AVCon is Adelaide's premier Anime and Video Games Convention. It is a non-for-profit event organised and run by a dedicated group of volunteers, known as Team AVCon. Founded in 2001, the convention has been held annually since 2002, and was initially located at the Adelaide University in the heart of the CBD.
As a result of its continued popularity AVCon moved to the Adelaide Convention Centre in 2009 to allow for a greater number of attendees. AVCon fans responded to the change in location by attending en-mass, with over 4,000 people through the doors over the course of the weekend. The 2009 AVCon was a fantastic start at its new location. The larger venue allowed AVCon to present its attendees with more of the anime, manga, video games, vendors, cosplay, Japanese popculture, related art and other favourite and new events.
All this comes with one upfront cost at the entrance, once within AVCon, our attendees are only asked to pay for food, drink and any items they wish to take home. All video games, anime screenings, entry into events (either as a contestant or an audience member) are covered in the entry fee.
Anime is a Japanese abbreviation for the word animation. Outside of Japan it commonly refers to animation originating from Japan, or works created in the Japanese style. In the last few years there has been an increase in the popularity of anime in Australia. More and more people are starting to develop a new appreciation for anime.
AVCon has constant screenings of various anime over the course of the weekend starting with its opening night.
Manga is the Japanese word for comic books. As with anime, manga is steadily becoming more and more popular in Australia with some of the bigger bookstores along with specialist stores such as Pulp Fiction expanding their ranges. For the uninitiated it should be noted that the majority of manga needs to be read from right to left rather than the western norm of left to right. This means you would start reading at what for a western style novel would be the back cover.