Covered in Beez

My visit to Brno began here.

Note: I actually originally wrote this as piece covering two points at once – Animefest 09 and what the EE anime market was like.  However in retrospect I feel such a piece, unless almost unwieldy in size would not do justice to what should be said about either.  See here for a link to the  other piece.

Each way took me longer than a flight to a remote tropical island to reach, but I’m finally back from my trip to the Eastern Europe to present Sword of the Stranger at Animefest 09.

When you mention anime in Europe, your first thoughts are normally in Central Europe – perhaps France, Germany, the UK or even Italy.  However I would tender that a growing rival to the UK at the very least for anime is the Czech Republic and surrounding countries.

Anime started to surface in the region with Akira back in the early 90s when all the films prohibited during the Communist era flooded the market.  Unfortunately for Akira and its publishers, at the time all animation in the country was assumed to be for children.  It won’t come as a huge surprise to everyone that children found this as fun as having to watch an episode of University Challenge*.

Set in the bustling University town of Brno, Animefest features a program spread over 3 days, running all 24hrs of each day.  Beez Entertainment acted as their main program partner for the event.  This meant it was my responsibility to coordinate things and represent Beez at a panel before the screening there.

In terms of convention model, this event has already outgrown several venues, finding itself now spread across 4 venues with the central one being Brno’s biggest cinema (450+ seats, used for premieres).  The event itself saw 1200 unique attendees over the weekend, making it pretty much on-par with the largest fan run events of the UK (1500, Amecon 2008).

Animefest’s organizers attendees have a number of plans to try and bring the area’s anime fans together. These include arranging a Euro-Cosplay event, bringing cosplayers from across the EU together in a competition of epic scale. Asides from that example there is a general feeling of a fandom that is growing, expanding and looking at new ways to do things constantly.
For example, not only do they attend other events across the region (including surrounding territories) but a group of organizers make the voyage over to central Europe for the likes of London Expo and beyond too.  One set plan to go for their first time this May and I find myself wondering if they will really like what they find…

One thing is for certain though - Eastern Europe’s anime scene is growing still.  The UK events better keep an eye out or they’ll be left behind really!

* If your children or yourself as a child were bright enough to enjoy University Challenge, replace this analogy with watching an episode of Hollyoaks.