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The Great Con Conspiracy Desu
I would like to thank the mousey over at wank_report for bringing this little nugget up. So lets revel in some actual funny here.

In Colorado the main anime convention has been Nan Desu Kan. In recent years another anime convention has been building up some steam, Animeland Wasabi.

Right after this year's Animeland Wasabi ended in the beginning of March anime company Funimation announced a lawsuit against Miller Timmons, and ten John Does for selling counterfeit items at Wasabi. (Anime News Network article) Timmons also manages the convention under his Think Art Media and Animeland businesses. There is also a nice breakdown of the lawsuit in this screencap.

A few days ago an announcement is made on the front page of Animeland Wasabi that basically decries that Funimation and Nan Desu Kan are trying to get rid of Animeland Wasabi because NDK totally got their people to find some bootleg merchandise at Wasabi to show to Funimation to get them to sue Wasabi.(Be warned of glaring green background.)

And who would doubt these claims after such strong opening statements like these:

To our anime community, Animeland would like to give details about the lawsuit between Funimation vs. Miller Timmons. The framework of this lawsuit that is pending in the Denver court system is an attempt for Funimation, Nan Desu Kan and Wasabi Anime to drive Animeland, Miller Timmons, and their fans out of the anime community in Denver because we have grown over the past six years.

At the end of that tl;dr there is a screencap of a reply from ThatGuyInTheHat who manages to Godwin himself, in German no less, to a poster on the forums.

Also in the comments to the ANN article the CEO of the site says that they did try to contact Timmons before they posted the article, which goes against Animeland Wasabi's claim that they have not been contacted for a statement. There also seems to have been some wanky comments that have been since deleted in that thread without being screen capped unfortunately.

There is a discussion on the forum (which seems to now no longer be, but there are screen caps) about the announcement where we learn that the screed went through lawyers before being posted. ThatGuyInTheHat believes that anyone who is sticking up for NDK is NDK staff. That he can only give vague hints of NDK's wrongdoings because they could be spying on their forum and use what is said against Wasabi.

Nan Desu Kan has released their own press release on the matter, where they avoid saying much of anything outside that they are not making any anime company to anything for them and are too busy with their own con to care about anyone else's.

With all this popping up shortly after the hearing to figure out the scheduling for the case one can only assume that this may be the beginning.

And in case anything else appears to go poof here are the screen caps collected so far.

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adverb
2013-05-15 04:02 am UTC (link)

Oh man. I now feel justified for not going to Wasabi, despite every one of my friends who still likes anime asking me to go.

I should point out that NDK isn't completely on the up-and-up either - I don't know all the details since I fell out of the anime scene a good eight or nine years ago, but they've always been stingy and a little weird about things. A friend and her boyfriend did some heavy-duty volunteering for them in exchange for comped tickets and a hotel room, and maybe some money. That was the deal all the way up until they finished their work, at which point it became, "Oops, we can't comp you anything, bye!"

Wasabi, on the other hand, seemed really unprofessional (which could be due to them just starting out) and some of the admin people I met gave off creeper vibes (although large parts of the Denver anime community does, last NDK I had to talk myself out of actually printing out copies of the Geek Social Fallacies and handing them out).

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	cinnamonical 2013-05-15 04:09 am UTC (link)
	I was wondering about NDK's history as well. ThatGuyInTheHat claims they've been doing "unethical stuff for the last year and a half," and the Animeland Wasabi page says that NDK banned cross-promotion with Wasabi, but I'm sure people can understand if I maintain a bit of healthy skepticism of both claims. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

adverb
2013-05-15 05:09 am UTC (link)

Yeah, I don't have any real details, although I can say for sure that NDK outgrew its convention space years ago (we're talking being in line for five hours in order to get into the major events, with the lines blocking up 75% of the hallway space), but they don't want to shell out for the convention center (I don't think there's a problem with affording it). Other than that one story, most of what I know is just rumors and the one time I talked with one of the head NDK people over a decade ago, so it could just be a typical con thing.

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seca
2013-05-15 09:12 am UTC (link)

From what I picked up reading into this it does seem both cons have issues. And NDK's response to the allegations dinged some of my BS sensors with how they used so many words on something they could have easily summed up in a couple of short paragraphs. But as they do not have the guy throwing out conspiracy theories about how others are trying to get them around every corner they are coming off as at least sane.

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morbid_angel
2013-05-24 08:45 am UTC (link)

Wasabi, on the other hand, seemed really unprofessional (which could be due to them just starting out) and some of the admin people I met gave off creeper vibes

Funny you should say that. When I was cosplaying Lady from Devil May Cry three years ago, I had a replicated Kalina Ann. Someone from the admin/staff or what have you asked me for a date. Then five minutes in the conversation he told me he had a felony.

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	morbid_angel 2013-05-24 08:50 am UTC (link)
	Also yes, Denver's anime scene has way too many creepers and it's really turning me off from conventions -_-. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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