DaiCon 2009: A good flop?

What makes an event a successful event? Good floor layout? Good sound system? Good attractions? Good crowd? All?

In the case of DaiCon 2009, an ACG (anime, comics and games) event held at MMU Cyberjaya, the only good thing I got to notice in the few hours I was there last Saturday was a better floor layout than what I'd seen at the previous ACG event I had attended which was HELP's C2AGE.

If C2AGE was rated one over five stars, DaiCon's only two.

In other words, not that fantastic.

Which, is a pity considering the kind of hype it had over the event way in advance. They had a snazzy looking website promoting the event and they even managed to rope in a seiyuu all the way from Japan to perform but again, this goes to show that things can always go wrong if you've failed to nail down the itty-bitty details.

Like Point Numero Uno: I was told that there was going to be a maid cafe. I'm no otaku by far but I thought it'd be something different to be served coffee and cake by girls in maid uniform and had looked forward to it. So I saw all these maids, right? And I had no idea if they were just random maid cosplayers or the ones who were supposed to work the cafe but I didn't see any cafe.

I did though, see the Nescafe truck and there was this Indian uncle OK, and he was serving people free instant coffee in the little paper cups. And not to be racist or anything (the point's not about the uncle to begin with) but I actually wondered if the organisers had gotten the idea of a cafe all wrong and decided that coffee was best served in paper cups, the instant way, and from a small booth set up next to a truck. I nearly asked the uncle, "Uncle, mana itu costume maid uncle?" but I decided that I had better not risk my free cup of coffee since I really wanted a drink.

Point Numero... uh, Duo?: Only questions submitted to the DaiCon committee AND that were approved will be asked during Minori Chihara's Q and A session. Said, a media friend who received an e-mail notifying the ruling two days prior to the event. The last minute-ness of the whole thing was because the committee had forgotten to notify the media much earlier.

Said media friend also decided to screw the whole thing altogether after getting so bored, going round and round the hall for a few times and realising that the attractions only amounted to a few booths selling artwork, a few booths selling shirts and other things, a makeup booth whose products you can find in Guardian and Watson's, a few booths displaying figurines and a bunch of cosplayers whose costumes were all right but not too fantastic.

A seiyuu comes all the way from Japan and the media were not granted exclusive one-on-one interviews but forced to sit in on the Q and A session with the rest of the paying fans. This was a far cry from previous interviews had with two other seiyuus who had made appearances at previous years' ACG events, namely Mr Tuxedo Mask and the guy who voices Ichigo Kurosaki.

Ah, let's screw it. The said media person is me. I had a one-on-one with Mr Tuxedo Mask, which was fantastic because although most reporters will tend to ask similar questions, at least they are able to write about their individual experiences or get a few questions asked differently (if lucky). Even when I was unable to attend last year's event that had Ichigo, thanks to the local PR team for Animax which is Roots, was still able to get a one-to-one phone interview with said seiyuu.

Because, your boss will not like it if you wrote the same stuff the other media wrote. In fact, my boss will tell me, since the other paper has the shit, let's just scrap it or yay, let's just rely on Bernama (but that's usually for news stuff).

Anyway, I'm rambling but why do people need to pay to see Chihara, whom some people (who spoke to me at the event) have labeled a "manufactured idol"? Why can't it be an attraction for all? To me, it seems like discrimination on the organisers part and a bit of a ripoff. I say, a ripoff because she is supposed to be a major crowd-pulling factor and yet, you are denying the crowd a reason to remain at the event longer than necessary (since the attractions got boring after a while).

The conclusion is, it's not an entirely bad event (although some of the karaoke contestants were scary and there was this mysterious long line for people to buy I don't know what). I was told that due to certain "political rifts" within the organising committee and the ACG club, a lot of things managed to get botched up and ended up the way they had.

However, a lesson to be learnt is this: Having a big name at your event (like with C2AGE and its Hannah Tan) does not necessarily guarantee it a success. It draws in some crowds and keeps some visitors happy (like the pervs, don't we know?) but if it has the visitors coming home and saying that this sucked and that sucked, you know that your event definitely needs a lot more improving.