The entire online event felt very rushed. I’d heard inklings of SOZO wanting to do online things, doing surveys and all, but that was around the end of July. From the end of July to early September, that was barely over a month of time to gather enough material for an event, and to prepare it well.
From the look of the schedule and the events, it seemed very random, and looked like they just tried to collate everything they could possibly obtain from all their connections, and dumped them all together. You’d go from one segment on games, to a different category next. It would have been more pleasing for viewers if things were grouped accordingly, so that they could watch everything they were interested in, instead of 15 minutes of one, then having to wait 2 hours or until the next day for possibly another 30 minutes of something else. The way they forced viewers to watch the entirety of the stream just to spot a logo for a chance to win something was also very cheap and dirty. It made me feel that they clearly knew what they had was uninteresting and they just had to find a way to actually keep people tuned in. REALLY REALLY BAD.
For something touted as an online event, very little of it was honestly live. Out of 4 hours or so of stream each day for the paid segment, only about a quarter of it was actually them being live on stream (some of the introductions to each new activity, and the Sora Tokui and Kiryu Coco segments on each day). Everything else was pre-recorded and was just shown to us. There were lots of trailers that you can find elsewhere on the Internet, like nico douga, YouTube, bilibili, etc. To call these ‘Specials’ is really pushing it. An example would be the Honkai Impact 3 developer video being uploaded just a day after it being shown on the stream, and the cinematic after being something you can find in-game. Or the activities involving movies and all that happens is them showing what you get for purchasing tickets, and showing a trailer.
The stream was overall very boring, for it was pretty much mostly just someone sitting in front of the screen and just talking. There was really a lack of visuals and sounds that could help make things livelier, something that could easily be done if more editing or effort was put into it. One of the sore points were the special messages for the WACAVA project, a cover channel for Anisong and Japanese songs. This was placed right at the end of each day, and it had someone record a video talking about this project, and to check out their channel on YouTube. This could have been done better if they had just showcased a bit of what they actually do, rather than expect people to go to their channel without really doing anything to help their cause. Especially the Saturday segment where Rainych pretty much said she was premiering a video at that exact same time, and to go to the channel to watch. So that just gave people the dilemma of either watching the ongoing stream, or going to the channel to watch a video. They could have just premiered the song during the stream, to give viewers a taste of what they do.
At the end of it all, it just felt like they came to say some words, and that’s it, we didn’t get to see anything they do, it was just a “hi, we cover songs, come check it out”. If this was supposed to be something to look out for during the stream and touted as a special event in the timetable/schedule, I fail to see how it was anything close to that. To end with something like this for regular activities also was really lacklustre and things just ended on a whimper. Usually for something like an event, especially online, you would try to schedule things such that it starts off well, maybe go through a little bit more of a lull in the middle, and end it with something big. This would allow the event and stream to at least be more pleasing to sit through, as the introduction keeps you interested, and you have something to look forward to at the end, but AFA Station had nothing like that. To even end off with something like an ad to promote their products on their AFA Shop, really just hurts.
The people doing the merch promotion segment were also awfully unprepared and seemed unprofessional. I don’t know if they were trying to make it more informal and all for this, but it didn’t sit well with me, and it was really uncomfortable to see them do what they did on stream. On this point, I felt the same way when Rithe hosted some of the segments, it was really cringey and she felt really out of place. She certainly does well in her areas of expertise, be it cosplaying and all, but certainly not in hosting segments this way as seen on AFA Station. Reiko during the Coco interview was also a bit hard to watch. With her not really into the whole Vtuber (Virtual YouTuber) thing, it was very clear to see to everyone she was not very familiar with a lot of things, and for this interview, it did not help. She kept asking her producer a lot of things and kept interrupting the whole segment for the producer, which was annoying. They could have just gotten someone more familiar (just let the producer do it honestly) if she was not going to take the lead in this, as well as be more into the whole discussion they had (she even straight out said she did not see Coco’s latest video when Coco asked her if she did, which was painful to see, let alone starting it out by saying she barely knew Coco, knowing her for like weeks(?) can’t remember exactly what she said but it was pointed out straight away she knew nothing about Vtubers).
The interview was also very dreary, watching both of them sit there on screen and talking for the entirety of it. The questions could definitely have come more quickly and could have been more interesting. There were no visuals to help or make things more interesting, as I pointed out earlier about the general event as a whole. With regard to the questions, it could have been more specific to things that have occurred that were known to the community and that could make it more entertaining. For example, something funny that happened in their streams or more current affairs, rather than general questions, and things that are mostly known, even if you do not follow Vtubers (then again, you can’t expect anything better from people who do not know about Vtubers in the first place).
The Gundam/model figure segment, especially on the free day the week earlier, was such a bore. They even had to time skip it several times; yeah, they definitely knew it was boring in general and did that. The Sora Fan Club part each day was also just a video ripped off YouTube and just played on-screen. It even stated in the video that the ideal way to watch this is by turning on subtitles, when subtitles were automatically on the stream and there was no option anyway to do otherwise, it clearly showed this was ripped off somewhere, which was really a kick to our faces.
Also, why would they decide to do some sort of event now? It makes no sense; there isn’t anything to hype things up about, aside from maybe some movies coming out in many weeks. The games are things that have already come out, or not coming out any time soon. Neither did they have anything to give people, like in-game gifts or specials. There was no big reason to see them on this stream. There was little of anything actually new, and some things that were shown during the AFA United done earlier this year were used. They did nothing but assure me that they are really bad at organising this sort of event, and damaged trust that they would do something better in the future.
The lineup they had also worries me, given their connections and how limiting it seems now. They may hold a monopoly here in SEA, but honestly, for the last few years, things have been looking rather lacklustre. Are they burning bridges? Why were some of the stellar stuff they had in the past just one-off things never to come again? Someone told me that what they bring is just what the higher ups within the company wants, and I hope that is not true, but I wouldn’t know. The site also went through some errors just before the streams, probably due to traffic, and that was another bummer and oopsie they did. They really should think of just having one registration for everything they do, rather than have an account each for everything, like the Station and the Shop; it is really a pain to have to make so many different accounts. With such a dull set of activities, I really hoped there would be more given out in terms of giveaways and prizes, but there were barely any. The lack of gifts and all for games involved in this was just another disappointment, the companies clearly didn’t see this event as something important enough to celebrate either I guess.
This was a waste of money, and of my time. AFA aside from ‘I love Anisong’ has not shown up well and this just drops the bar even lower. You could say my impression is influenced by the fact that I also experience events in Japan, so my expectations are much higher, but that just shows none of these can stand up to what you can go through if you are not limited to staying here. If you’re going to do another online event and just be like this, please do everyone a favour and DON’T. Find better activities and take hosting these things more seriously. Put more effort in editing and do things live like you mean it.
Written by Nat
NUSCAST: Thoughts of Anitan 
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