Tachibana
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Posts posted by Tachibana
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The Bad:
- During the signing on Friday for Elizabeth Maxwell her line just... suddenly stopped. For a good 30+ minutes, before being cleared out. To be clear, I don't mind being cut off as I DID show up to the signing later than I should've. I fully admit that I do mind, however, that staff/gofers were probably somewhat aware the line was going to be cut at this point and didn't see fit to at least warn us "hey she's probably not going to get to you all". This is probably more partially my fault given how absolutely long the wait was getting for the line to move, and you can perhaps chalk it up to my own negligent judgement, but I thought it important to bring up anyway in case something can be changed for next time there's a situation like this.
The Ugly
- The situation with the Women in Anime panel. Ugly enough for its own thread. It's probably the WORST scheduling snafu I've personally witnessed at Otakon. You absolutely need to do better going forward, especially for such an important subject that I wouldn't have minded seeing two separate panels for over the weekend if necessary.
- This is, obviously, not the con's fault but... with the KyoAni well wishes signature board (? not sure what else to call it) was pretty vandalized when I last checked in on it- big advertisements of etsys and instagrams overwriting lovely messages and drawings of support. To be clear with the IGs, I don't mean artists signing their drawings with their IG, I mean flat out "dudes follow me on @.xyzwhatever" without any sort of well wishes for KyoAni. I really hope Otakon has a plan for how to handle that. I guess at least a few of the sheets weren't completely ruined but at least one was just utterly trashed and a couple were left questionable.
The Ehh...? Consider this...?
- While Closing Ceremonies was overall good, it kinda seemed to end without the same oomph Opening Ceremonies did. This has been something that's occurred at least since the con came to DC, if not before. It's not a big deal in the slightest, but if you were looking to spruce it up any, I wouldn't complain.
The Good
- Everything else, thankfully, was handled very well.
- The other autograph sessions I attended (Stephanie Panisello and Kari Wahlgren on Friday, Erika Harlacher and Elizabeth Maxwell/Jason Liebricht on Sunday; my sibling echoes this for Epcar's Saturday session) were probably the best run sessions I've seen at any Otakon yet. Extremely smooth. Big kudos to whoever ran those.
- Opening ceremonies was entertaining and informative for the con's events. It really made me seriously rethink my planned schedule. Though, due to the aforementioned happening with the Elizabeth Maxwell line on Friday, I didn't really get to. Oh well! But it's still good it made me rethink things, definitely.
- Richard Epcar's outtakes panel, while short, was funny.
- The Saturday Morning Cartoons event was a blast. That's such a unique idea I haven't seen before at any other con. Please do it again, and unless there's high priority events/signings/panels I feel I need to attend at the same time to make my con experience "worth it", I'll absolutely come back.
- Stephanie Panisello's solo panel was fun and informative, quite liked it.
- The Video Game Voice Acting panel was really fun and informative as well. I was happy to see Jen Cohn and Ellyn Stern on it as well in spite of not being in the description, as I had found their absence odd.
- I appreciated the acknowledgement and explanation for the food rule when another person brought it up at feedback. That there's a difference between packing some allergy-free foods, a couple of snacks or sandwiches, and bringing in a pile of pizza boxes. I definitely agree bringing in big amounts of food is pretty disruptive (besides being bad for the center's business). I felt a bit like a criminal all weekend when I brought in sandwiches for myself for lunch/dinner and having to sneak around eating them, so it's nice to know I probably don't have to do that going forward, lol.
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Hey staff! I had an overall good time, but there was one thing that kinda-- ah, I can't mince words-- that REALLY bothered me. I almost brought it up at the Feedback session but I figured it'd be better to articulate myself here as it's kinda long and my brain keeps jumping around to different points as to why I'm upset at this. 'cause there are LAYERS.
So, on Saturday, there was supposed to be a Women in Anime panel. Typically Otakon holds these panels almost every year. Description indicated this- that it would have all the English dub actress guests on the panel to talk about representations of women in anime and what it's like to be a woman in anime voiceover. Now, I find such discussion between actresses interesting (and important!). 4 different actresses were in the Guidebook description of the panel- and still were as of me checking last night after it was over. The panel starts and I notice Erika and Kari are sort of... hanging off to the side while Ellyn just goes on, Elizabeth nowhere in sight. At first I thought "oh, maybe she's holding a moderating role, that's cool, Elizabeth must just be late". But it soon became really obvious that this was her panel and the two of them were escorted away.
Thankfully, I realized "oh, right, Ellyn Stern always holds one of these solo "Women in Anime" panels at cons she goes to- which I'm sure MANY congoers in the audience were not aware of. And, don't get me wrong, said panel was interesting when I first saw one a few years back, at Katsucon I think. But when you're told you're going to be seeing more or less a discussion between actresses and end up more with a lesson/lecture-style panel headed by a single panelist, it's a bit of a whiplash, and probably explains why people started leaving. It's also disappointing as I believe it was the only panel Kari was slated for this weekend besides the Samurai Champloo anniversary panel- so having such a big guest technically get snubbed of half their panels seems more than a bit disrespectful.
I figured I should tell y'all this you know why the panel is averaging like a 1.5 star rating on the Guidebook app, last I checked. I don't think it was objection to the panel's content- as it was important and good, and discussion about the portrayal of women in media is something that should absolutely happen- but rather, the fact that, well, it was falsely advertised. It should not be an indicator that congoers aren't interested in feminist content - just that, there's no mincing words, panel scheduling REALLY screwed this one up. I gave it a three star rating in the hopes it'd bump up the average to indicate an interest in the contents while also communicating my displeasure at 1) not getting to see all the actresses discuss the subject together and 2) Kari and Erika basically getting snubbed. Were it not averaging so low, though, I'd have absolutely given it a 1. I'm sure others were upset because they were there to specifically see one or more of the other actresses only to have them, well, not be there or be outright escorted out, with no real explanation.
Admittedly, I ended up leaving about 25 minutes in as, again, I had seen this panel Ellyn has given before, and it really wasn't significantly updated. I thought I'd go check out some other stuff at the con, you know? Thus, if the other actresses came in later, I missed them. But I'm guessing from how Kari and Erika were escorted out of the room as opposed to sitting in the back, well... they didn't. If I'm wrong, do correct me.
And, again, to repeat- the description wasn't even updated to reflect the change, even after the panel was over. I will say that, upon going to the individual guests' pages and realizing that they have individual schedules, I decided to check out the actresses listed in the description. None of the other listed actresses besides Ellyn had the panel listed themselves. So while I'll give small kudos to that, that doesn't really change the fact the description is exactly as it was, which is what most people are gonna see- indicating it was not Ellyn's panel she gives at cons, but rather, the seemingly annual panel discussion between the voice actresses.
I've seen Otakon go through scheduling snafus a number of times but I feel like this is one of the absolute worst given the sight of two guests of honor just awkwardly made to stand to the side and barely being acknowledged, and in the process making another guest of honor look rude to those unaware of her history with solo panels like this when it was most likely (and I sincerely hope it was this) a case of unacceptable levels of wires being crossed. At least with other cases like the Dragonball panel last year it was a case of the panel being cancelled or something. But this is unacceptable, at least in my opinion, on an entirely new level.
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Lots of cool panels! :O
Gonna have to wait until the autograph sessions are lined up before I make any planning decisions though, hah.
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Got mine today in spite of my snafu earlier!
And what a lovely design! -
Ah yeah got the zip code right. Phew. Thanks for telling me.
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Onnnn topic (I hope!) upon checking my badge orders, it appears I made a horrible error in address! In the Badge Mailing Information, I accidentally input "Alexandria, Vi" instead of Alexandria, VA!
I've already sent an e-mail to registration asking about it in the hopes of changing it officially, so I do expect an answer from them in the next few days, but for anyone in the know it would still help to know if I should expect to be able to receive my badge or if it'll have to be picked up at con.
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I imagine if for whatever reason your badge is not received you can pick it up at con. After all we're going to have to sign for them, so if it's returned to sender, Otakorp will know the badge wasn't gotten.
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Well, Romi-san is incredibly popular. Just a cursory twitter search reveals a LOT of people excited about the announcement and that's just on Twitter. It might be possible to have a normal autograph session as was done with Tomokazu Seki, but I'm almost positive he doesn't have the same "star power". Such things come with voicing Edward Elric I guess haha.
Saw someone jokingly suggest no signing of FMA products or paraphernalia, which would cut down the line a lot but really wouldn't be fair to all the FMA fans, so I disagree with the idea, hehe.
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The only way a lottery system would work is if it was opt in. I'm sure there are people coming to Otakon who've no interest in meeting her, so if they got picked it'd be beyond unfair. And I'm not sure how you'd handle a lottery system properly if it is opt-in. Probably best to do what they did with TMR and Kanno-san. Line up outside at one of the exits, etc.
EDIT: Holy double post batman what the heck happened? I sure didn't MEAN to do that.
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The only way a lottery system would work is if it was opt in. I'm sure there are people coming to Otakon who've no interest in meeting her, so if they got picked it'd be beyond unfair.
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KENSHIN-SAMA!
KENSHIN-SAMAAAA!!!
... ahem. >_>; That's out of my system.
Thank you all so so much for managing to get her to come! This is like such.... an amazingly huge deal for me. I adore so many of her roles, but especially
Anyway, given her huuuuge popularity in regards to being Ed, will the autographs situation be like it was for TMR and Yoko Kanno? Or should we just like... hope that we'll be able to meet her and throw ourselves into the void outside the autographs line?
Also, how would any Q&A panels with her go? Any audience questions or a way to submit questions to be considered?
I'm sorry I know you guys are still hammering out the details... but quite literally I'm willing to devote my entire con experience to meeting her. ;_;
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>first US con
>all the seiyuu save one that I really really want to meet have never been to a US con
Oh my goodness be still my beating heart don't get your hopes up....
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Probably shouldn't set my expectations TOO high but for alabaster to talk about a guest with "mwahahaha"... I can't help it.
It all sounds super hype though. Glad I can make my return this year.
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Welp, there you go then!
If I'm able to make it in on Thursday I'll still bring along something for him to sign and check out the concert. Meant to at Katsucon but my schedule got super full! Never been to an Otakon Matsuri so not sure if it has the same deal goin' on as the DC Matsuri which I seem to remember had the pop culture guests do signings right after they performed. -
You never know. He might only be available on Thursday. It'd sure be nice though- while I prefer Romi Park's performance, he nonetheless does a wonderful job as Kenshin in Sengoku BASARA. Ahhh Lord Kenshin.... ~ <3
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Hm, is Toshiyuki-san the seiyuu in question? o: If so, that announcement sure came a lot quicker than expected!
Anywho, I realize it's probably far too late to make requests for this year, but just a suggestion upon recent research-- what about Susan Dalian? She voiced Haku in Naruto, and she does a damn good job of it!
Her hometown IS Baltimore, so it'd be pretty neat if y'all could get her! -
Oooh, seems like a nice juicy lineup.
Popular current show huh? That could be any number of shows, hehe.
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I don't see it as snubbing either! I just though, ya know, they might. But if they understand you guys have limited funds, I guess that's not a concern.
Guess the guest huh? Yes please!
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Well now, I am just waiting for bio and photo on a couple of japanese guests.... one of whom is a seiyu that I think will make people pretty happy.
Oooh neat, eagerly waiting!
Also good question Coco. I also wonder if like whether people potentially getting offended at being snubbed in such a situation is an issue.
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Mm, sorry to burst your bubble, I don't think HuniePop would fall into Otakon's specific specialty range. They tend to focus solely on things that can be linked directly to East Asian culture, not on non-East-Asian culture related western products. This tends to mean Japanese media (anime, games, drama, music, etc.) and Korean media (typically K-pop). Given, if the western product has a direct link to East Asian culture, an exception can be made. I think it's been mentioned several times that Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra guests are considered often, and certainly things akin to US-based Japanese/Korean/Chinese traditional art programs/troupes and stuff like representatives from US shinto shrines and buddhist temples could be considered.Yes, HuniePop has an anime-esque design and VNs/date sims are popular in Japan, but it's a completely North American product with nothing much to do with East Asian culture to my knowledge. Further, as far as bringing them individually goes... none of the guests mentioned have many, if any, official roles to their name, and Otakon doesn't seem fond of inviting guests known for abridged series- typically they have to come as panelists/artists/dealers themselves. I'd suggest asking a different local con of your choice to get them?
They all seem super talented and I'm sure they'd be lovely to meet, but I don't think they fit Otakon's scope...
If I'm wrong on any of this, staff, lemme know.
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^Looking at the layout of the DC convention center there's several places that Otakon could set up autograph lines in an area out of the way from the rest of the con AND with plenty of room. I wouldn't be concerned with how they'll handle DC.
Excited to learn which guests will be invited this year. I should actually be able to come this year, at least for a day or two, so I'm in anticipatory bliss.
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Just popping in to request that Romi Park is invited, and also Natsuko Kuwatani as well... Yes, I recognize that Romi's one of those people y'all are always looking out for to get, but... I dunno I wanted to mention it!
Hope I'll be able to come this year, regardless!
2020 Guest Requests
in Otakon Guests
Posted
In no particular order...