dis moi que fume ViOtaku ???
LoL
En tout cas encore des raisons de regretter de ne pas avoir pu etre avec vous .
See U
July 11th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
hé hé hé pourquoi tout le monde me demande ce que je fume!!! c’etait une clop!!! vous savez celles qu’on roule nous meme et qui coutent bcp moins cher….
July 11th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Ha ok pour la tablette graphique. La aiptek 12000U format a4 je l’ai déja, mais le stylet qui est avec fonctionne extremement mal (ou bien c’est la tablette o_O). Alors je voulais changer.
Sinon mise a part sa, vous ne savez pas si on peut se procurer uniquement le stylet de la tablette =) ?
J’ai fait quelque recherche je trouve pas >.
July 11th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
non, le stylet ne fonctionne pas avec une autre tablette, et si le tien fonctionne mal, essaye donc de changer les piles
sinon, tu peux en commander un autre chez http://www.pearl.fr/article-S5135.html
voili voilou
July 11th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
Tres bien! Some great photos of the event and it looked like a lot of fun! What Gundams did you get? The chubby black spider man was pretty funny.
July 11th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
MDR!! Enorme!!
je t’envoie en phto la dédicaces de reno!!héhé! genre pour dégouté tout le monde!!et puis j’ai des tof de figurine j’ai mm la misa misa en résine!^^ pti coquinou va!!
et puis d’autre truk je t’envoie sa!!
July 11th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
bon résumé et bonne tof ,ce fut un plaisir de vous renconter rdv à la prochaine japan expo
July 11th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
OtakuSurf => I just added a picture of the gundam i got in the “free gundam” section, click to enlarge
Krouil => Le plaisir était partagé
July 11th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Cool! And I see you have your own sweater with your logo?!
July 12th, 2007 at 12:27 am
Wow, that looks like an awesome event. And its good that people enjoy this
kind of event. And W00t…free gundam :0?? lucky…
July 12th, 2007 at 1:18 am
Pour ma part, ce fut une bonne JE, mais dommage, j’aurais bien aimé vous voir plus longtemps, j’aurais aimé vous rejoindre au cosplay (je l’avais dis à je sais plus qui ^^ j’ai la mémoire d’un poisson rouge), mais bon c’etait mission impossible, toute la JE y etais !!.
Puis Dimanche, je n’etais pas là, besoin de repos apres deux grosses journées épuisantes
July 12th, 2007 at 3:11 am
Danny=> hell yeah we have our own Tee’s and if you think they’re just too cool, you can go ahead and buy one from the shop on this site
lanie => i feel lucky, indeed
Ryuugu => c’est dommage qu’on ne se soit pas vraiment tous retrouvés , mais on a déjà réussit à se voir, ce qui est déjà un exploit vu le monde qui était là bas
July 12th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Merci pour le lien Angelo ^^ & surtout merci de ton aide :D. J’en commande un de suite.
July 12th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
pas de quoi su.gar, tu as de grandes chances de le recevoir en noir (c’est la classe ;))
July 15th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
HEY HEY! alors tu rajoute pas les tof! XD!
! (pas drole le boulot! je sais!)
J’ai rien dit ton fusil à pompes doit être très exigeant!! donc je te laisse à tes occupation
sinon bien simpas la JE j’engui l’année prochaine!^^ et dommage qu’on ce soit pas tous vu, vu les stand qui avait on savait plus où donner de la tête!^^
Jya gambatte ne!!! がんばてね!
July 16th, 2007 at 1:04 am
anyaaa, t’as trouvé le moyen de faire une faute en japonais!!! t’es irrécupérable!!
tu as oulié le petit tsu (désolée moi j’ai pas mon ordi configuré pour ecrire en jap… -_-” )
July 16th, 2007 at 1:05 am
pkoi mon avatar ne marche plus…?? -_-”
July 16th, 2007 at 2:46 am
parceque tu postes en étant pas loguée à ton compte
loggue toi avant de poster et ça marchera buen 
July 22nd, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Nice event you have there. Looks like a lot of effort has been made without any corners being cut. People on the Internet always get to eat better food than me. (+_+)
August 22nd, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Hi
I am based in the UK, and was wondering if it’s easy for people from the UK to understand everything that’s going on? I guess what I mean is: is everything held in French and/or English? For instance, cosplay competitions and etc. does the Master of Ceremonies speak exclusively in French or does he also introduce everything/everyone in English?
Thanks for the review!
Thanks!
September 2nd, 2007 at 3:38 pm
well flicks, most of the time they speak french, just like when you go to japanese convention, they speak japanese
but when it comes to manga and cosplay, the language isn’t that important. In a cosplay convention, the winner is usually the one that holds the prize and looks way happier than the other two 