WORLD: MEDIUM OF THE WEEK - Animax brings 24-hour anime across Asia region.

Animax Asia aims to appeal to people of all ages, not just children, Jo Bowman writes.

Japanese animation fans will soon get a fix of their favourite programmes around the clock, with the launch this month of Animax Asia, the region's first 24-hour Japanese animation channel.

Three separate broadcast feeds, for Taiwan, Hong Kong and south-east Asia, will serve up a diet of animated films and series to an audience of young adults.

Todd Miller, the managing director for AXN, Animax and SVP in Asia at Sony Pictures Television International, says Asia's fascination with all things Japanese began with comics and Japanese music as early as the 60s. The love affair with animation came later as anime became more mainstream in the mid-90s with the Pokemon phenomenon.

More recently, the Japanese animated feature film Spirited Away captivated audiences across the globe .

'The genre of anime in Asia is very strong and there is widespread demand for it. And now the evolution of pay-TV in Asia allows us to meet this demand,' he says.

Animax Asia follows the launch of the original Animax channel in Japan in mid-June. Animax Japan has since become one of the country's most popular cable and satellite networks, viewed in four million homes. 'In Japan, Animax is a general entertainment channel appealing to children and adults, male and female. It's not dependent on just one demographic,' Miller says.