GAHROOOGAHMESHHHH (*｀･ω･´*)
So since I’m a cultureless white devil, I wasn’t offended by the Sakuracon commercial like Chicks on Anime were. That said, I do think that all of their reasons for feeling offended were pretty valid. Instead, I just facepalmed and headdesked. I couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be a parody or a satire (and if it was, what was it poking fun at?) or if it was just so bad that it failed utterly to communicate what it was trying to say.
The Yu-Gi-Oh parody that Sakuracon took down manages to make the video look really dumb by stripping out a lot of the context. For example, yes, it is true that part of the reason that the original commercial made me groan was because it was a bunch of white people yelling in a (Japanese) restaurant. The central groan to me, however came from the regurgitation of soundbites/memes.
This is where the Yu-Gi-Oh video shines. By remixing the soundtrack (and adding in some extra lines) with clips from Yu-Gi-Oh, there’s no longer the obnoxious white people yelling in an inappropriate situation aspect to the video. The emphasis becomes entirely on the words (sushi! manga! GUHROOGAMESH!)
Then, the little additions make it clear that this sort of cut up and decontextualized fandom is lame. On their own, there’s nothing really negative or positive about “anime” or “sushi”. “J-rock” and “GUHROOGAMESH” hint at this, but then “pre-pubescent schoolgirls” or “original Asian horror movies that get instantly remade” make this clear. These things DO get celebrated, even with the tacit understanding that they’re not socially acceptable (the schoolgirls) or embody that whole decontextualization/Orientalism thing. Or, to put it another way, nobody anywhere would think it would be OK if one of them said in the commercial “I love pornographic cartoons of men having gay sex”, even though there are things like yaoi screening rooms or vendors selling yaoi doujinshi in the dealers’ room.
Also, I can’t really mentally figure out the mindset behind taking down the parody video. The commercial itself gives a vibe of “You are like these people. These people bounce around in a Japanese-themed area yelling memes. Sakuracon is a Japanese-themed area where you can bounce around yelling memes! Therefore, get your butts to Sakuracon.” The parody video satirizes this mindset, but it’s also spawned tons of other videos (GUHROOGAMESH, etc.), being in a sense a bunch of a bunch of people bouncing around in a virtual area yelling memes. If the creators of the original video were too tone-deaf to realize what they’d done, how would they really be able to appreciate that the satire is actually satire (and therefore dangerous)?
Hinano:
I normally don’t participate in JP’s posts but the GAHROOGAHMESH thing made me LOL so I figured I’d say something. What makes me laugh about the Chicks on Anime thing is they’re SOOO offended that everyone in the commercial is white. OH NOES HOW DARE THEY NOT MAKE ASSES OF OTHER RACES OF ANIME FANS! 
There are a lot more offensive things in that commercial, starting with the fact that you got these weeaboos yelling at the top of their lungs in the middle of a sushi restaurant. I mean could you make an ass out of yourself anymore? That commercial is pretty much like WHY I refuse to go to anime cons anymore. They’re making a joke about anime fans, but it’s not a joke because you will really run into people who will scream GAHROOGAMESH and YAOI and DDR (and isn’t Smile.DK Swedish or something?) at anime cons except the amount will be 100 fold. 
I don’t know anything about Sakura Con and nor do I give a damn. The only con I can ever see myself attending is the New York Anime Festival and only because I will be running a panel there in order to get free weekend passes Maybe I should do a foreign MMORPG panel this year focusing on Pangya 
It seems not everyone was too thrilled with our blogging one last year.
P.S. The subtitles for the Japanese sushi chef were completely wrong. He says “桜コン行きます！” which can only mean “I’m going to Sakura con.” He is in no way telling THEM to go to Sakura con. Obviously Vig Mignogna either a) told him the wrong thing to say or b) thinks he knows Japanese cause he dubbed over some guy with a chain mail arm.
Take off the anymore and that’s why I won’t go to one of those either. I’m sure it might be fun, but having to deal with complete morons like that, yeah I’ll pass.
I used to go to cons regularly, back during the last millennium, though it was hardly perfect, most of the riffraff you see nowadays were still too young to attend on their own.
Nowadays I go to select cons and schedule correctly so I can attend industry panels that I know the average attendee won’t come near. Involves a lot of swimming through the masses of snot-nosed brats and punks though.
“I’m getting too old for this shit.”
Ahaha, the two videos made me ROFL so hard.
My response is: “Goddamn weeaboos.”
Even if this was staged, I’d like to know how much the chef was paid to allow this kind of asshattery to occur in his cuisine establishment, or if he knew his words were going to be “translated” into w/e the sakuracon people wanted to put there. JP makes a good point about the video utterly failing if it was supposed to be taken seriously; but even as satire or parody, it still utterly fails because it mocks the audience.
Oh, and I think the GUHROOGAMESH thing is going to become a Japanese meme, as I see the very beginnings of Japanese comments on the Niconico vid… too bad it just gives them MORE reasons to look down on “baka gaijin”. D:
I just thought of something magnificent: Someone needs to mix this Gahroogamesh in with the Howard Dean “YEAAAAAAAAAH” scream somehow. It would be truly epic lulz
Yeah, smile.dk is swedish. I wouldn’t count on too many swedes knowing about them tho. I do, but more or less only because I have a friend who’s some sort of fanatic over bubblegum pop, something I admit I did listen too more back in the ’90s when it was popular.
And the YGOTAS parody is, as you say, way better. And I’m not just saying that because I’m a huge fan of YGOTAS despite never having seen more than perhaps half an episode of YGO. Sakuracon doesn’t sound like anything I’d want to attend even if I got trip and everything paid (I’d jump ship upon arrival in Seattle, most likely, in such a situation). they may have changed their name from Baka!-con, but they’re still idiots, it seems.
Ah, right: Looking at wikipedia, I think this takes the cake:
“The Asia-Northwest Cultural Education Association (ANCEA) is a non-profit organization organized for charitable and educational purposes specifically for furthering the understanding of Asian culture through the use of traditional and contemporary media.”
Somehow this doesn’t really ring true to me.
maybe one day anime fans will not act like stupid little brats and be more civerlised. Instead of shorting at the top their lungs random phases.
I’ve been to one con, and one con only, and as great as the experience was it’s exhausting and I’m too old to deal with obnoxious bastard kids who block the narrow hallways taking pictures and acting like tards. I paid for weekend passes to go again, but I’ve noticed I’m not excited as I was last time, just anticipating the headache more or less. Oh well, this year I drink, and alcohol makes everything better.
Oh yeah the commercial, lol. The most hilarious thing about this is Vic and the people at Sakuracon actually thought this commercial would make people WANT to go rather than turn them away, which is the obvious reaction after seeing such a commercial unless you yourself are a weeaboo.
Sakuracon: Because we don’t want you in our restaurants.
Seemed like a brilliant ad to me, look at all the buzz it produced. Reminded me of those old “monster truck rally” commercials really, as far as production values go anyway.
But now that they’ve taken down the Yugioh abridged version, does that mean that this wasn’t a parody all along?
Hinano just confirmed my sneaking suspicion that the subtitles were wrong. Fail
roflmao. you know i was just looking on youtube and I saw the sakura con 2008 commercial and it was just as awful too
i think they are like notorious for promoting horrible weaaboo behavior
This would never happen in Australia, mostly because American originating anime fan memes are culturally irrelevant here. Hinano, if you want evidence I’m not just some weaboo, since I actually can’t speak a word of Japanese, I suggest you read my post on Keita Takahashi’s Japanese video game philosophy once it comes out at Screen Play Blog (I hope it does anyway). It’s one thing to like a culture’s animation and video games, it’s another thing to understand them. Personally I think Japanese game developer Keita Takahashi exhibits a very interesting philosophy about “disposable society” which ties into the cultural melancholy many Japanese people feel about being disconnected from other human beings in their society (come to think of it there’s other reasons hikikomori feel isolated other than emo bitching they can fix themselves/social anxiety disorders).
I missed my local Sydney based anime convention because I had to study for exams T_T but considering I got some quality time with one of my old school chums in my schedule I’m not that unhappy about it. Aussie anime fans, the sensible ones anyway, are usually very quiet people in public. Even I, who talked on radio about Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha manga, was terrified of public speaking because the host of that show, John Safran, is a gonzo genius who calls people out on their bullshit / calls them out as being wishy washy.
I don’t need to go to an anime convention to be confident that I am an anime fan. That’s what standing up to some gothic poser who shoved me at school for liking anime was for. That’s why I called out that Twilight fangirl on her Edward loving bullshit when she said anime fans are inferior because “Edward is 3D and anime girls are cartoon girlfriends for losers” according to her. Yeah, I ruined her shit by saying “And Edward is somehow more real than Yomiko Readman or any anime girl I could name?” It was a BAAWWWWWW fest for her, and I lol’d.
[ID SOJOURNER] On Guhroogamesh and Weeaboos « The Blue Fox Alley
Man. I dunno… I thought the original ad was pretty funny, but the motive behind making it confuses me.
Asperger’s Anime Blog » The Quiet Australian (Anime fans in Oz)
Oh, it’s been uploaded to niconico? I must have a link to that.
That ad is the most accurate depiction of weaboos I’ve ever seen.
Wow…they made every anime fan thats ever lived look like totally annoying retarded bastards. Why must they always do that? There are NORMAL anime fans…but they always show the crazy ones for some reason. Ugh…
But looking at it from a humor perspective, I think they did they’re job >>
After looking back at previous Sakuracon commercials, they’re all pretty decent. The 2008 one is weeabooism done right: it paints the con as an anime-filled space where the weeaboo would be the “correct” way of acting and the mundanes are the weirdos.
ToastCrust> http://www.nicovideo.jp/tag/sm6358429
top one: the notorious commercial
bottom one: the YuGiOh parody
“So since I’m a cultureless white devil, I wasn’t offended by the Sakuracon commercial like Chicks on Anime were.”
Cultureless white devils, represent!
I lol at the irony of a group of women calling themselves “Chicks” getting offended at anything. It’s like a group called “Honkies on Film” getting upset at a Spike Lee movie…
Commercial itself was pretty funny, although I’m not entirely sure how much of that was intentional (other than the “GAROOGAMESH!!” of course). It’s like a group of people got together and acted out a random topic on some third-rate anime board. Minus the incessant trolling and self-aggrandizement, of course.
We need to have someone edit in some trolling into that commercial. That would be WIN.
Oh… that commercial.
“桜コン行きます” could also mean “You’re going to Sakura-Con,” which is what I’m guessing they meant in using it. The subs are still wrong though.
Other than “sushi, anime, & manga” I didn’t know that the heck they were talking about. And I don’t like sushi so the only thing that offended was that the plumpest girl was an anime fan. Shouldn’t she have the the “Yaoi” fan?
I’m never going to any -cons nor will I ever cosplay or publicly say “GAHROOGAMESH.” And that’s only because I don’t like to travel a lot. Seeing that commercial just made me vow to never view any type of commercial by -cons as well.
Well, people did end up shouting GAHROOGAMESH! (and, uh, MARCO!) at the con, except now it was ironic instead of poserish. See what they did there?
I didn’t hear anyone shout gahroogamesh at sakuracon but i was only there for a few hours, mostly to play the initial d arcade machine
What pissed me off the most was i lost to some douche who picks the gtr when i pick the s13, but what ever im sure im a better driver in real life