Anime may have started as Japanese animation for a hyper-niche audience, but it has ballooned into a global phenomenon that generates more than $20 billion in annual revenues through TV shows, video games, and merchandise. Who can forget Pokémon Go, the 2016 augmented-reality game that had players using their mobile phones to track and capture virtual Pokémon around the world? And excitement for the genre only seems to be growing, with corporate events dedicated to building the industry's fanbase.

Crunchyroll Inc., a San Francisco-based anime streaming service, is one such company that hosts an annual U.S. gathering of the anime community. The organization was glowing when it wrapped up Crunchyroll Expo 2019. Featuring a series of theaters to watch premieres of the latest anime shows, a bustling exhibition hall of vendors selling pop-culture products, panels of experts sharing industry knowledge, a cosplay masquerade, and more, "Crunchy City" inside the San Jose McEnery Convention Center drew than 45,000 turnstile attendees to the three-day extravaganza – up 10 percent from the previous year and 50 percent higher than the first event in 2017. The Crunchyroll events team immediately started plotting an even more exciting festival for 2020, but then came COVID-19.

Early in the shutdown, the team still hoped to offer a live event later in the year with health and safety measures in place but also began parallel planning an entirely digital experience. In June, with the pandemic surging across the globe, Crunchyroll scrapped its live experience and focused on producing a digital replacement dubbed the Virtual Crunchyroll Expo (V-CRX) 2020. The company immediately announced the cancellation, revealed the digital offering for the same dates, and allowed fans to receive refunds for their purchased tickets or roll them over for the 2021 expo.

Global Ambitions
Instead of offering the kind of stripped-down conference that so many digital producers were churning out, the team set an ambitious vision of delivering an online festival that rivaled the immersive experience of its live expos. The challenge was that it only had five months to transform that digital dream into reality. "Like flipping a switch, documents full of ideas became meetings to discuss what was possible," says Lauren Stevens, events manager at Crunchyroll. "The technical limitations pushed the team's creativity for how we could build an event fans would love and bridge the divide of a remote-access world."

Crunchyroll collaborated with ReedPop, a Reed Exhibition Ltd. company, which had been the show's original production partner for the live expo and would continue being the collaborator for the now-digital conference. Fortunately, since the convention was slated for later in the year, the collaborators had a window – albeit a small one – to mine other virtual conventions taking place throughout late spring and early summer to figure out what was working and what wasn't.

Together, Crunchyroll and ReedPop began fleshing out plans, which would build off ideas from its live expos and incorporate innovative, tech-driven opportunities. Like similar virtual shows, V-CRX would offer attendees the chance to watch panels of anime experts and connect with vendors and artists. However, the company wanted to offer something more than the standard fare of screen time for its visitors, so it developed plans for dance parties, a cosplay competition, a gamified scavenger hunt, and even a cat cafe.

The virtual experience would still feature the New Crunchy City, a digital variation from its live festival, with four distinct zones: the Theater District, the Shopping District, the Anime Arts District, and the Super Arcade feat. Club Yuzu. The Theater District would showcase a robust schedule of 85 panels and offerings (many of which would be subtitled in up to six languages), while the Shopping District would allow fans to find merchandise from their favorite series. Inside the Anime Arts District, select artists could sell works inspired by their favorite fandoms. And finally, visitors could round out their convention experience through tantalizing experiences at the Super Arcade.

With plans roughed out, ReedPop got to work designing and building the expo's online platform, and the in-house design team began commissioning artwork for its cityscape. At the same time, the marketing team started drumming up excitement for the event. Preregistration for the September expo opened in July, and fans began receiving weekly email and social-media updates announcing new guests, highlighting panels, and revealing the New Crunchy City design. Guests were encouraged to download the show's companion app offering personalized scheduling and in-app exclusives. To further entice use of the app, the company teased the "Onyx Equinox" Scavenger Hunt, a proprietary gamified experience in which users would scan hidden Quick Response (QR) codes that unlocked anime characters and earn them the chance to win a premium subscription to Crunchyroll's streaming service or a ticket to the 2021 conference.

To accommodate its more than 200 panelists, special guests, and hosts, Crunchyroll decided to prerecord much of the video material to be released according to the slated schedule. "Doing so not only accommodated presenter schedules from around the globe but also helped us present a professional, subtitled, and seamless experience to our fans," says Mary Franklin, head of events at Crunchyroll. As if that wasn't time consuming enough, they were also coordinating with attendees applying to host fan panels and entrants hoping to win the Cosplay Cup in the costume competition. On top of that, the team was lining up vendors and artists looking to exhibit their offerings.

Being that this was the company's first foray into the digital-expo world, Crunchyroll was cagey about its pre-show goals. However, it planned to gauge the event's success, in part, on the number of registrants, total and unique page views, panel views, minutes of content watched, and the results from a post-event survey. And because of the global nature of a virtual event, the company was also keen to track attendance, viewership, and vendor participation from different countries.

Sneak Peek
During the weeks before V-CRX, registered attendees could use the event's app to preview offerings and create personalized schedules by favoriting panels and scheduling notifications of upcoming content. As part of the company's advancing marketing effort, the weekly emails became daily missives in the week leading up to V-CRX. And to attendees' delight, four days before the official kickoff, Crunchyroll opened the Shopping District and Anime Arts District, allowing eager visitors to explore parts of New Crunchy City.

In the Shopping District, fans found more than 100 vendors. The show's virtual exhibit hall allowed exhibitors to promote some of their featured items and link directly to their own online stores to market their full line of products. Visitors could snatch up all things anime, from character figurines and plushies to key chains and apparel. Meanwhile, in the Anime Arts District, attendees discovered a curated selection of vendors. "We had 180 different artists participate from more than eight different countries," Stevens says. "This was the first time we were able to include international talent, and all the artists shipped worldwide." While these booths were free, each exhibitor was required to submit an application so the Crunchyroll team could ensure fans were treated to a wide selection of artwork and styles from the anime and pop-culture communities.

Premier(e) Performance
On the first official morning of the event, registrants received a code to enter the fully opened New Crunchy City. The V-CRX homepage, vibrant with anime-inspired imagery, was intuitive to navigate – whether on a desktop or mobile device – via a sidebar, icons, and images denoting each of the virtual city's distinct districts. "We worked hard to make it as easy for fans as possible to move between the different areas of the experience and explore what they were most interested in," Stevens says.

Those that had already taken the pre-show opportunity to visit the arts and shopping zones could now enter the Theater District and Super Arcade. In the Theater District, fans dropped into any one of four stages to catch panel discussions ranging from the development of hit shows to cosplay tips and tricks. Each stage had its own chat feature, allowing attendees to engage with each other during scheduled offerings. Plus, viewers could choose from subtitles in up to six different languages.

While attendees loved the breadth of content, the Crunchyroll-Hime's Cosplay Cup was a fan favorite. Cosplay competitions are a mainstay at Crunchyroll's conventions, but this was the first time the company had to facilitate a virtual championship. Contestants were required to submit applications by the end of July that included a portfolio of the costume and information on the series or character the cosplay emulated. Once a panel of industry judges selected finalists for the fall competition, competitors were asked to submit video performances of themselves portraying their anime characters. A panel of expert judges including Rock M. Sakura, a drag queen and contestant from season 12 of "RuPaul's Drag Race," presented awards for best construction, performance, and innovation during a live awards ceremony, with winners earning trophies and cash prizes.

The Theater District also provided enthusiasts a chance to interact with some of the voices behind their favorite characters through the Meet and Greet engagement – the only offering that attendees had to pay for. Besides allowing enthusiasts a lively hour-long opportunity to meet some of the genre's brightest stars, attendees could receive autographed digital posters. Following the scheduled panels, the videos were housed in the Theater District's library so that visitors had on-demand access to them throughout the conference.

Between selected panels, fans amplified their convention experience in the virtual city's fourth district, the Super Arcade. There they downloaded free digital swag that included 40 digital posters and Zoom backgrounds featuring scenes from their favorite shows. Enthusiasts could also enjoy the Crunchy Cam, an in-app augmented-reality feature, to snap a selfie with a sticker of the V-CRX logo, Crunchyroll Hime (the company's mascot), or Yuzu (Hime's cat) to share on social media. Aficionados also embarked on a video tour featuring works of art from Japanese animation studio Mappa Co. Ltd., with commentary from series creators who shared insights into the inspirations behind their popular anime shows.

The district also provided a bevy of musical performances. Each evening, the community came together for online raves featuring cutting-edge talent such as TeddyLoid, the Japanese electronic music producer and DJ. Attendees could also catch composer Kevin Penkin and the musicians who played on the original soundtrack for "The Rising of the Shield Hero," as well as a concert from the Miku Symphony celebrating its fifth anniversary with performances by famous vocaloid Miku Hatsune and the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra.

With so much going on in the quartet of districts, attendees could easily become overstimulated. For those needing a quick reprieve, visitors could kick back and relax in one of the Super Arcade's three quiet rooms and watch calming scenescapes from some of Crunchyroll's hit shows while listening to soothing music. Alternatively, visitors could enter Yuzu's Cat Cafe, named after one of anime's favorite felines. The cafe offered livestreams of cats doing their thing – mostly napping and playing – on feeds from Kitten Academy in Connecticut, an organization that helps foster kittens get adopted. "There were many aspects of the show that were inspired by things we wanted to do originally at the live show, and Yuzu's Cat Cafe is a great example," Franklin says. "Cat cafes are popular in Japan, and we were looking into working with a cat adoption agency to host a safe, live cat cafe at Crunchyroll Expo. When we went virtual, we asked ourselves, 'Why not do this virtually?'"

Obviously, there was no shortage of engaging (and relaxing) activities for anime fans during V-CRX. And as they explored New Crunchy City, many kept their eyes peeled for QR codes hidden in the virtual environments. When they found one, guests scanned it using the app and unlocked a character from "Onyx Equinox," a show that had not yet launched. The gamification allowed Crunchyroll to introduce fans to the show's characters and promote the upcoming series. Hunters that located and scanned at least nine of the 10 QR codes were automatically entered into a virtual drawing where 20 lucky players won a year-long premium streaming subscription to Crunchyroll or a ticket to the 2021 gathering.

A Virtual Virtuoso
The expo's production and execution left Corporate Event Awards judges in awe. "Talk about a fantasy environment come to life," one juror said. Another remarked, "I appreciate how Crunchyroll created a variety of distinctly different engagements and activities. That can be especially hard to do during a virtual show."

Instead of breaking down and packing up, the events team started mining data from every possible source. And the results were nothing short of award worthy. Well over a quarter-million attendees from more than 200 countries and territories visited V-CRX during the three-day weekend. The expo garnered hundreds of thousands of video views amounting to more than eight years' worth of total viewing time. Plus, nearly half of participants were from outside the United States, exemplifying just how wide a net Crunchyroll cast.

Shortly after the close of V-CRX, registered users, sponsors, artists, and exhibitors received a survey to share their thoughts on the festival. The results revealed that more than three-quarters of respondents had never attended a Crunchyroll Expo, yet nearly all indicated they are likely to attend future live or digital events. "When we set out to create a virtual expo, we wanted to build an experience that let our fans feel like they were at a live event while still safely staying home," Franklin says. "Fans told us we achieved that goal, which is the highest compliment they could give us." And due to the success of its online expo, Crunchyroll plans to incorporate virtual offerings even after live shows return. We'll raise a choko of sake to that. Kanpai! E