Convention Tactics - Cheaper Guests
Just recording some thoughts about American-style anime conventions.
Recently I read about Malaysian convention Daicon (wait, didn’t someone already capitalized on that name?) and I’m happy that (somewhat) English-language East Asia is having more of these parties. Reflecting on Otakon’s guest issues over the years (as well as other cons) reminds me just how much trouble it can be to fly a crew from Japan to anywhere this side of the Pacific.
But if you’re May’n or something, you could hop over to Singapore on a relative dime. Since Malaysia is just a bridge away from Singapore, so that’s a relative-dime distance away too.
It makes me wonder. A country like Singapore speaks English for the most part, would they have any incentive to invite, say, American dub actors? I don’t think they sell any American-produced English dubs there, so they probably wouldn’t. But what if they did? Would they fly someone like LOL Vic Mignogna over?
I pick Vic for example because he’s an exemplary (lol) American dub actors doing the con circuit. He generally has good rapport with the con staff and many fans love him. His panels are usually fun to attend and fits in with the American-style anime con concept. But beyond his personality and his ability to entertain, a growing reason I see Vic at anime cons is because, well, this is America. It’s relatively cheap to fly and host American voice actors at American cons, to promote their own work, as many of them being self-reliant go-getters. It’s fun for them and for the fans, and it’s an inexpensive way to draw a crowd and make your convention something more interesting. Your anime con might be some no-name thing, but with a few VAs you can attach all the shows these people worked on, right on your website. People recognize Full Metal Alchemist, Bleach and DBZ right?
Speaking of no-name things, a cursory glance at sites like animecons.com would show you that bulk of “anime cons” nowadays are no-name things. This was a drastically different picture than merely 6-7 years ago, when the more established cons of today were the majority of what’s happening. (Well, I guess they are still where things are happening, fans or industry alike. They’re just outnumbered.)
These changes are inevitable, and they reflect the nature of anime conventions in the US, its role in the life of average fans, casual and serious alike. It’s easy to observe how demographics changed from a mostly male to about 50/50 breakdown in the con-attending demographic. It’s about the Pokemon generation getting old enough to attend cons and to have money to do so, and not just sci-fi aficionados who spent long afternoons during undergrad playing games and watching anime at a club. And of course, that means we have a lot of small cons serving a lot of people all over the place versus a dozen big ones over the course of the year, focused on major population centers.
So, yes, dub actors, cheap, easier to obtain as guests, easily found at cons all over. Win? It’s a very different win than what you’d find in Malaysia, I bet. What does this mean?
I think, to some extent, it presents bigger and older conventions an opportunity to refocus. I think a convention like Anime Central is a good example. They still feature popular Japanese guests, but despite being an older con that used to host Japanese production folks, Anime Central can still survive by tailoring to the bigger, Japanese-ambivalent public. Bring the musical guests, the dub actors, and the rest can sort itself out. The cost and benefit of bringing a seiyuu or a director of something less than super-popular just don’t tend to work out unless you’re the Otakon or AX out there. Doubly so if you’re not based on the West Coast. Spread that mix of considerations on the stretched-thin skin-tight budget common in a recessionary economy and you might get someone who worries too much.
It really can’t be worth it for the con or the guest to fly from Japan if only 50 people are going to the panel. I sometimes do wonder if certain cons might be better for Japanese guests who are in the production end. I’ve been to a number of them at Otakon and the panels with production guests are usually pretty awkward, like nobody knows what to ask, and they don’t understand what the con goers want. Once in a while they do click well when you’ve got a few people in the audience who can feed the guests decent questions, so it’s hard to write them off altogether.
Besides, I think most guests are just bait to get you to check out the con’s web page so you can pre-register or something. Even if you want to see some of them, you wind up doing something else anyway unless they’re like a guest you HAVE to see. In a way they’re like the point of the convention, yet not.
Heh.
Depends on the guests and what they do.
If you get guests like May’n, Kugimiya Rie and what not, then we’d have a blast going to cons.
On the other hand, if it’s people like Greg Ayres…
Well, THe only draw that guy has is if we had a dunk tank :P
I am already pretty disappointed with how sometimes cons are… but this makes me wonder what type of guests are coming to Otakon this year… >_
It’s a mystery to poor people like us!
I take from reading this, that you don’t work as staff for conventions so you don’t understand that even getting American VAs can cost quite a bit. Even more so if you live far from where the VAs live (Texas, California, Vancouver). It might be cheaper than a Japanese guest, but it’s not like throwing a few dollars out there, it’s a big comitment for the smaller ones.
I also take it you don’t watch dubs much.
Actually I do understand getting American VAs can cost quite a bit. I even implied this. And it can be cheaper than a Japanese guest, as I also implied this. But at the same time I think the generalization I made is valid.
And yeah, I don’t watch dubs much.
[…] an interesting article about anime conventions, and their guest lists. The article is called “Convention Tactics - Cheaper Guests.” It discusses the different types of guests that appear at anime cons, namely the differences […]
Nobody here are interested in American dubs, as the fan cultural mindset here are more in tune with the Japanese market. That said, I can bet that any American dub followers here are countable with one hand only.
Come to think about it, Malaysian conventions are much, much more communal (hence, more “warm and fuzzy” feeling) than the Singapore ones, by virtue of the cultural identities of these two countries. I can daresay that Malaysian conventions have much more in common with the American conventions than the ones in Singapore.
There is a running joke (or at least I presumed there is) about meeting up with the Bahasa Malaysian dub actors/actresses because they find it interesting to see them in person. “Who is that squeaky voice in [insert anime feature broadcasted in Bahasa here]?” Note that in many broadcasts of anime series in Malaysia, the voice actors and actresses are the same, and they have been doing it for like, 15 years or so.