Quote:
Originally Posted by Hachiko
(Post 4383477)
Seriously, this could have been handled properly. If I am going to be involved in a prank, I'd better be informed beforehand by the company and be given an option to opt-out. If the said company are going to apologize for this, do it ASAP and make it genuine. Don't drag it out. They did. Now they're paying the price.
|
Do we really,
really know that he and his staff weren't actually informed of the plan beforehand, as both they and the production committee have since claimed to be the case?
Work your way back from the fundamental premise of the whole thing (at least what is claimed): Mitsuhiro is guaranteed a role in the final, BD/DVD-only arc of Kokoro Connect from the get-go, and he will also be their PR guy over the course of the show.
So they create a story around this. A story of a voice actor down on his luck, who thinks he's going to get his big break and ends up being spurned by a nasty prank. Poor guy! But he's a hard worker, and people cheer for him as he works in the trenches to support the show as their PR spokesperson. And then at the end of the whole process, "surprise!" you've actually gotten a role after all. All his hard work paid off! Happy End.
So, in order to fit into this story, he had to claim certain things at certain points in time:
1. After the prank was pulled, before this became a big deal: "I had no idea, but we agreed to do the PR job, and I'm going to work hard!"
2. After the prank turned into a firestorm, but before the "secret" was revealed: "I didn't know, but I
really wasn't being pranked......"
3. Then the secret is out: actually, we've all known all along but we had to keep it a secret because we had a whole event planned for the reveal...
The problem is the premise was too believable, the acting was too believable, and other people got involved who were not part of the script and believed it (precisely because it was too realistic -- to the point where it could be taken to be legitimately real if not for knowing about that very first point; the acting job was already in the bag). Then the producers made a stupid move to try to salvage the situation (trying to preserve the secret still), and only made it worse.
I realize this is assuming that the claims made by the production committee are fundamentally true. But although I believe this whole scenario was poorly-conceived on many levels (it's too realistic to find funny, and it's a "joke" about bullying), I find this theory much more plausible given the amount of people involved to pull this off.
The problem is, of course, that the theory can't be proven because, no matter what anyone says or claims now, people will believe they were told to lie now so that the higher-ups can save face. And that's why it's always going to remain something of an urban legend no matter what, and people will believe what they want. There's no way to prove it without actual physical evidence that Mitsuhiro's staff knew about the entire plan beforehand (and even if you had that, I'm sure some would question it to the bitter end). So, at this point, we'll never know...