Animania

Animania Festival
Jono and Guu, the Animania mascots, with the Animania logo (2006 event)
Status	Defunct
Venue	Australian Technology Park (main convention)
Location(s)	Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide
Country	Australia
Inaugurated	2002
Most recent	2014
Activity	Game shows, concerts, cosplay, competitions, dealers room, panels, workshops, karaoke, video game room, artist's alley, community groups, video rooms and food fair
Website
http://www.animania.net.au

Animania was an annual anime convention that was held in Sydney, Australia. Originally run by local University anime societies, Animania is now organised by Aurora Entertainment, and includes several events in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, and Adelaide. The term Animania in the 1990s referred to online-organized meetings of Animaniacs fans from around the world.

Animania features many of the typical events found at anime conventions including cosplay and AMV (anime music video) competitions, anime screenings, workshops, karaoke, video games such as Dance Dance Revolution. In addition to such staples, Animania has experimented with several of its own attractions, such as live fandubbing, an "Iron Artist" drawing competition based on the Iron Chef TV show, the anime cover-band Halcyon, and "Animania Fusion", a skit-based video comedy featuring members of Animania staff.

Halcyon made their debut at Animania 2003 and at that time consisted of three members: Amanda Setiadi as the vocalist, Michael Lee (aka "Muki") as the acoustic guitar player, and Rosi Yu as the violinist. The band performed a small set and were sufficiently popular to warrant their return for Animania in 2005, as well as making appearances at other anime-related events in Sydney. The band has also grown from the original three-member setup to six, including a drummer, Michael Ip, and two more guitarists, Lindsay Nighjoy on bass and Jason Solomon on lead.

At the main Sydney Animania in 2007, Halcyon played two sets, including an acoustic set (without drums) at the Friday preview night, and with the full band on the Saturday night.

Halcyon's "style" is playing songs that have appeared in anime and Japanese video games, creating original translations (and occasionally reinterpretations) of the Japanese lyrics. Songs they have covered include Fly Me to the Moon from Neon Genesis Evangelion and HT from Trigun.

At the September 2007 Sydney event Animania announced they had been accepted by the World Cosplay Summit to host the Australian competitions to compete in Japan at WCS 2009. This will be the first time Australia has been represented at WCS.