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Wow. So AX was right. They said they expected that amount, right? I remember thinking it had to be an underestimate.

An anime convention in the anime capital of the world, and it draws 1/3 of what the big conventions do in the US? Is it because the con was seen as "foreign"?

------RM

It's probably because they didn't advertise it at all. While there I kept thinking the attendance was really small. I'm actually surprised by that 5000 number, it seemed much smaller than that. I have a feeling that people who got a 3-day pass count for 3 visits in that total. But it's not like there's no audience for that kind of event in Tokyo. On sunday there was a Broccoli 10th anniversary event in the same building. This is just one anime company with one showroom and the line of people waiting to get in was just interminable. If AX Tokyo had been decently advertised I'm convinced it could've drawn in more than 10,000 people per DAY. But that would've led to a bunch of problems because the con staff was pretty inexperienced. Even with the small attendance there were a number of technical problems, so I think it's a good thing that this year was just a non-advertised "practice run". But it *would* have been nice to have a little more people around... it felt a little empty, like 1000 people in a room built for 3000.

Eh, while I'm fully aware that anime fandom is really almost as niche in Japan with adults as it is in North America, still, I admit that I was completely skeptical that a North American-run anime event would be as successful in Japan as AX is in North America, since anime, even if it doesn't overwhelm Japanese prime-time TV programming like some North American fans assume, is still a lot more readily available (well, in larger quantities) in Tokyo, so there's no compelling need to pay admission to watch stuff you can easily watch elsewhere, and the guests make other frequent high profile appearances in the same city, so this is but one event among many.