/Slap

A Game of no Honor, no Dignity, and no Punching or Kicking.



Slapping is the way to go.

Exasperation, Exposition, Explanation, Day Two

Not reading this in correct Format? Go Here
Go Here if you Missed Day One
Sick of Bad News? Haruhi Second Season Announced
___________________________________

For those of you who do not know me, I am a fan, a big fan of Anime, but that isn't saying very much. I'm the host and President of the Anime Club @ UC Santa Barbara for the past three years, and I know a few things about the two A's. Administration and Anime.

Anime Expo of 2007 has left me speechless.

The following highlights "events" over a weekend spent in the burning sunlight of Long Beach at AX 2007, chasing the SOS idols.

Disclaimer: To keep this article in a rather neutral stance, it is color coded the following way:
(Please follow the link to the original article to see the formatting)

• Facts: Summary, short and clear
• Experience: This happened.
• Quotes: "As Spoken"
• What You Didn't Know: Some things happening in the background that even on site staff sometimes do not know (Note, much of this is word of mouth information that came from high up management of AX, may contain errors)
• Opinion: Mine, take with grain of salt.
• Rant: Block your ears.
  

Leave any question or comments at the bottom link.

_______________________________


The is the end of Day One, and Events that Lead Up to Day Two.



Day One, Saturday 6:10 PM, Front Walkway


The focus panel was over, and the exhibition hall was closed, and it was time to head home for the day.

"Ah! My Friend!!"
-Wada

Having lined up and sat together at the focus panel earlier in the day, we have become good friends with the Japanese fan and his friends. We exchanged greetings, handshakes, and I wondered why the most hardcore SOS-dan fan in the world, did not line up to ask a question at the focus panel, to let the seiyuu's know that he had followed them all the way here to support them, because he had more than an opportunity to nail first spot on the microphone. Note that Wada knows English only to the point of what he probably learned at school, so the conversation continues with his broken English, and my broken Japanese.

"The SOS-dan, come, here. To America. Focus Panel, for fans.... in America, so, I not line up."
-Wada

Holy crap, what courtesy! He flew, all the way from Japan, coming to the US all by himself, lines up first for the focus panel, and gets his ass cut by a group of "rule breakers", I think he deserves more than first place on the mic, and to say hello to his beloved idols. But NO. He has the courtesy to allow fans in America to run the focus panel, asking them questions that can't are not only slightly inappropriate in Japan, but lose his chance for center spotlight.

Perhaps its cultural, camaraderie among fans in Japan perhaps? This kind of stuff just doesn't happen on these shores. Once the host announced for people to line up for the microphone to ask questions, specifically requesting no punching or kicking, the room explodes and a 60 man line form with in a split second, I thought i saw someone's fist is another person's mouth. Great organization, AX, great demonstration of character, American fans.


Back to the front walkway, we ask Wada when he plans to start lining up for the autograph session scheduled for tomorrow at 10am. It seemed that even the action of asking shocked him.

".....All Night!!"
-Wada

More than a little surprised, since merely lining up for 3 hours had secured us front row seats, with the holy TICKET in hand, forfeiting sleep to line up in the morning for more than a couple of hours was beyond imagine at this point. I pointed out to Wada that he was thinking of competing with Japanese fans, and that American fans are not nearly as "hardcore" as their Japanese counterparts, who sometimes wait in line for days for signatures.

"油斷は禁物"
-Wada

His words blew my mind. Roughly meaning that one must never let one's guards down, we were then offered some veteran advice.

If the signing was to be 1 hour long, and the SOS-dan signs fast, and one signature per seiyuu, one person would perhaps finish in 30 seconds, put this in a pipeline, with no speaking, no picture taking, the process could be sped up to roughly 15 to 20 seconds, meaning that with a signing no longer than one full hour, no more than 200 could bring the trio's signature home.

Lets organize some facts.

With earlier estimation of an entire roll of tickets passed out, around 500 people are going to assume that they will be just zipping pass the line to land themselves an easy autograph.

Cowboy hat AX guy, the host for the focus panel, noted nothing more than the TIME, and LOCATION of the autograph session, which up to this point, didn't exist in the printed schedule, or even announced. Nothing about duration, or any sort of detail, and he also stated that he was unsure of the location he had given.


If you can't nail the first 50 spots in line, your autograph chances decreases dramatically the farther back you are. Assuming that the length is 1 hour, at most 200 would get signatures, if photographs are allowed, -30 people, if talking was allowed, -30 people, if customized signatures were allowed (talking required), -50 more, if multiple signatures were allowed, half the remainder.

Being at anything more than 200th in line, means that you're FUCKED!

Cowboy hat AX guy's words regarding the ticket was "priority" to those non-ticketed. And how is that going to work out? does one non-ticketed person go in every 3 ticketed? or is it half and half? Doesn't that also mean that the first non-ticketed person can go in before many of those who are ticketed?

Information regarding the signing was not poorly advertised, there was zero printed information.

If it wasn't for Wada's smack in the head, we would have shown up no earlier than 8 am.

Holding the golden ticket earned from the focus panel seemed to have "guaranteed the ticket holder a signing", which were the exact words of the person passing out the tickets, but things did not turn out that way at all.


________________________________

Day Two

Early in the morning, we clawed ourselves out of bed and started onto the road to the SOS-dan autograph session. It didn't help that the trip took an hour, all while some dumbass decided to crash and overturn his convertible in the middle of the freeway at 6 AM.

As we join the line, there are about 30 or so people in front, Wada being the first in front. I turned down his heartwarming invitation to join him in the front of the line, seeing that not only will I get mad stares for the next 3 hours, but being 50th in line was a safe bet to get a signature. I was wrong.

The staff then moved the line unto the walls, claiming that we were a fire hazard, and then lined people up, and then down some stairs.
Efficiently blocking exit from a door on the second floor, which seemed like an emergency exit.


At 9:00, the line had fattened, exponentially. The 30 that was in front of us, was now almost 100. We were uneasy, but cutting was inevitable. The probability to land that autograph has already dwindled, but more and more people I haven't seen in the line before went up the stairs, at 9:30, the stairs was packed. The people behind us, under the stairs, along the wall, and unto the bridge, were unfortunately hopeless, they just didn't know.

The line on the other side of the picture marked by the purple arrow indicates the Exhibition line starting for form again, those dumb sap's never learn.

10:00 AM

Some started to ask what was going on. The staff knew nothing.
Most of the staff who kept the line in order did not even know what the line was for, much less details of the delay.

Sometime around 10:30, a staff walks out and announces that the signing is RESCHEDULED. They then said they would hand out free tickets to the SOS-dan concert, which were around $30 retail.

I'm unaware of how many tickets that were given out in total, probably 200-300 seeing that they were in tiny paper bags. But there were a couple things overlooked.

Place in line meant nothing, I later re-encountered Wada and his friend Junichi, they were saying how even they have a 5 night stay at the hotel, they are going to spend the third night on the streets, lining up for the same thing.

If you already had a premier SOS-dan ticket, and you were first in line? Go Fuck Yourself.

So there we are, entire morning in the burning sun gone to waste, but hey, we got a free ticket to the concert that was sold out online right? I guess that wasn't so bad.

_____________________________

Day two, Saturday 3:00 PM,
In front of the Arena

The SOS-dan Live

The official rumor was that there are assigned seats. Tickets are limited, there are seat numbers, areas assigned printed on the ticket, it was the logical thing to believe.

Assigned Seats = No Need to Line Up.

There was a huge crowd gathered at the entrance of the Arena, but there was no line, and the staff were ordering people to line up at places that later were not part of the line.

at around 30 minutes before time assigned for "Seating" prior to the concert, lines started to form, serious cutting was taking place, but no one really cared, because seating was assigned, a staff member walked around with a megaphone reconfirming this fact.

1 hour later, after having our bags searched for cameras, the line was beginning to be let in.

I am completely baffled by the fact that they thought:
1. searching your bags for food/drinks/camera was at all the right thing to do
2. that the search actually stopped anyone from doing anything.

After I heard about the search, I pulled out my camera from by bag, and stuck in into my jeans pocket, and walked right through.

The only retard they stopped was this Naruto cosplaying kid that had a bag of 2 water bottles, that he was later forced to throw into the trash. What a fucking shame.

Upon entering the actual arena, the crowd was forced to make a line in front of the actual arena doors. When word comes down that General Attendance seating is first come first serve.

Those of you who believe the staff saying that seats were assigned? Staff Lie.

The crowd was highly agitated, with anyone even remotely looked like he was standing up, the entire line would shoot straight up. This line lasted for 2 hours, and the crowd was let into the auditorium at 5:30 PM, 1 hour after the show was scheduled to start.

The live was delayed for a long long time, naturally, the fans blamed AX, as it is well known for its delays, inefficiencies and various problems over the years.

Before the show started, seated audience were blasted by with SOS-dan related commercials. American commercials. They later showed a Anime review show, which proceeded to review The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, the American version, if the title was not obvious.

Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu is licensed to Bandai in America, and Bandai employed Bang Zoom! audio studio to dub the series into English.

I have no doubt that Bandai was the force behind the invitation of the SOS-dan ladies, and they wanted to pull a publicity stunt at the show.

It can only be described as GOD DAMN AWFUL! People came here to see Hirano Aya , Goto Yuko , and Chihara Minori, not some pretend American fans rating a show (8.4 btw) they paid 30 dollars to attend a live concert of.

Hearing English dubs was painful at best, but if the show was aimed to promote Haruhi in the US, then it is understandable, but it isn't. The live is for the seiyuu's. Capitalism showing its ugly face at an Anime live, what can I say, we're dealing with Bandai.

In any case, the adver-tainment did nothing to raise the spirits of the tired and agitated fans, who were still slowly coming in.

Around 6:00, the show finally started, we have, an interpreter, along with Patricia Ja Lee as the American host, Patricia, labeled in the picture below, on the left. These two were the bridge of conversation in the whole show.

The two's performance were abysmal.

The two introduced each of the three SOS-dan seiyuu's, Gotou Yuuko, Chihara Minori, and Hirano Aya, allowed each to sing their character songs, and did a comparison voice acting with their American counter parts.




Patricia Lee, cosplaying as Haruhi took the position as the host. I am not aware whether or not she was actually trying to play out Haruhi's American persona, but she came off to the audience as a stuck up self centered bitch. While Haruhi does have that attitude, it comes off as extremely bastardizing in English.

"I Recruit all of You to the ASOS-Brigade"
-Patricia Ja Lee

The part that pisses me off the most is that she believed that ANYONE would give a flying fuck about HER, an English speaking AMERICAN version persona Haruhi. The entire ordeal was a god damn mistake.

First of all, nobody cares about the North American version. The DVD's are barely released in the US, barely anyone has heard of these horrifyingly ear bleeding English dubs, and throughout the hour, the English voices were held much higher respect to the three seiyuu's who have come all this way to perform. The reason why everybody and anybody is in this auditorium in the first place.


I Fucking hate that bitch.




The order for a voice over comparison was Japanese first, then English second.

Anyone who fail to understand the meaning behind this, you are a fool.

They played a copy AFTER an original. In an attitude as if the American voices were somehow better, newer, and more appealing to the audience.

What you Might Not have Known:
Turns out, there are more facts that weigh into the equation: Patricia Lee and all the US voice actors are basically co-workers from Bang Zoom!

This came to me as more of an extreme disrespect for the SOS-dan ladies. The treatment they had received on stage was nothing similar to the sort of professional, rehearsed and coordinated performances they are used to in Japan.

Not only is the host only describable as a crude, unskilled and jaw-dropping bad actor, but she had put the non-English speaking seiyuu's in awkward positions numerous times.

The interpreter was in no way professional, prepared, or knowledgeable towards the context she was translating for. I would not be surprised if Bang Zoom! had pulled her from their accounting department and tossed her on stage because she was bilingual. Her translations were non-existent.

The order of English to Japanese should be Host->Translator->Seiyuu
and Japanese to English would be Seiyuu->Translator->Host

However, this order was broken in the very beginning, when Yokou Gotou spoke understandable amounts of English, and could converse directly to the host and the crowd.

Chihara Minori and Hirano Aya both had moments of blank stares to the camera, when questions directed to them from the host were not translated, and the entire stage crew were looking at them. The translation was so poorly coordinated that the seiyuu's on stage were often not aware of what was even going on.

The portion of Japanese that were translated, lost all of the humor, emotion, and character when originally spoken. The interpreter was also unaware of the meaning of popular ACG phrase "Tsundere". The English speaking audience did not understand more than 30% of what really happened.

".....Huh? What... Is, Tsundora?"
-Bang Zoom Interpreter

There were also a number of technical problems at the live.

There was a mis-sync of the audio the Seiyuu's were singing to, perhaps an ear piece, and the audio that the crowd was hearing. This caused the crowd to hear roughly a 0.3 second delay in the voice projected off the stage.

The seiyuu's were not half a second off beat in singing, it was a technical problem, but they took the fall for it.

There was also electrical noise and stutter in the video feed, all of which could have been prevented. It is unknown whether this problem was caused by the AX staff, or the Long Beach Convention Arena technical staff.


The only part that might have saved the day, was the numerous parts when Patricia Lee played Haruhi's wing-it persona.

"Hey, You know what I think is a Good Idea?"
-Patricia Ja Lee

well, getting the fuck off the stage would have a good been one, but I guess i can't ask for too much, and no one answered.
She had just invited the other two of Bandai's official Haruhi coplayer trio (pictured above) on stage. Contrary to Patricia, the other two spoke in Japanese, were quite cute, soft spoken, and rather popular among the fans.

"Hey... You know what I think is a Good Idea?"
-Patricia Ja Lee

Patricia gives an evil stare at Mikuru's cosplayer.

"GRAB HER BREASTS FROM BEHIND!!!!! and squeeee..."

was the message shooting out of my eyes, but I guess that was also too much to expect from that Fucking Bitch.

Mikuru Mikuru-beamed the crowd, twice.

After being delayed for nearly two hours, the live ended in ninety minutes. I met up with a friend who was doing Press coverage for AX.

"While seeing the SOS-dan was totally worth while, The problems, the host, the interpreter, and the technical issues that occured pains me to see our idols underapreciated."

and as we dragged our exhausted, burnt and mind blown bodies back home from AX, day two, we couldn't help but debate as to how much truth lies in the cute final words of Hirano Aya, when there are much greater forces at work behind the industry sponsored convention that is nothing more than doing business, Anime Expo 2007.

"I'l Be Baaaaaack!!!!"
-Hirano Aya

___________________________


Come back for the stunning conclusion that is the Exasperation, Exposition, Explanation Saga, Day Three. Where the true reason of a near-botched signing, and the Idol's reactions to the Live concert are revealed.

Exasperation, Exposition, Explanation, Day One

For those of you who do not know me, I am a fan, a big fan of Anime, but that isn't saying very much. I'm the host and President of the Anime Club @ UC Santa Barbara for the past three years, and I know a few things about the two A's. Administration and Anime.

Anime Expo of 2007 has left me speechless.

The following highlights "events" over a weekend spent in the burning sunlight of Long Beach at AX 2007, chasing the SOS idols.

Disclaimer: To keep this article in a rather neutral stance, it is split the following way:

• Facts: Summary, short and clear
• Experience: This happened.
• Quotes: "As Spoken"
• What You Didn't Know: Some things happening in the background that even on site staff sometimes do not know (Note, much of this is word of mouth information that came from high up management of AX, may contain errors)
• Opinion: Mine, take with grain of salt.
• Rant: Block your ears.
  

Leave any question or comments at the bottom link.

_______________________________

Day One, Friday 10:30 AM, Seaside Meeting Rooms

The line to register for a badge is long, winding, long, and long, arrival at 10:00 means you get your badge after around 5 hours of lining up, pre-reg.

The line for getting an AX badge has always been long, imagine a Cosco sized square room full of people, enough people that you can walk on top of their heads, now imagine that in a single line.
The staff roped off the Seaside Meeting Rooms entrance into the convention center building to queue up a line for registration.

"Pre-reg? get in the line, it starts...uhh... just keep walking that way."

-Front Door AX Staff

The queue holds around 200 people, another 200 on the other side set aside for "pre-registered" attendees, however, about 15000 more stacked into the sidewalk, parking lot, and open road miles down. There are no more than 30 volunteers working to get all of these folks inside.

30 untrained high school (on average, the girl who serviced me looked like she was 14) volunteers are not going to work up a sweat to beat their buddies in badge issueing. A 5 hour lines is not a good start for a convention.
Compare this to Fanime in San Jose, pre-reg lines is on avergae a 15 minute wait, while un-reg is around 2~3 hours. They have the same amount of booths servicing both badge types, plus, pre-reg staff have to pick out your particular badge out of a mountain of others.

AX's line was not even sorted until the very end, which means pre-reg does nothing, given the following facts: Pre-reg and No-pre-reg are serviced at the same rate, at times the staff pulls 100 of the pre-reg out of the 200 in front (which have already waited for 4 and a half hours), places them in a separate queue, and both lines enter the registration room at the same rate. Mathematically speaking, a pre-reg person placed into the seperate queue actually loses place in line and will have to wait longer.


Who the hell came up with that system?
He needs to be shot, for 5 hours.

Pre-registration gets you a piece of paper that does absolutely nothing to get you ahead of the procrastinators who did not pre-reg (besides the pre-reg who arrived late), and are they re-registering your actual appearance at the convention? Why does there even need to be a line?
Why are there no tag scanners, they scan printed paper in seconds, AX can issue stickers or pins to mark them.
Register working volunteer can't type for shit and your Unregistered?? fill out a scantron while you wait in line, they go through like plane tickets i hear.

So Why does AX not spend a couple thousand dollars to buy half a dozen machines to speed up the process but keep 15 thousand people waiting in the burning sun?


Volunteers, they're fucking FREE!


________________________________________


Day One, Friday 11:00 AM, In front of the Exhibition Hall


There is a line forming in front of the exhibition hall to enter at 12:00pm. The line follows along the long outer courtyard wall of the exhibition hall, across a sky bridge, twists into the darkness of the second floor of the two story parking lot, only to emerge from the first floor (vehicle) entrance, and wraps around the entire building such that the line folds back on the other side of the (vehicle) entrance to fit more incoming...

IDIOTS!

the line is approximately 10,000 persons long.


There is absolutely no purpose to line up once the line has crossed the sky bridge. I will explain why.
There is basically no such thing as an convention exclusive in the vendor room. North American fans have garnered enough attention from Japanese manufacturers and vendors such that anything that can be purchased at the show floor, will be available online, at other cons, or sold at local stores, as long as you have the skills to find it.

You may find some deals and madly discounted goods lying around by some unwary shopkeeper, but only if you know your prices, and the probability that you will wonder by such an item by chance in front of thousands of others? Slim.
Furthermore, know storekeepers well enough, and they will gladly sell you their goods at barely above Japanese manufacturer prices, that's around 20~30 dollars off of a high end 120 dollar figure.

If you thought a $120 figure is expensive, you wasted 2 hours, one hour for turning crispy on the concrete, and one hour for walking from where you foolishly stood, into the exhibition hall. Give yourself a badge, no, wait, just write "IDIOT" on yours.

While the long line doesn't really pose any problems to anybody, imagine the kind of problem AX will on their hands when some poor kid gets hit by a car while standing in line in the middle of the parking lot, so for their sake:

AX staff need to tell attendees that they do not need to "line up" to enter the exhibition hall, they just need to "wait", and then enter in an orderly fashion.

_______________________________

Day One, Friday 1:00 PM, Grand Ballroom

When asked if there was a line for the 4:30 SOS-dan focus panel, front door staff stated that there wasn't, but was sure that we couldn't start one on the second floor where he stood, after questioning 3 more uniformed staff members, none of them knew where the line was and where to start a line. One of them bluntly stated that

"I'm off by 4:00pm, so ....yea... *shrugs shoulders*"

-AX Line Staff

After a bit of wondering, we managed to find the head of the line downstairs, and across of a plaza outside of the building, along side of the Hyatt building's outer walkway. There were two groups already in line, no longer than 10 people. One person, a Japanese, in the second group in line was in a psyched up state. We later found out his name was 和田 (Wada). He had come directly from Japan, following the SOS-dan seiyyu's all the way to Long Beach to show them support, while his group consisted of 8 or 9, most of them came by themselves, and only knew each other from other conventions in Japan, and it was luck that had brought them on the same plane, most of them are visiting the US for the first time.

Just to make clear exactly how HARDCORE he is, he claims that he has 16 signed items by the SOS-dan, 2 of the 3 seiyuu's remember his face, and he appears on the DVD recording of an extremely hard-to-get-in concert by the SOS-dan, front, fucking, row. Not to mention he's wearing an official SOS T-shirt AND an extremely rare SOS vest, which he plans to get signed at this event. He is most definitely the most interesting and friendly person I've met this trip down south.

"Rule Breaker!!"

-Wada

Aparently, the group that was infront of the most hardcore SOS-dan fans had cut in front of them while the line was still immature and the staff confused.

only a few people were in the line, it wasn't obvious whether the line actually existed, none of the staff could accurately (or remotely) describe where to line up/the line was. Cutting, becomes a problem, and continues to be for the next three days.

One of the volunteers attempted to settle the angry Japanese fan, and proposes that he, but only him, could go in front. Wada turned it down, and whispers his feelings towards the rule breakers into my ear.

"I Dream them Killed!"

-Wada

Good fucking going, American fans, show them how you do things in the West.

ACG fans who followed epic lining up events all know what happens when fans are excited, extremely hot, dehydrated, and tired. PS3 lines are a good blueprint as to what can happen when lines are poorly organized. Cutting is basically inevitable, there's two ways to handle cutting. Either you allow cutting, or you have zero tolerance. What about the grey area? Take this scenario for instance:
Line started at 1pm, event is at 4:30.

• Person A cuts in front at 3:45
• Person K cuts in at 4:00

If Person A said he just got back from Lunch, and Person K had to drive his uncle to the airport?
Who do you let in if you were staff? What if the event happens at 8 pm?

Where do you mark the cut off for someone who cuts in late? What if someone had an emergency and just made it? It just doesn't work like that. And unless someone starts handing out tickets or wrist bands for those early in line, cutting will be inevitable, is 1 person cutting any less wrong that 2? what about 5. Educating idiots who are pissed because they are cut off by the people cutting in, is pretty much a useless cause.

AX needs to foresee where long lines are going to form, and either control the line, or angry mobs begin to form. Start with roping not a straight line, but a snake line, people are much more hesitant to cut those, because everybody sees you cross, and there will be less and less space to stand/sit.

At around 3:45 pm staff moved the now 500 long line into the building, up the stairs and curling around the front entrane of the Grand Ballroom. It would be the perfect time for someone to cut in line (without knowing anybody infront or behind) when the line had to move 2-300 meters up the stairs, but it just happens that the unlucky cutter decided to cut infront of me.

"Sorry sir, we're moving the long, you need to come with me"

-AX Staff

after being informed, a witty AX staff pulls the cutter out of the line with zero commotion, someone give this man a badge.

Upon entering the SOS-dan focus panel, staff passed out tickets for the autograph event, as a token to get ahead of those who did not attend the focus panel, or those who were too far back in line, I estimate that one roll of no more than 5-600 tickets were passed out.

Here comes the juicy part. Who ever came up with that one, must have thought they were smart. The front of the ticket is marked with a Staples logo, obviously a common commodity you can buy at the local store, and the signing was not scheduled within a few hours, but the next day! Also, the entire roll was given out, and the staff also kept no stubs, meaning that unless they recorded the roll's beginning and end serial number and checked it at the door at the signing, the tickets were useless.

Anybody with a car and 12 dollars can not only head to the nearest staples to pick up their own roll of raffle tickets, but scalp it to those who don't have one. The person who came up with this, is also an idiot.


Everything inside the focus panel went fairly smoothly, probably the only SOS-dan event that didn't go seriously wrong.

________________________________


Day One, Friday 5:30 pm, Exhibition Hall


Finally free from lining up in the burning sun of Long Beach, we take our first look into the Exhibition Halls of the largest Anime Convention of the year. Having been to more than a few cons, and spent more than enough to plaster our walls, tables and shelves with merchandise, we've come to be quite memorable customers at more than a few stores, and have the pleasure to enjoy some deals.

But the hall was closing down in 30 minutes, so there wasn't much point to rush and shop, since according to the previous thesis of Convention Merchandise, anything worth rushing for, would have already been bought. We arrive at a familiar dealer's island booth to check on how he's doing. And For the sake of argument, lets just call him Kevin. So Kevin, how's business?

"Business Fucking Sucks!"
-Kevin, AX Dealer

This isn't some half-assed single corner booth doujin drawing artist, Kevin's store has long been one of the largest non-industry store at the conventions he attends, and usually owns multiple islands stacked with merchandise and with business so well that he couldn't even find time to feed himself.

"I've been eating the whole fucking day!"
-Kevin

While speaking half jokingly, he was obviously very angry at the turn up.

According to him, dealers are charged by the convention to ship contents in their freights/trucks to the show floor on "platters", which is roughly the size of a shopping cart. and every year the prices have gone up. Mainly due to the location of the convention. And Electricity, Phone lines, furniture are all extra services they are required to pay for to smoothly run the business, the prices of those have risen dramatically also.

"Long Beach, as a location, and as a convention center, is not as good as Anaheim in previous years, and next year we'l be in LA, that's even worse!"
-Kevin

As the US fans become and larger and larger market, the overhead that dealers like Kevin must pay for to import goods directly from Japan are overshadowed by the large Japanese manufacturers that have started localization branches and are selling Americanized goods at a lower price. Take Nippon Ichi Software for example, they are selling their own brand products for up to 20 dollars cheaper than other stores on the floor.

Which one would you buy?
A Poster that titled "涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱" for 30 dollars?
Or The same Poster, this time titled "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya", along with a North American Bandai logo, for 15 dollars?

Do you care about the origin of the item? does that justify the higher price? are you a purist that not only must have First names last and Last names first, but also rebuke all non-Japan made merchandise? If you did care, the fact is, your a rarity.

The average fan at an introductory level, doesn't read Japanese, wants cheap goods, and loves America, and English, much more than some gibbering language he/she can not understand.

Simply look at how the SOS concert was arranged on Saturday, but more on that later.



At 6:00 sharp, Staff starts to shuffle out the loitering attendees off the show floor, which gets me started on the structural design of the Long Beach convention center. To better the efficiency of foot traffic, entrance and exits exist for solely, entrance OR exits, not both. We were forced to walk by half a dozen exits before finding one that didn't have an angry staff telling us we couldn't leave here. On the way, we saw this guy on the right.

Who is this poor shmuck? Who is this poor shmuck's fucking supervisor? Why is he holding an "Entrance Only" sign above his head?

Good Going, AX, You got a volunteer, flew him into Long Beach, gave him a hotel room, free food, free badge, and you make him hold a piece of cardboard above his head for 4 fucking days? At least give him a pole so he doesn't have to get muscle cramps in the morning!

to make things worse, there's Another one, standing RIGHT NEXT TO THE FIRST!

A simple THIS would have solved your problems, for much cheaper, and requires no bathroom breaks.

This is a prime example of the blind (idiotic supervisor) leading the blind(poor shmuck), leading the blind (retards trying to go out from the entrance).

Instead, post these fellas to the registration line, since I somehow feel like the 10,000 people waiting in the sun is a little more important than the 5 people who are trying to go out of "Entrance Only".


However, not all of poor-shmuck's work is for wrought, for the convention floor grounds IS confusing. Perhaps it was partly due to the size of AX this year, that forced everything but the Exhibit Hall outside of the giant indoor space, but the location of anything, and everything, leaves much to be desired. Upon instinct on arrival, most would head to high ground, where the sun shines, where the crowd is, but guess what. The registration booth is in a different castle building all together, in a tiny room in the center of the convention ground, which causes the line to start to form outside, under a giant bridge to the parking lot. Anime showings are at remote hotel meeting rooms barely connected to the convention grounds, and events are tossed all over the place, no body could find anything without asking one of the staff.

And it isn't like those highschool volunteers really know their convention floor plans either.

So after hours of crispifying in the sun, all we got today was our entrance badge, and a crumbly piece of raffle ticket, which at the end, served no purpose at all.







Exasperation, Exposition, Explanation, Day Two will continue Tomorrow.

Announcements are Good

Second Season of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu (probably won't be Yuutsu anymore?) was announced on Newtype. Are you excited?

Gundam Head is Excited.

Although the actual season will most likely be behind Clannad, which most don't see finishing under 26 episodes, which in turn, will follow only after Lucky Star ends.

Therefore, Suzumiya Haruhi no (Second Season), Spring 2008.

Patience is a Virtue, time to practice it.