Day 1
We arrived at the station at around 8:20 which is the earliest I’ve ever been able to get there and before the show actually opened. So upon arriving at the convention center we actually stood for about 20 minutes in the coiling section of lines I’ve never even seen put to use before.
The limited edition goods section, an ENTIRELY different queue, was as usual crowded beyond comprehensible belief. The fact that someone would travel any distance, let alone from outside the greater Tokyo metropolitan area and then proceed to go order a unique cell phone strap with THE ACTUAL VOICE ACTORS AND AUTHORS PRESENT is beyond me. But there it is.
I was dressed in my typical OP fanboy getup, I’m sure many of you have seen the pictures by now, the Chopper hat and I heart OP t-shirt. Walking through the queue this garnered a fair amount of amused laughs, points and inconspicuous cell pictures but I was happy to see I wasn’t the only one as ‘the Chopper hat’ was in fashion this year and one family of three even dressed entirely as Chopper. Very cute. Of notice was also a foreigner that, I guess, didn’t ‘get’ the culture of cosplay at JUMP Festa and went dressed as Edward Elric despite that the series is published in an entirely different publication.
It’d be like going to a Star Wars convention dressed as Worf…which I’m sure has actually been done before.
Majority of early cosplayers I noticed were standard Bleach, Naruto and Gintama fare with a pinch of Nurarihyon.
Entrance was same as usual, Bleach and Gintama blow-up dolls at the entrance to appease rabid fans of those series without making it look like OP crushes them unfairly. I’m not being facetious, that’s the real reason. Noted right away that in addition to the in-costume Naruto ‘trash bitches’ pretty ladies dressed as Luffy were handing out show floor merch guides and old grumpy men were dressed as Marines and were responsible for crowd control at various shop queues. As far as shops go they had a JUMP Shop, two cosplay shops with brand new OP Sabaody FULL cosplay sets for ridiculous amounts of cash (Luffy’s vest and shorts made of flimsy fabric will set you back a good $75 and Sanji’s ‘suit’ is over $100). One very cool item that hasn’t hit the streets yet is a ring based on Ace that has the lariat skull clasp with the two-face design and ASCE as well. It looks nice and is a good size but NOT worth $140 coming from some no-name designer.
Another goods store was dedicated to goods only sold at specific locations around Japan. Yes that’s right, it doesn’t end at Chopper. There are ALL sorts of generic snacks and crap that are simply packed in cardboard with the Strawhat’s pictures printed on them and sold for ridiculous prices.
For example, you’ll only find One Piece chinsuko cookies in Okinawa….but they’re still just regular chinsuko cookies.
They even had Strawhat ‘Mugi’ Tea (get it?) but again, it’s just generic buckwheat tea with the Strawhats on the label.
Lots of cutesy Chopper crap. They also had bathmats of those….um….’’endowed’ Robin and Nami images printed on bath mats. As an aside, I’m seeing those ‘style’ of images popping up on more and more merch to the point where I’m not really sure what’s official Oda-sanctioned and what’s doujin anymore.
It was my first time going into the shops in a few years so I had high expectations but nothing really blew me away.
The food line was ridonculous. I saw pictures of the One Piece-inspired ‘meat box’ online at for the first time ever it didn’t look like a total rip-off with at least three different kinds of meat and napolitan spaghetti as well. So I figured I’d get in line early before lunch and try to get one.
Nope.
90-freaking minute wait. For a lunch that wouldn’t even totally fill me. Pass.
Haruka did however go for the One Piece Domino’s Pizza which was CONSTANTLY being delivered by some suckers on the ‘delivery bikes’. It must have been a real pain in the ass going back and forth all day carrying a full load of pizza. I don’t even know where the closest store was. Anyway, there’s a campaign going on right now where all medium and large pizzas come in a special OP-themed box. Previously a ‘gift item’ included was a OP file folder which we received there and, while waiting in one line or another, a lady eager to practice her English who was also a rabid OP fan, actually gave us hers. FYI, the file folder campaign is over and the new one until mid-January is for OP-themed mugs. So if you happen to be in Japan it’s probably your best chance to get your hands on a OP x Domino’s pizza mug.
Games and shit.
Since there were two of us again this year there was time to actually look around instead of planting ourselves at the Toei Booth (I’ll get to that later) so I decided for the first time in two years, to take a detailed look at the games.
Nintendo had Donkey Kong and some Sengoku Basara Orochi Musou XYZ 3 was also there but I made a b-line for MvC3. I played the PS3 version and I chose Chris, Deadpool and Wolverine. Overall…I have no idea. Heh. All I can say is that it was lightyears easier to do cool stuff than in Blazblue. Having not played SF4 or a ‘crazy’ fighting like this since….well….MvC2, it was refreshing to have no idea what you’re doing but still have crazy shit happen. I saw some video of Arthur in action and while he looks tiny and awkward, I would not want to play against him with someone succeeds in the air because MOST of what he does is throw arcing items which must be a nightmare to deal with.
Monster Hunter Portable 3rd was also there and they had a full set of real armor from (I’m guessing) that new lightning beast. Also plenty of Felyne-themed statues and figures.
I went to see the Square Enix movie because for the FIRST TIME EVER it was overwhelmingly crowded and I literally walked STRAIGHT in and the trailers began. Began with the Japanese Kingdom Hearts Final Ultra International Climax Whatever PSP edition. As I never played the original since they weren’t kind enough to put it on the network, I couldn’t tell you anything about it other than that it looked pretty.
After two boring trailers the screen went black and I heard the ticking of a clock.
Me: “……no fucking way…..”
Text on Screen: “The adventure through time…..”
Me: “NO FUCKING WAY!”
Text on Screen: “Comes back again!”
Me: …..?
And after a thrilling series of artwork shots and screens of Chrono Trigger it ends with, “Finally coming to your mobile phone, next spring.”
-_-
But hey, it shows they haven’t forgotten it.
The Parasite Eve 3 trailer actually made me reconsider my ‘not gonna buy it’ approach. The story looks like absolute SHIT with the typical beaten, stabbed, raped, defiled-horse Japanese storyline of ‘Who am I really?’ but the action looks sweet and intuitive, not as random as I originally thought. I dunno if you’ve seen the trailers but there are some MASSIVE-scale battles and they look like fun but who knows.
And last was a trailer for Dissidia…Whatever-it’s-called.
Having played the original Dissidia and thoroughly enjoyed it, I can say it looks like more goodness presented in a MUCH smoother and enjoyable way. The whole game board thing was typical of PSP memory-saving navigation systems but the idea for the world map and how it looks in motion is BRILLIANT.
I also noticed Yuna’s foot in a CG scene which I instantly sent to all the gaming sites but apparently everyone thought it was just some guy fucking with them and I didn’t see the news in English at major sites until Nomura’s official announcement a few days ago. No good deed goes yadda yadda. Obviously Nomura didn’t mention it so I’m probably wrong but I could swear during a brief battle segment one of the portraits looked exactly like Nomura’s rendition of Shadow but with all the ‘dark’ characters looking so similar I dunno.
FF4 Complete for PSP is the bee’s knees. I will buy that in an instant.
Toys
Man do I suck at covering toys. You could put a WORLD-EXCLUSIVE P.O.P. in front of me and I couldn’t tell the difference between it and some arcade-fare shit anymore. The OP model and figurine world has just taken off like a rocket the past two years and I don’t know what’s what anymore.
I can tell you that I saw the new Men of Grand Line series in full completion and the Rayleigh and Roger are SWEET AS FUCK.
Also that large Hancock was there along with the rare white and gold paint edition. It’s super sexy. Haru and I spent/wasted $20 last night trying to get one at an arcade. They made it suuuuuuuuuper tough to get. We tried all sorts of different approaches and collectively nothing we knew worked. Probably should have gone to Akihabara and just bought it for half the price.
The most exciting thing I saw was a new series of skull OP phone straps. I love OP merch that doesn’t actually look like OP merch and a recent line of highly realistic OP-themed cell straps with detailed skulls representing crews and characters was apparently popular enough that they decided to continue the line. A new Ace (I have the current one) and Shanks are wicked.
The Dragon Ball Sculpture Tenkaichi Budoukai was revealed and although I know little about it it’s a neat idea, having some of the best sculptors in Japan using their skills to sculpt DB characters in a contest. SS3 Goku was very cool as were Piccolo and Freeza.
Art Booth
The original art booth was pretty cool. As a huge gift for Bleach fans at the end of the 10th anniversary, large scrolls of cloth were painted in ink by Kubo depicting some of his most popular characters. You can see them in the YouTube video. The opposite side of the booth was dedicated to displaying the comic covers under the gloss covers. I was surprised to learn that OP wasn’t alone in including such things. However, they were missing quite a few Pandmen and the Chopper which I’m not sure if that was on purpose or if they simply didn’t know.
There was a section for original pieces of art from the authors celebrating JF2011. You can see that in my video.
As for the original OP manga panels:
Luffy and Ace back to back ready to fight.
Luffy declaring to Rayleigh after the skip, “I’m gonna be the Pirate King!”
Color images of Luffy and Rayleigh from the skip return JUMP cover. They were clearly two separate images arranged by Shueisha.
The big pull was the VERY FIRST chapter 1 color spread next to the post-skip color spread.
It was quite a sight.
Interesting to note that the very first color spread was actually considerably larger than the current color spread. I recalled from JUMP Festas of years gone by that the color spreads were quite large but I thought I was just imagining that as recently his color art has pretty much been 1:1 scale as seen in JUMP. But no, it seems his older color work really WAS considerably larger. Also of note, the spread was actually divided into TWO PAGES. This means that there DOES NOT EXIST a complete version of that image. They could easily produce one but I was shocked to learn it’s not a complete image.
Also of note, Zoro’s eye has already been fixed in the post-skip spread. I looked VERY close for signs of erasure but couldn’t see any. I also don’t think Oda would redraw the entire scene just for that so I’d love to know what they method is unless of course…that wasn’t really the original.
3D Theater
So having arrived very early we were able to run around and line up for cool shit, the first of which we did was the giant OP 3D Theater from Banpresto. Hopefully you’ve seen the pictures but they had the Whitebeard and Ace statues present. We weren’t sure what we were in for but we got an ad for Chopper-themed convenience store and arcade goods followed by a 3D ad for the 3DS game. Some cut-scenes looked great but the in-game 3D seemed a little…distracting? Just seemed like a lot going on and was a little bit funky rather than thrilling. There was also a 3D trailer for the new 3D movie and I wasn’t impressed. Some of the nice details you notice in 2D seemed to be lost in the conversion where edges just look sloppy rather than smooth.
It was the 3D anime short compilation we saw that was really entertaining.
It was basically a summary of the war up until Luffy stepped on the execution platform.
Was totally sick to see a DBKai-style shortened form that was close to the manga in terms of speed. Literally just giant characters performing crazy moves one after the other. INSANE. And being something we ‘think’ should be in 2D, looked GREAT in 3D. Jinbei’s water moves and Akainu’s magma shots in particular were wicked. I hope it becomes available someday because more than live TV dramas and such, the 3D effect on hand drawn animation is sick and would be a GREAT addition to the series over the next 10 years.
Toei Booth
Okay. I dunno if it’s a sign of the times or what but there was a new special guest present at JUMP Festa this year, The Chiba Prefectural Police. I’ve seen rent-a-cops before but never the actual police patrolling. It was freaking creepy. So anyway, it all really hit the fan when I saw the Toei Booth which was more like the Fort Knox. The entire booth was sealed off from the outside with only part of a large screen available to the outside and narrow openings between panels for outsiders to peek in. They only allowed around 100-150 people into the viewing area and you could NOT stay like past years. You actually had to leave your spot and then line up hoping that you had the right timing for the next show because if you were let in for a non-OP show that meant you lost your spot.
It was absurd.
The entire reason was to prevent video being taken of the stage which is something I traditionally try to get for everyone but the entire system is fucked if you ask me. I have NEVER seen ANY of the video taken from JUMP Festa used anywhere in sold promotional material. That includes the JUMP Stages.
Keeping the material secreted away like that only hurts them and it’s an incredibly outdated line of thought. But I’ll touch more on this during the OP Stage discussion.
This year I saw two of the four VA stages and my wife was able to cover the third for me. Neither of us saw the fourth.
At the first stage it was something of a reunion for them since they said they hadn’t been together like that since last JUMP Festa. I’m not sure about the truth of that since they recorded the 3D movie’s lines together just a few days before but who cares.
Present were (by character name as usual since it’s easier) Luffy, Zoro, Sanji, Brook, Usopp & Franky. All came out with their typical greeting lines. Having not been together, they had (not surprisingly) very little to actually talk about. Not a lot of revealing backstage talk like there usually is. However, none of the mattered when they called out The Rootless and the place went nuts. Again, remember, I was watching this through the slats of the banner/barriers they constructed around the booth. First thing was Brook’s voice actor actually hit them with a number of questions about the music writing process. I’m not sure if he was genuinely interested or if he was trying to be in character but anyway we learned that The Rootless, in their effort to be selected for OP’s opening theme, submitted TWENTY songs. Wow. One Day was the one that got selected. They created the music before they write the lyrics and they compose the refrain first before thinking up the beginning or other parts of the song which they compose, usually, by simply taking a walk outside.
It’s great to see them there because they’re probably the first REAL OP fans that ACTUALLY HAD TO WORK to get the opening song instead of being paid to say they’re fans or being part of some bigger deal. The biggest proof of that is that they’re still very indie and perform at very small places.
So those of you who said it was pointless to complain about opening 12, guess you were completely wrong.
The vocalist then sang part of the song karaoke.
After that they announced a HUGE OP event in Osaka. And it’s literally going to be the LARGEST OP event to date as it will be at Osaka Dome. It will take place March 25-27th which FUCKING SUCKS since those are usually the three days I have to lead a THREE DAY English debate camp in to mountains of Ono.
Balls.
I’ll see what I can do but apparently they’re even going to have actual Shichibukai wardrobes on display.
The second VA stage was a lot more fun and everyone seemed to be in the spirit as they beat up on Nakai pretty well making him do a dance with castanets. Also, they employed the giant monitor, which they didn’t during the first show, which allowed me to get the video you saw on YouTube. It was a karaoke duet between Zoro’s VA and The Rootless of One Day that, once again, they bullied Zoro’s VA into doing.
The most amusing part was when they asked The Rootless (collectively) who their favorite character was and then gave the cast a chance to ‘appeal’ to them. Luffy started with the fucking stupid/lame/boring ‘Kid Captain’ routine. Nami followed by doing an alluring, “Who’s the greatest navigator on the seas?” which Yao busted on her with by mimicking in Mr. 2 voice and then really playing it up as an okama. Sanji and Zoro then followed suit TRYING to do the same kind of voice but failed miserably. Usopp sang the Soge King song and then Brook asked to see the bassist’s underwear.
They chose Luffy.
Haru went to report on the second day’s first VA Stage and said there was nothing particularly special announced except for Iva’s new voice actor making a surprise appearance. She said that during the second day, they allowed for NO standing room outside the booth, even far away from the booth for fear of video.
On the other side of the booth was the Thousand Serena from Nissan and an exclusive trailer for the new 3D film. The trailer was BASICALLY the same as others but it did include some additional info:
Buggy MIGHT show up or at least some other familiar faces.
The crew will find themselves in a sea monster’s nest of sorts similar to the Calm Belt scene.
A chase with Marines will be involved.
There seems to be at least one ‘fighting pose’ scene for each character that takes advantage of the 3D medium. You’ve seen Usopp’s but I’ve also seen Franky, Brook, Sanji, Nami, Robin and Zoro’s. They were reluctant to show one for Chopper and you’ve probably seen Luffy’s hands stretching for Bazooka.
The One Piece Super Stage
JUMP Festa isn’t what it used to be.
It’s no longer an event for fans of ALL AGES to come together and just enjoy what makes shonen manga so much fun while getting amazing exclusive announcements and incredible stage shows, the likes of which can only be seen there.
JUMP Festa has become a commercial war.
Somewhere back home there lies a videotape which footage from JUMP Festa 2004 back in 2003 that you would not believe.
The JUMP Super Stages filled a stadium (WITH SEATING FOR ALL!)
There were elaborate stage stunt shows.
The authors talked freely about behind the scenes work.
And everything was completely open to all who wanted to see it.
Compare that to this year with rent-a-cops and actual police patrolling, Toei barricading their stage and limiting it to just over a hundred viewers when there were 100,000 visitors each day and the VA’s being reduced to product spokesmen. It used to be cute when they just wore OP-shirts and they said, “You can buy them over at that booth!” But this year they were wearing shirts, the glasses and then at the end, each of them held a different OP product and talked about it for 20 seconds each. Yeesh.
But as usual, my last hope was the OP stage events that, despite sending in TWENTY cards for, failed to receive a stage pass for the second year in a row.
I had heard rumors about a live feed in a separate part of the hall so we investigated on Day 1 before doing ANYTHING else and as it turns out, there was indeed a single wall-mounted 40-inch TV that half-assedly displayed the event. Now, you’ve gotta imagine this. The location the TV is in is a standard convention center hallway. It’s not in the hall but rather near the center food vendors and smoking rooms. It’s be NO MEANS meant for mass viewing. But that’s cool because VERRRRY few people actually know about it. So we figured that if we could secure a spot on the nearby bench, we’d be able to hear the broadcast and take memos even with all the noise and commotion.
Since Day 1 was a Toriko/OP stage at 4PM that would PROBABLY be a wash anyway, we didn’t care about getting a good spot and would just return later and get what we could.
So we came back at about 3:30PM and found that the TV was off.
We figured it was off between stages.
So we waited.
And 4PM came.
No feed.
4:07 came and went.
No feed.
Haru went to ask one of the nearby attendants.
The answer was, “The TV feed was broken and they were anxiously trying to fix it but they weren’t sure they could.”
She asked if it would be broadcast tomorrow.
They answered, “If it gets fixed the plan is to broadcast it.”
She came back and told me and the first words out of my mouth were, “BULLSHIT!”
I can smell “Japanese bullshit” a mile away and this reeked of it. She wasn’t so sure but I assured her it was. It’s what they call ‘tatemae’. Google it if you care enough.
So we left Day 1 with no stage info. I even stayed up late to scan 2ch for reports from the stage.
Nothing.
Oh well.
Day 2. The moment we entered we made a B-line for the benches by the small TV and put our faith into that 40-inch space.
We made sure to ask the attendant, “Is One Piece going to be broadcast as well?”
He said it was planned to be broadcast but there might be a problem if there were technical difficulties.
Uh-huh.
The first stage of the day was Bakuman. One otakuish guy was glued to the TV broadcast which miraculously appeared to have been fixed. Then it was over. A lady in her late 40’s had the best spot and she was a HUGE Sket Dance otaku so when that stage finished she left her spot to stand close to the TV and we got the best seat. Sket Dance drew a fairly large crowd, around 20 people, and I was a little concerned that passerbyers would get interested and word would travel creating a mass of people that would result in cut of the feed. But no. It ended and they dispersed and all was well. Next was Nurarihyon and that was the scariest since I figured it would have the most dedicated rabid fans that would form a crowd and with the following Naruto stage, it would surely mean the feed would be cut.
But no.
It was amazing.
Only a few extraordinarily geeky people lined up, probably less than 10, and that was it.
By this time I had been sitting in the same goddamned spot for FIVE HOURS.
And then it happened.
The moment the stage for Nurarihyon cleared, the feed went dead. Haru went to ask the nearby attendant what happened. The little bitch minion went running off to whoever his master was and when he returned he said that there were, “technical difficulties”.
WOW! THAT’S SOME PRETTY GODDAMN AMAZING TIMING FOR TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES!!!!!!!!
I was fucking livid.
But it was no time to argue with Japanese bullshit. I donned my Chopper hat and went to Plan Z, begging like a little girl.
Haru wrote for me, “Please let me go to the One Piece Stage with you.”, on a small piece of paper and I stood at the back of what would soon be the line for the One Piece stage. I planted my foot in the ground and stuck out my lower lip to pout and bundled my self-respecte and ego into a ball and threw them into a black hole as I literally begged someone to let me in with them.
Couple after couple passed. Some laughing. Some being shocked. Some feeling bad and couldn’t look me in the eyes. Some even bowing and apologizing. In the distance I saw a crowd gathered around the TV so I asked Haru to check it out while I waited.
A foreigner.
In my Chopper hat and ‘I heart OP’ t-shirt.
Alone.
And then it happened.
A small gesture to be certain. But I’ll never forget how it felt.
A tap on my shoulder from behind.
I turned around and there he was.
A man in his late 30’s looking at me smiling and waving me over into line with him.
The fucking roof opened up and angels descended from the heavens singing hymns of praise.
The man’s name was Mr. Watanabe and he is the coolest Japanese dude I know.
As it turns out he was accompanying his two sons because he had TWO tickets. But his wife stayed home which meant he had an open spot.
Holy fuck.
It was freaking magic.
And not only that, his seats were in A Block. A block is front center. I was literally the seventh row back. I have never been that close.
I’m telling you, the best part was A Block line had to walk past all the other blocks so I walked by all the people who passed me over and hearing this as I walked by their shitty standing-room-only locations, “HUH!? HOW’D HE!? HE’S GOING TO A-BLOCK?!”
Suck it mother-fuckers.
Suck it long and hard. Good things come…
So we waited in line and I entertained his kids with some magic as I was carrying some cards with me and we talked about comics and stuff. He’s actually originally a Naruto fan but he saw the Naruto stage last year (yes, that’s right, not only did he have 2 tickets, he’s gotten them before, more on this later) and figured on a lark he’d try for OP this year.
Wow.
So after an hour or so we got our seats and the show began.
The whole crew except for Brook was there.
They entered by recreating their opening lines from post-skip. Everyone sounds more or less the same except for Robin who sounds EXTREMELY cheerful.
Their costumes this year were celebrational hakama with colors matching their characters. Franky’s was decorated with coconut tree designs like his shirt.
They also revealed that from their enkai (drinking party) the night before, Oda drew all of them on Japanese fans which they opened up and displayed for us. All of them were standard except for Franky’s whose was of his speedos.
Then Oda came out (from the side) as usual as he was wearing a shimmering gold hakama.
They talked about OP’s huge success selling 200,000,000 copies and announced the campaign where they’ll be appearing on magazine covers of Shueisha publications.
They then started what have become traditional variety-style games. Seeing as they were in hakama they did a Japanese game called ‘oogiri’. Difficult to explain and I tried to look for a wiki explanation to link to but there isn’t one. So the SIMPLE explanation is, it’s basically thinking up a themed knock-knock joke on the spot. The MC gives a topic and you have to think up something related. They ask WHY it’s related and the joke is the LINK between the two. If the MC likes your joke then you get a ‘zabuton’ and you get to stack them up higher and sit on it like a tower above your opponents. Oda was relegated to the minimal job of doling out zabutons while Luffy’s VA emceed.
Anyway, this went on and it was entertaining, especially Oda who either STOLE zabutons or simply smacked the men while making the women come get their own, it was ultimately pointless.
They also had a ‘tattoo message‘ game where they had to think up messages to express in a tattoo similar to 3D2Y. And that was funny was also VERY Japanese and not really informative at all.
Finally they got to talking about the movie. We learned in JUMP a few weeks ago that Tomomitsu Yamaguchi better known as ‘Gussan’ would be lending his voice talent to the film. Gussan is freaking AWESOME. He’s funny, witty, bright and quite talented. It’s a shame that he’ll be wasted on something that isn’t even a full-fledged OP film. But there we learned he would be performing all three members of the Schneider Pirate Crew: Schneider, Baz (dog) and Jaz (eagle).
Oda spoke a bit about the 3D process and some of the characters.
They talked about the dog for instance who has the droopy tongue and ears. Oda said he did that because it’d be funny if they came flying out in 3D. He designed the eagle because it would be scary coming at you in 3D. And he designed the old man because you’d be grossed out if he came at you in 3D.
Luffy’s VA commented that they’re still tweaking the 3D so hopefully it will look ‘even better’ than the clips we saw at the show. I hope so. Oda seems to have little experience with 3D though as he was actually surprised that 3D glasses aren’t even red and blue anymore.
Go figure.
They said their goodbyes at that point and finished with Oda who hinted that, “Isn’t something strange about Sanji? I think having just one perv in the crew was enough.” He also suggested that he’s thinking of many more islands and hopes that we’ll look forward to them.
They finished by singing Family with Brook on video. As usual Oda chilled in the back.
He came forward, hit the button, and for the first time, I was one of the people to be covered in confetti ribbons! Yay!
End.
All in all folks, I dunno about the future of JUMP Festa. Yeah it’s nice that One Piece is incredibly popular and is NOW the modern equivalent of DB, but there needs to be some goddamn balance.
They’re pissing off adults because they cater to kids with the JF events and breaking kids hearts at the same time.
I saw many a young girl walk away in tears from the Super Stage line for various series. And although I probably would have enjoyed it from a Bleach fan, that’s really not cool. Especially for kids that come from long distances just to find they handle the event like a frickin’ boot camp.
Here One Piece is selling razors and cars while expecting them to ACTUALLY PAY FOR THE COMICS THEIR KIDS BUY, while favoring children for stage passes, and turning them away at the same time.
It’s literally a lose-lose situation.
This year something incredible happened but I doubt lightning will strike twice and I don’t think Shueisha will join the rest of the world in the 21st century anytime soon.
Anyway I got full audio of the entire One Piece Stage from start to finish by secretly using a digital recorder, so eventually I can post the whole thing on YouTube.
So there seems to have been a lot of typical AP drama about how long it took to get done and whining about not being able to read a text version first. I think the funniest I read was:
‘I have a life, I want to read it in 10 minutes rather than listen to three hours.’
I guess the 6 hours I spent typing this means there’s literally nothing better that I could be doing with my time eh?
Anyway, take it easy and thank you guys!