Australia Final Round

September 4, 5:30 in the morning
How long flight! It took about 20 hours to arrive in Sydney. There isn't any direct line from Nagoya to Sydney so I had to exchange to another line in Singapore. At last I arrived in Sydney.
At first I went outside the airport. The sky was covered with thick cloud. I was afraid everything would be well. When I was eating breakfast along, Kenny, cosplay stuff of Animania appeared. He is AG who was bone in France. He is a nice guy who loves Japan. He really looks like Ed, Canadian WCS stuff. He picked me up with Jill who is a WCS2009 representative of Singapore. I heard that she was invited as a guest cosplayer of Animania.
At first we went to the hall, Australian Technology Park. It takes less about 10 minutes to there by car from center of Sydney.
It is made with old technology, steam locomotive as a theme. Particularly there were not new technology exhibits.
Though the appearance was used old factory which was built of brick, the inside was new and beautiful.
I caught Amanda, chief director who looks busy to interview.
GPS"Hi, is everything going well?"
AMANDA"Ｉ'm sure, I'm going to finish it until tomorrow. The six selected teams of WCS Preliminary Round are so cool. We can expect them."

She looked having a lot of confidence.
I spent that day to help management.

September 5, 9:00 in the morning
There were already 500 people in front of the hall. 30 percent of them looked wearing cosplay. One of the amazing things is everything handmade. I thought that is characteristic of Australian Cosplayers and especially, the quality of boots and military tools are top level in the world.
It had pre judgment from 11:00a.m. Judge and cosplayers were gathered a room and cosplayers were interviewed individually about costume and team.
Joined 6 team name and costume details are below.

Performance Teams

Team	Bubblegum Crusade
Costume	Negima! Magister Negi Magi Asuna Kagurazaka Negi Springfield

Team	S.M.E.X
Costume	Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle Sakura Syaoran

Team	Haraju2girls
Costume	X/1999 Subaru Sumeragi Princess Hinoto

Team	Another World Breathing
Costume	Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 Lelouch vi Britannia Suzaku Kururugi

Team	Go Wu Go!
Costume	Battle Arena Toshinden Uranus Duke B. Rambert

Team	The Alice Troopers
Costume	Eternal Sonata Count Waltz Jazz

Anyway small details of costume were great! I was interested that they live far from each other because Australia is big country, one lives in Melbourne the other in Adelaide like that they are thousand mails away but they made a team. They use the internet to communicate each other. They have meetings about design of costume and performance, etc on the internet. Actually if they want to see and talk, they have to use the airplane.
"We haven't met for half a year." They said and the judge went on.
All of them passed costume judge. They were almost even fight.

Finally it started The Preliminary Round at 4:00p.m.
The heated performance lasted in watching 2,000 audience.
It is sorry that the quality of performance was not as well as that of costume, but they did the best. The characteristic Australian performance was that many teams were using big tools on stage.
The result was "Go Wu Go!" and "S.M.E.X"were same score and both of the first place. 1point difference "Another World Breathing" was the third place . It was close match.
The discussion was heated in judge meeting. It was so difficult to select that every team could aim for the first place.

And then the final judge announced. Grand champion was Go Wu Go!. The team was the second place in 2008 Australia Preliminary Round so they really wanted to revenge it in this time. When they heard to go to Japan, they were crying in the joy.
Loser Christin, S.M.E.X who had lived in Japan and speaks fluent Japanese (Kansai dialect) had decided last challenge.Then she was also crying.
I thought Judge is really difficult. Our judge gave their life not a little influence so I reconfirmed that we have to judge sincerely.

Looking back to Australia Preliminary Round, I was surprised high quality of costume as well as high level of stuff management. Consideration of their "Manage it on time" is the same as WCS staff or might have more. Also it was held new and unique event like Japanese Gothic & lolita living set exhibition and military tools contest etc.
I believe the Cosplayer of this country would get a grand champion in the near future and went back to Japan.

World Cosplay Summit Executive Committee Staff GPS