On the sunniest day my fair city has seen in more than a few weeks, I ventured out to the Royal Melbourne Showgrounds with fellow nerd Liam Marcon for Manifest 2010, which is probably Australia’s premier anime convention (or ‘festival’, if you will).

It was an odd experience, to say the least. While I consider myself an anime fan, it’s been obvious to me for a long time that there’s actually very little anime that I really enjoy.

In fact, if I had to pull a percentage out of my back pocket, I’d say something like 96.7 percent of all anime released in the past 10 years has bored the living lunch right out of me.

Take away the likes of Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Samurai Champloo (itself a mere shadow of Cowboy Bebop) and a few Ghibli films, and I’m hard-pressed to say there’s anything else that has really captured my attention.

It’s almost depressing; I’ve yet to be pointed to a new series for which the primary and secondary characters and plot points can’t be checked off on a frighteningly formulaic checklist. And, frankly, I’m pretty easy to please – so this is really saying something, I think.

Also, here’s an awesome(ly hilarious) video.

More photos below.

Anyway, Manifest. As always, the event is largely one massive cosplay geekout, and while it’s not my scene (although I could probably be convinced to dress as Patlabor’s Captain Goto if I thought any of the mostly-teenage participants would even recognise the outfit), I have to give credit to the kids for the amount of effort and dedication that goes into their costumes.

Still, it’s clear this is absolutely not my scene. It’s probably just an age thing, or the simple fact that I’m not as obsessed with anime as most of the event’s attendees obviously are.

Liam gets his head crushed in the mechanical grip of a very manly Sigourney Weaver.

There were some amusing sights and moments, but in the end, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d wasted a beautiful day.