TOEInty-Five: TAPI’s 25th Year Anniversary Event

Posted on December 5th, 2011 by Ruby Knight

Last November 26, Toei Animation Philippines Inc. (TAPI) celebrated their 25th anniversary with their TOEInty-Five event at Eastwood City. Five years ago, TAPI celebrated their twentieth anniversary with a similar event in the same venue. Now, five years later, TAPI has again delivered an event worth waiting for. There were three major activities during the event: the Karaoke Competition, the Group Cosplay Competition and the Anime Float Competition. According to the organizers, the Group Cosplay Competition had the largest prize money to be offered to the winner – basically the same since their twentieth anniversary since 2006.

Cosplayers from various Toei Animation titles were there, such as Sailor Moon, Digimon, One Piece and Pretty Cure were there. The Super Robot cosplayers evoked childhood memories when people saw them; various robots such as Daimos, Mazinger Z and Voltes V graced the event, alongside characters from these shows such as Prince Richter (Ulrich) and Richard Hartford. Of course, cosplayers from another branch of Toei fired up the event - the tokusatsu genre was represented by various Kamen Riders from the Showa (KR Stronger, KR Super-1) and Heisei (KR Decade, KR Orga) periods; likewise, the Super Sentai rangers from the old (Bioman, Jetman) and the new (Abaranger, Gokaiger) were present.

In the end, here are the winners for the Karaoke and Group Cosplay competition:

KARAOKE COMPETITION
First Place: Rose Ann Sandig
Second Place: Patricia Yambao
Third Place: Ivory dela Cruz

GROUP COSPLAY COMPETITION: WINNING GROUPS
First Place: Mach 20
Second Place: Tranzor Go!
Third Place: Wildcards!

GROUP COSPLAY COMPETITION: WINNING PERFORMANCES
First Place: Voltes V
Second Place: Daimos
Third Place: Choudenshi Bioman

From Inside Ruby Knight’s Armor

Well, the thought of attending an event only held every five years was enough to convince me to go here – in addition to supporting a bunch of friends who were competitors in the competition. I knew how to commute to the venue but since it was traffic, I arrived at about 1:30 in the afternoon. As soon as I got at the venue, I noticed that most cosplayers were wearing Toei titles, with only a few wearing cosplays from TV Tokyo works. There was a prevalence of armor cosplayers, mostly coming from the tokusatsu (Kamen Rider and Super Sentai) and Super Robot titles – as mentioned earlier. Many cosplay groups joined the group cosplay, since they had the biggest prize money for the winners (P50,000). Armor cosplay aside, the Sailor Moon and Pretty Cure groups were something to look forward to.

Save from meeting new and old faces, taking pictures and enjoying the event, I met with Zychez, Chylle and Colocoy then left at 6 in the evening. From this point onward, I’ll be posting my perspective as a tokusatsu fan. I was personally disappointed when the group I supported did not win. I saw the video of their skit days later, and based on the looks of it, the audience did not have any idea who these Riders/Rangers were. The group was all about Super Robots; they won the first and second place. At the end of the video, I felt the feeling of someone who cosplayed a character he/she really loves, only to end up being ignored by the mainstream due to the fact that the character wasn’t really known; or, the character was shown but didn’t get too much exposure. A redeeming factor, on the other hand, was the victory of the Bioman group.

(Pardon me for the previous segment, I needed to let it all out.)