News
Animania Festival Closing Their Doors
posted on by Jon Hayward
The news went online on Tuesday the 26th of February in the Morning after the organisers of Animania Festival added an update to their website and facebook page with the following text;
NEWS FLASH!
After much deliberation, we have decided to send off Animania Festival in SYDNEY on 22nd March 2014. This will be the finale event for Animania.
We would love to see you all one last time at this historic milestone!
No reason for the decision to finish Animania Festival has been given and it is unknown if Animania's organisers will additionally be shutting down the parent company, Aurora Entertainment.
Their final event will take place in Sydney on the 22nd of March 2014, we assume the event will be held in Sydney's Australian Technology Park but there are no further details at this stage.
Sydney still has plenty of events with Supanova, Oz Comic Con and the Sydney Manga and Anime Show! (SMASH!) events planned for 2014. If you would like further information on Sydney events please read our Anime Convention Calendar for 2014.
History of Animania
Primarily started by a group of anime fans at the University of New South Wales in 2002, Animania held it's first event on the 12th of October 2002 in the Eastern Avenue Lecture Theatre and Auditorium Complex at the University of Sydney. The following year the event expanded to two days from the 11th of October 2003 and this time ran at the Scientia at the University of New South Wales before being handed over to Aurora Entertainment to operate the 2004 event at the Sydney City Town Hall. On a personal side note this was my first ever Anime convention and I met several notable figures who went onto shape Anime and the convention scene in Australia to this day.
From there Animania spread out to multiple states with Brisbane and Melbourne quick destinations for a selection of Animanias and Mini-Animania events. Being the only event to utilise hotel spaces in Australia, Animania was a bit of a curiosity, especially for Brisbane reporter Luke Carroll who spent more time waiting for the lifts than reporting on the convention in 2008 and 2009 did not fare much better. After that point between our negative reviews and Animania's pre-existing bootlegging issues ANN|AU has not been back. Animania continued a slow decline into obscurity with Mini-Animania Melbourne officially ceasing operations in 2012 due to lack of a suitable venue (the last Melbourne event was March 2011) and Brisbane finishing in 2012.
Animania was the only event in Australia to participate as part of the World Cosplay Summit from 2008. The festival ran heats in multiple capital cities and sent the best and brightest cosplayers to the yearly WCS event in Nagoya, Japan. We currently do not know the status of the WCS with the impending closure of Animania and no other conventions are aware of any plans to continue Australia's participation in the WCS at this stage.
