Before we begin I would like to mention one thing. Did all the casual bloggers, podcasters, and forum posters discover industry panels at once or did they just think to complain about industry panels at Otakon 2014 for the first time? All in all I don’t attend that many industry panels anymore. They are slightly more interesting than shareholders meetings and slightly less interesting than anything remotely fun.
Industry panels are mostly there to inform you of new licenses, remind you when things are coming out, mention major changes, and engage in a little Q&A. As any anime company worth its salt has a robust social media presence you can get most of that online. Plus all the major news sites and a few dedicated bloggers cover anything you would want to know without you having to sit through an hour of pitches.
The only reason to go most of the time is if want to engage in the Q&A. If you want to know what titles they are working on picking up they just won’t tell you that and if you want numbers most of the time they will dance around the issue. They will answers a lot of other questions but they are almost always on their best behavior when in front of an audience filled with cellphones and press people. If you have grievances they will note them, if you have praise they will appreciate it, and if you are confused they will usually sort things out the best that they can.
But that is 95% of all industry panels. Some trailers and then some Q&A. Some people are a little drier than others but you can only make so nice a purse out of a sow’s ear. I’m not exactly sure what people are expected to help spice up industry panels. Jokes? Skits? Balloon Animals? Every once in a while you have some neat things like the Uminko license or Ed Chavez’s little mini lectures but expecting those to be regular occurrence is foolishness. (Also Ed little mini lectures are usually just panels he would normally do, outside of being the Vertical rep, condensed into the last half of the Vertical panel.) Do you really want most industry reps trying to “rap with all the young home slices” in the audience?
Also let’s be honest. Most of the time when people seem really disappointed with industry panels they talk about them being boring and needing to be spiced up with content but always one factor also is brought up usually as a barely mentioned items almost under people’s breaths. They miss bigger giveaways that used to be around during the anime and manga bubbles. They want Oprah styled “You get an Itasha! You get an Itasha! Everyone gets an Itasha!” prizes. Until the next boom those are not going to be common place. Just deal with it.
But mostly importantly I’m not sure why people complain to Otakon. If you ask Sentai Filmworks or VIZ to make their panels a little more fun you have to tell them directly. They might not do anything but they will definitely take in into consideration. But Otakon is not going to stop Funimation from doing panels until they up their game because you think they need more showmanship. That is just not how the world works.
Reverse Thieves 