What do you think of when you hear words such as anime, manga Godzilla and Masked Rider...Japan right? But just in case there are those out there who don't there is a new event, while will be running full-scale from 2002 to promote these aspects of Japanese culture to the world.

This year a preliminary scaled down event was held - C3PRE. The 3 Cs stand for "Cultural Convention of Characters". It was held on August 26 at Tokyo Big Site, down near Odaiba.

The themes of the pre-event revolved around the promotion of

the fun of characters, introducing new creators and the creation of new character events.

One of the huge exhibition halls at Tokyo Big Site was divided into three areas, Amateur Dealers, Professional Dealers and Sponsor Corporations. Each area featured booths, displays and an event stage to introduce the various characters.

In the two Dealers areas there were more than 300 booths and 30 companies in the Sponsor area.

And more than 13,100 people wandering around...

By far the most popular booth was Bandai's, where the 1/12 scale, 1.47m high hyper-hybrid model MS-O6F ZAKU II C3 Special Version (Mass-Produce Type Zaku Green) was sold.

This model was priced at 198,000 Yen - but the price did not deter the Gundam fans from waiting in a long queue to buy one!

The same scale MS-O6S Zaku II (Char's Zaku) which will be available this winter also attracted a lot of attention, as well as the model displayed in the GC booth holding the "GC Gundam Official Card", which was designed by Kunio Ogawara.

Due to a relaxation of the usual strict licensing with Gundam products there was a huge range of Gundam items available everywhere.

Other hotly-pursued items were the girly figures and garage kits from anime like Love Hina, Azumanga Daioh, Angelic Layer.

Cowboy Bebop mania reigned supreme as people rushed to get the latest range of goods from this series.

Also attracting heaps of attention was the real scale version of Vash's gun from Trigun at the Dai-Nippon Giken booth...