Thousands of cosplayers and anime fans gathered at the yearly Anime Festival Asia (AFA) in Singapore from Nov 25-27 celebrating Japanese pop culture at the Suntec Singapore Convention and Exhibition Centre. It was held for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began more than two years ago. In 2019, AFA draw 120,000 attendees.
AFA
Anime Festival Asia is a succession of anime conventions conducted in the Southeast Asian region, with a central yearly convention held in Singapore.
Together with the major conventions, AFA also conducts sporadic business sessions concentrating on the anime and manga industries. The first of these was Animation Asia Conference, held in 2009.
How popular is anime in Singapore?
As of March 2022, more than half of adults in Singapore (52%) have watched anime at least once. Of those among the 48% who have not, more than one-fifth (21%) say they would consider watching anime in the future, while over three-quarters (79%) ruled this out.
Action anime is the top favorite of more than half of frequent watchers (53%) and a third of casual watchers (33%). Adventure anime is also enjoyed by more than two-fifths (43%) of frequent watchers and under a third of casual watchers (30%), while Comedy anime is enjoyed by more than one-third of frequent watchers (35%) and over a quarter of casual watchers (28%).
Manga vs. Anime
Manga and anime are at the center of significant innovations and cultural debates in Japan.
They are not indistinguishable fields. Manga has been depicted as Japanese comic books. Anime covers the scope of Japanese animation that they have become identical but with a different Japanese modern-day artistic and visual culture in the eyes of many media, culture scholars and commentators around the world.
Many view manga as the origin, the creative spirit and energy that produced anime in video games and merchandise spin-offs.
While manga was the foundation of anime during the postwar period, it was through anime that a wide-ranging global audience became aware of the intricacy of Japanese visual culture.
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