| Anime Festival Asia | |
|---|---|
 | |
 Maid café at Anime Festival Asia 2009 | |
| Status | Active |
| Genre | Festivals |
| Frequency | Annually (in each country) |
| Country | Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand |
| Inaugurated | 22 November 2008 |
| Most recent | 26 November 2023 |
| Website | animefestival.asia |
C3AFA, also known as Anime Festival Asia (AFA), is a series of anime conventions held in the Southeast Asian region, with a core annual convention held in Singapore. The main convention is traditionally held over a weekend in late November to early December. It was held at the Suntec Singapore International Convention and Exhibition Centre from 2008 to 2011, but was moved to the Singapore Expo MAX Pavilion in 2012 due to renovation works at Suntec Convention Centre that year. The convention returned to Suntec Convention Centre in 2013 and is being held there till now.
Satellite conventions were also held at the Putra World Trade Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; at the Jakarta International Expo, Kemayoran, Jakarta, Indonesia; at the Royal Paragon Hall, Bangkok, Thailand; and at the Indonesia Convention Exhibition, Tangerang, Greater Jakarta, Indonesia.
Alongside the main conventions, AFA also holds periodic business conferences focusing on the anime and manga industry. The first of these was Animation Asia Conference, held in 2009.[1]
The attendees of AFA was 94,270 in 2016,[2] 96,000 in 2017 and 105,000 in 2018.[3] The total cumulative attendance from 2008 to 2018 is approximately 1,700,000.
The continued organisation of AFA and its flagship Japanese music concert I Love Anisong is managed by SOZO Pte Ltd.[4] In 2017, SOZO entered a partnership with Sotsu—organizer of C3 events in Japan, Hong Kong, and China, forming C3AFA.[5] In 2018, SOZO and Eliphant—the organizer of GameStart, a gaming and sports event in Singapore, formed a strategic alliance to bring more contents to the region.[6]
- ^ "Animation Asia Conference 2009". Onscreen Asia. Archived from the original on 12 October 2014. Retrieved 4 June 2013.
- ^ "Anime Festival Asia grows more than three times larger than when it launched in 2008". The Straits Times. 25 November 2016. Retrieved 8 March 2017.
- ^ "ANIME FESTIVAL ASIA - HISTORY". Retrieved 20 March 2019.
- ^ "SOZO - SOZO". SOZO. Retrieved 6 June 2017.
- ^ "Biggest Japanese pop culture event organisers join forces to bring C3 AFA to various countries" (PDF). animefestival.asia. 2017.
- ^ "The producers of Anime Festival Asia and GameStart Asia team up to further develop ACG (Anime, Cosplay, Gaming) contents in SE Asia" (PDF). animefestival.asia. 28 February 2018.