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wouldnt anyone who watched haruhi be enthusiastic? If you are going to be working with a guest of honor you should get an idea of what they would be considered rude (the japanese are a very polite bunch).

also if i recall correctly, somewhere on ANN someone posted a quote from johnny boshe (don't know if i spelled that right) saying " its not fair, I didn't know the dance". again horrible planning.

Interesting, so they (PJL + JYB) were badly scripted and [un]prepared to be misunderstood as acting like idiots?

Lastly, just because people are japanese doesnt mean much. i know MANY asian people that don't have a grasp on their culture. not sure about the ASOS girls but you get my point.gah i gota go now, rants more to come.

jvowles wrote:

(Even a single competent part-time admin assistant would run the organization something in the neighborhood of 50-60k per year.)

Wow. Guess I should switch careers.

I don't know what you've been looking at, but that's way too high, especially for part-time, even taking taxes into account.

Zoe wrote:

jvowles wrote: (Even a single competent part-time admin assistant would run the organization something in the neighborhood of 50-60k per year.) Wow. Guess I should switch careers. I don't know what you've been looking at, but that's way too high, especially for part-time, even taking taxes into account.

You may be confusing pay with cost.

Pay is about 30k-40k for an experienced admin assistant. A good rule of thumb is that it costs roughly twice the salary to actually employ someone. Add in some reimbursable expenses.... it doesn't take long to reach the number I quoted.

The sound issue STILL didn't get fixed. It was played on WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER FOR CHRIST SAKE. The music lagged several times, God Knows and all the songs before it only had ONE CHANNEL coming out - you couldn't hear Yuki's guitar part. Hirano-san also had trouble hearing the music herself because her singing lagged the music by almost half a second, which means that she was hearing the music BOUNCING BACK from the far-end of the wall (yes, sound travels slowly)

I wouldn't say Patricia Lee was lazy or didn't care about the concert, but she was certainly unprofessional on stage and looked like she only saw the rehearsal stuff 5 minutes before the concert started.

Very very very disappointed at AX. Where's the professional staff? Professional sound crew? The volunteers knew NOTHING at each event and each time I asked, the answer was different - questions ranging from seating, ticketing, to what we can bring in to the signing session.

There is NO reason to hire an admin assistant for a con for more than 16 hrs a week (and even that is heavy IMO) outside the con. Let's say you give em a full 40 for two weeks before the con. And then for fun, let's say 40 hrs overtime (at time and a half) right there around/during the con. If you pay them $20/hr (which would be INSANE for an AA) that's still less than $20k for the year.

As noted by Zoe, you have no real reason to give benefits, so even with miscellaneous expenses surrounding the hire, there's no reason to exceed $30k or so. Now, if you wanna argue a competent administrator could even cost you in the six figure range, that's a whole different question and plausible. But then, I think you SHOULD be able to find someone "on the cheap" BECAUSE they would want to do it for love of anime, but granted, it is debatable how good the people you'd get under such a criteria. But really, there's no reason a good AA should cost that much. I respect you a great deal Jim, but c'mon.

To be honest, I have zero clue on how to fix it. But, if what has been said on how the Japanese guests were treated - no hotel room ready, not allowed to prepare properly for events, etc. - are true, then it will be harder to get others to come.

Yes, the Japanese do not say derogatory things in public. But they are human and you know as well as I do that the talent are going to tell their friends about all of the bad things that went wrong. And the managers and producers sure as hell are going to spread the word amongst themselves about how poorly run AX is. And it is going to be harder and harder to get "name" Japanese talent to AX if this continues.

W-General wrote:

The sound issue STILL didn't get fixed. It was played on WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER FOR CHRIST SAKE. The music lagged several times, God Knows and all the songs before it only had ONE CHANNEL coming out - you couldn't hear Yuki's guitar part. Hirano-san also had trouble hearing the music herself because her singing lagged the music by almost half a second, which means that she was hearing the music BOUNCING BACK from the far-end of the wall (yes, sound travels slowly) I wouldn't say Patricia Lee was lazy or didn't care about the concert, but she was certainly unprofessional on stage and looked like she only saw the rehearsal stuff 5 minutes before the concert started. Very very very disappointed at AX. Where's the professional staff? Professional sound crew? The volunteers knew NOTHING at each event and each time I asked, the answer was different - questions ranging from seating, ticketing, to what we can bring in to the signing session.

In terms of technical difficulties, I would say this year was the worse. I'm completely with you regarding the SOS event. That was such a HUGE disappointment, and I felt REALLY bad for the three seiyuus. I didn't mind Patricia Lee, and I actually thought her sarcasm added to the event more than anything, but what I found more annoying was them dragging out the dub voice actors out on stage. No offense to the American voice actors personally, but I didn't pay for the premier tickets and stand in line for hours to watch THEM. I actually felt bad for them because compared to the original seiyuu's, their skills were clearly inferior. Actually, when they had Patricia Lee do Haruhi's voice instead of Wendy Lee, it only showed how miscast the American Haruhi is (a general issue I find with dubs, but that's another topic for another day). When the American voice actor for Mikuru was on stage and responded to the question about voice acting training by saying she didn't go to any school, it only made me think maybe she should have. I hate to bash the American voice actors because I'm sure they're underpaid and underappreciated as it is, so I really blame the SOS organizers for putting them up against the original seiyuus and actually forcing us to make a comparison. Not to mention, that whole bit was just LAME.

Other than the really retarded technical difficulties, it was also embarrassing that they were obviously ill-prepared with the questions. It was almost as if someone who was completely unfamiliar with Haruhi, the seiyuus, or just anime voice actors in general was put in charge of the event. The questions they came up with were so pathetic! Also, was ANY rehearsing involved for this event? I find it hard to believe that there was. Even if there was a delay, weren't the people involved given scripts at least days before hand? I shudder when I think of the negative impression the Japanese seiyuus must be bringing back with them to Japan about the American con experience. Sad, really sad. Whoever organized and ran the SOS Brigade tour should be ashamed of themselves.

I'm surprised that no one else is saying anything about the one person I am incredibly irked with - the BangZoom! translator. That woman only exacerbated the problems that were already there. She kept trying to emcee rather than translate, and whenever Patty attempted to steer the show in one direction, the translator was all like, "Let's do this instead!" It was ridiculous; she wasn't even doing her job half the time and addressed the audience in Japanese. -_-; No wonder whenever she said "On three, everybody say ______," the audience appeared lackluster to the seiyuu.

The main people I hold responsible were whomever planned the event and especially whoever wrote the damn script. I gather there was a specific script when Patrica Lee gave her opinion about having to say "psychedelic" (or some word like that) and pointing to her script.

I also believe that no one was probably given there script till probably about an hour or two before the event started judging by how the majority of them were holding papers and how they reacted (frantically looking through said papers) when unexpected events occurred. The guest are all professionals, and I'm sure if they were given the script within a reasonable time they would have had them memorized and knew exactly what would be happening. The result of this was that everyone was unprepared and it really looked like they were winging the majority of the performance. It was still enjoyable and the encore left me with a good impression but it could have been much much better. So once more, whoever planned the event and wrote the script should be the main targets of blame (along with the tech people).

However, I do understand why they did some of the things they did such as bring the ASOS crew into this. The event was titled "SOS Brigade Invasion Tour" rather than "SOS CONCERT" or something to that effect. I'm guessing they were probably trying to market to a more centralized American audience than the diehard Haruhi fans (they already have our souls so they're trying to attract new blood ).Though I also agree that it's not what the majority, including me, wanted to see.

On a related note, Was I the only person that was bugged by the fact that over 80% of the questions at the Hirano, CHIHARA and GOTO panel were all directed specifically towards Aya Hirano? I know she is the fan favorite seiyuu (including mine), but the panel was for all three of them. I felt pretty bad for both Chihara and Goto because they were just sitting there looking kinda down 3/4's of the way into it. When they did have a chance to speak, they were very energetic and cheerful but those times were very few and far between. I did notice that one of the more general questions regarding the three of them was tackled by Hirano as the primary speaker but I felt that some of the questions should have been ask that gave all three of them a chance to speak.