How Not To Hype…
Last night (August 19th), word came around that the streaming anime site Crunchyroll.com was going to have a “video announcement” from Morning Musume at 12 Noon Pacific time today (August 20th). It sounded promising, and a lot of speculation about what the announcement would consist of (News of more Western perfomances? Announcement of an American record deal, hopefully with a good indie label?) went around in the hours between the announcement and the time that the video in question became live.
What did we get? A video containing short statement from the band about their appearance at AX last month, and a lot of talk about different animes (most of which the band had nothing to do with except as fans).
It’s not Morning Musume’s fault though. They were used by this site, which employed a ridiculous amount of hype to draw attention (and page hits) to Crunchyroll. As they say in the wrestling business, we – meaning both the fans and the band – were worked. And at least the interview was subtitled (relatively well, save for a few glaring instances where whoever was doing the subtitles had one line directly superimposed over another rather than just trading graphics). But the band and UFW using Dohhh Up! and Hello!Online providing a translation a few hours later would have been just as, if not more, effective and efficient than what Crunchyroll provided on Thursday afternoon.
To avoid such a problem in the future, Up Front Agency should stick to music-oriented sites and blogs that will do a better service to the band’s legacy and future and avoid anime sites like Crunchyroll. Morning Musume are a musical group, not a group of voice actresses that happen to make records once in a while (only half the band members have done voiceover work to begin with) – emphasizing the music rather than the extracurricular activities is and should be the primary focus here.
