“Hideaki Tokutake of Japan Location Market — an organization promoting regional development through tourism, and a host of one of the symposiums — emphasized the growing potential of animation tourism.
“A majority of people think story settings for anime are imaginary, but in many cases, they’re not,” Tokutake said, citing the case of Washimiya-machi, Saitama Prefecture — one of the cities where the anime series “Lucky Star” takes place.
“The number of visitors to the local Washimiya Shrine during New Year’s rocketed from 90,000 to 420,000 between 2007 and 2009, and had a huge impact on the city’s tourist income, as well as sales of related merchandise,” he said, adding that such revenue from “pilgrimages” by anime fans poses a great business opportunity.
Gunji Mikio of Production I.G agreed, saying his company is planning on coordinating a tour in the Tohoku region following the footsteps of Date Masamune, a powerful daimyo of the Azuchi-Momoyama Period and the samurai featured in Production I.G’s popular “Sengoku Basara” anime.
“We need to think of new ways to make profits in these tough times, and anime tourism is one thing we’re looking into,” he said.”
This is the type of thing that could be really, really cool on paper, but then really, really bomb in practice…Like, I want to be optimistic, and I can certainly see an application for it (especialy to make money), but it just doesn’t feel solid. It feels like a bunch a guys desparate to make money off of anime went-”Hey?! What haven’t we done yet?” Course I still want to ride the Going Merry, so who am I to talk?
[via The Japan Time]
State of the Anime Industry (Main Article)
