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If there is one thing that is sad to see, it's the total mishandling of top-tier talent. Even the most experienced artist will sometimes find themselves faced with unpredictable technical difficulties, unexpected turns in the plan, and the proverbial acts of God. It's quite a different story when it's sheer professional incompetence that steadily destroys the will of even the most world weary of performers. Such was the fate handed to the performers at the SOS Brigade show at Anime Expo 2007.
This time, we were a little smarter and made sure to track down a couple press tickets way before hand. While we waited to get them and be taken to the venue, we ran into Dale North and Gia from animeonline.com. We chatted for a while as we were told that all of the press people would be lead in a group over to the venue. A few minutes after the time they told us, we still didn't see any other group of press forming, so we asked what was up. Apparently the group had already left! This seemed impossible for two reasons:
1. The staff said they would tell us when they were going and the staff would obviously never lie to the press, and...
2. We were standing directly in front of the press room door the entire time.
So we grabbed our gear and ran all the way across the convention center and somehow managed to find the press people without incident.
Once again, no one, including the press, was allowed to take photos or video of the event. It would seem that they learned from some of their previous mistakes and made it very clear on several occasions that there were to be no cameras, and that any cameras seen on in the venue would be taken. OK, no problem there.
Once again there was a large line to get in and the show started three hours behind the printed schedule. Again, many people had been waiting most of the day to get in, but at least this time they allowed a few people to sit inside while they waited.
After another hour long wait in line, we were finally allowed to take our seats. It should be mentioned that we could hear several of the performers still sound checking right up to the time the doors opened, meaning that things were already running at a very slow pace.
Once we were in, we had to sit though a host of anime promo stuff played on the two large screens, most of it Haruhi related. Again, after a long wait, things finally got rolling.
It's almost ironic, no, it is ironic that the very first song was Miruku's theme song "Koi no Mikuru Densetsu." In it, she's supposed to sound off key and shaky. It's actually pretty hard to sing badly, but it went very well. Even though the intentional badness, there was an air of something just not being right. Something was a bit off. It was about to become much off-er.
First off, it seems that for a long time there was only one microphone for the performers to use. Since there was usually at least three people on stage at any one time, this made for a bit of awkwardness. But seriously, only one mic? In a huge arena? They should have had, what, twenty? Fifty? This alone should boggle the mind of any sane person.
I can't remember the exact string of events and songs, but I'm sure you can imagine the set up. One of the voice actors would sing a song, get a bit of chatting in with the ASOS Brigade's version of Haruhi, Patricia Ja Lee, then do some live voice acting. It was this scripted banter and voice acting that went almost totally awry. The actors missed almost ever cue, leaving a confused Patricia and the MC (who's name I'm forgetting) stalling for time by asking questions of each other that neither seemed to understand. To make this awkwardness even worse, almost none of the video was working correctly. The audience was treated to shots of the engineer mousing around on the Windows desktop and clicking on the various buttons. Songs would sometimes start, then abruptly stop. There were huge pauses between the song introductions and the actual song starting.
Worst of all was the way it seemed that the performers on stage couldn't hear the music. They were always singing wonderfully, but way out of sync with the music. At one point someone mentioned the voices were very loud on stage, so I'm guessing that the difference between the vocal and music volume was vastly unbalanced. Through all of these horrible and seemingly unending technical problems, the performers were amazing examples of professionalism. It was obviously having an effect on them when at one point Johnny Yong Bosch was part of a massively confusing voice acting session with Minori Chihara and a now understandably livid Patricia. No one knew what was going on. The awkward pauses were painful.
Nevertheless, this cycle of confusion kept on spiraling until Aya Hirano's final song which was absolutely perfect. It was as if the gods of darkness and dismay lifted their curse over the technical staff and producers and allowed this one ray of sunshine to pass through.
Following the final song was, of course, the dance. The winners of a previous dance contest were brought on stage, along with all of the other voice actors. This also went very well until the end, when for absolutely no reason the stage was flooded with fog, making it impossible to see the actual dancers!
Overall, I'd have to say that this was easily the worst display of unprofessional technical production I've ever seen. The performers all kept an astounding level of professionalism in the face of total disaster. Their singing was excellent and the amount of energy they brought to their performance was blinding. It was as if the entire show was slapped together five minutes before the doors opened and no one was ever told what to expect, least of all the technical staff. If I had paid to get in, I would certainly not have left without getting my money back.
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