Forum - View topicNEWS: Breaking News: Halko Momoi Slams Anime Expo on Blog
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Yuukichan's Papa
 Posts: 93 |
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I had fun this year but it wasn't because of anything specific about the con. (I took two of my nieces and it was their first anime convention.) Conwise, it was one of the worst I've been to, and this was my eighth year going. While I can't necessarily blame the con itself for not having Anaheim this year, going back to a smaller location while still growing was definitely not a good idea.
I didn't get to attend the ASOS Brigade concert because I was disgusted with the delays leaving us out in the afternoon sun. One hour after seating was supposed to start, a staff member with a megaphone said that anybody with "Ticketmaster tickets" had assigned seating (which was true), and that they should move forward (which apparently wasn't true). There was a mad dash to the entrance, only to be held there for a half hour and then told to get to the back of the line. At that point I left. The fire marshalls being incredibly paranoid didn't help with keeping events on time. As others have said, the layout of the place is far from ideal for walking from location to location, to the point that we almost spent more time walking than actually being at events. Delays and the occasional cancellation or rescheduling are commonplace at cons, but this year was just ridiculous. Combined with the concept of "premiere tickets" (worth a thread of its own), all of this has almost made my friend and I question returning. I can only hope that the new location for 2008 is better, because it can't be much worse. |
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genman
Posts: 40 |
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AX has spent the past 15 years pissing off attendees and it's no surprise that they have also managed to piss off industry (Viz, Tokyopop) and now finally has made a guest of honor cry. At least, one we now know about. My wife and I attended AX (coming from Seattle) to see Momoi. We were satisfied with the concert on Monday, finally. And she, from her blog, was happy in the end as well. But, AX spins it as a "time management" problem. I don't know, it's the way AX has always been. I know everyone there tries really hard, but there's some lack of something (organization? execution?) that causes things to fall apart. |
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W-General
Posts: 280 Location: Ithaca, NY, USA / Taichung, Taiwan |
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I have an endless list of complaints and this is just my first time to anime expo. I'd rather save the long complaints (and by long I mean pages) for Anime Expo staff directly because I know posting here isn't constructive at all. I'll write a long complaint email to them when I get home.
This is just a brief summary: The good Dealer's room size Focus panel and panels Five Centimeters per second The bad Location Insanely long lines The ugly Tech support Time management Mistreatment of Japanese guests Both of which lead to event shortening and cancellations. I think what the guests have to say is a fairly good indicator of how it went. One example I would say is what happened to SOS-dan events. The first day went perfectly well, I think. At the focus panel the guests seem pleased and happy, and Hirano Aya (http://www.hiranoaya.com/cgi-bin/diary/sfs6_diary/) on her June 29 blog post had fairly positive things to say, but were silent after the second day. That was when the disaster started. Technical difficulties, schedule changes, poor concert planning and tech support, etc. I heard rumors from volunteer staff that the agent/producer or the girls were upset about schedule conflicts. I guess that the fact that they decided to cut all personal interactions (handshakes), all talking with SOS girls, all personal item, and only about 60 people got the autograph. (luckily I was one of them) The only other guest who cut "fan treatment" was Momoi, who also had some complaints on her blog. I think the decreased level of fan treatment = angry guests. Chihara Minori (Nagato Yuki) was actually nice enough to come to the Bandai panel, and her blog (http://minorhythm.jugem.jp/) had nothing but praise for AX and Los Angeles. Which I think might mean that Hirano Aya and even Gotou Yuuko are upset. Hirano-san's actually a very talkative person on her blog, posting 2~3 times a day, and no posts since Saturday morning.... something's wrong, and I can only think of the disaster that was AX. Logistics were also terrible too. I quote an AX registration staff at the Will Call booth morning of Day 2 when which opens at 8am, but didn't happen until 9am: "We're still waiting for the laptops. They're with the tech guys, I don't know where they are. They are probably still sleeping in their hotel room." BULLSHI*. And that's just one of the ridiculous things at AX this year. I'll save the rant for AX staff though. Overall I blame AX for poor planning and execution and leaving such a poor impression of America on the SOS girls. I am afraid they will never come to AX again after such terrible experience - let's hope they would at least come to other conventions in the future, like Otakon. No excuses, AX, no excuses. p.s. I went to SOS, Oreskaband, Chiaki, Savage Genius (video and camera were allowed! Super nice!!!) and Momo-i Apart from the disaster that was SOS concert, the rest were very good. I guess the screw-ups were mostly concentrate in the first two days....but that really did the most damage. Last edited by W-General on Tue Jul 03, 2007 1:55 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Spotlesseden
Posts: 3514 Location: earth |
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ohh boy, so many years of experience on this event(AX), and they still messed up this bad? They must changed the previous event planning people.
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Microbe999
Posts: 1 |
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...Anyway, back to the subject of Halko Momoi....
I was going to skip this concert after she gave a mini concert the night before at AX Idol, I didn't think there was much more I needed to see of Halko Momoi, but after getting home and reading about her blog entry, it kind of compelled me to go see her on Monday (not to mention there wasn't much to do on monday). The room was not as packed as the other concerts (I went to all except SKIN), and they handed out glowsticks during her concert and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves a great deal! At the encore, Mrs. Momoi seemed generally happy and was very moved to tears at one point. I enjoyed her performance a great deal. I've been attending AX for 13 years now, and there were a lot of things wrong about this year, but having that arena was one of the best things I thought they have had in a long long time. So many main events have you crammed like sardines into those horrible ballrooms, I have always dreaded attending most of them in the past, and having this arena and all that freedom to sit where you wanted was truly awesome. |
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Kaioshin_Sama
Posts: 1215 |
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All I knew about Halko Momoi is that she is the voice of Anise Taitlin from Tales of The Abyss, and now it appears that they apparently share the same overall personality.
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bleuster
 Posts: 455 Location: Orange County |
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I could have warned you about that. lol When you're in during one of hottest and driest days of the summer in SoCal, with thousands of people all in one place, Long Beach is where you do not want to be. Supervisors. That would've helped plenty. I know it's an understaffed issue, but having someone in charge on one issue just to make sure it happens makes everything much more smoother. I knew I wasn't going once I heard it was held in Long Beach, but if it's back in Anaheim next year, I have a lot of planning and organizing to do. |
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icepick314
 Posts: 486 Location: Back in the Good Ol' US of A |
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i've always wanted to go AX and Otakon for years but both are just too damm big for my taste...
having to wade through mob, waiting in long lines, and delays to venues put me off going to them... last Project A-Kon i went, it was very locked down compared to previous one i went 2 years prior...no more taking pics during interviews, no audio and video recording at all, and more people attending than ever before.... i think i'll just avoid anime cons in US all together as it just seem too damm big and disorganized for it's own good....not to mention it seems like there are 3 cons every month.... |
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FiliKlepto
Posts: 17 Location: Nakano-ku, Tokyo |
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Does anyone know if there's a "Speak Bitterness" forum/thread/website for AX? Because I'm so there. Anyhow, I agree -- or at least concur -- with what most everyone has said here except on two large points. First, please don't say that the ASOS were "acting like a bunch of a-holes". I saw the dance as well, and even if you don't consider their dance as particularly skillful as the others on stage, I find it difficult to call their behavior rude. These three are the girls chosen to market the MoSH license in America and from my past meetings with them, they - or at least Patty (Haruhi) - are very enthusiastic about the series. Furthermore, two of them are actually Japanese, and it just doesn't compute - the idea of them acting out of line to fellow Japanese, particularly in such a public situation. Secondly, I find it unfortunate that everyone is blaming problems caused by the con itself on the LBCC. Granted, as a Long Beach resident I do have some bias towards the location, but please hear me out. I've noticed endless complaints about the distance, etc, so I wanted to share with you all something I noticed: I had an exhibitor badge, so I was able to walk the most direct routes. Going from the far side of the LB Arena by the parking structure, ending at the top of the stairway (that led down into the exhibit hall) took only ten to fifteen minutes. Walking from that same start to end point following the flow of traffic and where con staff directed us... took over twice as long. No kidding. And it was so stupid how exits (like for the exhibit hall) put you completely out of the way from where you wanted to go. Definitely a mismanagement of space, rather than the fault of the location (Long Beach itself is pretty groovy; again biased) and I think it gave a lot of people a worse impression of LBCC than they necessarily should have gotten. So, in summary - let's try not to misdirect our anger here, guys. Let's find who's really to blame and slam them hard. ...Uh, just kidding. ^^; Last edited by FiliKlepto on Tue Jul 03, 2007 2:40 am; edited 1 time in total |
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nemuiwanko
Posts: 3 |
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Anime Expo 2007 was my very first AX ever. And well.. I was disappointed. Content and concerts were great in my opinion which people will agree with, however the lack of organization killed a lot of things.
Many hours were wasted in line, especially in the hot blazing sun.. I got sunburned very badly and I don't know.. but my eyes feel very weird and messed up right now. It doesn't help that it seemed like the staff did not know what was going on. If it wasn't for me exploring around the con as I left my friend to stand in the pre-reg line, I would have stayed there for 7 hours, and all I needed was to pick up my badgeholder. Thank god for the badge holder line which opened around 1pmish I believe. -_- Sigh, I really wished I could have gotten the SOS brigade autographs. Waiting over 7 hours over a two day period wasn't exactly too great for my skin  I'm sure the other people in line would agree.
At the moment I'm not sure if I should consider a second visit to AX. I'll think about it in the future, however, compared to my first fanimecon which was this year, they were GREAT!!! ^____^ Anyway, that'll be all, my vision is getting too weird to continue o_O;; |
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Yuukichan's Papa
Posts: 93 |
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Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against the LBCC itself, just how it was put to use for the convention (like the complaints about the exhibit hall exit, for instance), as well as the fact that it just can't accomodate a crowd of that size. More than anything else though, the lack of communication between staffers didn't help. As for any bias because you live in the area, don't worry about that either. I live in the Valley, so all the pointless LA bashing in the "new location for AX" thread is getting on my nerves. |
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CuteyHoney
 Posts: 53 Location: OC,CA |
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I attended the Halko Momoi panel. She said that she had some problems and had to cancel all of her events except for her concert. It seemed like maybe her management and AX management butted heads or something. She was upset, and started crying. I was very upset, because I was looking forward to her autograph session. I wanted her to autograph my Nurse Witch Komugi poster. I spent my last 2 days of AX going to every staff member asking them if her events would be rescheduled, they either replied, "I don't know" or "no". She felt like we were all cheated, and we were. |
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LordRobin
Posts: 354 Location: Akron, OH |
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There have been 16 Anime Expos. I've been to 14 of them, starting with the first, in 1992. Compared with some past AXs (like 1997, which was held in a venue about half as big as it needed to be), this con seemed to run as smooth as silk.
Mind you, my experience may have been atypical. First off, I just barely managed to get my badge before I left Ohio, so I didn't have to wait in line for a badge-holder. I considered myself very lucky. Given how late the badges were mailed, I figure there were thousands (if not tens of thousands) of pre-registrees that had to wait in line. There was just no way to plan for that. I blame the people who were in charge of getting the badges made. I hear that "everything" was late, which is odd, because "everything" I attended started on time. Well, the Anna Tsuchiya concert started 40 minutes late, but it compensated by being @#$%ing awesome. Hell, the Masquerade started on time, AND YOU COULD JUST WALK IN WITHOUT WAITING IN LINE! HOW COOL IS THAT?!! I remember skipping the Masquerade at AX in the late 90's because attending it meant waiting in line a minimum of 3 hours, 8 hours if you wanted a decent seat. There were 9000 people watching the cosplayers and that arena wasn't even breaking a sweat. The audience was doing The Wave. Someone said they weren't allowed in the film room if they were "a few minutes late". I wish that had been the policy for the first showing of Death Note. Every 30-90 seconds, some a-hole would open one of the doors, shining a blast of sunlight in my darkness-adjusted eyes. If they later instituted a policy of no entry after the movie starts, that was just to be courteous to the people already inside. Honestly, I thought the con was awesome, but looking back, I didn't do all that much, or rather the few things I did took up a lot of time. I saw Anna Tsuchiya and Oreskaband, both Death Note movies (three showings of each was a very smart move), the ADV premieres, and the Masquerade. I saw a small number of panels and spent a great deal of time in the Exhibit Hall (from which there was no good way to get out without a long walk -- valid complaint). Nevertheless, I believe many of the complaints I'm reading, even if I didn't experience the problems myself. As I've mentioned in the past, con staffing is an issue all over the country. There is this attitude that cons should be run "by fans, for fans". When you're running some dinky little con that brings in maybe a thousand people over three days, that's a fine attitude. When you're running the nation's biggest anime convention, bringing in 45,000 over 4 days, that's just idiotic. AX relies too much on volunteers. No one is more unthinking and rude than some nobody who's been given a blue vest and authority. It is time for a 100% professional con staff, so that expertise isn't lost every few years. Anime Expo has been run for 16 years. It should be a science by now. ------RM |
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LydiaDianne
 Posts: 5633 Location: Southern California |
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Well, said. That is EXACTLY it! There needs to be a professional Con Staff. Still have the volunteers. I'm sure that they would be extremly helpful. But, having Pros used to dealing with 45k people would be even better. |
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hikura
Posts: 565 |
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Sounds like AX really should start considering some sort of limit on attendance.It is getting to big to handle.
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