Animania

Infobox Anime convention
name = Animania Festival


caption = Jono and Guu, the Animania mascots, with the Animania logo
status = Active
venue = Sydney Town Hall (main convention)
location = Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne
country = Australia
first = 2002
attendance =
events = Game shows, concerts, cosplay, competitions, dealers room, panels, workshops, karaoke, video game room, artist's alley, community groups, video rooms and food fair
website = http://www.animania.net.au

Animania is an annual anime convention that has been held in Sydney, Australia since 2002. It is Sydney's first dedicated anime and manga event.

Originally run by local University anime societies, Animania is now organised by Aurora Entertainment, and includes several events in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, culminating in the main convention held in October in the Sydney Town Hall.

Programming

Animania features many of the typical events found at anime conventions such as cosplay and AMV (anime music video) competitions, screenings (originally these were mainly fansubs but now only screen licensed titles), artist booths, karaoke and video games such as Dance Dance Revolution and Initial D.

In addition to such staples, Animania has experimented with several of its own attractions, such as live fandubbing, an "Iron Artist" drawing competition based on the Iron Chef TV show, the anime cover-band Halcyon, and "Animania Fusion", a skit-based video comedy featuring members of Animania staff.

Halcyon

Halcyon made their debut at Animania 2003 and at that time consisted of three members: Amanda Setiadi as the vocalist, Michael Lee (aka "Muki") as the acoustic guitar player, and Rosi Yu as the violinist. The band performed a small set and were sufficiently popular to warrant their return for Animania in 2005, as well as making appearances at other anime-related events in Sydney. The band has also grown from the original three-member setup to six, including a drummer, Michael Ip, and two more guitarists, Lindsay Nighjoy on bass and Jason Solomon on lead.

At the main Sydney Animania in 2007, Halcyon played two sets, including an acoustic set (without drums) at the Friday preview night, and with the full band on the Saturday night.

Halcyon's "style" is playing songs that have appeared in anime and Japanese video games, creating original translations (and occasionally reinterpretations) of the Japanese lyrics. Songs they have covered include Fly Me to the Moon from Neon Genesis Evangelion and "HT" from Trigun.

World Cosplay Summit

At the September 2007 Sydney event Animania announced [cite web | url = http://animania.net.au/2008/wcs | title = Animania 2008 Website | publisher = Animania.net.au | accessdate = 2008-04-27] they had been accepted by the World Cosplay Summit to host the Australian competitions to compete in Japan at WCS 2009. This will be the first time Australia has been represented at WCS.

Preliminary competition events will be held at the 2008 events with the finals taking place at August 2008 Sydney event. The winning team will be flown to Japan in 2009 to compete in the World Cosplay Summit.

History

Event history

ee also

* List of anime conventions

References

* Maddox, G. (2003). [http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/10/1065676156485.html "Animania - it's not just Pokemon"] . "Sydney Morning Herald". Retrieved January 22, 2006.

External links

* [http://www.animania.net.au Animania Festival] - Animania Festival's Official website.

* [http://www.tv-aichi.co.jp/wcs/e/ World Cosplay Summit] - World Cosplay Summit 2008 Website.