Point Zero: Redefining Otaku

Among the community and public, there has been many opinions regarding The EOY’09.   Many questions and comments where made  regarding different aspect  of the event. Following our report on The EOY 09, we have a very great pleasure to speak with Tim Wong, Chairman for The EOY 09  to understand more about the scenes running behind The EOY 09.

PZportal: Why do you want to pick up EOY after STAC let go of it?

Tim: I feel that EOY is an event that I personally like a lot; it’s one of the cosplay events I’ve gone to every year since ‘05. So among all the cosplay and J-rock events, I will always go to EOY, it’s something which I won’t miss.  Also I think this group of people (that attend EOY) is very talented. They like to perform and sing, and have a lot of different skills, and they’re very good at making costumes. It’s a group of people that have a lot of talent but are not given a proper platform to perform. So when I heard that STAC was going to close down it was rather disheartening. So I felt, why don’t we try at it again? If not, all the talent we see here will just disappear.

PZportal:We know that STAC is a cosplay club, but all we know about EOY’s committee last year was that it was led by you. Could you give us an introduction to the rest of your committee?

Tim: The team had six people last year, but we have 8 to 9 people now, so we’ve grown slightly this year. Generally I am the founder, chairman for the event. Zhong Hao (Vincent) is our designer. Yuan Le does all the programming and web design; the registration system and event flow on the website is done by him. He’s the expert in the area, as his main job is a full time programmer. We also have an art group from Republic Polytechnic helping us who are called Dayaku, led by Ophelia and Jiemin. So we have these two to help us in artwork and drawing, like the ones in the event booklets.  Ophelia is also in charge of the booth allocation. Makan and Shi Hai are my left and right hand people. They are the operation personnel; they help with tasks ranging from moving tables, doing milk runs and buying food, to giving cues to the performers, and making sure everything is well taken care of and in place. So basically it’s a small team but we work very closely together and we feel that it’s been very effective.

PZportal: How was the committee formed ? Did you seek for staff online, or did you ask your close friends?

Tim: Yuan Le and Vincent are both very close friends of mine, and they’re also EOY goers who like EOY a lot. They always go to EOY to take pictures, so that’s how I got those two. As for the RP group, they approached us during the production of EOY, and I thought, why not give them a chance? And it worked out quite well.

PZportal: Personally I have attended Yui Makino’s concert and it is pretty good, what made you to engage  Yui to perform at EOY?

Tim: I think she is a very talented artist. Plus, in EOY we have abundant local talent like bands, pianists, singers. Yui is a voice actress, pianist and singer, so she fits into this direction. For EOY09 we are very art centred as suppose to the previous EOY and we don’t want to be like other anime events where it’s more pop-centred and conventional. So we want to offer a different flavour for EOY ‘09. That why we got Yui; plus, I like Yui as well.

PZportal: You mentioned that you are a fan of Yui, so how was it like to work with one of your idols?

Tim: It’s like a dream come true. It’s quite interesting, ‘cause you not only get to see your idol, you actually get to plan a concert for her, sequence her song, assign an engineer and design the lighting for her so it’s a very nice experience.

PZportal: Do you get  stressed while working with her?

Tim: You know, all artistes are handled by label representatives and managers. Generally they are very nice people; it’s just that there’s a language barrier sometimes and different people have different requirements. For example, the managers would like their artist’s performance to go well, but we also have the whole event to run, so we have to manage our priorities. But at the end of the day, they are very nice people to talk to and work with.

PZportal: The main problem indicated by the feedback is about the congestion. One of the questions that have been asked around is: why did you choose the drama centre as location for EOY ‘09?

Tim: First of all, as you know, EOY has been held at the Expo for many years, and I felt that if we go back there it there won’t be much of a significant change for the event. As a trained sound engineer, I do stage and lighting, so I always have this liking for stage effects for performances. So I wanted to give people a place to perform where they can interact so that why we hunted for places with an emphasis on the arts, and went in this arts direction. So there is a different effect to the whole event. When you see SOY, you see COSFEST, you see AFA; they are good events, they are very big, and they got a huge stage but we don’t want to do it in a convention style, but an artiste-focused style. I think no one has really tried that before, so I wanted to go in a different direction. So we decided to go towards art, and that led us to pick the drama centre.

Also, we expected about 3000 people, so we took a venue that was slightly bigger by about 15 to 20%, in anticipation of bigger crowds, though the place was narrower so there was some contraction in certain areas. But we certainly didn’t expect such a turnout. It’s certainly a problem, and it means we’ll be looking for a much bigger space for this year.

PZportal: So I understand that  it’s less about the cosplay and more about the arts?

Tim:Not exactly. You see, we are trying to put across the angle that cosplay is like an art. It may not be like conventional art, but more like pop art. So the cosplay, costume making, singing performances and competitions, it’s all pop art.

PZportal: There are people saying that in last year’s EOY, they think that it’s centred on Yui Makino instead of cosplay itself, contrary to previous EOY’s.

Tim: Actually, we got the venue way before we got Makino Yui in. So in the original plan we did not have an artiste to plan around. We started asking about her in June; the venue was booked as early as February. Also, it’s the first time that EOY has specially invited an artiste, so naturally we’d want to give her a bit more recognition and exposure. Artistes cannot be left to sing to empty crowds, so we have to push for it a bit. Also it’s not the only thing we have; we have the cosplay segment, the performance segment, the artist segment…so we try to balance it out.

PZportal: Two years ago, AFA were the first to bring artistes in. Is your decision to do the same for EOY a response to that?

Tim: Actually, we try not to be like AFA, as they are very pop culture and anime centred, while EOY is more focused on the arts and cosplay. We think that distinction is important. Also, because they are so big, there is no point in us going in the same direction, since they’ll probably just cannibalise us. We’d rather focus on a different market. That’s the reason we didn’t specifically look for a pop-oriented artist but an arts-oriented one. So people may feel that we’re probably like AFA but I can say for sure that it’s not. We have no intention to compete against AFA.

We do, however, have good relations with the AFA people. We help them with their events and they help us with ours, so there’s a mutual understanding. It makes no sense for us to go in AFA’s direction. They’re well-funded, they have a lot of big sponsors, and honestly, they’re a commercial organisation while we’re run by fans. We want to maintain that, ‘cause otherwise the purpose of EOY would be defeated.

PZportal: I read from some forum posts that you haven’t confirmed whether you want to have EOY ’10. Have you come to a decision?

Tim: Officially, we haven’t announced anything, but the current consensus is that we’re going to do it. In fact, we’re already scouting for venues and we’re in early planning stages.

PZportal: We’re still in the start of the year so it might be early to ask this, but can you give us some hints about what to expect from this year’s EOY?

Tim: We haven’t had anything concrete yet, but the space will definitely be bigger. We will probably have a lot more performances as well. We realised that we could actually have a lot more performances with the schedule we had last year. As for the artistes, we haven’t confirmed who we’re bringing in.