Anime Expo

• 1. Introduction

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  Anime Expo fills the Los Angeles Convention Center for four days every summer, and its 2017 edition drew more than 107,658 people through the doors, the largest anime and manga convention in North America. Run by the non-profit Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation, it traditionally opens on the first weekend of July, though earlier editions moved through convention centers in Anaheim and San Jose, and even a weekend each in New York City and Tokyo. Guest panels, tabletop gaming, competitions, an arcade, and concerts fill its schedule each year. Behind that lineup sits a three-decade run marked by boardroom resignations, a multi-million-dollar debt, and a pandemic that forced the whole show online. How did a small gathering grow into a six-figure crowd, and what did it take to keep the doors open?

• 2. Founding And Growth

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  The Red Lion Hotel in San Jose, California, hosted the first Anime Expo from the 3rd to the 6th of July, 1992. Many of its original staff had come from Anime Con, a San Jose convention held the year before, which the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation absorbed in 1992. In 1994 the convention relocated to Southern California, and every edition since has taken place there. From 1,750 attendees at that first show, turnout climbed year after year, and the convention has held the title of North America's largest anime gathering every year but one, in 2003, when the East Coast convention Otakon narrowly edged it out. That relentless growth would soon test the organization running it.

• 3. Leadership Turmoil

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  Chief executive officer Trulee Karahashi, who had spent 11 years with Anime Expo and its parent organization in various roles, left in March 2009. Michael Lattanzio, a former Universal Studios executive, was hired that September as the new CEO. By January 2010, eight members of the convention's upper management team, known as ConCom, publicly resigned over disagreements with Lattanzio's new direction. One flashpoint was his decision to restructure marketing, which included dismissing a PR and marketing contractor the organization had worked with since 2004; two other staffers had already left for unrelated reasons, leaving only the vice-chair and two others from the previous year's team. Lattanzio himself was released from the CEO position in September 2010. Anime News Network reported in early 2012 that the organization had suffered a $1.2 million loss in 2010, though the 2011 convention turned a $100,000 profit and cut the outstanding debt to $700,000. Creditor IDG World Expo took over several operating functions, while guest selection and programming stayed under the organization's control, and Takayuki Karahashi was elected chairman of the board. Marc Perez left the company in April 2016, and Ray Chiang stepped in as acting CEO. The show's next transformation would come not from the boardroom, but from its own front doors.

• 4. Growing Pains

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  The first Pre-Show Night arrived on the 30th of June 2017, adding the Neon District, the World Cosplay Summit U.S. Finals, and a slate of premieres to the schedule. As attendance kept climbing, fans faced long lines just to reach the convention hall, which organizers attributed to safety and security concerns. Those crowds would vanish almost overnight when a very different threat arrived in 2020.

• 5. Weathering The Pandemic

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  A global coronavirus outbreak in the months before the 2020 show forced organizers to reconsider large gatherings. On the 17th of April 2020, the organization announced it was cancelling Anime Expo 2020, citing health and safety concerns, while still planning to hold the 2021 show on its normal July dates. On the 27th of May 2020, it unveiled a two-day online replacement called Anime Expo Lite, held on the 3rd and the 4th of July that year. On the 3rd of March 2021, the in-person 2021 convention was canceled as well, citing continued uncertainties surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, and Anime Expo Lite was moved to the 2021 schedule instead. Anime Expo returned in person in 2022, running from the 1st to the 4th of July, its first live event since 2019. The 2023 convention suffered serious overcrowding and coincided with a hotel staff strike. Organizers changed the layout and operations for 2024, easing the crowding, though the new panel ticketing system did not work as intended. Not every Anime Expo experiment has stayed in Los Angeles, or even in the United States.

• 6. Beyond California

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  The organization has run conventions outside California only twice: Anime Expo New York in 2002 and Anime Expo Tokyo in 2004. Anime Expo New York took place in the Times Square district in 2002, originally planned as a joint effort with Central Park Media's Big Apple Anime Fest. Disagreements split the two into separate events sharing the same time frame and venues, with Big Apple Anime Fest handling theatrical screenings while Anime Expo New York ran the convention itself, though both program guides listed some of the same notable guests. The New York event was staged to prove the organization could run a show outside its home state, and it served as a trial run for Anime Expo Tokyo two years later; no event outside California has run since 2004. Anime Expo Tokyo opened in 2004 at the Sunshine City Convention Center in Ikebukuro, organized not directly by the SPJA but by the Japanese Association for Science Fiction International Communication, known as JASFIC, with SPJA's assistance. JASFIC had two aims: establish a non-corporate-sponsored anime convention in Japan, and show the organizers of the World Science Fiction Convention that Japan could host events drawing a foreign crowd. More than 40 guests were booked, including manga artist Ken Akamatsu, MiQ, Under17, and Hiroshi Aro, though a handful cancelled at the last minute, and the event marked the first time an Anime Expo officially hosted guests from the U.S. anime industry, among them webcomic artist Fred Gallagher and voice actor Crispin Freeman. Of the 4,249 people who attended, an estimated 300 had traveled from abroad, alongside 240 members of the press, 40 of them from overseas, and another 430 dealers, guests, and staff. Anime Expo Tokyo never returned for a second year, but JASFIC's push paid off when it helped bring the 65th World Science Fiction Convention to Japan in 2007.

• 7. Sister Conventions

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  Anime Expo Chibi, formerly called Anime Expo Ontario, runs each November as a two-day convention at the Ontario Convention Center in Ontario, California. Organized by Anime Expo itself, it is built smaller, with its focus kept on the artist alley and exhibit hall, and its schedule includes an arcade, a cosplay contest, karaoke, live music, a Maid Cafe, a manga lounge, tabletop gaming, and workshops. Anime Conji began in San Diego in 2010 as its own annual convention, and the SPJA took over running it in 2013. Event quality concerns led to the cancellation of Anime Conji 2016, and the 2017 edition was also called off. The convention returned in 2018 under its original organizers, the San Diego Speculative Fiction Society, and held no event in 2020 because of financial and location problems. Every one of these spinoffs, large or small, answers to the same non-profit board behind the flagship show.

• 8. Nonprofit Behind The Scenes

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  The Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation is registered as a federal and California state 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization, headquartered in Corona, a Southern California suburb. Before the 1st of January 2020, it had instead been registered as a 501(c)(6) non-profit trade benefit organization. That shift in status changed the legal framework under which every future edition of Anime Expo, and its family of sister conventions, now operates.