Animax Feels the Alodia Effect
Animax Ani-Mates Stephanie Henares and Alodia Gosiengfiao
Among Filipino geek culture bloggers, Filipina cosplayer and Net idol Alodia Gosiengfiao has earned a reputation for causing traffic spikes whenever she’s featured in a blog post. Chalk it up to her enormous and loyal online fan base. Call it the Alodia Effect.
The Effect Quantified
Animax Asia is now feeling the Alodia Effect. The Southeast Asian anime cable network recently hired Alodia and Filipina VJ Stephanie Henares as their brand ambassadors — their “Ani-Mates”. The Ani-Mates’ duties include maintaining blogs and posting Web-exclusive videos for Animax. Thanks to the Ani-Mates initiative, Animax has experienced a whopping 17% jump in Web site traffic.
The Ani-Mates microsite attracted 48,000 page views, from 41,000 unique visits, within three weeks of the Ani-Mates’ introduction. That’s a sizable chunk of the 400,000 pageviews attracted by the Animax web site over the same period.
Until now, there were no public numbers to quantify Alodia’s ability to attract niche Web traffic. It was a phenomenon discussed only among small circles of Filipino geek culture bloggers and marketers. Now we have international statistics to prove that the Alodia Effect is indeed very, very real. Click here to continue reading “Animax Feels the Alodia Effect”…
Culture Crash Cosplay Cover
The cover of Culture Crash magazine issue fourteen, from 2004. Foreground, from left to right: Filipina cosplayers Alodia Gosiengfiao, Ashley Gosiengfiao, and Jerry Polence.
As cosplay continues to rise along with geek culture in the Philippines, here’s a bit of a blast from the past. This is the wraparound cover for the fourteenth issue of Culture Crash magazine, from 2004.
A Legacy of Fantasy
What’s so special about a geek culture magazine with a bunch of cosplayers on the cover? Well, this particular cover features three of the most influential Filipina cosplayers of the last decade: Alodia Gosiengfiao, Ashley Gosiengfiao, and Jerry Polence. This issue of Culture Crash marked the first time each of them ever appeared on a magazine cover in costume.
Alodia cosplayed the mischievous thief Rikku from the hit role-playing game Final Fantasy X-2. Alodia’s younger sister Ashley cosplayed Rikku’s teammate, the stalwart gunner Yuna. Both sisters portrayed the gun mage versions of their characters. Jerry cosplayed the ice goddess Shiva from Final Fantasy X. All three cosplayers first portrayed their respective characters at the 2003 C3 Convention in Manila.
The Continuing Future
Where are they now, you ask? Alodia and Ashley are famous across Japan and Southeast Asia, while Jerry continues to refine her art in the United States. Filipinos bear a strong cultural affinity for performance arts. As cosplay shapes up to become the performance art for the age of the geeky mashup, and as geek culture rises in the Philippines, Filipino cosplayers are well-positioned to become global luminaries in this ascendant artform.
Inspired by the ever-escalating struggles and successes of their elders, younger and younger Filipino cosplayers are pursuing their art with greater and greater zest. Alodia, arguably the most famous Filipina cosplayer in the world today, was sixteen when this Culture Crash cover came out. The youngest professional cosplayer in the Philippines today, Chienna Filomeno, is only thirteen. The youngest active cosplayer in the Philippines today, Louella Faller, is four. Mind you, four-year-old Louella wore three different costumes at ToyCon 2010. The little girl’s quite the trooper.
As cosplayers discover new ways to connect with their audiences and diversify their art, perhaps new generations of Filipino cosplayers will evangelize geek culture in ways their predecessors never even imagined.
