Justin: Reddit’s NA presence kinda blew up when Moon Goddess was announced! Are you familiar with the Grand Order Subreddit?
Albert: Oh, we read it every day! *laughs*
Aiko: Actually, if you don’t mind me stepping in, I was at Otakon!
Justin: Oh, not at all! Go ahead.
Aiko: We had a Fate cosplay gathering the next day and it was just - I had never seen anything like it, it was so crazy! We had fun and took a lot of photos. The categories were great, like the Saber faces and especially Waver with Iskandar. They were definitely the crowd favorite and everyone was giving them a standing ovation!
Albert: The true main characters of Fate/Zero.
Aiko: At one point, Iskandar took his cape off and put it on Waver and it was amazing! I’ve never seen a crowd like that - we caused such a congestion right around our booth area because it was very moving. We also screened Fate/Grand Order First Order and it was *completely* packed, like no seats available! So it was great from my experience!
Justin: That’s awesome to hear! Can we look forward to more in future conventions?
Albert: Absolutely, while we’re on the road, we’re definitely going to more conventions and at every one, we’ll try to bring the latest information. We’re trying to create a community and do something every time we’re at an event. It’s not just, “Here’s some information, see you in three months!” Especially at Anime Expo - we announced the information, but I really wanted to be there personally so we could talk Fate! We’re going to more conventions through the entire year. Every time we’re there, we’ll bring some more info and I’ll try to be there to talk more about Fate! If you have any questions, come ask me directly.
We’ll see what we can bring to future conventions to have a more engaging experience. The real summoning booth was a lot of fun and drew quite the crowd!
Justin: Do you have plans on how you’ll interact with players over the Internet? The Japanese side has several things, including their live streams. Is that something you may be interested in expanding into?
Albert: It’s a good idea to think about! Japan has a lot of resources, where they can run events and talk to people directly. They also have broadcasts, like Chaldea Broadcast Station, where they invite guests and do all sorts of things with voice actors and key staff.
At Aniplex of America, we also have our own live streaming. There’s some interesting ideas, since this came up in the past as well. It’s a good and interesting concept where we could start doing a similar thing and it’d be me talking directly to the fans. “Here’s some new info!”, as I also try to answer questions as they flood through the chat!
Justin: Like on Twitch chat?
Albert: Yeah, like Twitch chat. It’s definitely an interesting idea to have a wider, further outreach to our community. For me, it’s a very important concept I have for this project. I want to make sure we include and engage with the fans as much as we can! Talking to the fans is the best!
At this moment, a gust of wind from an open window caused a full-sized Mash cut-out to fall over behind us!
Albert: Woah, Mash just fell. Mash is like, “Senpai, shut up!”
We get her back upright before continuing the interview.
Justin: I think one of the things you guys did that a lot of us didn’t expect was in ‘My Room’, where if you press on a servant there’s a translation of the dialogue they say! I didn’t expect that to be translated to English. But now with these events, there are event shops too. Or even Da Vinci. Are there going to be translations for those lines too?
Editor Note: We know that event shop dialogue in NA for servants actually shows up under the character profile and is translated, but it doesn’t help anyone without that character who doesn’t understand Japanese, does it?!
Albert: So, I’m currently working with DELiGHTWORKS on that. It’s definitely one of the issues and feedback we got constantly. People have asked that if we have subtitles in My Room and the Servant Profile pages, what about the other shops? It’s something we’re certainly aware of. I don’t know if it’s a technical issue or any specific reason, but I want to and we’re all working with DELiGHTWORKS to see if we can adjust things to make it work, since a lot of those voice lines are funny and interesting. I imagine fans would want to know, “Hey, what the heck is Da Vinci talking about here!?”
Justin: So on that note, you mentioned there’s communication between both you and DELiGHTWORKS. How do you both contribute to the decision process in what events roll out?
Albert: Oh, it’s definitely a joint decision. Obviously, the NA version didn’t launch the exact same date the JP server did, so if we time it the same as JP, some things would be kind of off. Halloween would be in September if we time it exactly how Japan spaced it out! So definitely!
When we originally plan an event, we’ll look at the American calendar and compare it to the JP release. We may have to move some things around to match the event, like how Moon Goddess was originally to match with the Autumn festival, and if it doesn’t it kind of defeats the purpose. So it worked great with the eclipse! And if we don’t have Halloween happening on Halloween, that’s no good either, right?
So there’s a lot of back and forth between us and Japan where we’re matching events with the calendars. But if we do, we’ll have to shift some other stuff around and DELiGHTWORKS will also tell us what can or can’t be shifted... or we all have to compromise. So it’s not just one side deciding all the things. We’re both looking at the big picture and deciding how we’ll continue to move forward.
