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Coronavirus significantly hampers the cosplay and anime culture

The very famous Nippombashi Street Festa which regularly draws over 200,000 people will not be able to do so this year. Japan has a lot of cosplay events, but few can match the scale of Osaka’s Nippombashi Street Festa. The event’s organisers have sent out a notice that this year’s Street Festa, which was scheduled to take place on 15 March, has been cancelled.

Japan’s number of confirmed infections still trails far, far behind China’s, but the Japanese government has been finding an increasing number of cases within the country, with the first coronavirus death occurring in Kanagawa Prefecture less than a week ago.

Meanwhile, Anime Japan, Tokyo’s largest anime industry event/fan gathering, has sent out a statement advising would-be attendees that it is also considering cancelling this year’s iteration, currently scheduled for 21-24 March at the Tokyo Big Site conference center, though as of this writing the plan is for the convention to go on as scheduled.

The deadly virus has also affected the anime community of Japan. The first anime victim of the coronavirus outbreak was the series A3! Sason Sring & Summer,where the official blog post announced the delay of the series until the end of the season, and was corroborated by a similar announcement from the show’s New Zealand and Australian broadcaster AnimeLab. Asteroid in Love, is the second in the line which delayed their seventh episode by a week, opting to air a recap episode in its original time slot instead.

Infinite Dendrogram became the latest casualty on 18 February, with the series’ official website stating that the “recent spread of the new global coronavirus “COVID-19, we decided to postpone broadcasting and distribution of episode 7 due to production circumstances. We deeply apologize to the fans for the sudden announcement.”

A the virus sweeps the country with millions being quarantined, many business have been repeatedly shut down under various quarantines which prevent workers from performing any of their duties.

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