Kunicon St. Louis - AMV contest & other stuff

basterd!! · Post by **basterd!!** » Tue Mar 08, 2005 8:26 pm

ok i bitched about the st lious amv contest for kunicon on the contests forum. now let me bitch about the con in general.

Did anybody here experience the price gouging by some of the dealers at this "convention"? David carridine was giving autographs and a couple of dealers were selling kill bill swords. i bought 2 the first day at 30 bucks each. the next day a friend i was with decide to get a sword autographed also. the deal doubled the price of the "bill" sword from 30 to 60 bucks. and was telling people that the black sword was the only one he would sign ( see there was also the "brides" sword available for 30bucks) I told the dealer they were full of it. If david carridine will sign a blank sheet of paper, how would he not sign a sword? Of course the dealer was full of it. My friend got his 30 buck "brides" sword signed.

Also i will say that i saw a 14 year old kid who was waiting in line for the martial arts demostartion literally get jerked out of line because he left his badge pass in his room. He had been asked were his badge was and had just opened his mouth when some 6 foot guy wearing a "staff" shirt yanked his arm and said "this way". 10 minutes later i saw the kid coming back into line but of course he was way behind where he had been. I called over to him and said to the people around me that this kid had lost his place earlier , could he come back? Everyone else had seen what happened and said ok. It was just really uncalled for the way it was handled.

As far as the judging went. for the cosplay contest i thought it was a complete farce. A trio which came up with multiple original song pariodies and pretty good costumes didn't even place out of 8 "teams". i say teams because 2 "teams" consisted of single people saying a line or two and walking off stage. Whoever was doing the judging for this competition really wasn't qualified in my opinion.

But to me what really killed this con was a lack of audience activities. Anime jeopardy, anime trivia contests, whos line is it anyway anime, ect. Basically all there was to this con was fansubs, halo tournament, a f##ked up amv contest, and a lot of hassles.

Not a good con. I definately do not recommend!!

dokool · Post by **dokool** » Tue Mar 08, 2005 10:14 pm

Check out Kunicon.com - They can't even afford to pay their hosting!

PWNED.

basterd!! · Post by **basterd!!** » Tue Mar 08, 2005 11:13 pm

oh my god... that is hillarious!!!. kunicon can't even make the payments on its website!!!

looks like their super grand prize of a 12,500 dollar computer for its grand prize amv contest winner will definately be paid on time. LOL. Supposedly every one who entered the st lious contest is supposed to get a dvd. I'll believe it when i see it, and even then i'll probably be dreaming!!

You know i wondered if the "winner" of the plasma tv they gave away in miami was a real person. sure is convient some guy from guetamalia wins the prize.

Another funny/sad thing at the convention is that when the line were really long waiting for team ryoko/david carridine, the staff memebers would yell, "ok who wants some free prizes?" the "prizes" included vhs tapes of tekken, and ring 2 promotional 8 by 10" posters. WOW..what a giveaway.

After seeing these crooks in action, i put nothing past them.

DJKiller · Post by **DJKiller** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 1:29 am

Some of you may remember me, greenjinjo, Drgnd, and Garylisk, i'm christopher clai, i used to be Manager of IT operations at Kunicon. I left right after miami because of this mismanagement.

I also run the company that hosts their website, i can say that this is the 2nd time they have not paid on time. Let alone, they have not paid reimbursements they owe my company for being at the event, and the volunteers who were suppose to be reimbursed from Miami are yet to be reimbursed. This convention is a sham. I used to have faith in it, until there was a change of management.

In my personal opinion.Under no circumstances should any convention in this country be operating as a for-profit corporation. That is exactly what Kunicon is.

The computer they may do, they have done fairly good on their prizes, so thats nothing to gripe about.

There are plenty of other conventions out there, and i suggest people support their local cons and do not attend this national con. I understand it may be harsh, and may piss off the staff members i know from the con, but thats what i feel.

I would love to go into more detail about the workings of the Kunicon empire, but i might bore some. I will say though, if anyone knows www.risingsun.net, his report was truthful, and the numbers he told were exact.

Org Profile · Post by **Vlad G Pohnert** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 2:12 am

Yep... sounds like Kunicon is in a nose dive and looking and sounding more like the Star Trek Creation cons.. I met the owners of Creation and it sounds to me like Kunicon's owners have the same attitude and love of money over fans...

Personally, I'm not going to support a event with a AMV contest track record as it has... Frankly Dangling a carrot prize in from of my face is not what contests are all about and no matter how big the carrot, it just won't fly if the organizers don't even bother doing a proper job...

Trust me on this, we do not need a Creation of Anime cons around trying to squash fandom when there are so many wonderfull and dedicated fan run cons out there... It's up to us fans to make sure cons are done by fans for fans

Vlad

basterd!! · Post by **basterd!!** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 2:17 am

Damn straight. We all just need to get the word out so the fans won't have to endure/be taken in by this craptacular "convetion. We need to post to the fan sites and local anime club websites. I'm making sure everyone in my kansas city anime club knows the truth.

Malindachan · Post by **Malindachan** » Wed Mar 09, 2005 9:03 am

Yup, I was at Kunicon too. I'll say, it was worth the $20 I paid when I preregistered over winter break, however, it was NOT worth the $43 at the door for the weekend pass. I enjoyed watching the price raising higher than expected after I registered. I guess they figured out that they wouldn't make enough profit just charging $35 at the door like a originally planned.

Also, Kunicon's website or lack of is freakin hillarious! Thank you for posting that!

I won't bother reposting what others have already said. I might go back to Kunicon next year and volunteer. Seems like they need some people who know how to run the various aspects of a con. One comment that wasn't mentioned, their anime viewing rooms were horribly off time wise. Not sure about all the rooms, but there was at least one where no one was monitoring. Anyways, the con people thought that 2 episodes of torrent anime = one hour. Needless to say, by 1pm shows from 5pm were showing, which makes me wonder if that midnight hentai run went off way early.

But yeah, I've now seen what profit ran cons are like and it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I might volunteer just b/c I like the idea of there being a con in my state and having it run smoothly would be nice. However, I might just drive the extra couple hundred to go to a real con.

dokool · Post by **dokool** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 2:50 am

Update: Their website is back up. The forum is surprisingly void of negative feedback on the con. One wonders...

DJKiller · Post by **DJKiller** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 12:25 pm

Well, they did go into an area where there has never been an anime convention, so the feedback won't always be so negative.

When they go into cities of con veterans, they get it pretty good. I noticed you quoted me on the kuni forums, damn is manny gonna try and kill me XD

dokool · Post by **dokool** » Thu Mar 10, 2005 9:21 pm

DJKiller wrote:Well, they did go into an area where there has never been an anime convention, so the feedback won't always be so negative.

When they go into cities of con veterans, they get it pretty good. I noticed you quoted me on the kuni forums, damn is manny gonna try and kill me XD

Only because it was relevant. My goal is to stir up the hornet's nest enough to keep them from getting to Philadelphia (a city they'd mentioned in their Coming Soon thing way back when), so any excuse I can get to post negative stuff on their website is a good excuse...