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:
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.
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...
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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 differentcastle 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.
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!!"
-WadaAparently, 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
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 Staffafter 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!"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.
-Kevin
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
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.
Labels: Anime Expo, AX, AX07, Day One, Exasperation, Explanation, Exposition, Lines, Otaku, SOS, Sunlight, Suzumiya Haruhi
posted by thecrowes at
2:21 AM
8 Comments:
hah, wow that sounds pretty bad. I only went the first day. Yeah, the fact that the regsitration computers went down for a bit was not a good sign. I think that Long Beach was a bit too small to hold the amount of people that showed up. And it's in LA next year? crap.
"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. "
I know it's just a rant, but still, raging wapanese. Honestly, the majority of fans there were raging wapanese who hold anything in english with disdain. This is coming from experience by overhearing people throughout the day and in the otaku parliamentary debates held that day over subs vs dubs. Anyway, what the fuck is wrong with English? It's a very rich language with a wide vocabulary and interesting history. If you're suggeting that a certain monspeak is the better language, you're just as angry and uninformed as the rest of them.
"what the fuck is wrong with English?"
the simple fact that Americans hold "their own language" OVER "the original language" is disgusting.
furthermore, professional American voice actresses don't even exist, much less comparable to the professionalism of Japanese Seiyuu's, their professional and skilled performance.
while "picking the side" has always been a long debate, and you can find flame wars all over the place just for this, but I think the facts come down pretty obvious.
We don't like english dubs as much as you like say, indian dubs, not everyone likes every language.
I guess the only thing I need to say is..
"!!!!!!!!!!Patricia Ja Lee sucks!!!!!!!!!!"
Uhm... listen here asshole, you don't know half of what goes on for staff or volunteers. Hell, you have no idea how to tell them apart! And for the guys that were holding the signs, that was for LESS THAN ONE FUCKING HOUR! NOT ALL FUCKING FOUR DAYS!
Learn to find out WHY SHIT WORKS THE WAY IT DOES... then you can complain.
Oh yeah, those 'volunteers'? They only get room and board. AX flys only GoHs to the con. Even staff have to pay gas/airline/whatever to get to the convention.
And most of those volunteers, they are friends of mine. Leave them the fuck alone. They're doing more with their time at the con than you ever would. Not like they would want someone so arrogant and stuck-up like you to volunteer or staff anyways.
Piss off!
^lol, idiot
the second you lost your cool, you've lost the argument.
certain staff do get free airline tickets, so suck it moron, get YOUR facts straight. and even if not all the purple text are facts, did you read why its purple? its a rant you dumb shit.
none of your sorry ass excuses changes the fact that AX was poorly managed and staffed, and how does being the friend of a fucktard idiot make your friends any better than the hundreds of other staff out there? oh wait, it doesn't.
Well, I know I have my share of opinions and you can disagree, but I'm not really here to say what's right or not. Those are my friends in the blue vests that you took pictures of, so I was hoping that you took them off. Just the fact that they don't know their picture is up on the site leaves me uneasy. Thanks~.^
As a sidenote, for the staff that they do fly out.. I think they'd probably have to be higher up in the chain... like way higher. hehe
[url=http://dcxvssh.com]vVqGZ[/url] - zhMaP - http://hhmgziigpu.com
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