Big Apple Anime Fest

Not to be confused with New York Anime Festival.

The Big Apple Anime Fest (BAAF) was an anime convention sponsored by Mitsubishi Motors which was held annually between 2001 and 2003 and supported by a consortium of anime and manga companies.^[1]

Big Apple Anime Fest
Status	Defunct
Venue	Marriott New York Marquis
Locations	New York City, New York
Country	United States
Inaugurated	2001
Most recent	2003
Attendance	12,832 in 2003
Organized by	Central Park Media

History

Event history

Dates	Location	Atten.	Guests
October 26–28, 2001	Directors Guild of America Theater New York, New York	3,500	Tim Eldred, Tiffany Grant, Matt K. Miller, Yuji Moriyama, Toshio Maeda, Kobe Tai, Asia Carrera and Koichi Ohata.[2][3]
August 30 – September 2, 2002	Times Square New York, New York	7,500	Mandy Bonhomme, Akitaroh Daichi, Yoko Kanno, Toshihiro Kawamoto, Yoshihiro Komada, Rachael Lillis, Taro Maki, Liam O'Brien, Tommy Ohtsuka, Ed Paul, Eric Stuart, Yoshiyuki Tomino, Shinichiro Watanabe, and Jimmy Zoppi.[4]
August 29–31, 2003	Marriott New York Marquis New York, New York	12,832	Michael Alston Baley, Marc Diraison, Keith Giffen, Tsukasa Hojo, Amy Howard-Wilson, Yasuhiro Irie, Takeshi Koike, Satoshi Kon, Hyun se Lee, Masao Maruyama, Taka Nagasawa, Takashi Nakamura, Liam O'Brien, Lisa Ortiz, Eric Stuart, Tomoko Taniguchi, Veronica Taylor, Ren Usami, and Tatsumi Yoda.[5]

Cancellations

Despite confirmed dates for 2004, Big Apple Anime Fest announced on its web site that it would skip its event in 2004 due to the Republican National Convention, which was to be held in New York City over Labor Day weekend.^[6][7] The following year, John O'Donnell of Central Park Media, one of the companies supporting Big Apple Anime Fest, informed AnimeCons.com that he was, "unaware of any plans for BAAF 2005 at this time."^[8] The convention has not been held since, and it is uncertain if there are any plans to revive it.^[9]

Attendance counting

Big Apple Anime Fest's metric for counting attendance differed from those typically used by other anime conventions, counting person-days ("turnstile attendance") rather than memberships sold.^[10]

See also

• Anime NYC
• New York Comic Con
• List of anime conventions