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Tokyo Int'l Anime Fair, Anime Contents Expo Unite to Form AnimeJapan

A new major anime event named "AnimeJapan" will debut next spring as the merger of two previous events — Tokyo International Anime Fair (TAF) and Anime Contents Expo (ACE). The event will promote the anime industry among businesses and fans with exhibitor booths, stage events, and industry areas. The announcement was made at the "Anime Industry's New Event Press Conference" at the Hyatt Regency Tokyo in Shinjuku on Wednesday.

Next year, the new event will run from March 22 to March 23 in all six East Halls of the Tokyo Big Sight complex. TAF was also scheduled for March 19-22 at East Halls 1-3 in Tokyo Big Sight, but it will no longer be held. Similarly, ACE will not be held next year.

The new event is sponsored by the AnimeJapan Executive Committee in cooperation with the Association of Japanese Animations (AJA) and 11 comic publishers. AJA once co-managed TAF, while Aniplex and Kadokawa are two of the major companies that once sponsored ACE before collaborating on AnimeJapan. The 19 sponsoring companies of AnimeJapan include Toei Animation, Tezuka Productions, Sunrise and other anime production companies, as well as King Records, Bandai Visual, Pony Canyon, and other video distributors.

Background

A group of anime and manga companies created ACE in response to the controversy surrounding TAF and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's amendment to Tokyo's Youth Healthy Development Ordinance. The amendment expands the number of manga and anime that fall under "harmful publications," the legal category of works that must not be sold or rented to people under the age of 18.

Among others, 10 major manga publishers planned to boycott TAF 2011 because of the amended ordinance, although not all of them would have formally exhibited at TAF or ACE.

However, the first planned ACE event was cancelled six days after the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake (Higashi Nihon Daishinsai) disaster of March 11, 2011. If it had been held, it would have been held in Chiba during the same weekend as TAF, which was also cancelled in 2011.

The first ACE was eventually held March 31-April 1, 2012, one week after TAF was held that same year. In 2013, TAF was held at Tokyo Big Sight on March 21-24 , while ACE was held one week later at Makuhari Messe in Chiba on March 30-31.

Source: animeanime.jp

Update: The AnimeJapan Executive Committee has 19 member companies and AJA:

• Aniplex Inc.
• animate Ltd.
• Kadokawa Corporation
• King Record Co., Ltd.
• Satelight Inc.
• Sunrise Inc.
• Geneon Universal Entertainment Japan, LLC.
• Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions Co., Ltd.
• Tezuka Productions Co., Ltd.
• Toei Animation Co., Ltd.
• TMS Entertainment Co., Ltd.
• Nihon Ad Systems, Inc. (NAS)
• Nippon Animation Co., Ltd.
• Bandai Visual Co.,Ltd
• Pierrot Co.,Ltd.
• Production I.G, Inc.
• Frontier Works Inc.
• Pony Canyon Inc.
• Marvelous AQL Inc.

Neither the Tokyo Metropolitan Government nor the Tokyo Governor's Office are listed in the committee, unlike in TAF's committee. The committee expects 100,000 visits over the course of the two days.