I was able to go to the second day of the con. Luckily I didn’t dare go to day one because of the huge number of people. 200+ Individual cosplayers battled it out for the 25K prize. Luckily, SM X was large enough to handle all the attendees, it’s huge, a whole lot bigger than the World Trade Center where past Hero events were held. There were lot’s of people, old and new to the cosplay world, and I hope everyone enjoyed as much as I did.

Anyway here’s a partial list of winners:

LEAGUE OF HEROES CATEGORY

OVER-ALL WINNER:
Arjay Navarro (Hitsugaya Toushiro/Bleach)
BEST FEMALE:
Maine Esperanza (Belldandy/Ah! My Goddess)
BEST MALE:
Jacob Gil (Yojimbo/Final Fantasy X)
CRAFTSMANSHIP AWARD:
Robert Ong (BMAU/RF Online)
PERFORMANCE MACHINE:
Gilbert Sagun (GekiRed/Juuken Sentai Gekiranger)
AUDIENCE CHOICE:
Patrick Joseph Perlas (Hard Gay)

OHAYO CATEGORY

OVER-ALL WINNER:
Alexa Mei Alegria (Sakura Kinomoto/Card Captor Sakura)
BEST FEMALE:
Daryl Tapang (Magical Princess Holy Up/Akazukin Chacha)
BEST MALE:
Don Josh Vincent Almanza (Chibi Naruto/Naruto)
CRAFTSMANSHIP AWARD:
Shawn Marion Dave (Inuyasha/Inuyasha)
PERFORMANCE MACHINE:
Zire Sotto (Conan Edogawa/Detective Conan)
AUDIENCE CHOICE:
Joshua Aleik Sison (Konohamaru/Naruto)

GROUP COSPLAY

OVER-ALL WINNER:
Shigi-Shigi Sputnik Group (Shaider)

So overall, was the event better than the previous one? Yes and no. Yes because we could at least move around, SM X really is huge, security is tight so we felt very safe inside and I saw a lot of familiar faces. No because H3 went back to the old way of organizing events by marooning cosplayers in one area while waiting for their turn on the catwalk. While it gives organizers less headaches, it takes out the fun factor that made H3 so, well fun. They couldn’t roam around and enjoy the con until AFTER their performance. A lot of the “fun” booths and interest-drawing booths were also notably missing as well as an arcade for Tekken (gah!).

One of the good points for the event was the cosplayer-marshalls. While it’s not anything new, it’s good to see that Hero knows how to use connections to get to know people.

Here’s some of the pics we’ve taken. There’s only a scant few since I was a bit busy catching up with friends but I did enjoy the con, especially the group skits. Also, the camera used wasn’t mine since my camera died off the night before so if you see a guy in yellow, thank him for lending us the camera.

If you want to see more, view them on my flickr page.