While the guest list is smaller than cons past, to say it's worse than a previous year is rather rude, don't you think? You don't have to like the lineup by any means since everyone has different opinions, but the guests who are coming out should at least still be welcomed and not, as a collective, be considered worse than a previous year because the total number is smaller or not who you want.
EDIT: With that said, I too am curious if more guests will be announced since the numbers are lower. Still, the current lineup is solid for my tastes.
I don't think anyone complaining about the "quality" of the guest lineup is disrespecting the guests themselves (personally or professionally), but are disappointed with the lineup as a whole. People are still glad that the con has guests, and seem to like the guests, but don't find the guests entirely suited to this con for a variety of reasons (and don't like the paltry number of guests...)
I think that when people mention "quality" of guests, they don't meant that the guests currently in the lineup do poor work, but rather that the guests aren't relevant to the convention and aren't popular enough or big enough names for a convention Fanimecon's size. I think that people also expect more Japanese guests at a con of this size, as a lot of English-language voice actors can be found at smaller cons (and most of the English-language voice actors attending aren't super popular or relevant, as far as I can tell). It's more an issue of "what do other cons this size (or even slightly smaller) have?" and Fanimecon not stacking up. Heck, SacAnime tends to have larger lineups of guests that are more relevant and popular (though almost entirely American guests), and Fanime has been around much longer and is much larger. Guests like this are staples of any convention, and help round out a guest list, but a con Fanime's size needs to have something besides staples. It would be like going to a fancy restaurant and only being able to order the same basic sandwiches that can be ordered anywhere else, without anything extra or gourmet to make going to the fancier restaurant worth it. (not a perfect analogy, but I think it gets the point across)
So the issue is more that the guests haven't worked on anything new and popular, and aren't particularly famous otherwise, that we could see a lot of these guests at smaller cons, and that there are just so few guests.
That said...
I'd rather have Yoko Kanno with the Seatbelts.
I'd love for this to happen. That's a guest I would go see. :]
We really appreciate the suggestions, however the process is more like the GoH picking us as opposed to us picking the GoH. While there are many nuances involved, basically your suggestions drive us to contact the GoHs. However, it may be that our contacts do not have established relationships with your suggestions and so we need to develop that relationship from fresh. While money does play a role, if the GoH is already booked or simply not interested for any reason, we will not be able to get them regardless of how much green we throw at them. We will keep on trying and please keep on suggesting, or we will end up getting the GoHs WE like (while our interested may overlap)...it will be more like FanimeStaffCon as opposed to FanimeCon:)
I think that most attendees would prefer to have more guests and more popular guests, even if it's the guests that the staff likes and not ones that have been suggested by attendees. ;]
Also, if many, many guests have been contacted but only a few have wanted to join the convention (assuming that this is what happened, rather than that very few guests were contacted), then there might be something wrong with the guest selection and contacting process. I don't know if it is a PR issue with the con/a bad reputation, or contacting guests too late, or some other issue, but it seems like new contacts and relationships with guests can be made, and that other conventions manage to do so. There seems to be something going wrong in this process, but I'm not part of staff or knowledgeable about convention guest selection processes to really know what is happening behind the scenes.
Though, thanks for always going into threads and trying to clear things up as much as you can and manage any PR issues the best you can, ewu. No hatin' on you, just frustrated with this con generally.
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Topic: Any more guests of honor? (Read 21428 times)