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Anime conventions, or the lack of
Nov. 15th, 2020 03:59 amNext year's Katsucon has been cancelled and punted into 2022. I'm not really surprised. Assuming things go back to normal enough for Otakon to happen in 2021, that would mean a gap of 18 months between when I'd go to conventions. I have a sneaking suspicion it may end up longer than that.
The thing is, conventions don't just spring up out of nowhere overnight. They can't. These are planned a whole year in advance, with contracts and negotiations taking up months at a time. It's not like they can just mothball the whole thing, wait a while, then pull a tarp off it like nothing happened. Nope, the process has to start all over again.
It should also be noted that conventions seem to be waiting until a few months before the event to announce it's been canceled or postponed. They're not just arbitrarily saying that, even though everyone seems to know what's coming. No, what the conventions are waiting for is a contract clause to activate: Force Majeure. What that does is, if something big happens that prevents the convention from being held, and it's outside the control of both convention and venue, then that's a Force Majeure event and everyone's off the hook. The convention doesn't have to pay the venue (or they get deposits back), pre-registrations can get refunded or applied to next year, and planning can start for the next one. It's a hard brake on the convention, but a controlled one, which is always going to be better than hitting a wall or going off a cliff.
Now if the decision to cancel was made exclusively by the convention staff, then they'd have steep penalties to contend with. They would either be liable for cancellation fees or they'd lose any deposits they may have already pre-paid to the venue. That can get expensive (losses in the six figures is realistic) and can be enough to permanently end the convention. So, in a situation like this, Force Majeure is their only hope.
In the case of Otakon, FM was invoked because the convention center was being turned into a field hospital. For AUSA, the hotel closed due to the pandemic and it became clear it wasn't going to reopen any time soon. For Katsucon, the hotel is okay but limits on gatherings remain, so stuffing 20k+ anime fans into one building is impossible.
I'm not expecting every convention to return to the calendar. A few of them are probably not coming back. While the large ones are organized as their own entities, either non-profits or LLCs or combination of such, many of the smaller ones are funded entirely out of someone's pocket, and if something goes wrong, it's on them to foot the bill. I can see many of those smaller cons fizzling out, with their founders and sole con-runners feeling deep relief at the FM clause getting invoked, so they can get their money back and pay bills, or at least not worry about going into debt over a convention that wasn't going to happen.
The anime conventions will come back someday. Too many people, myself included, miss them too much to let them become a thing of the past. We miss the big anime-themed parties that ran all weekend long. I predict that the first anime conventions that come back are going to be both weird and triumphant; like a typical anime protagonist who just took a crazy beating but somehow got back on their feet, because they have just enough fight left in them. Appropriate, really.
The thing is, conventions don't just spring up out of nowhere overnight. They can't. These are planned a whole year in advance, with contracts and negotiations taking up months at a time. It's not like they can just mothball the whole thing, wait a while, then pull a tarp off it like nothing happened. Nope, the process has to start all over again.
It should also be noted that conventions seem to be waiting until a few months before the event to announce it's been canceled or postponed. They're not just arbitrarily saying that, even though everyone seems to know what's coming. No, what the conventions are waiting for is a contract clause to activate: Force Majeure. What that does is, if something big happens that prevents the convention from being held, and it's outside the control of both convention and venue, then that's a Force Majeure event and everyone's off the hook. The convention doesn't have to pay the venue (or they get deposits back), pre-registrations can get refunded or applied to next year, and planning can start for the next one. It's a hard brake on the convention, but a controlled one, which is always going to be better than hitting a wall or going off a cliff.
Now if the decision to cancel was made exclusively by the convention staff, then they'd have steep penalties to contend with. They would either be liable for cancellation fees or they'd lose any deposits they may have already pre-paid to the venue. That can get expensive (losses in the six figures is realistic) and can be enough to permanently end the convention. So, in a situation like this, Force Majeure is their only hope.
In the case of Otakon, FM was invoked because the convention center was being turned into a field hospital. For AUSA, the hotel closed due to the pandemic and it became clear it wasn't going to reopen any time soon. For Katsucon, the hotel is okay but limits on gatherings remain, so stuffing 20k+ anime fans into one building is impossible.
I'm not expecting every convention to return to the calendar. A few of them are probably not coming back. While the large ones are organized as their own entities, either non-profits or LLCs or combination of such, many of the smaller ones are funded entirely out of someone's pocket, and if something goes wrong, it's on them to foot the bill. I can see many of those smaller cons fizzling out, with their founders and sole con-runners feeling deep relief at the FM clause getting invoked, so they can get their money back and pay bills, or at least not worry about going into debt over a convention that wasn't going to happen.
The anime conventions will come back someday. Too many people, myself included, miss them too much to let them become a thing of the past. We miss the big anime-themed parties that ran all weekend long. I predict that the first anime conventions that come back are going to be both weird and triumphant; like a typical anime protagonist who just took a crazy beating but somehow got back on their feet, because they have just enough fight left in them. Appropriate, really.
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