When the day ends, you hang up your coat, put your guns away, lean back, feet up, and air out your tiredness. We did that at Geneon After Dark.
Geneon After Dark is the name of the panel Geneon used to describe their 1am Otakon 2006 industry Q&A where cuffs are mostly off and the fanboy producers (and fangirls) giggled with us. I rather liked it last year when I went crazy and committed various forms of idolatry against Nana Mizuki. Speaking of which, I did forget to reiterate the question why there’s no movement on that front…
The panel itself is fairly simple. We sat, they pitched a trailer, they solicit a few questions regarding that thing, we raise our hands and get picked, we ask, they answer, and we get a free item. Rinse and repeat. A few clips later they opened up to general questions, but we had videos to see all throughout the panel including the Hellsing Ep2 previews. The floor opened up a lot more after we saw that.
The freebies they gave away were pretty good. I think I was the 3rd person to get picked so I had a wide variety of choices–piles of scrolls and t-shirts, and a lot of random stuff. It was sad, though, because the only thing I want I can’t have (a box of autographed incest given to some Hellsing fan), and the second thing I wanted is…from Kyo Kara Maou. Yes, a shoujo anime that I don’t even watch. It was a tin of something. I decided to just go for my 3rd pick, at least it’s g. I would say “damn you” for getting that Fuu figure, but I don’t even want it that much.
I think a big problem with a gathering attempt like this is that some of the audience are just plainly clueless. If you didn’t know what Black Lagoon was at that panel, well, that might be the sign to you that you need a clue before opening your mouth; let alone ask a long-winded question that makes no sense and cut into Q&A time. On the other hand a lot of the audience very much keyed-on when it comes to pointed questions, so props to them. I think this really shows especially when nearing the end of the panel I feel a lot of us were just dying to simply get some plain Q&A, but with the freebie-giving-away in the way we couldn’t get the questions out and have that dialogue going unless you’re a knowingly-rude person like me who does it because it’s supposed to be done. Terry(?) was the Geneon guy picking hands and he was trying to get to everyone who hasn’t had something–nice try but bleh. People were just raising their hands and asking dumb questions to get stuff. Since the panel didn’t conclude until 2:30, I was mad tired and didn’t want to stay around to hear all the chit chat post-panel, partly because the Good-Question-to-Bad ratio is probably too high, and I am just done airing my laundry for the day.
That said, I did stay for a couple round with…that other producer guy. I would have made my rounds to Stephen but he was pretty busy with the music people and I didn’t want to line up. And that brings us to our real topical point:
No one will ever license Futakoi Alternative.
If you recall, Geneon licensed UFOTable’s “big hit” Dokkoida. And you might also notice, if you pay attention to hype and fan clamoring, Dokkoida isn’t exactly a hot title. I think even in the fansub-sphere it didn’t make a lot of noise. Or much of noise at all. A speedy sub was all that was left in the path of an excellent but sadly forgettable show for most people, it would seem. What’s wrong with UFOTable? What’s wrong with you (who did not buy Dokkoida yet)? That’s not a big deal compared to what awaits Futakoi Alternative.
The brief conversation we had with…ugh, what’s his face next to Terry? Sorry for not remembering your name at 2am in the morning. In any event, said Geneon Guy professed his love for Dokkoida?! (and o/ for you brother) earlier which reminded me about Futakoi Alternative, one of the few titles I hunker for license-age. Naturally I brought up the topic later and he countered with something like “Well, the Japanese licenser will probably want to sell Futakoi too, and I don’t know about you but Futakoi is…”
A-yep. Futakoi is, yeah. Not a title Geneon would really like to license, at any rate.
So there we have it. It’s not the same kind of licensing hell Macross Zero is stuck in. It’s definitely not the same kind of licensing hell that Random Shoujo Series is stuck in, but that one might affect Futakoi Alternative indirectly if Dokkoida just doesn’t do well enough to justify it from the bottom line. In retrospect this situation probably has played itself out in the earlier years of fandom especially with game licenses. How do you get a “Tsukihime” without a “Tsukibako” anyways, right? How did businesses overcome that? I suppose licensing two shows is different than licensing one and ignoring the game counterpart.
More importantly, just what do we fans have to do to get a piece of it? Sucker a company, or wait for one, to license Futakoi vanilla first? I don’t really like the idea of that, but it might be the only thing left to do. Got any bright ideas for us threesome fans?
Certainly no more “Alternative” shows! Unless the original isn’t crap, anyways.
