[NERV_HQ]

came oh so early before the birds started singing to wait in line on saturday. 5 hours later, staff says it has been cancelled to the next day.

next day...came oh so EARLIER before the sun probably rose to wait in line. 6 hours later, staff says only 50-100 people were going to be able to get autographs, and everyone else is cut from the pack.

BY GOD THE LINE WRAPPED AROUND AND AROUND THE CONVENTION!

WHY DO THEY TELL US THESE CRUCIAL THINGS LAST MINUTE....!!!!

AFTER WAITING ALL THAT DAMN TIME IN THE SUN....TWICE............nuff said............

and then, i felt so bad for all 3 during the concert. Johnny and Patricia Ja Lee kept blabbing, getting out of hand, and not following the script, and even cutting-off the guests while they were doing their lines! They obviously confused the 3 guests, making them obviously SO UNCOMFORTABLE for their first concert here in the US. THE TRANSLATOR/CO-HOST EVEN HAD TO TELL PATRICIA AND JOHNNY TO STOP ACTING UP! great impression guys, just great. JOHNNY AND PATRICIA, have some respect please. AND I DONT EVEN WANT TO START ON THAT CRAPPY ENGINEER! The technical problems never stopped...which made it more difficult for the 3 ladies.

i am not mad at aya, chihara or yuko........i am mad at pretty much...well ya know.

This post has been edited by NERV_HQ: 02 July 2007 - 12:48 AM

[DJcream]

I think the Saturday fiasco was one of the worst cases of miscommunication ever. Everyone stayed in line for hours in the hot sun. When they said that they are moving it back, there was very little compensation and no guarantee that our spots will remain the same. Here's what went wrong...

- Last minute critical announcements: Hours of wait quickly falters. basically Saturday morning was a waste for me.
- Crappy compenstation: If the SKIN concert didn't sell out then SOS Brigade tickets can be available. It's like passing out free air, everyone in line may have already had tickets or will get them if they were willing to stay in line for 4 hours for an autograph.
- Saturday efforts were worthless: For those front in line on Saturday, it didn't mean crap if you weren't in front on Sunday. They should of marked the tickets of the first 100 before breaking up the Saturday line so that the Saturday would mean something.
- No personal items to be signed: This is information that they could of told us between the time they announced the autograph session after the Friday focus panel and Sunday's signing. Seriously, it's like they like to spring crap on us when it's already too late.
- No compensation 2: After Sunday's fiasco, there was nothing that could make up for wasting at least 8 hours in line to get an autograph. ORESKABAND tickets are easy to get and doesn't make up even an ounce of effort. If only Bandai or AX will put money where their mouth is with some sort of way to say I'm sorry.

As the person that started the AX Haruhi thread and even called Aya Hirano's appearance 24 before the announcement, I can say that i've been betrayed. I hated the disorganized staff this year. From autographs to concerts to the AMV Contest, stuff was not going as planned.

[b-san]

johnny and patricia were not out of hand. nothing made sense during that concert, what were they supposed to do?

[Giggles]

johnny and patricia were totally out of hand.. They ignored the guest speakers!! come on now.. All we care about are the Japanese voice actors .. Why did they have scripts in their hand?.. Shouldnt they have had it memorized by then?.. That just shows that they were not prepared.. The co-host translator did a terrible job.. At some points she did Japanese translation to us.. We're not Japanese so we wouldnt understand..

They also didnt start the autograph session until 30 mins after the scheduled time.. Why did they take 30 minutes to count 50 peoples head .. Why arent the events on time?.. wats up with that?.. ANd you know what?..

The staff members didnt even tell us what was going the whole time when we were waiting..

This post has been edited by Giggles: 02 July 2007 - 08:49 AM

[ennuyeux]

I thought when the translator scolded Patricia, that was one of the few parts of the script they were actually following? But anyway, there was still the vibe of disorganization. It seemed like people didn't know what they were supposed to be doing, and I think this is most likely due to whoever was planning the entire flow of things in the first place. I have a feeling that Patricia and others only got their scripts the day of, at least it felt that way with how confusing things were. Long delays between calling people onto the stage, like when they were calling Yuko back. I still enjoyed the concert, but it could have been put together a lot better.

[Diedrupo]

I thought Patricia and Johnny did a good job. A lot of that stuff on the stage that happened was there for humorous effect, not the embarrassment of the japanese guests. They probably all knew each other beforehand (likely met pre-con) so I highly doubt there was any embarrassing problems experienced.

Perhaps it made a few congoers uncomfortable, but I'd like to think it was entertaining for most. It was for me, anyway.

Besides, the concert didn't have much material to it, only a few songs by each of the voice actresses and then a massive hare hare yukai dance at the end. Roughly 30 minutes of material. they had to pad out the other 30 min with other stuff, so there you go.

This post has been edited by Diedrupo: 02 July 2007 - 01:01 PM

[Bonta-Thunder]

The reason for the no personal items signing was the SOS brigade terms and was told to the AX staffers to tell the ppl in line for the signing about it.

This post has been edited by Bonta-Thunder: 02 July 2007 - 02:10 PM

[TallonKarrde23]

I figured just about EVERYTHING that went on with everyone on stage during the SOS thing was as it was planned.

Only because i know none of them can act, and the whole idea of saying things like 'the script says to say this' or acting like a jackass is a common running joke in just about anything thats humorous and was probably actually how the script was written to begin with. So i just assumed it was all planned out ahead of time that way, if it wasnt, then the concert woudlnt have continued magically. Its not like the majority of it wasnt scripted, while yeah there was a few things that probably werent planned ahead of time, im pretty sure the majority of it was on purpose and everyone on the stage knew about it.

Anyway, i dont think any of the three of them were offended (Aya, Chihara, or Yuko) at all, and i think patricia and johnny were pretty amusing.

This post has been edited by TallonKarrde23: 02 July 2007 - 03:00 PM

[jinx626]

Posted this in another thread.

Attended the panel and waited in line in the blistering sun to get a ticket for autograph. On saturday waited in line 5 hours before the "tentative" signing and then it was announced cancelled at the time it was suppose to start (couldn't they have announced this earlier??!??). On sunday came at 6am to line up to try and get an autograph again and seemed to be in good position until all the cutting/saving spots with no AX staff in site to help manage line until around 9am. Signing was suppose to start at 11am but was delayed till around 11:20am then it was announced only 50-100 ppl would get pre-autographed posters WTF!!!! Aya and company couldn't make more??!?? Still stayed in line even though they told us to leave and then found that people who went to BANDAI BOOTH tickets (which i never heard about) managed to have higher priority than those that had red panel tickets...EVEN BIGGER WTF. I really don't blame too much AX staff on this one as i heard it was mainly the SOS mangement team that set the schedules even though knowing full well how many ppl were waiting for signatures of the trio. The only thing i blame AX staff is not giving out the information much earlier that only first 50 were going to get something and line management.

What BANDAI and SOS Management should've done is hand out those tickets to those that were already in line with red tickets instead of offering at their BOOTH...WTF. Also handing out another ticket for those that waited on Saturday and given them higher priority instead of giving out SOS concert ticket which i had premier tickets already..

[Aekari]

TallonKarrde23, on Jul 2 2007, 03:58 PM, said:

Anyway, i dont think any of the three of them were offended (Aya, Chihara, or Yuko) at all

I don't really believe so either, although the stuff with Johnny and Patricia onstage with Miss Chihara was slightly uncomfortable. Miss Chihara's blog (http://minorhythm.jugem.jp/) on the アニメエキスポ　２日目 entry for 7/1/07 doesn't say anything about being offended, mad, or anything of that sort. According to her,

Quote

アメリカの声優さん達との公開プチアフレコもあり、とて�
刺激的で楽しい時間でした

"There was also a public mini-"off record" session with the American voice actors. It was a very stimulating and fun hour."

This post has been edited by Aekari: 02 July 2007 - 04:17 PM

[Bonta-Thunder]

I didn't think so either. Even though the concert was not prepared well, i still enjoyed it esp. the fake beatin on the screens that showed Johnny getting pwned by a ninja.

[Mei]

We only have the impression of Minorin's view, blog-wise. All Aaya talked about was how big her clam chowder was (lol) and Goto-san's blog is still on day 1 [as of this post], so there is still the verdict from those two.

I guess Minorin was thouroughly confused with the "Lost in Translation" escapades on stage, but she seemed to have enjoyed learning the word "watermelon". XD Doesn't seem too bad... I think.

SOS autograph session should have been either been 1) raffled from the start or 2) not happened at all. Just to save the 200+ of us some sanity. My friend was the one screaming and ranting after she heard the cut off on Sunday... yeah, the one in the East High uniform Haruhi cosplay. I was just as mad, but just not as expressly.

I hope the girls had at least some time to enjoy themselves around town, despite the rudeness from the staff they got.

This post has been edited by Mei: 02 July 2007 - 10:17 PM

[NERV_HQ]

OP here.

well after thinking about, i'm mostly mad about the autograph session ruckus.

the SOS concert was indeed very very fun for me and worth every hour of wait. but i still felt the guests unconfortable-ness because of confusion, especially chihara (the translator had to say sorry to her cuz of johnny and patricia). but then again, i can understand that at these kind of things, you might have to go a little out of ur way to improvise and make things more humorous, which is what johnny and patricia did. if only they did that but at the same time managing themselves and knowing when enough is enough, and keeping in mind that u have 3 special guests performing with you who don't know much english.

[Orion]

The Bandai booth thing was not well publicized at all. They had a tiny little sign at their booth saying that if you bought one of their Haruhi items and then were one of the first 50 people to show up on Sunday with a receipt, you would get an autograph. I noticed it and immediately bought a (second copy) of one of the CDs and figured that would be a nice backup plan in case I didn't make it on Saturday.

Well, you all know how the Saturday autographing session ended up. I showed up a little before 6am on Sunday morning, and was going to stand in line for the exhibit hall so that when they opened I would be one of the first to get in and get in line at the Bandai booth, but then I saw how short the line for the rescheduled SOS-dan autograph session was, so I figured, "Hey, I should just get in this line." Silly me, I should have stuck with my original plan, and I probably would've gotten my autographs. I naively thought they would have no problem getting through the 100-ish people in front of me and that I'd definitely get an autograph.

Well bah humbug.

[quantbits]

QUOTE(HippieRenji @ Jul 3 2007, 12:36 PM) *

From what I understand that had NOTHING to do with AX staff. SOS are simply VERY arrogant people and since the arena did not look full they got offended and would only sign 50 posters from the dealers room.

I am trying to investigate this right now.. but a very interesting claim nevertheless.

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[kyosuke-sempai]

I think it is both Ax staffs and SOS Bridage faults.

Ax staffs should have confirm - I meant demand an answer - if SOS wants to give our signature or not.

[HippieRenji]

Theyre voice ACTORS its called following script.

Most VA are fans themselves. Did you expect them to be totally business like and not have any fun at the con?

[Bonta-Thunder]

I might repeat myself but it was fun. Just those 3 being here made my AX a lil brighter even if it was unorganized. THat and getting a domestic poster autograph by them. Woot.

[NERV_HQ]

HippieRenji, on Jul 3 2007, 04:23 PM, said:

Theyre voice ACTORS its called following script.

Most VA are fans themselves. Did you expect them to be totally business like and not have any fun at the con?

i guess you didnt read my second post.

[jotaru]

I was disappointed with most of the concerts at AX this year...the guests are truly great ones, but having the inexperienced staffs, it became a mess. If AX is serious of doing concerts, they better hire more professional sound and stage technicians instead of having volunteers. Plus hearing all the guests getting mistreated at the con, I felt sorry for them.

At this point, AX doesn't have the experience people of knowing how to take care the musicial guests and their concerts, not to mention poor marketing too. If AX is smart next year, reduces 6 concerts to 1-2 concerts and put some effort in it. 6 concerts may be too much for AX staffs to handle and concentrate on, seeing lots of empty seats for most concerts sadden the musical guests too.