The fate of the world is at stake. The golden-haired Super Saiyan named Goku channels his life force into a ball of powerful energy and blasts it at a menacing alien in front of more than 9,000 cheering Dragon Ball Z (DBZ) fans. The scene from the long-running animated series – debatably the biggest and most influential manga and anime franchise of all time – played out on a massive screen near the waterfront at Jacobs Park's Rady Shell in San Diego. Led by legendary conductor Nicholas Buc, the San Diego Symphony Orchestra performed the show's original score while vocalist Hiroki Takahashi sang along.

This style of immersive, curated multimedia concert experience isn't exactly new, but it was a first for the San Francisco-based anime streaming service Crunchyroll. "Coming out of COVID, this was Crunchyroll's first San Diego Comic-Con since the pandemic," says Gita Rebbapragada, Crunchyroll's chief marketing officer.

"We wanted to bring the fan community together with a spotlight on anime in a unique and celebratory way."

San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) International is perhaps the single biggest fan convention in the world, celebrating an array of pop culture topics and genres. The ongoing pandemic led to its cancellation in 2020 and 2021, so event organizers and partners knew they wanted to go big for 2022. Crunchyroll strove to drive traffic to its brand by providing a memorable multimedia experience at SDCC.

Shell Game
A bit of serendipity: For 15 years, the San Diego Symphony held summertime concerts in the bayside park just southwest of the convention center. A brand-new, state-of-the-art open-air music venue called the Rady Shell was scheduled for a July 2020 open on the park's waterfront, but like so many things that year, it faced delays.

The Rady Shell's eventual August 2021 ribbon-cutting ceremony revealed a stunning architectural marvel: an acoustically engineered sound stage with 13,000 square feet of performance space stretching 57 feet high and 92 feet across. Six rib-like concentric steel frames support massive sheets of fabric to form the asymmetrical shell. The Crunchyroll team noticed the space was available during SDCC, so the company hatched a plan to create a unique concert series celebrating anime culture at large. "Our partners at Toei Animation had been working on a traveling and ticketed concert series for Dragon Ball and some of their other properties," says Rebbapragada. "We wanted to see if something similar could be arranged that would be free for SDCC attendees."

Designed in collaboration with events production company Overlook, the Dragon Ball Symphonic Adventure is a touring 2.5-hour cinematic and symphonic experience that leads fans of the series through the show's exciting history. Scaling the show down to a manageable 90 minutes allowed organizers to offer the concert for free and prevented burnout for SDCC attendees. Rebbapragada said the team wanted "to ensure SDCC attendees, who likely already experienced a very fun, full day at the convention, could end their day by immersing themselves into the world of Dragon Ball."

Heavy on the music and visuals, the concert also included pyrotechnic displays and projection mapping unique to the space, so while fireworks exploded from the front of the stage, fans saw an enormous anime dragon projection curling around the top of the Rady Shell. A surprising hurdle? "One of the more noteworthy challenges was locking down special fireworks approvals and permissions from the military since the convention center is so close to a military base!" Rebbapragada says.

Crunchyroll's team saw the event as an extension of the core SDCC programming, which is why it was offered free to all convention badge holders. "The fact that Crunchyroll made this concert event available free to all Comic-Con badge holders was a smart move that surely saw a huge return on investment," said one Sizzle Awards judge. "Integrating touchpoints and messaging throughout areas of San Diego adjacent to the traffic builder event was yet another really smart decision."

Breaking Boundaries
Leading up to and during the weekend of SDCC, Crunchyroll drummed up excitement by branding a number of San Diego Metropolitan Transit System buses with the Crunchyroll logo and outfitting them with a wrap that featured characters from some of the service's most popular anime, including Dragon Ball. "Each of our activations helped us immerse fans into the world of anime," Rebbapragada says. "Whether fans were on the exhibit floor or exploring the area surrounding the convention center, we wanted to be there celebrating anime!"

How could the Crunchyroll team celebrate anime culture more broadly with the concert series? The answer involved hosting the all-female Japanese music group Atarashii Gakko!, a name that translates roughly to "out of line" or "new school leaders."

"As a group, they embrace personal expression and push against traditional boundaries," Rebbapragada says. "Their sound and style breaks down genre walls to create music mixing elements of pop, jazz, hip-hop, rock, and more, delivered with a punk energy and featuring frantic dance moves, choreographed by the four members themselves." Described as "wild and edgy," the group puts a lot of effort into an engaging performance that expresses the cultural beauty of Japan at large.

Members include the cute but fierce Mizyu, funky Rin, wildcard Suzuka, and graceful Kanon with each embodying a certain kind of archetype seen so often in anime. And their iconic Japanese sailor schoolgirl costumes with long skirts certainly evoke myriad characters anime fans have seen time and again, most obviously Sailor Moon. But the group's various costumes for the show also evoked anime tropes in ways that resonated with fans.

Crunchyroll estimates that approximately 17,000 fans attended the concert series across both nights. The venue can seat up to 10,000 depending on its configuration and it was close to capacity both nights. Factoring in the concerts' social media buzz and the ensuing press coverage from 60 media outlets, the anime streaming service considered the event a resounding success.

"This company had a plan to wow attendees and the media and they did it," said a Sizzle Awards judge. "They considered all senses and delivered a rich experience that led to millions of impressions and media coverage."

Having a Ball
Dragon Ball was a major part of those efforts, especially because it was anticipating an opening of its own – the latest feature-length animated film was slated for its theatrical released in the United States only a few weeks later.

"The timing of the event as part of SDCC coincided well with many of our other efforts at the convention around the Dragon Ball franchise," Rebbapragada says. "During the marketing promotions of both this SDCC event and our broader title promotions, our team balanced the appeal of the classic Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball series with the opportunity to excite fans with what was new for the franchise in the 'Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero' film."

In addition to the concert event, Crunchyroll had a presence on the SDCC show floor that delighted attendees. A prominent panel featured the English and Japanese voices behind some of the film and franchise's biggest characters. Plus, attendees were able to see an extended sneak peek of the film's first 20 minutes. The film focuses on the surrogate father-son relationship between characters Piccolo and Gohan as they protect Earth from a major threat. Piccolo, a fan-favorite green alien, who is the reincarnation of the demon king, is often overshadowed by the franchise's more central heroes, so Crunchyroll took the opportunity to give him some love.

Crunchyroll worked with Toei Animation (the studio that produces Dragon Ball) on a booth featuring a life-size replica of Piccolo's house. "We wanted to create an immersive experience that would excite existing fans while sparking curiosity in those not yet familiar with the series," Rebbapragada says. "Piccolo's house was created to allow attendees to become part of the action through a custom build designed to bring the anime to life – literally!"

Several affiliated activations, like that of video game publisher Bandai Namco, also promoted "Super Hero." Fans could claim distinct Dragon Ball badge ribbons, swag bags, branded paper fans, lanyards, and headsets for Gohan and Piccolo. The interplay between them all generated a scavenger hunt effect of cross promotion.

Thanks in part to Crunchyroll's efforts at SDCC, "Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero" went on to become the number one film in North America its opening weekend in August 2022 and eventually the fourth highest-grossing anime film ever at the U.S. box office. IMDb rankings show it's the fifth best Dragon Ball movie ever made out of 22.

Although it's difficult to track how many concertgoers turned out to see Atarashii Gakko! or the Dragon Ball concert precisely because of their exposure to Crunchyroll's brand at a booth or panel, you can't argue with the results. "It was an effective traffic builder that generated an energy boost that clearly drove traffic to Crunchyroll's SDCC booth," one Sizzle Awards judge wrote. But perhaps Crunchyroll's Rebbapragada said it best: "You can never go wrong with fireworks on the water!" E