It's been a long couple of days at Jump Festa 2014, still catching up on sleep. But here's a quick run down of this year's Jump Festa.
The most popular series this year was probably Kuroko no Basket - lot's of merchandise, lot's of cosplay and massive queues of girls wanting to get their hands on anything related to it. The upcoming series they are pushing - Nisekoi; the anime is starting next year and they are pushing it hard. The original goods - not my cup of tea as there was mainly a lot of stationary type items but I got the Yugioh Premium Pack 16s and Double Galaxy-Eyes Dragon play mats (which were then sold out on the second day). The merchant booths - things sold out pretty fast, especially at Cospa and Animate. The Jump Store was a lot smaller than last year which made no sense to me as it was very busy.
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| Glass balls of various sharingan as well as a rasengan at the back. These were on sale back in summer and glow with a black light. |
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| Bleach animation sketches. |
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| Staff carrying freebies for Puyopuyo game. |
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| Move and pose with life-size Gintama cut-outs. |
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| The Yugioh Double Galaxy-Eyes dragon play mat close up of Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon. |
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| Big balloon characters served as helpful meeting places. |
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| Life-sized Kakumeiki Valvrave statue. |
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| Ao no Exorcist DVD goodies. |
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| More life-sized cut-outs for picture taking opportunities. |
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| Giant blow-up Kyuubi - you can wear a Naruto vest/jacket and pose in front of it and a staff member takes your photo. These photo 'booths' were very popular; one for most of the main Jump series like One Piece and Ansatsu Kyoushitsu. |
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| The next G.E.M Naruto figure coming out will be Sasuke. |
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| Also new chibi-Naruto figures. |
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| New Digimon figures will also be released soon. |
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| They come with interchangeable parts for different expressions. |
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| And the next, next G.E.M Naruto figure will be of Kakashi again but in Anbu mode. |
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I also had a lot of fun at the Yugioh duels.The lines were fair, about 15 minutes for single duels and 40 for tag duels. You get a Jump promo pack for participating and after your second win, you receive the extra plastic play mat (which was called a patamerun field). All it is, is 14 bits of card connected by clear plastic so that you can fold it up - not quite cheap and nasty but getting there. Not surprisingly, some people were more than happy to concede their matches so that they could queue up again for the promo packs instead. Your wins/losses are recorded on a stamp card - they use different stamps for each day so no carrying over results from the previous day. Konami also had an 'attraction corner' where you could play mini games and get the plastic play mats as well but it was only open to little kids, families and women.
Lastly, there was a free item you could get for Pokemon X/Y as well; the weakness policy item. I have to admit I was a bit disappointed at the lack of Pokemon merchandise available - all the items there are also available in Pokemon Centers.
All in all, it was a great weekend at Jump Festa. My tips for anyone going next year would be: dress warm, bring your own food and drink, bring some form of entertainment while you wait in queues and wear comfortable shoes.
