The big event only finished last week but with preliminaries taking place all year around preparations for next year are already happening. For Japan the biggest activity is getting the new web page prepared, that should be up in a couple months or so. For preliminaries first up on August 23rd - 24th we have Animania in Sydney deciding the representative for Australia, new participating country in WCS 2009! In fact Australia has been preparing since March of this year with regional rounds in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane already completed.

Beyond that there is Connichi in Germany on September 12th-14th and the New York Anime Festival determining the USA representative 2 weeks after that from September 26th-28th. I got you a few interviews from representatives last year, I will try to get interviews and even more information for you in the following year leading up to WCS 2009.

Above is a poster for the WCS preliminaries in Germany next month. In the picture you can see the Germany 2008 representatives Anna and Katharina at the top and team Italy 2008 - Nadia and Martina - on the left. At the bottom is I Hwa from Singapore and Kikiwan from Tokyo, both from this years event again. Thanks for the image Puka!