All right guys, so I’ll be posting my thoughts and opinions overall from the event. So here is my impression of jump festa 2013:
The actual event wasnt really held in tokyo,but somewhat outside of the area. about 30 minutes away. it wasnt the first time i came to this area though as I came before for other events. As soon as you get off the train you immediately see signs for the event and workers holding signs as well. Just know that this convention isn't in any way at all for non-japanese fans as EVERYTHING is in Japanese. I'm sure your thinking "well its japan so they should have it like that", but that isnt the true at all many of the events like tokyo game show, electronic expo, and more have workers who speak english, and signs for english. As far as i can tell, jump festa doesn't get many foreigners nor do they expect them to show up, so if your planning to attend, you better hope you know japanese or come with a friend who can speak japanese (I have some level of japanese, but as for reading kanji I will get killed in that part lol).
Well I walk to the entrance, and there are actually 2 different entrances. The entrance I happen to enter on accident was a "buy some souvenirs before coming inside the event line". I kinda laughed after having to explain I just wanted to go inside the event. there were some cool merchandise to pick out, but as I'm a college student on a budget I cant go spending so much money. I head to the entrance of the event, and I was thinking I was going to pay some amount of money, but the whole event was free!!! So pretty much you get there and just walk in which is nice. the only thing I had to pay for were my souvenirs.
I start walking around and as you first enter you see a giant luffy statue welcoming you to the event. Then you start seeing the booths everywhere. Ill try to remember which ones i seen, but thats also viewable in my picture albums. I saw Sega, konami, capcom, pokemon, monster hunter, toei animation, square-enix(MOST IMPORTANT), picture setting booths, naruto, one, piece, yugioh, and more booths. Everything had their own little fun games and things to do. Me personally, I tried to find the square booth as fast as I can to get a glimpse at kh1.5. The place was pretty big, about 3 large halls. You would have the typical Japanese workers dressed up for their booth themes and handing out brochures. I just got pokemon, square, and naruto brochures. The first 2 halls had a mixture of booths, and the 3rd hall was just a food section to eat with anime themed food. There was also a jump stage, but I didn't get to check it out and I wasn't allowed to take pictures in that area. I went to the square booth, and they had many accessories from final fantasy, dragon quest, and kingdom hearts. A lot of the stuff they had I’ve seen at the square-enix store in Tokyo. The only things they didn't have from what that was exclusive for the event was the kh3ds sora/riku models with their new keyblades (badass btw), and other ff7 models.
I head back to the other 2 rooms, and Ill have to mention that they were holding tournaments for yugioh, pokemon, and some other games. I was kinda sad that they had a pokemon tournament cus I had left mine at home. Would have been nice to play some Japanese players. They also had separate leagues for the tournaments. I saw like mix ages, elementary, middle, high, tag teams, multi teams (and this is for all the games). Btw, if you had a 3ds, your street pass will sky rocket. Japan is known to love handheld systems, and everyone literally has a 3ds (even the old man that's sitting down by himself has a 3ds). I think I literally had about over 300 street passes that day. I know it's a lot rarer to get street pass in the US as many people don't carry them around unless you go to specific areas, but that's my personal experience/opinion.
As for playing games at the event, it really depends what you’re trying to play. I know many of you asked if I was able to try some games, sadly the big name games like KH, Naruto, once piece and more had tickets reservation that YOU NEEDED TO GET THERE AS SOON AS THE EVENT STARTED. Japanese people have a tendency to follow anything popular no matter how many times they were remade. As I like to say, if Japanese people see it on tv, they’ll go buy it right away. But getting back on topic, I wasn't able to play any of the games, but just watch from a distance the people playing them. Really would have been nice to get my hands on them, but we’ll just have to wait for the release.
Overall the experience was fun, and the vibe felt really energetic. There were also many directors creators for games, manga, animes there, but didn't get to watch them. I had a good time just walking around and seeing everything going on. Would definitely like to come to more of these events sometime in the future, but only time will tell with that. Hope you enjoyed my impressions and if you guys have other questions please ask!
. will also take pictures of other random things at the event so will keep everyone posted on it!
