It is the biggest fan-convention for youth and popular culture in Austria. Every year the association AniManga invites all Anime- and Mangafans to celebrate a colourful amicable festival. But how was the idea of the AniNite conceived?

It all began at 2011, when round about 70 friends met on a small scale for the first AniNite to watch some Japanese movies and play video games together. Already the year after that there was a second projection theatre and the number of visitors had more than doubled. In the year 2003 the first “Austrian Otaku of the year”-competition took place and already 900 persons participated in the small event – organized from fans for fans.

All that took place under the guidance of the non-profit association AniManga Austria – Arbeitskreis japanische Jugendkultur, which is animated at supporting the Japanese youth and popular culture in Austria and reducing the preconception against foreign cultures. The project was founded in the year 2000 with the online portal AniManga, which was expanded one year later by the forum AnimeBoard.

In the same year the association once again succeeded with raising the traffic count and expanding the program and through that offer an exciting and cultural valuable event for Japan fanciers. In the year 2011 the association was able for the first time to present Japanese star guests to the visitors.

More than 7,000 fans of the Japanese culture found their way to the AniNite until 2011. More and more visitors are also from Austria’s neighboring countries, too, and that way make the AniNite even more manifold, colourful and exiting.

In 2013 for the first time the AniNite was held outside of Vienna. With more than 10,000 visitors the AniNite took place at the Muliversum Schwechat (near Vienna). This event set new benchmarks in quality and traffic count of an Anime convention in Austria. There had never been this amount of positive feedback from the visitors. A show group was provided on the AniNite for the first time that year, next to a number of Japanese and German guests of honor of the Anime and Manga fraction.

The record of the previous year was broken by the AniNite in 2014 with 14,000 guests. Next to interesting speeches about Japan, anime and more, several artists delighted the visitors with their work.

With the great cooperation of the project team and about 200 volunteers, which support the event every year without consideration, it has become possible!

The whole AniNite-crew will be happy if you will be part of it in 2015, too!