Anime Festival Asia aims regional with Singapore as flagship

Anime Festival Asia, which ended on Sunday (29 November), looks set to return even bigger next year as the organisers eye the South-East-Asian market.

The three-day event saw close to 200 booths from exhibitors like toy maker Good Smile, Japanese entertainment company Pony Canyon, and Japanese broadcaster NHK, as well as 90,000 visitors, some who dressed up as their favourite anime, manga or games characters.

SOZO’s executive director Shawn Chin, one of the organisers of the event, said the turnout was encouraging and that there were plans to take AFA to a greater regional stage, with Singapore’s as its flagship.

This year, there were AFA events in both Thailand and Indonesia, in addition to Singapore, but Chin said the organisers would be looking towards a “more holistic” approach from next year onwards.

“We want to be a platform where Japanese pop culture lovers can come together,” Chin said of this year’s festival in Singapore, which for the first time featured other aspects of Japanese entertainment, such as comedians, in addition to Japanese artistes.

Despite the challenge posed by a foreign language, the Japanese comedians worked really hard and delivered their performances in English, Chin said.

Other Japanese industry players at the AFA included JUNON, an entertainment magazine targeted at women.

The magazine held a contest at the AFA mini-stage between two teams of young men, one 18 and over, and the other below 18.

Choo Kia Ming, an executive at an educational institution, said she found JUNON’s event “refreshing”, even though she had wondered how they were related to anime.

Still, she said she had a good time at the convention, and was glad Singapore hosted such events, though she did have some thoughts for next year.

“I would like to see more male seiyuus (voice actors) coming in though,” said Choo, adding that the “concert also seemed to be targeted towards male fans”.

SOZO’s Chin said the artiste lineup was planned with a mix of popularity and research around the anime that would be featured at AFA.

With women comprising around 40-45 per cent of the visitors to AFA, Chin said organisers aimed to satisfy both audiences, having invited male voice actors Show Hayami ("Bleach"/"Is the Order a Rabbit??") and Makoto Furukawa ("One Punch Man") this year.

There were also other factors to consider such as the tight schedules of these artistes, who sometimes have to fly in and out of Singapore on the same day.

“We hope to bring in more (voice actors), for sure,” Chin said of future AFA events.