Interest
Anime Tourism Association Opens Online Survey for Top 88 Pilgrimage Sites for 2020
posted on by Kim Morrissy
The Anime Tourism Association opened its online survey on Saturday for its list of 88 anime pilgrimage sites. Popular user-submitted entries will be taken into consideration for the final list. This year marks the third time voting has taken place.
The survey will be online until September 22, and will be available in Japanese, English, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Thai, Malay, Korean, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
The 2018 list was criticized online for its lack of transparency about the internal selection process and the unexplained gaps between what titles the fans voted for and what made it to the final list. Michael Vito, an American anime pilgrimage fan and travel writer, argued that many of the top-voted works by Kyoto Animation and P.A. Works were discarded in favor of titles that Kadokawa had a financial stake in. Tsuguhiko Kadokawa, chairman of the Kadokawa Corporation and the Anime Tourism Association, said that there was some difficulty in getting the rights cleared with all the Intellectual Property owners within a short space of time, but claimed that they were able to rectify that issue for the 2019 list.
The 88 anime pilgrimage concept is modeled on Shikoku's 88 Temple Pilgrimage, Japan's most famous Buddhist pilgrimage route. The Anime Tourism Association was founded in 2016 as a partnership between Kadokawa and various tourism and travel companies. Their aim is to attract tourists, from Japan as well as foreign countries, and bolster regional revitalization projects throughout Japan.
Source: Press Release (May 31)
