Here I have put some effort into studying ALL the various ticketing options combined with other crucial information about location, venue and size.
I considered adding in estimates for budgets for each event but it is much harder to generate without having specific knowledge of each event’s costs.
Whilst anyone can find out venue costs, it only takes the tiniest bit of experience to know that the venue costs only make up for a fraction of the overall event budget.
An announcement on the Madman site means even more anime will be hitting mainstream TV.
The combined news reveals that Ergo Proxy will be airing on ABC2 (Free Digital) and for those with Digital subscription you can also get Bleach, Trinity Blood, InuYasha, Fullmetal Alchemist and Eureka Seven Adult Swim (Cable).
No mention if they were subtitled or dubbed, however as is the trend for TV broadcasts I can safely bet they will be dubbed.
SMASH bans fanart
SMASH appear to have presented a dichotomy for their stallholders by banning unauthorised fanart.
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Animania put on a 2-day event in Brisbane, however the event as a whole may be less than the sum of its parts.
In May the Animania Festival visited Brisbane with its first ever 2-day event in that city. (There were two separate 1-day Brisbane events in 2006).
This was also the first time video-games has featured as an event in Brisbane, this follows the inclusion of games at Melbourne and Sydney events earlier this year.
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A recent study on Wikipedia searches announced that a lot of searches are related to anime (visit the source for the full details).
We categorized the top 100 Wikipedia terms for April into six general categories to figure out what the major search themes are on Wikipedia.
AnimeNewsNetwork picked this up and ran with it.
According to research conducted by Compete, Inc., search terms related to anime accounted for 26% of the top one hundred searches on Wikipedia in the month of April. This represents the second-largest category of terms, behind only “general research” (28%). Source: Compete.com Blog
Shortly after (and here is where the fun starts) Madman presumably noticed the story on ANN, and promptly reposted it with a few minor corrections.
Anime accounts for 26% of content on Wikipedia
Complete.com has recently taken a look at a break down of Wikipedia subjects. Surprisingly Anime accounts for a whopping 26% of its content, the single highest category of topics in Wikipedia.
Waitjustaminute. 26% of content on Wikipedia is now Anime? That summary is nothing like the ANN story, nor does it appear as if they even read the Complete.com report. Shame on you, Madman editors!
Just for fun let’s see how much content that would be, a quick calculation puts that at roughly 474,000 articles. That’s a hell of a lot of Pokemon articles in anybody’s language!
In the war of the pop-culture conventions the most important battle will be over before the gates even open.
I have strong reasons to believe the majority of income from both conventions is from their attendance, but from what I’ve been reading and hearing for years is that people attend these conventions because of the vendors. Thus begins the battle for sponsors and (more importantly) vendors.
Sometime around 1 June someone from the Armageddon crew posted in a forum that they were moving their October convention to Melbourne instead of Sydney. This news spread like wildfire among the Supanova fans that were following this chain of events. Sometime after it was updated on Armageddon’s Australian event website: http://www.armageddonexpo.com/
Supanova’s response was rather positive, announcing they will reschedule their events next year to avoid a clash:
as I promised both Bill in an email months ago and Rob on the phone just last week, that if Armageddon chose not to clash with Supanova in Sydney this year we would give them their desired October dates in Sydney annually with a guaranteed two month prior unobstructed window (calculated from their Labour Day October holiday dates in Auckland annually). I’ll even add a one month after window so that everything can be as smooth as possible.
(emphasis from original)
Most vendors will not have the resources to attend both events on the same weekend and now that they are in different cities this isn’t going to make it any easier. Some groups such as OzTaku and Pulp Faction may have enough staffing to attend both events (in separate cities).
Madman is probably the only (anime related) vendor who can afford the time and staffing to attend both events. You can pretty much guarantee they’ll be at Supanova (one of Madman staff is also a Supanova staff), and with Armageddon in their home town they can’t miss it.
I expect over the next few months the other vendors will start picking sides however there is the possibility that now the events are in different cities fans will attend both events regardless of the vendors.
Perhaps this has moved from a lose-lose to a win-win situation for both events?
Back in Melbourne for 2007 the Animania Festival was in a new venue this year – the Rydges Hotel. They say it was a huge turnout, and I’m tempted to believe them considering the photos. Even though the venue was larger it still looked just as cramped as last year.
Honestly, I couldn’t find any third party reviews on the event. So all I can go on is the Animania report and the various blogs and photos around the web. Nothing interesting to report, looks like it went well and will be returning next year. The only question is will they use the same Hotel or move yet again to a larger venue?
Were they short term affiliates?
Did they vacate after being asked for money?
What the use is announcing someone as an affiliate if they don’t support you?
All these questions and more will not be answered on the SMASH website.
It was only a matter of time to lose AnimeSydney.org … after all you can’t really claim to have the Sydney Anime clubs Group as an affiliate if you don’t even have a majority of the Sydney Anime clubs as affiliates. That’s just silly.
Word of the Day: Anatopism. Go look it up in a dictionary (I did), then take another look at the picture below. Do you agree, or do you see it differently?
After “losing” JAUWS as an affiliate SMASH have now gone and “lost” AnimeUNSW’s support as well.
A brief history of affiliates:
Unlike in the case of JAUWS, SMASH actually had direct links to AnimeUNSW: Sidney Lien is listed as a committee member on SMASH’s schedule page and also posted a comment on the SMASH blog as staff member. That could only be the same Sidney Lien that is also a committee member for AnimeUNSW as stated on the club’s website.
I don’t know any details behind this drop, but considering SMASH are holding the event at the Roundhouse at UNSW, having the AnimeUNSW club on board would have no doubt gained them some extremely rich discounts for the venue hire.
Ego Proxy 