Anime/manga: community and fandom

A friend was a participant on this subject and asked us to go to the panel.  We were not sure about it but we decided to go anyway.  It was much more enlightening than we envisioned.  We were lucky to have in the assistance two old timers from the anime convention community.  On was a founder of Anime North and the other was on OtakuCon.

We talk some times about anime and manga fans and how they act in conventions.  All anime conventions are based on the worldcon model.  It was easier to copy a working model than to invent a new one.  And it works. But the relative importance of the worldcon parts changed.  In anime convention the merchant gallery and costumes are much more important.  Its not unusual to see at least 50% of the attendees costumed.  Anime convention are also bigger in terms of entrance.  Some conventions had more than 30 000 members.

There is one other big difference in the convention organisation, anime organisation is the same each year but, in worldcon, a new organisation is built from scratch each year.  We think it protect the worldcon from being a sclerosed event without any change.  We may attend to an anime convention one day just to see how it work.  It must be fun.