Anime Contents Expo vs. Tokyo Anime Fair

The Tokyo International Anime Fair is dead, long live Anime Contents Expo! The latter will apparently be the anime expo to keep an eye out for, starting from next year, as top anime companies have decided to boycott good ol' Tokyo 'Anime Fair and host this new event instead, during the same period as TAF (March 26-27).



Organizers of Anime Contents Expo 2011 (ACE) include Aniplex, Animate, Kadokawa Shoten, King Records, Geneon, Frontier Works, Marvelous Entertainment and Media Factory. According to the new event's executive committee, the reason for their "uprising" is Tokyo's recently passed amendment to its Youth Healthy Development Ordinance, which expands the list of "harmful" anime and manga that can't be sold or rented to people under the age of 18 - among other nasty provisions.

Earlier this month, a group of 10 manga publishers called "Comic 10-Shakai" have also expressed their intention to boycott TAF 2011, in response to the same revised bill passed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. The same Metropolitan Government which just so happens to be part of TAF's executive committee, and whose Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara just so happens to be the committee's chairperson (he was the most vocal pusher for that "nonexistent youths" bill that was defeated in June, and again for this new one which sadly passed).

So looking forward to the first edition of Anime Contents Expo, the show will take place at Makuhari Messe in Chiba prefecture - the same place where the Tokyo Game Show (TGS) and Shueisha's Jump Festa are also being held, during the second half of each year. Jump Festa, by the way, has been drawing more visitors than even TGS this year, while TAF remained far behind those two in attendance numbers. Perhaps ACE will manage to tip a statistic or two...