SMASH! 2010 Rundown
- August 8th, 2010
So, this years SMASH! (Sydney Manga and Anime Show) was really fantastic, and according to the SMASH forums, they sold more tickets then they ever expected they could. The new location, Sydney Town Hall, reached capacity early in the day, and the organisers were forced to stop ticket sales, much to the misfortune of anyone who turned up late. Fortunately, next years SMASH will be held at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre on the water at Darling harbour, which is a much larger venue.
The show included video game competitions, cosplay competitions, karaoke competitions (with one of the finalists singing Cruel Angels Thesis), an art workshop, a maid café, artist and anime club stands, a gundam display area, and lots of merchandise stands, including stands for the two major anime distributers in Australia, Madman and Siren Visual.
The guest panels were great, with audience members able to ask Yuko Miyamura, Tiffany Grant, and Matt Greenfield as many questions as they had time for. There were 3 panels in total, The Grant & Greenfield Panel, The Yuko Miyamura Panel, and The Evangelion Panel. The guests themselves were also fantastic, they participated in a guest signing hour, Yuko Miyamura performed a live dub of Evangelion, and Tiffany Grant helped in auctioning a number of items including signed items donated by Matt and Tiffany, with all proceeds going to charity. 
Regarding Evangelion, a number of interesting questions were asked, but not necessarily answered, including “What’s the progress on the Live Action Evangelion Movie?”, “What were you’re thoughts on the new Asuka?” and “What is the significance of the character’s name ending in ‘nami’?”. I managed to get recordings of most of the panels (only half of the Miyamura panel), but they are of rather questionable quality, so I shall make transcripts of some of the more interesting questions in the next week or so.
Man crooning for the people waiting in the enormous line.
Part of the enormous line.
Part of the Gundam display.
Some of the DVDs at the Madman stand.
Some Eva cosplay.
Some more Eva cosplay.
Kaworu putting the moves on Shinji.
Touhou for Zap.
Lots of cosplay.