Animania

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Animania Festival
Jono and Guu, the Animania mascots, with the Animania logo
Status Active
Venue Sydney Town Hall (main convention)
Location Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne
Country Flag of Australia Australia
Years in existence 2002 to present
Attendance Not reported
List of events Game shows, concerts, cosplay, competitions, dealers room, panels, workshops, karaoke, video game room, artist's alley, community groups, video rooms and food fair
Official Website

Animania is an annual anime convention that has been held in Sydney, Australia since 2002. It is Sydney's first dedicated anime and manga event.

Originally run by local University anime societies, Animania is now organised by Aurora Entertainment, and includes several events in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, culminating in the main convention held in October in the Sydney Town Hall.

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Animania 2002

The first Animania, held on October 12, 2002, was started by then-President (Founding President, 2001) and Treasurer (Founding Vice President, 2001) of SUAnime (the Sydney University Anime Society) and was run chiefly by SUAnime, with limited help from the anime societies at AnimeUNSW and Anime@UTS. It was held in the Eastern Avenue building of the University of Sydney, and went from the official starting time of 10 a.m. to close at 8 p.m.

Reportedly the organisers visited the Manifest convention to get some ideas and advice on running Animania, and were told by the committee that "Anime conventions take 6 months to organise. Minimum."[1] two months before Animania was due to start. Despite this, the event ran without any significant problems, and according to the Animania website attracted over 500 people, which was deemed a success by the organisers.

[edit] Notable events

Madman allowed the organisers to present the Australian premiere of the Neon Genesis Evangelion movie End of Evangelion, which was shown concurrently in two theatres - one in Japanese with English subtitles and the other with the English dub - introduced by Madman representatives.

[edit] Animania 2003

The following year, Animania was again run by a consortium of representatives from the anime societies in Sydney, this time mainly by SUAnime and AnimeUNSW. The event was held on October 11 and 12 in the Scientia building at the University of NSW, and attracted more than 1,500 visitors.

[edit] Notable events

The event scored a mention in the Sydney Morning Herald on the second page of its main section.[2]

Animania 2003 featured the debut of Halcyon.

[edit] Animania 2004

In 2004, with most of the founding executive of Animania and SUAnime having stepped down, it was decided to hand the reins to a group of people who were involved in the first event. This group incorporated as Aurora Entertainment, and organised the event to be held in the Sydney Town Hall. While there were some complaints about the increased ticket price and lack of vendors[3], Aurora argued that the increased ticket price was necessary due to the high cost of the venue and there were fewer vendors to reduce the number of bootlegged merchandise to appease sponsors such as Madman Entertainment.

[edit] Notable Events

A short documentary was created by a team from the SBS Movie Show, which later aired in January 2005. This documentary gave a brief overview of the event and attractions and was later included in a promotional DVD given away by Madman.

[edit] Animania Festival 2005

In 2005, the name was changed to Animania Festival. The name change reflected the expansion of Animania with a new 'mini Animania' held in Brisbane and the news that in 2006 there would be a series of events running through the 3 major cities on the East Coast of Australia, these being Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.

[edit] Mini Animania Brisbane

As well as being part of the Animania Festival, mini Animania Brisbane was also the first ever Anime and Japanese Pop Culture convention to be held in Brisbane. The event was for a single day and had a select range of vendors and clubs, as well as an artist's area, video rooms, and a main stage which featured popular events including Animania Olympia and Cosplay Competition. The event as a whole attracted similar attendance to the original Animania 2002 event, and was deemed a success by the organisers.

[edit] Animania Sydney

The Sydney event returned again to the same venue, the Sydney Town Hall. As in 2004 the event spanned two days and had many of the same attractions. The most popular event overall was the Cosplay Competition, which ran on both days of the event. One new event in 2005 called "Iron Artist", inspired by the popular Japanese culinary TV show Iron Chef, had fans compete in a battle of creating themed artworks on-the-spot and culminated in a final on-stage duel between two artists. The people behind "Iron Artist" have since moved on to starting a national tournament which is hosted at other Anime and Manga conventions including Manifest and Supanova. Future similar art events held at Animania are not related to this tournament. (see Animania forums)

[edit] Scheduling conflicts

The Supanova Pop Culture Expo is the only convention held in Sydney of a size similar to Animania that has a large anime component, although Supanova also focuses on other aspects of pop culture such as science fiction and comic books, and as a result has a similar, if larger, target audience.

For several years, Supanova held a Sydney convention in April/May and a Brisbane convention in September/October, but problems in arranging their Brisbane venue for 2005 led to a reversal of this pattern, resulting in the Sydney Supanova being held on the weekend following Animania. There was some discussion amongst people not associated with either convention as to whether this close scheduling might affect attendance at one or both conventions, particularly as much of the target audience is comprised of students, who often do not have a large dispensable income.

Both Supanova and Animania organisers stress the co-operation between the conventions, and while official attendance numbers have not yet been released, neither side has accused the other of "poaching" attendees. In 2006 the conventions were again both held in October in Sydney, but with a gap of four weeks between them.

[edit] Animania Festival 2006

In 2006, Animania Festival held five events, including day-long conventions in Brisbane (two), Melbourne and Sydney (one each), and the weekend-long main event in Sydney in September/October. Animania Festival was also endorsed as an official event of the 2006 Australia-Japan Year of Exchange Programme, the 30th anniversary of a programme sanctioned by the Governments of both Australia and Japan.

[edit] Typical Animania Events

Animania features many of the typical events found at anime conventions such as cosplay and AMV (anime music video) competitions, screenings (originally these were mainly fansubs but now only screen licensed titles), artist booths, karaoke and video games such as Dance Dance Revolution and Initial D.

In addition to such staples, Animania has experimented with several of its own attractions, such as live fandubbing, an "Iron Artist" drawing competition based off the Iron Chef TV show, the anime cover-band Halcyon, and "Animania Fusion", a skit-based video comedy featuring members of Animania staff.

[edit] Halcyon

Halcyon made their debut at Animania 2003 and at that time consisted of three members: Amanda Setiadi as the vocalist, Michael Lee (aka "Muki") as the acoustic guitar player, and Rosi Yu as the violinist. The band performed a small set and were sufficiently popular to warrant their return for Animania in 2005, as well as making appearances at other anime-related events in Sydney. The band has also grown from the original three-member setup to six, including a drummer, Michael Ip, and two more guitarists, Lindsay Nighjoy on bass and Jason Solomon on lead.

Halcyon's "style" is playing songs that have appeared in anime and Japanese video games, creating original translations (and occasionally reinterpretations) of the Japanese lyrics. Songs they have covered include Fly Me to the Moon from Neon Genesis Evangelion and HT from Trigun.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes and references

[edit] External links

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