I want to say that EOY this year felt more professional than the previous ones, but I think professional isn’t the right word. It feels more commercialized, despite the organizer’s assurance that EOY continues to be a fan-organized event for fans.

I refer to my reply on double‘s blog post to reiterate what I have said there:

This year’s EOY gave a much more commercial feel, with changes such as the venue and additions such as Makino Yui as the guest. Is it only me, or is EOY trying to head down the same path as AFA? Commercialised events are a double-edged sword, depending on what you’re looking for. We’ll just have to wait and see, I guess.

I followed the trend in American conventions, and the thing about them, is that community-driven events – run by only sheer volunteer force – tend to attract less people than commercially-driven ones.

Singapore has passed its plethora of community-driven events (except SOY’B, which I wager, will still live on, only because it has a supportive school environment to host it), and now, it requires financial backing of small/medium enterprises to support them. Unfortunately, the majority of the anime fan community/blogosphere have already shunned Odex – which has begun selling merchandises in the recently concluded Mini Anime Fair at Takashimaya & DVDs out of Singapore – so the bulk of the corporate support are through Animax and a couple of anime fan-related companies.

I forsee a burnout of sorts for anime fandom here. A creeping realization of the over-commercialization of the industry – seeing as after 2007, the subjective quality of anime productions have been grudgingly towards the lower common denominator, with the shutdown of several anime production houses and studios – will wake some players up. The hope is that once the crass commercialization phase has passed, anime as a hobby will be revitalized. As it is now, it is a bad time to indulge into anime fandom.

I didn’t go for the event, but I definitely think that location was a bad choice. For goodness sake, its a library, not a convention centre.