After drawing 3,000 to its debut, Atlanta’s newest anime fest expands

Last year, the co-founders of Trap Sushi wanted to try something new.

The Atlanta-based organization had made a name for itself over the previous five years by holding regular gatherings that fuse anime, hip-hop and gaming culture, drawing hundreds of partygoers on a regular basis.

But what if it added another event to its roster, one larger and more ambitious: a festival with live music and other interactive experiences?

The inaugural Atlanime Fest — pronounced “Atlanna-may,” for the record — was a hit. More than 3,000 attendees flocked to the venue for the one-day event last October, many of them decked out in cosplay, to watch headliner Waka Flocka Flame and other performances, dance to DJ sets or compete in gaming tournaments.

This year, Atlanime Fest is returning. Trap Sushi has scaled it up to a four-day affair Oct. 15-18, an expansion it hopes will draw more visitors from other cities and parts of the country.

Held across multiple venues, the all-ages event is adding new types of programming, including a panel on Black animators, a content creator incubator and a fashion show. The festival will culminate in more than a dozen live performances on Saturday, headlined by Slim Jxmmi of rap duo Rae Sremmurd, and a skate night at Cascade Skating Rink on Sunday.

With the added dates, Atlanime Fest joins the ranks of Anime Weekend Atlanta, MomoCon and Dragon Con as multiday conventions celebrating anime. What sets it apart, however, is its mission to provide a welcoming space for Black fans to engage in their niche interests, said Eli Watkins, the chief marketing officer and managing partner of Atlanime Fest.

“This offering is about the events, yes, and it’s about the culture,” Watkins said. “But it’s also about bringing together people in a very safe, family-friendly event that can be multigenerational.”

Growth has been the name of the game for Trap Sushi since co-founders Tolden “Troop” and Stephanie Williams held their first event in 2020.

The monthly parties grew mostly through word-of-mouth, going from 25 people to more than 3,500. Trap Sushi began to partner with conventions across the country, traveling to and holding events in Los Angeles, New York City and Houston.

In 2024, Atlanta-based gaming and esports marketing company Cxmmunity Media took a 15% stake in Trap Sushi, helping the party expand its cadence and its global reach. In May of last year, Trap Sushi held its first event in Tokyo, where it hopes to soon return.

Trap Sushi’s journey has followed a rise in popularity of anime.

Since the pandemic, anime has moved further into the mainstream, enabled by the rise of streaming services such as Crunchyroll, which reported more than 21 million subscribers worldwide in March, and Netflix, which reported this year that more than 50% of its members regularly enjoy anime. But the true inception of anime’s popularity can be traced back to the start of YouTube, providing accessibility to the niche genre through technology, according to a 2024 study by the National Research Group.

Anime fans in the U.S. are typically younger and male, according to the NRG report. About 47% of anime viewers in the U.S. are white, while a quarter are Hispanic and 20% are Black, according to the NRG report. Both of these percentages exceed the Black and Hispanic populations in the U.S.

Still, Black anime fans don’t always feel fully represented at large conventions, which can often have predominantly white attendees and may not reflect the diverse makeup of the fandom, Watkins said.

Trap Sushi parties have sought to fill that gap, celebrating the intersection of Black culture and Japanese pop culture. Atlanime builds on that effort, offering an option that also welcomes fans under 21.

“When we started Atlanime Fest, it was really for, like, the next generation of people to, like, have this, like, third space and have a place (to feel like) they’re kids again,” Watkins said. “Me and Troop have said this before: You can finally come out now. You don’t have to be embarrassed.”

For Troop Williams, success looks like attendees walking away thinking they had a great time and felt safe. Selling out is their goal — as of Tuesday, the lowest tiers of the festival passes have sold out.