Animethon is a three-day

anime convention An anime convention is an event or gathering with a primary focus on anime, manga and Japanese culture. Commonly, anime conventions are multi-day events hosted at convention centers, hotels or college campuses. They feature a wide variety of activ ...

held annually at

Edmonton Convention Centre The Edmonton Convention Centre (ECC, formerly the Shaw Conference Centre), is a meeting, entertainment, and convention venue located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Opened in 1983, it is managed by Explore Edmonton, the destination marketing org ...

Edmonton Edmonton ( ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta. Edmonton is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Alberta's central region. The city ancho ...

, Alberta. It is Canada's longest-running anime convention, the first being held in 1994.

History

Animethon was formed back in 1994 by the Banzai Anime Klub of Alberta (BAKA) and hosted by (BAKA II), with the intention of promoting Japanese anime. It became a success by presenting well-known and more obscure anime to audiences and has since grown to what it is now. Today, Animethon is presented by the non-profit organization, Alberta Society for Asian Popular Arts (ASAPA). In the beginning, Animethon 1 was a one-day event that allowed people to view different Japanese anime movies and television shows within two classrooms at Grant MacEwan. From there, it expanded to the whole 106th street building during Animethon 2 through 10. It was not until Animethon 11 that the festival grew to utilize the entire university campus for events, artist alley, education panels, and a large vendor hall. As such, the steady increase of numbers in attendees to Animethon has allowed for various vendors to expose themselves to a unique group of people both young and old. In 2019, since moving to the Edmonton Convention Centre, Animethon has hit the 10k attendance mark and also to be one of the longest running anime convention in Canada. Animethon has experienced several years of consecutive growth in attendance while increasing their scope to include musical guests from Japan such as FLOW, ROOKIEZ is PUNK'D,

Yoko Ishida is a Japanese singer. She is known for having performed theme songs for anime shows such as ''Prétear'', ''Ai Yori Aoshi'', the ''Ah! My Goddess'' TV series and the ''Strike Witches'' series, as well as for having sung for the Para Para Max CD ...

Kanon Wakeshima is a Japanese musician and singer. Originally produced by musician and fashion designer Mana, Wakeshima debuted under the DefStar Records label on May 28, 2008 with the single " Still Doll", the ending theme for the anime adaptation of the manga ...

An Cafe was a Japanese pop rock band formed in 2003 and signed to Sony Music Japan. Their visual image is Japanese street fashion#Oshare kei, oshare kei,''Shoxx Bis'' No 3 October 2004 issue, pg 69 and they describe their music as "Harajuku Dance-rock, ...

, and

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. The event was not held in 2020 and 2021 due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, but is set to return in August 2022.

Events and programming

Animethon has expanded their focus beyond screening anime and now also include voice actor guests from North America, musical acts from North America and Japan, improvisation groups, as well as various related activities such as gaming, costume contests, anime music video compilations/contests, and more.

Event history

A Taste of Animethon

A Taste of Animethon was first created in 2010. Initially, it was a smaller event meant to supplement ASAPA's lineup of events, but grew quickly and was eventually moved to the Shaw Conference Centre in 2016. It was suspended after the 2018 event due to the difficulties of simultaneously planning Animethon and an increasingly-large Taste of Animethon. The event was intended to be revived in 2022 to make up for the cancellation of the 2020 and 2021 events due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the event was ultimately cancelled due to

Omicron variant Omicron (B.1.1.529) is a variant of SARS-CoV-2 first reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) by the Network for Genomics Surveillance in South Africa on 24 November 2021. It was first detected in Botswana and has spread to become the ...

ASAPA control

In 2004 the event was transferred to a new society, the Alberta Society for Asian Popular Arts (ASAPA), a non-profit society that focuses on the promotion and enjoyment of Asian popular art and culture. The society is also the financial and legal backbone of Animethon, formed under the Societies Act of Alberta.

References

External links

Animethon website
{{Anime conventions in North America Anime conventions in Canada Festivals in Edmonton Recurring events established in 1994 MacEwan University 1994 establishments in Alberta Annual events in Canada Festivals established in 1994