Forum - View topicAnswerman - What Made The Big Anime Conventions So Big?
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18187 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Yeah, that's a lot of what keeps me coming back to Acen every year. For me the expense and travel time are worth it just to be immersed in such a vibrant environment, see what everyone's come up with for costumes and experience first-hand how much fun people are having with a hobby I love. It helps keep me young at heart, and it's just not the same seeing shots of cosplayers on a Web site. (But then, I'm also one of those people who's still firmly willing to pay for the theater experience when it comes to seeing movies, too.) More mixed 'cons - like Gen Con, for instance - I go to expressly for the events. To put it another way, many of the times I've gone to Acen I've been leery because of the cost or time it took and/or because I wasn't sure if there were enough events there to interest me. But not once have I ever walked away from the 'con regretting that I had come. |
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REDOG
Posts: 37 |
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Man, reading this answerman and thread make me wanna fly to america right now.
If matters are this friendly and open in american cons, not to mention the quantity and variety! not to mention conversation depth!! In the boring clogged hole middle eastern state i live in, everything anime related, not to mention anime community related, is almost dead in a vampire coffin with locks, garlics, fatima's hand and david stars on top. Just saying THUMB'S UP U.S. OTAKUS! To read and drool from it all 
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Aura Ichadora
 Posts: 2284 Location: In front of my computer |
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o.o *It's A Small World After All plays in the background* Yep! Has to be you... you were the only Levy cosplayer I ran into that entire con! Ha... it's actually kinda funny that we "run" into each other on here too! I never actually heard that part so it is cool that by Saturday the autograph issue was fixed and no one else was being charged... I just didn't know since the only autograph I wanted that year was Todd Haberkorn's. But yeah... I'm sure it really ruined a lot of people's con experience. Well... besides the other issues the con had that year (the crazy lines and seemingly lack of control, the overcrowded and tiny dealer's hall, registration being in a tiny room and taking forever, and so on...). So happy that they've now moved into the convention hall as well; the con is so much easier to navigate through now! |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6867 Location: Kazune City |
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The simplest answer I could give would be "by allowing themselves to become general nerd social destinations by tolerating a certain amount of drift from anime purity." Or less charitably, by becoming all-purpose cosplay events with some anime on the side. But as long as they're run by people with some amount of financial sense and social/business acumen who're dedicated to the work, passionate about the fandom, and willing to be responsive to attendee concerns, conventions can have a fair chance of success.
The biggest pitfall I've seen is with conventions that try to be "too much too soon" -- new, untested events sure they'll be smash hits with gangbuster attendance, booking expansive and expensive venues, chasing pricey big-name guests, making grandiose promises to vendors, scheduling themselves head-to-head against established events, and using optimistic debt financing to cover costs. Organizers who do these things tend to have warped views of reality, which leads to intra-staff tension, conflicts with attendees, vendors, and venues, and pointless drama with now-rival existing events. Not surprisingly, events I've seen or heard of that do these things don't last more than a few years.
Though since the study isn't anime-specific, some anime hot spots mentioned by Justin like California, New York, and Texas don't score as well. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Would Japan Expo USA be one such example? Their ambitions were very high, and it's clear they're trying to be just as big as the main Japan Expo in Paris, but they didn't seem to realize that the situation in the United States is different, namely that because there are so many big anime conventions in North America that the Japan Expo name doesn't have any worth here. (I'd like to also say that, knowing someone who works for the year-round AX staff, she gets in contact with people from anime conventions around the continent, big and small, including big ones like Otakon and Akon, but the people of Japan Expo USA have never once spoken with her despite it being in the same state.) I also believe conventions benefit more when they support and respect each other than trying to be competitive. The biggest case is conventions occurring at the same time covering the same topic: There is only one of each guest, and companies would spread themselves pretty thin going to multiple conventions at the same time. If a convention team decides to intentionall pit themselves against another convention in this way, they will devour each other's attendees, potential guests, sponsors (if they take sponsors), and company representatives, because all these people can only pick one convention and decide to go to one and forgo the other. |
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