Event organizer Cosplay.ph has announced on Wednesday that the Cosplay Mania event will be canceled for this year due to effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This will be the first time that the organizer’s flagship event had been postponed since it was first held in 2008, and the next event is set to be held next year. The event was original set to take place on October 3-4, 2020.
The organizer had previously announced the cancellation of Cosplay Carnival 2020 and Anime and Cosplay Expo (ACX) 2020, which were scheduled to be held in April and July, respectively.
Instead, the organizer announced in the video that they plan to hold an online event called “FanFes Online”, but details regarding the event will be announced at a later date.
The event was derived from FanFes Manila, which was a pop-culture convention, also organized by Cosplay.ph, focusing more on Western pop culture, but was only held once, in May 2018.
Cosplay Mania is the flagship event of Cosplay.ph, focusing mainly on Japanese anime, pop culture and cosplay.
The popular convention is regularly held between the third and fourth quarter of the year, since it was first held in 2008. The event was held at the Megatrade Halls at SM Megamall in Mandaluyong City in its first two years, before moving to SMX Convention Center Manila in Pasay City, which had been its home since 2010.
The event also partnered with the highly-popular regional anime convention Anime Festival Asia (AFA), organized by Singapore-based organizer SOZO, and has brought the winners of their annual cosplay competition to AFA’s Asian Regional Cosplay Championship from 2009 to 2015.
Last year, Cosplay Mania brought popular Japanese musical acts like Myth & Roid, Asaka and May’n, as well as voice actors Motoko Kumai and Rumi Okubo.
