Did not attend on day one. Pictures for day two here and here are few since I came late. Videos here.
Day three saw a collaboration of photographers for the blog, and the results are here, here and here… Some more here and here. Videos here. Last batches here and here.
And so rumor has it that there are times when Megatrade Hall is unused, the management of SM Megamall would initiate events on their own. Supposedly one of their back-up plans is to request Otakuzine to hold an anime convention. Whether to believe this or not is worth thinking about. But it’s not very far off that this could be true.
And indeed, Otaku Expo Reload is not exactly one of the events that’s been planned out ever since the year began. The announcement and confirmation came rather late, and so it is highly possible that this was requested instead of planned. Hence, I’m willing to give more leeway, and I won’t expect Ozine Fest or Cosplay Mania levels.
So I didn’t attend day one since it fell on a work day. I only spent about two hours in the convention on day two since I only rushed over from work. It was only on day three that I managed to stay there the whole day.
My initial fears for the event is on how willing are people to go, seeing as a major event just happened last week. Do people still have the budget for it? Are people still interested? Good thing though, even as Friday was a relative ghost town from what I saw from outside (I passed by on Friday), the turn out was quite good. They still managed to fill the one hall, at least for Sunday.
Nothing really noteworthy about the cosplayers. Most can be considered as rehashes of their appearances on Cosplay Mania X. But it was at least your chance to take pictures if you missed out on some the previous week.
As for activities, the event organizers stayed true to their usual formula, which relies more on stage activities. From my perspective, it does feel like more happened on stage than most, since that’s just kind of how the Ozine team works.
My major pet peeve on the event was the crazy-ass lighting that would invoke epilepsy and the crazy-ass delay in opening on day three. They opened the gates past 11:30 AM!
Some additional notes:
- Haponesang Dilat has been revived.
- As far as my friend and I can read, the lead of Evening Tea Time was faking her guitar-playing. It doesn’t even look like she plugged her guitar to any amplifier.
- Booths are rather bare…
- There was some commotion among the audience. It seems like Dennis Uy of Otakuzine had some problems with a con-goer…
- The new trend among cosplayers who catwalked was giving out freebies to the audience. It’s crazy.
- Bloody Rena Ryuugu turned me down when I asked permission to take her picture. To her defense, she was talking to someone. To my defense, she really was bloody. Later on, I just took a ninja shot when others were taking her pictures
On a more personal note, this is the first convention where I got invited as a guest. Whoa! Thanks to Bryan Uy of Otakuzine for the invite 
