Animate! Comic Con Returns to Miami for the First Time Since 2017

After seven years away, GalaxyCon, the Fort Lauderdale-based comic book and anime convention organizer, is bringing Animate! Miami back to the Miami Airport Convention Center from Friday, February 14, through Sunday, February 16. The showcase, focused on the worlds of animation, anime, and cosplay, will feature appearances by guests from popular animated series such as Rick and Morty, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and The Fairly Odd Parents.

Animate! Miami launched in 2013 but failed to return for another installment after 2017. This year's edition promises meet and greets with popular voice actors, panels, Q&As, and even a Tattoo Row where attendees can get inked onsite. As with other Animate! conventions, the costume contest and Fantasy Super Cosplay Wrestling are expected highlights of the three-day event. Local vendors will include comic shops such as Davie's Past Present Future Comics and Korka Comics.

"What's great about Animate! is the amount of programming at our events," says GalaxyCon co-founder Mike Broder. "It goes back to when I used to do Animate! in Miami in the first place."

Before its final installment in 2017, Broder's original company, Super Conventions, oversaw Animate! Florida, along with its sister events Florida Supercon and Paradise City Comic Con. In the nearly 20 years since Broder founded Super Conventions in 2006, various organizers have established similar conventions in the city, including Otakufest, MizuCon, and Spirit of Japan. Each of these revolves around different interests, but Broder's efforts have clearly influenced them.

"[Other local conventions] didn't exist when we did," says Nick Unthank, GalaxyCon's director of programming. "They've seen what works with our shows, and some of them have adapted to it."
Depending on the city and convention theme, GalaxyCon's events can draw anywhere from 15,000 to 50,000 attendees. Nightmare Weekend Miami, also organized by GalaxyCon, drew a smaller turnout this past October — about 3,000 attendees across all three days.

Broder hopes Animate! Miami will resonate with South Florida's geek community on a larger scale. Last month, GalaxyCon collaborated with Fort Lauderdale's Revolution Live to host Animate! Rave, intended to be a micro sampler of a GalaxyCon experience.  "I'm hoping the people who used to come out to our shows and have a good time come out again," says Broder of this weekend's official convention.

Animate! has another favorable factor in its corner: Miami's multilingual audience. The Latino community has shown a particular interest in anime for a long time, and local event organizers have capitalized on that by booking voice actors from anime and western cartoons' Spanish dubs. Other conventions — including those organized by GalaxyCon — have adapted accordingly. In 2021, Florida Supercon featured voice actors Sebastián Reggio, Andrea Villaverde, Juan Felipe Sierra Corte, and Rómulo Bernal from the Spanish dub of the anime My Hero Academia.

In addition to this weekend's Miami edition, GalaxyCon will host another Animate! convention in Orlando in August. Mirroring the explosive growth of regional cons since Animate! Miami's last outing, Broder has realized how popular his conventions have become. He first noted the phenomenon back in 2014, when he looked at the massive crowds of attendees from the crosswalk at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

"I'm standing there with my wife at the time and we're just watching this," he remembers. "It was overwhelming to see the scale of what we had built."

Animate! Miami. Friday, February 14, through Sunday, February 16, at the Miami Airport Convention Center, 711 NW 72nd Ave., Miami; 954-231-0574. Tickets cost $35 to $250 via galaxycon.com.