ANIMAX MUSIX 2011 at Yokohama Arena

On November 23rd, I attended ANIMAX MUSIX 2011 at Yokohama Arena.

I arrive pretty early at 10AM, originally because I wanted to finish visiting all the booths with enough time to spare to visit the Raumen Museum during lunch.

Charity auction items

Instead, I wound up getting caught in a giant 100-man karaoke which was simply so interesting I couldn't leave. The atmosphere was super relaxed, and with lots of decent amateur singers and a very enthusiastic crowd, it was like a live before the live. The format was a pre-determined series of nearly every variety of anisong, but limited to 1 verse + chorus so they could cram as many in as possible. Each time a song came up, the organizer would try and get someone to volunteer, sometimes even guilting people to partcipate. A few choice moments: Eternal Blaze came on, the whole crowd whipped out UOs out of nowhere (so it's not just Momoi fans who keep emergency UOs hidden on their body). For Yukarin songs, a bunch of fans magically whipped out Yukari penlights even though Animax isn't a Yukarin event. When SKILL was sung, they got a bunch of dudes and 1 girl to come up to match the band member composition. At the end, one of the producers came by and gathered us for a big group video, which I'm sure will show up in TV report next year.

The whole thing lasted until noon so I had to abandon Ramen Museum after all. Instead I met up with @jouttex (major thanks for the ticket hookup) and 2 other dudes to grab a quick lunch from Lawson.

I didn't buy any goods, since I already have too many T-shirts and towels and there wasn't anything I absolutely NEEDED to line up for. I did feel a little bit of regret after I saw how bright the penlights were though. The blue and orange ones looked pretty good in their clear cases, but they were already sold out when I walked by the merchandise stands around 1pm. Oh well I'll stick to my flashlights.

After lunch, we split up, and I found my seat in the front A block of the arena. My ticket this time was way better than I could have hoped for the price.

Yokohama Arena is a huge venue, but it feels much smaller and more intimate compared to Saitama Super Arena. The near end was right in our faces, but even the far end of the stage felt close, and when I looked behind me, the guys in the balcony around us didn't feel far away at all. My position this time was a really good, as you had a good close view of the center stage, and a super close view of the left stage. But it went from "really good" position to "freaking amazing" position for 1 major reason which I'll detail a bit later.

When the event started, big jumbo screens came on and they did the whole artist countdown thing on the screen with everyone cheering. The official penlights helped make the entire arena look like a nice sea of blue and gold.

I was actually armed with earplugs this time, but even though I was very close to the speaker, I was pleasantly surprised by the reasonable volume (I used the earplugs anyway). The sound quality was actually good for a big room. Maybe it's because the only other big arenas I've been to were Tokyo Dome (god awful), Budokan (terrible), Saitama Super Arena (terrible), and Makuhari Messe (might as well have been in mono) so my frame of reference is skewed. Yokohama Arena was at least decent: not-ear shattering loudness, not too much echo, and ok dynamic range. The biggest problems were that the singing during acoustic corner sounded flat (might just be the venue) and the mixing - for certain artists, the band was drowning out the vocals. Luckily the latter didn't happen with artists I really cared about. As an aside, the best sounding event that I've ever been to period was probably Starry Candy Stripe at TERRSA hall in Niigata, where Yukarin's rendition of "Namida no Loop" sounded so good it nearly ruined all other lives for me until I could get over it.

Top batter was Nakagawa Shoko. I never watched Guren Lagann (and I read Beelzebub manga without watching anime) so I didn't really know the songs but I jumped anyway since it was a good atmosphere. Shoko-tan is maybe middling-average as a singer, but she's pretty good at MC. Immediately she endeared herself to the audience by making them yell a bunch of shit. I didn't even understand half the references of what we were yelling (Giza?) until she got the whole crowd "tutturuuing." Her interactive MC skills are quite good: controlling the mood, getting different segments of audience like guys/girls/glasses/cosplayers to cheer, and so on.

Nakagawa Shoko:
1. Tsuyogari (Beelzebub ED)
2. Tsuzuku Sekai (1st TTGL movie themesong)
3. Namida no Tane, Egao no Hana (2nd TTGL movie themesong)

angela has been an old favorite ever since they performed at Otakon several years back, so I was glad to see them again (Domestic Love Band doesn't count). During MC, they were waving at the cameras and to all the people watching via simulcast, which reminded me that this year's Animax Musix was being broadcasted live to theaters.

angela:
4.Beautiful Fighter (Shikabane Hime OP)
5.Shangri-La (Fafner OP)

As usual, atsuko gave a great performance with a voice that filled the whole event space. Typically, in singer/composer duos like this, only the singers tend to stand out much. After all, so many composers do a ton of work behind the scenes but just get relegated to "the background guitar player" on stage. Not so with KATSU. He's actually a lot like Koike aniki in the sense that his contrasting costumes and crazy playing mannerisms contribute a lot to making the duo interesting. During one song, he gangwalked right over to our side, leaned over the divider, got all in our face, and proceeded to hammer chords into his guitar.

For the last song, I had forgotten that Shangri-La was a towel song and has its own special towel moves so I was smacking myself for not bringing something to throw around. During the MC, atsuko was like "Hey it's pretty hot in here right? Time to bring out MY TOWEL." I ended up just using a penlight.

Next was REMM featuring ayami. Don't really know them or the song. REMM came in sharp suit and carrying a keyboard, while ayami came in a white pleather coat. She looked really young and acted so nervous during her MCs, but it was pretty funny when she said she wasn't 18 yet. People were yelling "highschooler" as a response. When they paired up, it did remind me a bit of fripside, except we all know how freaking awesome Nanjo's costumes are.

REMM featuring ayami:
6. Freedom (Battle Spirits Heroes OP)

Once they left, and even younger looking kid showed up. I didn't really know Kawano Marina, the song, or what show she worked on. But she instantly made me like her when she pulled a page from ELISA's playbook and made everyone yell her name. When I say "Yokohama Arena" you yell "Kawano Marina!!!" (Ma Arena). Later I found out she was one of the winners of ANIMAX's yearly Anisong Grand Prix singing competition, and that all the winners (HIMEKA, Sasaki Sayaka, Kita Shuhei, Suzuki Konomi) got to perform at this event.

Kawano Marina:
7.Morning Arch (A Channel OP)

Then the big screen flashed "Fan Selection Corner", announcing the first segment of what ANIMAX MUSIX is best known for: cover songs!

First up for cover songs was May'n. She had a bunch of lives during this period that I wasn't planning on attending, but I guess I ended up getting to see her anyway. I didn't really know this song but it was pretty fun and there were lots of UO. Speaking of UOs, people were using UOs almost all the time. Because ANIMAX sold official blue and orange penlight, "orange" became a standard color instead of a special color. Everyone there who had a modded orange flashlight or a giant bucket of UO cyalumes (which was about a quarter of the arena) just busted out UO any time others were using the orange penlights.

May'n:
8.Orfeu (Uta no Prince Sama OP)

Faylan was next with a solid performance. I didn't care that much about Faylan the last time I saw her at Tokyo Game Show but since Polaris came out (and after actually watching Milky Holmes) I knew her better now and had some appreciation for her singing, so I'm glad I got a second chance to see her live. But I didn't know this song. I only remember a little of Slam Dunk in my youth, but that was when ZARD was doing the ED. Too bad. It would have been nostalgic otherwise.

Faylan:
9.Anata dake mitsumeteru (Slam Dunk ED)

After the song, Faylan stayed on stage and called up Sasaki Sayaka and ayami. Even though I didn't know 2 out of 3 artists, I got pretty excited for this one since they were performing one of the best Kawada Mami songs in existence. Big mass of UOs again. Their 3 voices fit perfectly together and it was a fantastic tribute to the original.

Faylan & Sasaki Sayaka & ayami
10.JOINT (Shana 2 OP)

Faylan does pretty well standing in for Kawada actually. Next was HIMEKA, who came out in a long dress and did a much needed ballad so we could rest after jumping too much for JOINT.

1st reaction: ~siren~ bah gawd momma there is a white person on stage at an anisong event
2nd reaction: Oh damn, this live singing is pretty good.
3rd reaction: Hey, waitaminute, didn't I see her on Niconico before during Anisama Girls Night?

I guess I didn't really notice back then during Niconico online, or she's just much better live.

HIMEKA:
11.Adesso e fortuna～Honoo to Eien～ (Record of Lodoss War themesong)

Later I found out this was one of the songs she won the 2008 competition with so she must have really practiced and perfected it.

angela came back to some big cheers. I was especially happy since I actually believed them during their earlier MC when they said it was their last song. I guess they meant their last non-cover song.

angela:
12.Kimi no shiranai monogatari (Bakemonogatari)

And that was the end of Fan Request corner #1.

GRANRODEO was next. Kisho showed up in checkered outfit that made him look like a punk golfer. They're a relatively successful act, but that didn't stop Kisho from making a joke about people leaving for bathroom breaks. Even though I really don't care about the group, Kisho is cool I guess - plus he's goddamn Sensei-san from Bottle Fairy.

GRANRODEO:
13.Ai no Warrior (Angelique Maren no Rokukishi OP)
14.HEAVEN (Koutetsu Jeeg ED)

HIMEKA also came back for one more song, non-cover this time. At the end, she tried her hand at MC and you could see her think so hard at at trying to remember what to say. More than once you could see her shut down for a few seconds and go into deep recall, but the audience was supportive and she always managed to find the right words after a pause. It was cool to see: like when harddrive LED flashes when it seeks, when HIMEKA went into word-search mode she gets a puzzled look and her eyes start blinking like crazy. Weirdly, it made you really want to root for her and it seemed to work since there were lots of "HIMEKA" calls after. She also announced a one-man live.

HIMEKA:
15.Asu e no Kizuna (Valkyria Chronicles OP)

Never heard of The Sketchbook before and they didn't really sound like "Anisong" group, just a normal band. Sket Dance was playing on screen in the background but I didn't know the anime at all so I was still lost despite the visual aid. Anyway, I don't have much to say about it. Being a group of 3 people, they made use of the big stage well. The two guys split up to go to the walkways on each side and girl with a base hovered around at the top of the stairs in the center. The sound was a bit off on this one, as you couldn't hear the vocals too well.

The Sketchbook:
16.Michi (SKET DANCE OP)

Next was Sasaki Sayaka, who came out and did her one famous song from Nichijou. I didn't know the second song.

Sasaki Sayaka:
17.Zzz (Nichijou ED)
18.Starting Again (Cardfight Vanguard ED)

Next some Singapore jailbait group called Sea A showed up. They seriously looked like 12 year olds and they were all wearing ridiculously small/thin clothes. They might as well have performed in their underwear - one girl's costume was literally nothing but odango hairstyle, skimpy tanktop, and hotpants. As for actual performance, the singing was pretty average but it seems like they rely a lot more on dancing and showing lots of skin, which felt way out of place for this event composed of mostly established vocalists and Anisong grand prix winners.

During MC's, each member introduced themselves with a well rehearsed spiel about who they were, where they were from, their interests, and what they wanted to achieve by performing here. But a lot of people didn't even remember their names. It was kind of funny that after all their work memorizing MCs in Japanese, some dude just catcalls "Hey, Purple!"

Sea A:
19.DREAM SHOOTER (Cardfight Vanguard ED)
20.DELI-DELI☆DELICIOUS (Toriko ED)

According to Wiki they are 20+ years old if you can believe it. Sea A must get their idol singers from the same place the Chinese Olympic team gets their female gymnasts.

Then came KOTOKO who had hands down the BEST performance of the night. KOTOKO owns, so badly. I was dual wielding UOs for every fucking song, and my primary Fenix actually ran out of juice by the end. There were lots of KOTOKO yells during the MCs, and she got the whole arena excited with just the first song. Shockingly, Re-sublimity did not get the top reaction in her setlist. Maybe people in Japan have probably heard Resub live tons of times, but since I only heard it once live before in Sapporo, for me it was still "OH MY GOD RESUB ASDFLKSJF!!!" Instead, the biggest reaction came for the Shana 3 OP.

The stage had pyrotechnics rigged up, and from my area, you could feel the waves of heat between every blast of flame during Light My Fire. Then in a move absolutely no-one expected, KOTOKO came off the stage and walked right in front of us, and continued to take an entire trip around the arena. This allowed us to turn around and get a good look at the crowd as she walked through. The audience was just going nuts. I hadn't watched Shana 3 or gotten around to checking the new KOTOKO album yet so this song was totally new to me, but it was able to stand on its own on the first listen. Even though the song was so new, the calls and yelling parts were intuitive and the entire crowd was able to get into it despite probably a good percentage of them including myself having never heard the song before. Ryo (of Supercell) did a good job.

KOTOKO:
21.Re-sublimity (Kannaduki no Miko OP)
22.Nanakorobi Yaoki☆Shijo shugi! (Hayate no Gotoku OP)
23.Hirake! Sora no oto
24.Light My Fire (Shana 3 OP)

Jumping furiously from the start of Re-sublimity till the end of Light My Fire was exhausting. Unless the next artist literally started crowdsurfing, there was probably no way to follow that act so we took a short break.

During the intermission, they showed clips on the big screens of artists introducing their charity auction stuff.

Upon resuming the event, we were greeted by Minorin, who is one of the artists that can get major reactions just from her name showing on the screen. Without missing a beat, she continued the pace set by KOTOKO with her popular songs and a classic Utena cover. It was fun cheering at "Re-vo-lu-tion" with everyone. The only other time I got to participate in Rinbu -revolution- live at a big event was also with Minorin in 2008 when she performed it as a duet with Okui Masami.

Chihara Minori:
25.Paradise Lost (Ga-Rei: zero OP)
26.TERMINATED (Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon OP)
27.Yasashii Boukyaku (Haruhi movie ED)
28.Rinbu -revolution- (Utena OP)

After Minorin, Kita Shuhei came up. Shuhei was the first winner of Anisong Grand Prix 5 years ago. He did two songs, but I didn't recognize them or the anime, and I was tired after Minorin so I kinda zoned out. Sorry.

Kita Shuhei:
29.Sekai de Ichiban Koishiteru (Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi OP)
30.Sekai no hate ni kimi ga itemo (Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi 2 OP)

Faylan came next and put on a good show. Solid as usual.

Faylan:
31.mind as Judgment (CANNAN OP)
32.Blood teller (Mirai Nikki ED)

Then came Kalafina. Penlights and cyalumes are banned during Kalafina-only lives (staff will even search your bag like it's contraband) so, the only time to see lights during Kalafina concerts is at big events like these. But despite little opportunity to practice, people were still able to work together to get the right colors. For Magia, everyone went red, which Kalafina members noticed and thanked everyone for. I could say a lot about Kalafina in general, but since I went to a Kalafina event 2 days later, I'll save it for another post.

Kalafina:
33.Magia (Madoka ED)
34.Kagayaku Sora no Shiijima ni wa (Black Butler 2 ED)

Once Kalafina finished, it was back to collaboration corner again. It was pretty good overall, but I was just happy to see KOTOKO come back for more songs.

May'n & KOTOKO & GRANRODEO:
35.SWORD SUMMIT (Sengoku BASARA OP)

As for Railgun, I like the song but I think May'n was a little mismatched for it. Nanjo fits the song so well that it's hard to improve with any cover, but in general, I think you need a higher voice to do this, like Minorin's.

May'n:
36.Only my railgun (Railgun OP)

SeaA:
37.Platina (CCS OP)

Over The Future was also rather impressive. For me, it was another throwback to 2008 and the singers were pretty good. Before the song, Kita introduced Suzuki Konomi, the winner of this year's Anisong Grand Prix, as the special guest. When she came out, at first I actually thought they got one of the actual Karen Children members back out to sing it because she was just a little kid in a frilly dress. She ended up having a really good voice though.

Kita Shuhei & Sasaki Sayaka & Suzuki Konomi:
38.Over the Future (Karen Children OP)

For these lesser known new guys, I think it's smart for them to do well known popular songs like Over the Future or Butter-Fly so the crowd gets excited even if they don't know the singers.

The Sketchbook & Kita Shuhei:
39.Butter-Fly (Digimon OP)

Next was my second favorite part of ANIMAX after KOTOKO solo set: acoustic corner! I've said it before, but acoustic corner is one of the best parts of any live concert, because it's when you can really focus on live singing: the background music is much quieter, and the pressure of doing calls goes away. Nobody thinks you are a spoil-sport if you just sit there listening intently. Sound quality was were good even though it was a little flat, but I'm not sure if I can't fault any equipment or mixing for that.

First up, angela. This is where the location of my seats really turned into a plus. Acoustic corner was set up in the center platform to get as close to everyone as possible, so instead of the usual route, angela came in from the side entrance. This entrance happened to be right next to us, so I waved to them as they passed by. On stage, Atsuko did a good job emoting the whole feel of the song.

angela:
40.secret base～Kimi ga kureta mono～ (Anohana ED)

Now while all this was happening, Minorin was waiting her turn but instead of waiting backstage, she decided to just chill out right next to us. She was wearing a super tight red dress and we got to see it up close. Then angela came back down the same route, while Minorin went on stage to do her thing. The guy next to me was freaking out afterwards.

Chihara Minori:
41. Anna ni issho dattanoni (Gundam SEED OP)

After acoustic corner, GRANRODEO also came by and got everyone back on their feet yelling about how much they loved Gundam. When Kisho came to the walkways on the side he was shaking people's hands.

GRANRODEO:
42.INVOKE (Gundam SEED OP)

Kalafina returned for cover songs this time. "Nowhere" was an interesting choice but not unexpected, since it's a FictionJunction song. It's impossible to imagine them singing anything other Kajiura's stuff. So it was crazy when the next song turned out to be Sorairo Days. There's just such a huge image gap there. This has to be watched to be believed, so I'm glad they plan on airing this later in February. Shoko joined midway through Sorairo Days to a lot of excitement and carried the baton into the next 2 covers.

Kalafina:
43.nowhere (MADLAX theme song)

Kalafina & Nakagawa Shoko:
44.Sorairo Days (TTGL OP)

Nakagawa Shoko:
45.Bouken Desho Desho？ (Haruhi OP)
46.Hikari to kage wo dakishimetamama (Rayearth OP)

The series of awesome covers continued with an excellent pick by KOTOKO. There was major major nostalgia on this one, and KOTOKO pretty much can stand in for Yuki. It puts a different spin on the song, but this Sobakasu was so good it actually sounds like it could be a KOTOKO original. It definitely wouldn't feel out of place at all on an album like Short Circuit.

KOTOKO:
47.Sobakasu (Kenshin OP)

By the end of Sobakasu I was pretty satisifed so I was totally unprepared when Minorin and angela came back yet again to do...ETERNAL BLAZE. Minorin was undoubtedly the most popular artist in the arena that day, so having her and atsuko sing etabure together pretty much pushed the crowd to critical loudness levels. If I had to judge auidence noise level, that was the single loudest point of the whole day and it was amazing. To be honest, I actually had more fun during this cover than Mizuki Nana's own original performance of Eternal Blaze during King/Queen's Night. It was just insane how high people were jumping and each time it was timed with a blast of fire on stage.

Chihara Minori & angela
48.ETERNAL BLAZE (Nanoha A's OP)

Finally, May'n came out with a Cheryl-esque black outfit and closed out with a surprisingly long set of 6 songs. I liked the Macross F stuff but I didn't really know the other songs. Brain Diver was pretty good though.

May'n:
49.Scarlet Ballet (Hidan no Aria OP)
50.Kindan no elixir (Macross F insert song)
51.Moshimo kimi ga negau no nara (Valkyria Chronicles 3 theme song)
52.Universal Bunny (Macross F insert song)
53.Ready Go! (Okamisan OP)
54.Brain Diver (Phi Brain OP)

Including collaborations and covers, May'n got 9 songs total which was more than any other artist. If you look at the other big names, Minorin and KOTOKO came in second with 6, Angela had 5, Kalafina, Faylan, and GRANRODEO had 4.

During encore, everyone came back on stage wearing ANIMAX t-shirts and did their closing speech one by one. During angela's speech, katsu was just gonna say some words and end it at that but atsuko egged him on to do his salute schtick. So, he sheepishly gets to the front and gets the whole crowd to salute to Animax.

After everyone finished, they all sang the Maruko-chan song. Instead of a music video, they put big lyrics on screen so everyone in the audience could sing along.

Entire Arena
55.Odoro Pompokorin (Chibi Maruko-chan ED)

And like that, after almost 7 hours, Animax Musix 2011 came to a close. The problem with big super-long events (especially Anisama) is that they can get boring when it's the turns of artists you don't care about. I was really only a true fan of half of the artists showing up today and either casual fan (or worse didn't know them at all) of the others, so I was especially afraid of that happening. But it turned out to be fine since for the most part, even artists I didn't know were good singers or picked good songs.

Rather, I was still in the mood for more anisongs, so I trekked over to Tsukiyume Anisong DJ Bar in nearby Kawasaki for more music and half-priced food for the rest of the night.

Goods:
None, but I did pick up a sweet pamphlet and the usual streamers/ribbons that fall on the arena section during the finale

Posted by Paranda at 7:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Chaos Party Special 2011

I finally have enough time around the holidays to put my notes together into a blog post. Although I was excited to see Amagami SS seiyuu, Chaos Party Special 2011 was the first "real event" for me. After all, the main reason I even considered a 2nd trip to Japan this year was to go to some Sakura Saori events.

This year's Chaos Party was hosted on November 20th at Kawasaki Club Citta, a venue with special significance since it was where the first ever UNDER17 live DVD was filmed.

I arrived early to buy ave;new goods, and met up with friends @mandimandi and @eliasross in line soon after.

Around 1pm they started letting us in by number order. The hall is pretty big as far as live houses go, about the size and shape of a tennis court. A large otagei pen (about 20 ft x 20ft) was squarely in the center-rear area of the floor and labeled as such and there was a balcony on the far end with seating where staff and guests could look over the floor. I was only able to recognize ave;new's a.k.a.dRESS there.

The performance stage was flanked by two huge speakers. It was low and wide, with enough room so all the band members had their own personal space. A cleared area in the center was for the main singer, but due to lowness it was not possible to see the lower half of anyone that night.

First up was Riryka. She appeared to be popular with fangirls who were constantly yelling "Riryka-sama" but I didn't know her songs at all. She had a big black costume and a bit of a gothic theme going on. As soon as the music hit, the room lit up with lights of every color and people started jumping everywhere. I took a moment to really appreciate the kind of atmosphere these events create since the crowd for the last concert I went to just a few months ago (Montreal) was so lethargic. Her songs had more of a "cool" feeling to it so at first it didn't really seem suited for calls but the group somehow made it work.

1. 硝子のLoneliness
2. In the Dark
3. Bravin' Bad Brew

For her last song, Riryka introduced marie, a popular singer from various game openings for a duet. I sort-of knew her thanks to listening to GWAVE compilation series but wasn't too familiar with her set list today except the last song. Marie performed 4 songs, and drew some impressive degree color coordination of glowsticks. Koi no recipe went all pink and went over well, but Clover Heart's was the most popular. There was loud cheers when she announced it and everyone switched to green lights and yelled out lines of the chorus. The screams of "Clovers Hearts" were deafening.

4.Double Moon, World Fusion
5.恋のレシピ
6.battle royal
7.Clover Heart's

After marie, the lights went out and a shadowy figure came on the stage without introduction. At first, the silhouette made it look like she had huge hair but the lights came on to reveal Sakura Saori in a red dress and a gigantic frilly bow on her head. "Now it's my turn" she yelled in her ridiculously high voice. I was starstruck immediately. I saw Saori once before at Anisama 2008, but circumstances were different back then. 1. She was so far away I could barely see her, and 2. I was only a casual ave;new fan at the time. Now that I've drank the ave;new koolaid and Saori herself was less than 20 feet away I was going "ohshit-ohshit-ohshit it's really Saori, it's REALLY Sakura Saori." This is one of those moments that you can only get one or two experiences per artist when you FINALLY see them live after years of anticipation (Momoi at AX in 2007, KOTOKO in 2010) or something insanely awesome and unexpected happens (Momoi at Hawaii and Fanime in 2009). I thought I was used to that voice from radio by now but hearing her do it live during MCs in person was unreal. It's just so insanely, mind-bogglingly high.

Once I got over my giddiness, I joined with a huge group of ave;new fans in cheering. Being an ave;new fan in the US is so very lonely, and sometimes you feel like you are the ONLY fan in the entire area. But in Japan, that is not the case at all. There were so many people wearing ave;new shirts and wristbands that I'd estimate close to 20 percent of Chaos Party attendees considered ave;new the primary draw of the event.

Saori started off with true my heart aka "kishimen" (by her own admission). It's a truly difficult song to sing properly. I know from torturing a captive audience at karaoke with my failed attempts in terribad falsetto (sorry everyone ^^) but that's another story. Even Saori has a little trouble hitting all the notes singing and dancing live, but compared to the 2008 performance at Anisama, it was a lot better. It's very clear her singing has improved to a other new level, so those years of voice coaching weren't for nothing. Plus there was no random DJ going "What, what" this time. The choice of Eternal Wish was also very good.

8. true my heart
9. Eternal Wish
10. 超越↑↑恋してナイしょ☆メア！！

Before announcing the final song, Saori asked if she could request a small favor from the audience. She sang a bar from the song and requested "When I say 'Chu chu chu chuu chu chu chu', you jump and say 'Ole'" Everyone erupted in "OOOOOOOH" from recognition. The band went into overdrive, many UOs were cracked and the next 5 minutes were intense. At the end, while still doing her signature voice, Saori thanked everyone for coming and gave a tiny shout out to American fans (us) that she knew were in the crowd.

Next was AiRI, the artist formerly known as UR@N, probably most familiar to western fans as the singing voice for Kirari in Kira Kira. I last saw her at AX in 2010 where she performed in a traditional yukata, but here she was wearing more rockish clothing and had longer hair. She played three songs, none of which I knew, but I do enjoy AiRI's high pitched singing style (a different type of "high" than Shaori), and they were all very catchy and had an immediately recognizable style to them similar to the d2b songs I knew. Usually, I never really get excited for songs I hear for the 1st time and it always takes a few tries for something to grow on me, but her setlist was good enough that I could appreciate even listening to it once. During MCs, she was pretty coy with her name change, pretending as if she were an industry newcomer and then "surprising" people with her past identity while the audience humored her. "You know, I used to have a different name." She even had us redo some of her old UR@N chants swapped with her new name and had the whole crowd going "Airi-chaaaannn." She did end up giving a pretty sincere sounding speech about how this was a major year for her though and thanking everyone for supporting her for so long.

11. 運命
12. learn together
13. Pieces
14. Reincarnation ver.2011

For the last song, she called up ASTLYRE. I didn't know ASTLYRE or what to expect, but he turned out to be a guitar player and acted as an extra band member for the next few songs. Once AiRI finished up, Ishida Yoko took her place. At first we were surprised she only did one song but then realized it was really just ASTLYRE's set cycling through artists.

15. Over Beat ver.2011

After Ishida, a short rotund woman in a poncho came onto the stage. To my suprise, the audience started shouting Rekka. So it came as news to me that woman was in fact the respected Katakira Rekka well known among various circles. In photos online, her face was always hidden behind a cat mask. The poncho was a very odd and visually jarring choice for live attire, but I guess maybe she's a little self-conscious about herself. Not that voice fans really care that much. Certainly, there were a lot of Rekka fans in the crowd and she got a big reaction for almost every song, especially Tamayura. The opening of the last song was particularly amazing and I was marking out unbelievably hard for how well they built up the tension. It's a cool song in its own right, but when I listened to it late on Youtube I realized I had been permanently spoiled by the live band version.

16. ときめき☆ガーディアン ver.2011
17. Fate Through The Regret
18. パラダイムシフト
19. 魂響

There was a much needed intermission after the triple combo of Saori, AiRI, and Rekka. During the break, we moved to the back to escape from the heat and desperately fan ourselves and exchange drink tickets. Since most of the artists we were interested in already performed, we were planning to hang back rather than suffer the front again for the last few artists we wanted to see, but then YURIA came out right away so we squeezed back in.

YURIA said she thought a long time about what kind of songs to play from her long and varied career. These years she has been part of Pinky Doodle Poodle, which I admit I haven't really followed, but she decided to close out her set with a specially picked song from her Honey Bee days: Plastic Smile. According to her, it's a song she hasn't played in a long time so I felt very lucky to hear it this trip.

20. AROUND THE WORLD
21. Samsara
22. プラスチックスマイル

Next was milktub. bamboo, who AX con-goers are probably very familiar with, came out to join the rest of the band members (who had been playing for every artist) in full makeup while wearing Mickey Mouse pants/gloves/ears over a skin tight black body suit that showed off a prominent gut. During Amaenbo Shogun, he actually changed out of his Mickey gear and came back with a topknot wig and shogun outfit (while still wearig the black bodysuit). He also brought out a dakimakura of what appeared to a grotesquely muscular naked 2D version of himself as a prop.

Bamboo is actually more popular than I thought, and everything he sang had custom moves to it which became fun to imitate even when I didn't know the songs. Unlike other sets, he also did a lot of talking with fans between each song. During one MC, he started attacked us with various imaginary guns and swords (think of Yukarin's meromero stick) and got all the band members to come up with their own unique slashes.

23. 月曜はキライ
24. 甘えん坊将軍～大奥は抱き枕編～
25. バカ・ゴー・ホーム

Baka Go Home was the most energetic out of those, but there were a LOT of milktub shirts in the room so almost every song went over pretty well. Following milktub was Misato Aki, looking a lot older and and sounding more polished than from when I first saw her at Anisama. She actually has a lot of singles and albums for someone who was only active the last few years, and she has been to many many overseas conventions (several in Asia and South America, one in the US). Unfortunately I couldn't really get myself interested in her style so I went through this set mostly on autopilot.

26. 最後のエデン
27. Jewelry tears
28. Spread Wings

Already having done one song earlier with ASTLYRE, Ishida Yoko returned to finish up her set with 3 songs. Oddly, I did consider myself a casual fan of Ishida Yoko, but I only knew her "official works" from anime OPs and Para Para stuff. So I went in expecting that, but instead I didn't recognize a single song she performed that day and was left slightly disappointed. Carnival was decent though, even hearing it for the first time. Later I found out from friends that they were all songs released under her alternate NANA name.

29. Carnival
30. 恋する神通力
31. 太陽のプロミア

Just as I was getting slightly bored, the legendary last act Satou Hiromi came out. Back in the day, I was a huge Hiromi fan, and before the live I was a bit afraid I wasn't up to date on her newer stuff - as always due to a lack of time. But as soon as she started the first song, those worries melted away and I knew I was in for an awesome ride.

32. Angelic Symphony
33. Guri Guri
34. ラブレター

That's right, that set list does not lie: fucking "Angelic Symphony" with a live band ~hoooleeeee shit~. And then Green Green OP and Love Letter? I don't know how many times I looped those songs in my teenage years. And the best part was all of these work really well with a live band. In half an hour, I pretty much relived my high school senior year. Hiromi-nee's performance style is great too. She was going all over the stage like a rockstar and really pumped the crowd into a frenzy. It was an excellent choice to end the show with her and I consider it my second favorite performance all night after ave;new.　A general theme for MCs from these veteran artists was showing a lot of gratitude to fans for their long careers and Hiromi-nee followed suit.

After, there was a brief wait and relatively short encore chant before everyone came back out to perform the last song. Though, it was mostly just Hiromi who actually had the microphone so everyone else was doing background vocals.

35. ハローグッバイ

Finally, there was one last send-off where everyone lined up and each artist said a couple of parting words, the usual thanks and goodbyes while bamboo acted to organize them all. Once all the artists said what they wanted, everyone took a bow and the event came to a close.

Overall, it was a very fun event, and one that I'd definitely consider going to again next year if my schedule permits. Although there were some slow parts, the focus of the event around a narrow range of music kind of helped keep more boring points to a minimum (unlike the bigger range of Animelo). Additionally, the time of 5 hours was just on the limit of satisfying exhaustion without going too long, and that long time was helped by good distribution of bigger name artist appearances throughout the show instead of stacking them all at the end. As for sound quality, it was pretty clean, but a bit too loud - 2 hours later after dinner, my ears were still ringing. I picked up some earplugs the next day.

Event goods purchased:

ave;new T-shirt, towel, and wristband set with bonus postcard

Chaos Party T-Shirt and towel

Posted by Paranda at 4:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Spring Party notes

Earlier this spring, I went to a sphere concert. I wrote some notes about it but it never materialized into a real "live report." Eventually the motivation went away so I'll just dump the snippets and close the book on that.

• The jump timing for a lot of songs don't make any sense. Basically don't expect to go with the flow on calls. Need to know them beforehand
• Ayahi is really popular with girls. I saw some female sphere fans in full Ayahi jumpsuits that were pretty neat
• Aki gives off big sister vibes even though she's smaller than me. Also she doesn't really tower over others as much as I thought
• Didn't hear anyone use Tomacchan nickname. Fans called her Harukasu instead. I guess the name from the photobook?
• Tomatsu's color being orange means she gets the benefit of a ton of people pulling out UO
• Minako did the most in terms of crowd leadership (calls, waving signals, clapping, etc). Also the whole stage turned purple.
• Really long intro where 4 members read a sappy script about spring time.
• During bowing session, other sphere girls would turn their heads to look at you directly, but Haruka did shifty eyes instead lol
• Sphere fans pretty organized. Guy next to me had a big case of glowsticks divided into 4 compartments for each member.
• After costume change, Aki in her green miniskirt + green boots gliding around the stage on supports totally looked like feminine Peter Pan
• There's an interesting mechanic where a secondary stage would actually split into 4 parts while the girls were on it. Each stage would move through the concert halls down one of the aisles and recombine in the middle and back of the stage. Very clever to give everyone a chance to see them up close considering the randomized seats. Sadly it was underused - they only went down the aisle this 3 times, which means every section lost out on 1 member
• The concert title was "Spring Party is Here" and so seating blocks were arranged as YTRAPS with Y all the way at the front row and S in the last row. Backwards it spells S. Party. Unfortunately, I got screwed with "S" but it's good experience to know for future Sphere concerts if they randomize the seats. You can sort of guess the arrangements based on the title and pick a letter in the middle to be safe. Or gamble on the end letters. On the up side, I was in the aisle so the members came right by me when they went around the hall.

Posted by Paranda at 12:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tamura Yukari LOVE LIVE 2011 SPRING *Mary Rose* day 2

On April 16th, I attened Day 2 of Tamura Yukari's spring concert in Budokan. This is a much shorter supplemental report to cover new MCs and variations in the performance or set list. For the original set list, see Day 1 report here.

My location for today was the front row in Arena B6 block, directly along the center aisle like so:

So every time Yukarin came down the aisle, she crossed directly in front. She was also directly above us during the cage part for Shinseiro, but no feathers happened to float down by our section (or maybe I was just too mesmerized to notice).

During 1st MC, Yukarin surveyed the crowd comparing the colors. Since it was 千秋楽, in addition to the pink parka and happis, there were also a ton of people wearing the limited edition pink T-shirts. Yukarin remarked that this time there was a lot of pink that fit well with the spring atmosphere.

Waving to whole audience: "All the people in pink are like cherry blossoms"
Pointing to a few guys with green cyalumes: "Green is like the leaves of the cherry tree"
Pointing to two guys in red live t-shirts: :Are you two guys friends? This will probably get cut, but you two are like Atashi Sakuranbo:
Pointing to people in blue shirts (actually these guys are technically wearing the wrong shirt, because blue was supposed to be for the first day): "Blue...blue is like what??"
JACK suggested the sky, which Yukari gladly obliged. "Blue is like the cracks of blue sky you can see between the cherry trees"
Pointing to black shirts: "Black is..the darkness in peoples hearts." Laughing and clapping from audience for that one.

For song #5, Spring Fever was replaced with Tenshi no oshigoto, a c/w song on Douwa Meikyuu that was only performed on tour during Sweet Milky Way 2007. It's recognizeable by its "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe" opener and it's simplistic and repetitive tune makes it easy to follow along.

For song #8, the acoustic version of YOURS EVER was replaced by Yoimachi no hana, another rare track from her Gin no Senritsu, Kioku no Mizuoto album that was only performed during fancy baby doll concert in 2006. The sound quality was a little bit better than the day before which I'm thankful for, but since this is a faster song I think it could have been better still if they tuned the instrumental down slightly so her voice can stand out more.

For second MC, Yukarin talked about her baby blue sky song again. "It's not played often, but it's the first song I wrote by myself. You all got really pumped for it huh?"

Well you told us to yesterday!! Although the truth is it's not really a kind of song that matches heavy calls, and she knew it.

"Although it kinda died down near the end. But you put lots of effort so thank you!"

By this time Yukarin had already changed into her purpleish candy wrapper and bow outfit, and as she was looking at it she mentioned it was really cute. "Don't you agree? It's really cute. Although it's totally different and the designer probably doesn't even know, it's kind of like Meruru right? Well the real Meruru outfit is a lot more revealing, but this outfit has a kind of magical girl feel to it right? Maybe not everyone knows who Meruru is, but her song..."

At this point a good part of the audience pretty much explodes into cheering with anticipation of Hoshikuzu Witch Meruru, but Yukari takes great joy in crushing their dreams

"..is something I can't sing"

Crowd: EEEEEEEHHH?

"Huh you really want me to sing that? But I can't. Danshaku doesn't know it. I considered it, but if I did it..."

Yukari flashes a smile to audience getting their hopes up

"JASRAC will get mad. So I won't sing it. But this outfit really is cute.."

Having been denied their Meruru, the audience gives up. But they insist on a consolation prize: one twirl at least! The 回って call is a long tradition at Yukarin concerts and there's no way to deny it. Yukari played along but not before more required teasing of the audience. Turn...like this? She half-started on a cartwheel, a front roll, and other moves. "But I can't do that! If I do it (a cartwheel) my skirt will fly up. No way!" Eventually she relented and just did a normal spin.

After she did it she caught a glimpse of herself on the big screen behind and got interested in playing with that. "How fun, I can see myself from the back." So she ordered the camera to zoom in, then slowly zoom out. When the camera had pulled far enough, she yelled STOP! Neither audience nor camera guy had any idea what was going on. The camera just did as it was told and we watched while she barked more orders.

"TOO FAR, ZOOM BACK IN! OK NOW ZOOM OUT A LITTLE MORE. NOW STOP! STOP!"
...
This is "zettai ryouiki"

She had stopped the camera exactly so the bottom of the screen would end an inch below her skirt, thus creating the perfect gap.

For song #15, Hoshizora no Spica was replaced with another Nanoha song, Beautiful Amulet. Similar to the previous day, she went down to the center of the stage for an extended period of time, so I got a full blast of Yukari up close. Beautiful Amulet had pyrotechnics as well, but it didn't fit as well as Spica.

During MC after Meron Ondo, Neko rowed Yukarin back to the stage again, but she had some fun toying with the staff who was actually pushing the platform. She told them to stop, go back, and go forward, changing her mind several times. "I was just lying, sorry. But you should be grateful, fans would love to do this job!". I'm sure if Yukarin were a boss, this is how she would give employees paycuts too.

Once the cats did their magic trick to disappear behind the curtain again, Yukarin tried the same routine. But instead of Cherry coming out like the previous day, Tamachan came out instead. At least this time people remembered his name. Once Yukarin reappeared, it was meron time. Since Yukarin bragged that kokumin only become meromero for her, Masanyan got the stick to test out that theory.

Everyone became meromero for Masanyan.

Yukari got up in a huff, went up to the front of the stage, pointed to everyone and said "ARE YOU PEOPLE STUPID?"

"I told you! You should only become meromero when I do it!"

Next the stick passed to GOD. While GOD was getting ready, Yukarin was making motions behind his back telling all the audience how to react. She feigned a slumping motion and winked at the audience, then told GOD to go ahead.

Everyone became meromero for GOD.

Again Yukarin pouted in the same tone as before "HEY! ARE YOU PEOPLE IDIOTS?"

HA! It was time for the audience to tease Yukarin this time. Every cast member decided to try with similar results. During each member, Yukari tried to remind the audience NOT to meron, but it was useless. During Hatabou's turn she tried to make a special appeal.

As we all know from SCS, the H in Hatabou stands for HENTAI. "Hatabou, they are not going to mero~n for you because you are hentai". But instead Hatabou got loud HENTAI chants and a subsequently huge mero~n.

Now Yukarin was puffing her cheeks and getting frustrated that the crowd even mero~ned for Hatabou. But she quickly rationalized it away.

"Ah, I get it. Those weren't REALLY serious. When I do it, you'll give me the true super mero~n."

Almost nobody became meromero for Yukarin.

The tables have turned himesama. It is us who denies YOU! Instead everyone went into slumping position that she had been trying to get people to do earlier. She went into shock. Has everyone graduated from Yukari Kingdom? she said sadly. Wait it must be broken, so she tried again and again.

Only a few people did it each time.

"People who don't read the mood and do whatever they want to stand out are not good."

Woah, a bit of a harsh scolding from Yukarin? I thought she'd congratualte their loyalty instead, but the correct move was to follow the audience and no-sell yukarin mero~n

Though personally considering the mero happened in some sections of the 2nd floor rather than single individuals, I think it's just parts of the audience misunderstanding due to following the leads of clueless people. There has been some speculation online on whether Yukarin was trying to use this opportunity to say something that had some deeper hidden meaning, like telling people to wear the proper shirts, use only pink lights, do normal calls, or don't yell loudly during her MCs, etc. It could be reading too much into it, but I decided I'll change even my own behavior to retire Fenix mounted pink lights for the next Yukari concert I go to (even though it's pink, having less bright normal pen lights is easier on her eyes). Crowd harmony is important.

Finally, she decided it was time to give the rest of us who had desperately been resisting mero~n a chance. So for the final wave, after we all agreed it would be for real, she hit the audience with several waves of mero~n and got a huge thunderous response back.

For song #19, Koiseyo Onnanoko was replaced with Love Love Baby Happy Star. This is a great choice, and as I mentioned from last year's lives, one of the most fun songs to do live on the recent Citron no Ame album. ゆかりと視線ぶつかる～♪ *faints*

Apparently this song got upgraded into a "puppet song," although they didn't warn us beforehand. The instructions on the puppets very clearly said "Use during Koiseyo Onnanoko and Sugar Tune, so I was about 10 seconds late in getting Chocola out after I realized the stage dancers all had them. I didn't even have time to put it on so I just held her normally. Lots of timed jumping, but the song is still too new for the audience to get fully coordinated so IMO there were some misjumps/heys.

The final encore MC was mostly the same thing as the previous day, announcing her participation in Anisama 2011, Universal Studios Japan events, and the release of BD/DVD for SCS and today's live sometime this summer. One new thing she told us though was she was really glad this time's concert went well. During the previous time in 2007, she was actually really nervous back then because she had gotten throat surgery a little while before.

After the concert, since this time's concert was recorded for BD/DVD and we had finished so earlier (only 7PM), the crowd tried to start a second encore chant but this fizzled out after lights came back on. Still given the set list we heard in the last two days, it was still a really satisfying concert and I'm glad I went and the best part is in 6 months time I'll be able to relive it again through the BD release.

Interestingly for both days, Yukarin did not make any tongue in cheek references to her age. Is the 17 years old joke finally played out?

Maybe not

Day 1 Set list
01.LOVE ME NOW!
02.Picnic
03.Happy Life
04.Platina Lover's Day
05.Tenshi no oshigoto
06.Don't wake me☆ up!
07.Nagareboshi Jenny
08.Yoimachino hana (acoustic)
09.floral blue
10.baby blue sky
11.Super Special Day
12.Koi ni ochita painter
13.Koi no ageha
14.Shinseiro
15.Beautiful Amulet
16.Mero~n Ondo
17.Oshiete A to Z
18.You & Me
19.Love love baby happy star
20.Cherry Kiss
21.Kono yubi tomare
22.Chelsea Girl
23.Gratitude
24.fancy baby doll
25.Super Special Smiling Shy Girl

Next will be image-heavy goods post.

Posted by Paranda at 8:05 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Tamura Yukari LOVE LIVE 2011 SPRING *Mary Rose* day 1

On April 15th 2011, I attended Tamura Yukari's spring concert in Budokan. A good live experience begins with a day of queuing, so at 4AM I struck out for the concert hall from my hotel on foot. By the time I arrived, it was nearing 5AM and there were already plenty of people around.

The last time I went to Budokan (quite disasterous if you'll recall) it was very late at night, but today, it was already light out so I finally got a first good look at the place. Budokan's layout is a bit like a fortified castle. To enter, you must first walk halfway up a big hill, cross the bridge over a wide moat surrounding Kitanomaru Park, and then step through large imposing gates into a stone walled courtyard.

Though there were still 5 hours until merchandise tables opened, many fans were already wearing official goods bought from the previous day's early sale, and the throng of similarly dressed fans pressed against the courtyard's outer gates at the top of the bridge made it look like an organized siege from some invading force (in this case the Yukari Kingdom army). By 5:15 AM, the crowd at the gate had grown to about 200 strong, an impressive number for so early in the morning. However, it turns out the line started at the street instead of the gate so when a suited guy helped up the "最後尾" sign at the bottom of the bridge he nearly caused a stampede.

Luckily for me, I was near the bottom at the time anyway. I had figured 200~ was still a safe number, and saw no point in squeezing into the mass at the top. My decision to stay at the bottom and snap some photos of the cherry trees filling the entire park instead means I had the luck of winding up 50th in line.

The guide led the group through the courtyard then through another set of gates to the Budokan grounds where a long row of booths had been set up. Since the weather was nice, the wait wasn't too bad. There was no freezing rain to contend with for example (see Niigata). Each time the wind blew, we'd be treated to a shower of cherry petals and it was almost like a big group doing hanami, in a way.

We watched staff unload boxes of goods into the booth until 10AM, when the line started moving. With upwards of 10 separate purchasing stations taking on customers, I was in and out of the goods line within half an hour. I tried to stick to the planned list, but as usual, this planning is wasted because I always break budget. The most popular items this time around were the Cherry puppets, puppet one piece, redesigned happi coat, and gachagacha - all of which sold out within 2 hours. Since I could get into a lot of details for each of them, I'll do a separate post about individual goods in the next few days.

After goods, many fans stuck around in the area. There was some chatter about whether or not Yukarin would make a surprise appearance and wave to the crowd from the top balconies (referencing her stunt as seen during the "Making of" segments in Love Live Chelsea Girl 2008 DVD). She didn't appear, but we were fortunate enough to get to listen to a full sound check in the afternoon, where she went through several songs including Cherry Kiss. A nice enough reward for waiting around!

At 5:00 PM, Budokan doors opened and people starting making their way inside. In some corners, groups would first erupt into "Go Happy, Go Happy, Go Happy Yukarin" chants before going in. I found my seat in the third row of the 1st floor balcony, which offered a decent view of the stage as well as the crowd below. Woah it was a sea of pink! With vast majority in happi or parka, this audience was definitely the most uniformly colored group out of all the Yukarin shows I've been to so far.

An hour later, lights dimmed and the arena got flooded with pink glow of pen lights. Introduced by the giant screen up top, Momoiro Danshaku, NEKO and NECO, and Momoiro Mates came out to lots of fanfare, and there was even a fully suited Momoiro brass band. When the dancers all pulled out pompoms, it gave away the 1st song and the crowd cheered in anticipation for "Love Me Now." It was a surprising choice considering pompom songs usually came at the end during previous lives.

Once the music hit, Yukari rose from the trapdoor in the center stage (but no jump this time). She had a silver/white two piece dress that ended just above the knee and a crest of white feathers in her fixed up hair. When she raised her pompom, the crowd followed in kind, jumping and waving with pompoms of their own. This song has its own unique moveset thanks to being worked into a PV, but it's pretty easy and possibly less complicated than even just default concert calls (Love me now *HEY!*). Having experienced this song live twice already, I was able to follow things without much trouble.

Then out of nowhere, a familiar brass opening...and then "OMG CAN IT BE??". As someone who has rewatched Pinkle Twinkle Party DVD about 3 dozen times (not all complete rewatchings), there was no way I could mistake the first song of that fantastic 2006 concert: Picnic! It's one of the few songs that I can recreate all of Yukari's motions by heart, so I was able to see she nailed the performance with the same grace as back then, but with a few variations (improved shuffle). Picnic is one of my all time favorites, but it seems it was just a normal song for the crowd or it was simply too old for current fans ("のんびりいこうぜ、ゆかり！" and "笑って" calls were a bit sparse.

Next song was Happy Life, an upbeat song that called back to the time when she first performed it live here in the same location during Chelsea Girl 08. For this song she took off the top layer of her dress to reveal the skirt was actually part of a frilly one piece, then joined her dancers on a large moving platform that sent them down the middle aisle of the arena. The platform traveled all the way to the end of the arena where it stopped for the rest of the song before returning to the stage to do MC.

First MC was a bit shorter than average, but pretty standard fare for Yukarin. She welcomed everyone to day 1 of Budokan. "But even though it says "Opening Day" it's only just a back to back performance." Then as usual she played with the audience, running around the stage calling out every part of the stage (Arena, 1st floor, 2nd floor, etc). Amazingly she resisted the usual temptation to omit certain sections.

Typically, it goes something like:
"Arena!"
"YAYYYYYY"
Second floor!
"YAYYYYY"
Ok that's it"
*1st floor goes EEEEEEHHH*
"Ok fiiiinnnnee. 1st floor"

But today Yukarin was surprisingly nicer than usual and hardly had an insult for anyone. Ok, she did at least try to tease the fans in the stage side seats, calling them はみ出席 being in such a bad position but it winded up being cute instead. She would run all the way to one side of the stage and hide　behind a speaker, poke her head out, and say "Hah if I do this you can't see me right?". It was so cute the other side demanded she hide for them too. Guys with full balrogs of ultra bright glowsticks started going nuts trying to flag her down. Yukari seemed to enjoy the spectacle since she gave them plenty of attention, though I get the feel that fans who do full hands of glowsticks are more numerous in recent times than the old lives shown in DVDs. Without any official endorsement though, the opinion on this shift is divided among fans especially since some of the guys don't even use pink (why would you balrog ultra green at this kind of concert)??

Interestingly, she also didn't do any weird crowd surveys this time like getting age ranges, male/female ratios, working vs unemployed, people who came by train/plane, dads who brought their kids, guys who went to comiket and bought dirty books, etc (all real things asked in past lives before). Instead of her usual prolonged teasing, she transitioned pretty into full blown SERIOUS teary eyed mush mode (typically reserved for finales) and concluded the MC by thanking everyone who came, wishing for everyone to have a good time, and hoping they'd take back great memories. Woah? Spoiled princess Yukarin being so nice to us in opening MC. She must have thought hard on this and decided to open with a more sincere note to really appreciate people who came in light of recent earthquakes, though she didn't reference this directly.

She sang the title song of her latest single Platina Lover's Day. The song is too new to get its own special cheers but it got a pretty good response crowd-wise since we all knew this song would be included. It's a good medium tempo live song that fits "Yukarin" calls well. Then she jumped back in time again, to Spring Fever from her 2005 album Kohaku no Uta, Hotohira. This is not an often performed song, but enough people knew the calls since she had a four-stop tour in 2005 named after it (see extras on Cutie Cutie DVD). It was a good choice considering the season, though I personally did not know it too well - only watched those Cutie Cutie digest extras once or twice.

Next was Don't wake me☆ up. It's a very simple yet catchy tune that I used to loop quite a bit when Tomorrow came out and pretty much describes my work life. Inexplicably, it got skipped in the set lists for both Dreamy Maple Crown and Princess a la mode, so I'm glad it finally made live rotation at least once. During the song, Yukari came over to top of the stairs on the left and right arms of the arena so that 2nd floor sides (where we were) could see her up close. After the song, she left for a costume change while announcer Haramaki Kouji (and Yukarin's real life cousin) narrated for band member introductions.

Momoiro Danshaku was the same members as usual except...the brand new P-tan on keyboard, who has now replaced Nobupyon. Looks like they are still trying to find a permanent keyboard position ever since Julian left (stripped of baron nobility??). As an aside, I believe Masanyan currently has the longest tenure among the danshaku right now. While most band members played a quick piece, GOD as usual came out with his own special pompom dance.

Once the band was introduced again, Yukari reappeared on the stage with a new costume: a deep blue skirt with white polkadots, shoulderless red top lined with black trim, and high heel slippers to sing Nagareboshi Jenny, the c/w song on the latest Meron Ondo CD. Of course at the time, I only just bought the CD hours before and hadn't listened to it yet, so I was standing around wondering "WTF when did this song come out?" But it's great. It had this 1950s musical feel, with dancers coming out in opposite colors of Yukarin (red polkadot skirts, blue top) and doing a zigzagging line dance that looked like it came straight out of a broadway production. Yukari's dance routine for this is also really RELALY cute - possibly one of her best routines ever - with her kicking her tiny heels up and back like a swing dancer during the "only you" sabi (and she has such nice legs for it)! It's something I'll rewatch on a DVD just for the dance.

After this, the stage went dark for YOURS EVER, the first acoustic performance of the night accompanied by P-tan's piano. It was another song I didn't recognize, but actually it's on the Sincerely Dears album, (I only listened to that 2 or 3 times so I must have just forgotten). No matter, acoustic corner is time to just enjoy singing without worrying about calls so I just tried to soak in the sound. I mentioned in older live reports that acoustic corners are one of the best parts of a live since it gives you a chance to just take in a performance. Although 神曲 are really fun, they also divide your attention as you desperately multitask between watching the singer, listening to the song, trying to do calls, and watching others do calls out the corner of your eye to make sure you're not doing everything wrong. So I took these rare opportunities to listen hard. Unfortunately Budokan's acoustics (or perhaps my location) was not too good so I felt like the sound was a bit off. I remember from Niigata when she sang Namida no Loop it was so sultry my ears nearly melted off. Yukarin tried her best today, but the sound just wasn't on her side this time. I hoped next time might be better.

Following the acoustic performance, Yukarin moved on to Floral Blue (c/w song from Platina Lover's Day) Yukari sang while two dancers appeared at the top of the stairs in short blue one pieces to perform some sort of slow tango.

Giving band members time to set up again, there was another round of member introduction for Momoiro Mates, who each entered after being announced with the slightly oddly phrased "Number 1 *adjective* Girl." In Yukari Kingdom, everyone is No. 1 in something! Each girl had a few seconds to show off some dance moves. There were high kicks, cartwheels, spins, and jumps although some dancers did some hilariously out of place moves like booty grinds.

Unlike Momoiro Danshaku, I didn't recognize any of the Momoiro Mates. It's hard to keep track because there are so many regulars who rotate in and out of lives, and the absence of some known members doesn't mean they're gone or replaced. I really only remember MAMIKO and NATSUMI's faces because they taught me the Meron on Theme dance in the Chelsea Girl DVD and Happy Loop in Pinkle Twinkle Party respectively. So I looked for either of them, but no luck today.

Once dancers were done, Yukarin reappeared in a fancy dress that looked like a big purple candy wrapper and was adorned all over with large ribbons that circled her entire person and went into the next song baby blue sky.

Now getting to the the third song I didn't know, I was starting to wonder if I had missed an album release lately. I prefer getting to know and like a song before I hear it live so I was kicking myself for not researching new releases. But, a lot of the crowd was also a bit lost so we just tried to fill in with normal cheering.

Then came MC which explained everything.

Wait! Wait a minute everyone! This song was the first song I ever wrote
Audience: "OOOOOOOHHHH"
"So how come there's such a pitiful reaction? It's more like people are going 'what the heck is this song?'"
*Crowd laughs and denies, even though they know it's true*
Tomorrow. If, IF by chance this song happens to play, I want you all to get really excited about it. Even though you don't recognize it. Because you know, if this song gets on DVD, I get paid 0.03 yen in royalties! Well that's less than 1 yen per copy, but anyway if this gets played tomorrow I want you all to get pumped up for it! First, when you hear this opening, I want you to yell KITAAAA. Let's practice

Ahhh greedy Yukarin is the bestest. Yukari opens her arms wide and starts singing the little tune and yelling "KITA!" The band plays the opening again, and everyone feigns extreme excitement. After a HUGE KITAAAA scream, Yukari leads the fans in "hey" chants, and then mimes out her fantasy scenario of seeing tomorrow's fans getting totally confused by the heavy cheering. She also mentioned very specifically not to reveal the plan online. Apparently she wanted them to get the same weird feeling we all got, but intensified even more because hey EVERYONE ELSE KNOWS IT! When she asked who really didn't know the song this time and got a big response, she explained that it was a coupling song from her 2002 single (Love Parade). Woah that's before I even became otaku, but unlike Baby's Breath it was never played enough for most people to know it unless they were really long time fans of Yukarin. On a separate tangent, she finished off MC by telling a story of the previous day about how she tried to make some melt some chocolate cream over bread, but when she baked the combination, it hardened instead.

"Ok it's about time to get to the next song. Super Special Day"

What!? Don't announce something as awesome as Super Special Day so casually! Even though not many people knew a song from 2002, they sure as hell knew this. Though this song is even older (2001), it got the biggest reaction of the night so far. To be fair, this is a popular fan favorite from Tokimeki Memorial 2 and has actually been played during lives with its own calls (L. O.V.E. Yukarin!) And the calls were very loud. Everyone was just so excited about this coming back since it hasn't seen at a live since Sweet Milky Way in 2007. I personally didn't think I'd ever get the chance to do this song or picnic.

Jumping forward to more recent times again, Yukarin followed with Koi ni ochita painter which was one of the songs on her Citron no Ame album that she didn't get to sing during SCS tour. After this song, Yukarin changed costumes again while each brass band member did a piece. No member got introduced by name though.

Koi no ageha is a jazzy song from her 2008 album Komorobi no Rosette. Though I'm not a huge fan of the melody on this specific song, these jazzy songs in general are interesting because they let Yukarin drop a few octaves and go into deep voice mode. It was a good choice especially since she had the full brass band today and could make good use of them, so we got all the real instruments instead of a recording. I couldn't remember if she was usually supposed to have a cane in this or not, but she didn't have one today.

For Shinseiro, another newer song on her latest album, Yukari got on the moving platform again and it brought her to the center of the stage. As she was singing, a gilded white cage lowered in from above. After she stepped in and closed the door, the cage lifted back up until she was around first floor eye level. The lighting changed again, and a slow rain of feathers came down all around her. This must have looked pretty dramatic from the front, but being at the side, it just looked kind of weird. The cage was slightly tipped at an angle from her weight, and all the feathers were falling slightly behind. So my view was basically this:

That's not a complaint though. Yukari in the bird cage brought her within much better viewing distance to us, and any effort to do that is always highly appreciated.

Next was Hoshizora no Spica. This is a pretty popular song that got a decent reaction. Similar to Douwa Meikyu, its live rendition is accompanied by pyrotechnics. During climaxes of the song, blasts of fire would shoot from the stage in a pattern as if someone were playing a flame organ. It did seem to be manually operated because I recall the at least one time when they forgot to trigger the flame. I guess the operator was too engrossed in the scene.

Finally came the most highly anticipated moment of the night, Meron Ondo time. A video came up with NEKO and NECO in Happi coats. They went over each move, step by step and paused at each segment for the audience to repeat what they just learned. Narration was done by Yukari in her "Yukari-chan" voice (I believe that is the name given to her chibiko form now, at least according to the FC page's web comic). This is the same voice as used to say "めろ～ん音頭がはじまるよ～" She even did sound effects, going "aaaahhn" when having everyone lift their hands which drew muffled laughs from the crowd. Now imagine an entire instructional video like that.

Once the video was over, Yukarin came out along with several members all wearing the happi coats. Rather than just having only the 8 dancers who were already introduced, there were also some new faces including a bunch of kids in the group. Some of them seemed no older than 12 yrs old (woah shouldn't you girls be in school?). I guess they were all there to give it a "festival feel."

With everyone out on stage, we all raised our hands into the starting position. The dancers stayed on stage, while Yukarin, NEKO, and NECO all got onto the moving platform to lead the audience from the middle of the arena. Then music started and it was all *clap-clap-clap* A~SORYA for a few wonderful minutes. This is certain to look sooo crazy on video. My only wish was that they clarified the correct starting side, because the problem with Yukarin moving on the center platform is for everyone in the front half of the arena including us, halfway through the song we need to turn around and then...uh...which direction should we do now? Same "mirrored" direction as before, OR, copy Yukarin exactly now that we are facing the same way? Eventually I settled on copy exactly, swapping between mirror/original depending on the location. Minor details such as this aside, ondo was definitely a fun time.

After Mero~n Ondo, NEKO/NECO treated the platform like a canoe and rowed Yukarin back to the stage. On stage, NEKO did a disappearing/reappearing trick with a cloth and the stage trapdoor. It was pretty obvious how it worked, and anyone on the side could easily see behind the cloth but everyone humored the magic trick anyway with applause and cheering. Once NEKO finished, Yukarin also wanted to do it too. Her trick involved an extra step where she switched places with a Cherry puppet before finally returning. "Ah but I forgot my meromero stick! That means I can't do mero~n"

Cue a guy coming in with the stick while chanting "UnUnSodaSoda" which the crowd also copied. As an aside, I always get my hopes up for Meron no Uta when this chant starts but it never happens. So this guy says he COULD give Yukarin the stick, but he wanted some attention first. "Come on guys, what's my name?"
Audience responses were: *silence*, "Uhh", and "おまえ!！" orz
Finally someone got his name. Actually it was sound producer Tamachan. After I heard that, I remember I saw him twice before during Starry Candy Stripe tour, but I forgot his face entirely.

Yukarin took the stick and did usual demonstration by waving all the band members. Since P-tan was new she told him to pay special attention to his first ever mero~n. Masanyan actually dodged mero, but Yukarin must have not seen it because she didn't give him too hard a time. Once danshaku all fell to the floor after getting meromero she said it looked like BL.

Then it was the audience's turn. Since she mero~ned a few times already without n~rome, we all just assumed n~rome wasn't coming. So when she did try it everybody had to scramble back into mero~n position. Redo! She tried it again but just decided to freeze the audience in their backbreaking position without releasing them. "Ahh I'm tired." Fans yelled "EEEEHHH" but she just said she enjoyed seeing such a wonderful lit up sight of everyone's face in pain. So cruel, himesama! Finally she returned everyone to normal with n~rome and started into Oshiete A to Z.

I got plenty of "A to Z" practice last year so it was easy to follow along. The standard fare during this song is the double-clap, single-clap rhythmn.

When she followed up with You & Me immediately after, that was the signal that we must be getting close to the end. You & Me is such an energy hog, since the audience winds up shouting 30% of the song. Not much to say about the song that I haven't already said for SCS, but the audience seemed especially loud today. Fans just really love their rap.

Next was Koiseyo Onnanoko. YES! The 1st Yukari song I ever memorized the entire choreography for. I had only did this song once during Animelo 08, and I didn't have a puppet back then. I had hoped for it during SCS but it never came. Now was my chance, and this time I was able to follow everything, from jumps to waves to drawing giant hearts in the air. For my puppet, I chose to use Chocola with the latest one-piece, because she's such a good girl.

Keeping the momentum of high level songs, Yukarin jumped onto the moving platform and continued with Cherry Kiss, a very popular song is usually saved for ending concerts on a high note like Dreamy Maple Crown and Princess a la Mode. I love this song, and knew to expect it from the sound check, but I often confuse the chorus with that of candy smile (they're pretty similar and both act as closers IMO) so I was constantly thinking "hey when she was gonna do that famous kick?" After was Kono Yubi Tomare, another from the latest single. This is a fast paced pop tune that is definitely going to be a staple of lives in the future. Lots of "hey, hey" in it that fits well with concerts. Yukarin and dancers all held up towels that they started to swing around during the chorus. All the fans did the same. Well, except me, because I didn't buy one of the Live towels that day and I certainly wasn't going to use the microfiber towel with Yukarin's picture on - way too fragile. Made a mental note to go buy a pink towel the next day.

For the final song, she ended with Chelsea Girl - now an "always play" during lives that we all know and love. But, I don't think we've had Chelsea Girl with full brass band since the last time she did it in Budokan in 2008, so that was a major plus. As is usual with final songs, during the chorus, ribbons shot out and fell into the crowd to celebrate the end of the show.

After wave and waves of encore chants, Yukari returned to do Gratitude. I have great memories of this song thanks to SCS tour, and the ARIGATOU parts still lifted my spirits as much as ever. It's easy to overlook if you only listen to it on CD (as I did before SCS) but as soon as I heard it live I fell in love with it and I was very happy to hear it live again.

For final MC
Wow it's really hot in here isn't it. Gotta replenish water. But if I drink too much I'll have to go to the bathroom. If I keep drinking like this I'll be in trouble. lolwut? She said it in such a worrying tone too, not like a teasing fans kind of way but a "oh shit I've got a real dilemma here" kind of way. Yukari also had 3 announcements to make.

1st announcement was that she will be part of ORICON INFINITY MUSIC 2011 at Universal Studios Japan. Apparently her love of Terminator 2 came about because she took a ride on the T2 attraction in the past.
2nd announcement was that she will be part of Animelo Summer Live 2011's Day 1 Lineup
3rd announcement was that the last day of Starry Candy Stripe 2010 in Tokyo Kokusai Forum, plus tomorrow's 4/16 Spring Mary Rose concert will be on BD/DVD by sometime this summer.

Second to last song was fancy baby doll. During the extended bridge for FBD, as always, Yukarin brought out a big basket full of bunny dolls but this time there was a special bonus. While she threw a few in every direction of the arena, NEKO and NECO prepared the big guns to reach upper balconies. Enter FBD Cannon, a huge muzzle-loaded single-shot air cannon that blasted a cluster of dolls out 50-70 feet - far enough to reach the 2nd and 3rd floors. They had several of these cannons that she would just fire one after the other. The first time she took it out we were curiously cautions, then *BOOM* bunnies just fly out and smack against the balcony wall with the crowd going "WOOOAHHHH"

And finally the true last song of the night was Super Special Smiling Shy Girl, enough to kill the last of any energy we had for the night, as well as our voices. Near the end Yukarin turned the microphone toward the audience so arena, 1st floor, 2nd floor, and 3rd floor all got their own separate turns to sing the final segments and do chants.

After everything was over, Yukari did her farewell wave, going to each side of the stage plus the moving platforms so she could cover every part of the concert hall. Each section also started its own Yukari chant. Yukari even started a coordinated wave on the third floor, something that didn't happen last year. Yukari's really good at doing farewells because she just exudes this aura of gratitude - like she REALLY doesn't want to leave, and we don't want her to go either. But it was already close to 9:30PM, so after 3 long hours...LOVE LIVE 2011 Spring Mary Rose Shonichi was finally concluded.

And just as I was thinking how crazy awesome that is and how my trip was all worth it and done, it hit me that yeah, I've still got tomorrow :P

Day 1 Set list
01.LOVE ME NOW!
02.Picnic
03.Happy Life
04.Platina Lover's Day
05.Spring fever
06.Don't wake me☆ up!
07.Nagareboshi Jenny
08.YOURS EVER (acoustic)
09.floral blue
10.baby blue sky
11.Super Special Day
12.Koi ni ochita painter
13.Koi no ageha
14.Shinseiro
15.Hoshizora no spica
16.Mero~n Ondo
17.Oshiete A to Z
18.You & Me
19.Koiseyo Onnanoko
20.Cherry Kiss
21.Kono yubi tomare
22.Chelsea Girl
23.Gratitude
24.fancy baby doll
25.Super Special Smiling Shy Girl

Number of songs by year of release
2001 - 1
2002 - 1
2005 - 3
2006 - 1
2007 - 2
2008 - 3
2009 - 3
2010 - 6
2011 - 5

Next post will be Day 2 MC and set list variations, followed by third post for goods report. Speaking of goods, I think I spent over $700 on them this time. Where hell did that all go? Even I haven't accounted for it yet.

Posted by Paranda at 2:19 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Minorin day at NYAF

Though I missed Friday's events entirely, I had a pretty good Minorin-centric Saturday, starting at 2AM when I went to line up at Javitz for autographs. It was cold, but at least not too boring after moy and alexd showed up a few hours later. After the con opened up at 7 and we got tickets, alexd went back to his apt, while moy and I went to the nearest couch and promptly passed out dead for a bit. The moment of rest was short lived. By 11AM I was back camping the panel room for Minorin's Q&A.

Though there was no fan participation this time, the East Meets format is pretty interesting. It consisted of Minorin (east) opposite several western voice-over actors (west) having what amounted to a semi-scripted and friendly dialogue to discuss their different experiences in voice acting. Welcomely absent from the panel...

- Biographical questions that could have been looked up 2 seconds on Wiki
- "Who/what is your favorite" dilemmas
- What's your inspiration? x 10000
- Guys more concerned with promoting themselves than asking the guest anything

Admittedly I do derive a bit of guilty pleasure from seeing the occasional oblivious fan ask questions of a career-ending/bridge-burning nature if talent were to answer truthfully. It's funny to see seiyuu rack their brains trying to formulate fluff non-answers to dodge things that most people would know better than to ask.

There were good bits and pieces which will no doubt make it onto youtube. In one part, some of the western actors talked about how they auditioned for a role by recording a demo-tape at home. Minorin misheard and thought American voice actors could phone in entire sessions in their own home and flipped the fuck out for a while before somebody picked up on her confusion and re-clarified that it was for audition only. Minorin totally froze up and went "Oh yeah. Of course, we do that too!" with a REALLY embarassed look on her face and started laughing. It's ok Minorin, nobody thinks you're an airhead for missing a translation (they think it for the million other reasons). Probably the funniest part was after Minorin learned that for American cartoons, voice actors would record with only a script and some storyboards, but no video. She just burst out with very loud and cute "EEEEEEEHHH?" several times while the translator was explaining things. The english VAs thought she was adorable with the reactions. I think that may have also been a bit of misunderstanding at work though - Maybe Minorin didn't get that for our cartoons, the animation is done to match dialogue after the voice recording, because she was asking stuff like "how do you know how the pace of the lines?" and remarking how incredibly hard it sounded.

After the panel, we took the group picture that is now posted on Minorin's blog, and then immediately rushed to autographs. I previously got a name-personalized pinup thanks to moy, and this time a non-personalized autograph on Kimi Ga Kure Ta Ano Hi, an older single. When I brought out this CD, one of her handlers (anyone else feel she looked like an older version of a certain other seiyuu?) was really amused and called over another handler to share like there was some inside joke associated with this item. I wish I had asked what was so special about this item but I was momentarily starstruck by Minorin being way too close, and didn't really have time as they were rushing us through the line at top speeds. So I give my CD to the handler, and she gives it to Minorin who signs it in just a few seconds - even faster than May'n. But even though the encounter was brief, Minorin has a way of looking straight at you and delivering a killer smile that makes all that time waiting in line overnight worth it.

Since I didn't have a VIP ticket, I figured I had to line up as early as possible to get a decent chance at finding a seat so right after the autograph I grabbed a quick lunch and then headed straight to IGN theatre. By this time, the lack of sleep combined with the effects of post-lunch food coma caught up with me and made those 3 hours wait in line an absolute torture. I was in a zombified state yet unable to sleep because of the hard floors and cramped space. Finally the doors opened a little past seven. I wish the staff had allowed people to file in a bit earlier and in a more orderly manner, because as soon as they started letting people in it turned into a mad dash for the best remaining seats. Originally, I was in 6th row all the way on the sides, but somehow got moved up to 4th row center-right into VIP seats reserved for people that were no-shows. Still I was away from the main FC section to my left (see video - I'm the lone UO guy on the right side while most fans with UO are on the left). As I tweeted earlier, there are advantages and disadvantages to this. First, in my section people were sitting down while the FC section was all standing up. At first I was really low key with my glowstick and actions because I felt like a bit of a jerk being the ONLY stander blocking the view of people behind me, but by the middle of the first song I decided "hey how many times do you get to see Minorin perform this close live, if people aren't going to stand up...well fuck-em" and went into full-on concert mode. It was also harder for me to see what others were doing and follow along since it meant I would have to turn to the side and divert my attention from the main act (I decided to just do whatever felt right based on experience from other concerts, and it turned out all right and mostly in synch). Some advantages were the extra space from the aisle being so empty and the fact that being the only standing and participating person in the area, whenever Minorin came over she waved to me a bunch of times (yayyyy).

Minorin came out in a short blue dress and thigh high leather boots, but more impressively she was rocking the same hairstyle as she had during Anisama 2010. She must have gone straight to dressing room right after the autograph session to get it ready in time. Similar to what MELL did at AX and Otakon before, Minorin's MCs were 100% in English for the entire night. The sentence structure wasn't very good, and the english wasn't polished at all, but it only made the MC better because she was trying so hard with what she had memorized and added a certain charm like she prepared her speech herself with only minimal translator help. "Do you like Haruhi? I like Haruhi too!" *trademark minorin giggle*

As predicted, the set list was dominated by Haruhi songs. In order:

Yuki, Muon, Madobe Nite
FC went UOs. I should mention though that it's well known that full blown "otagei" is frowned upon at Minorin concerts, so even though we were standing up, we just did calls with high intensity and standard stuff. No craziness. Still I was kind of pissed that most people near me were sitting down though, even though they got free glowsticks. WTF, didn't you line up for hours to get to the front and all you wanna do is take crappy cellphone pics (despite the ban on photography), check mail, and watch the jumbo screen?

SELECT?
Almost 100% blue glowsticks

Junpaku Sanctuary
Slow song, but pretty popular. Got a decent reaction when she announced it. FC went all white

Tommorrow's Chance
UO. Crowd starting coming alive at this point. Couple of people starting standing up as well and coming up behind me.

Freedom Dreamer
UO. It's VERY fun to do live with all the call and response, and especially the coordinated jumping. This is probably what broke the ice for most of the crowd though and people starting getting up and participating as they got the hint during "everybody jump". Frankly she should have opened with this song as it set the tone for the rest of the night. I was doing leaps at full power several feet off the ground, so I can't walk now.

Paradise Lost
UO. Because Minorin doesn't want us to rest.

Keikenchi Joushouchuu
When Minorin did MC and said "Do you know...Minami-ke?" the crowd erupted into cheers. FC went UO again. She must not do this very often live though as there was a bit of confusion about the glowstick waving pattern. Even FC was confused, so it was very much a learning experience for all of us.

Yasashii Boukyaku
Blue/White. Break time from excitement.

Hare hare yukai
UO finisher. For the final song, Minorin called out Christi-nyan and another dancer Carrie and they all did the Haruhi dance. Minorin called for everyone to do the dance. I think it was the only time the FC got outmatched though, most of them, and myself didn't really know the moves and had to resort to hasty copying. In a reversal of roles, a lot of random people in the audience without glowsticks DID know the dance moves.

At the end Minorin read her thank you message in English and said how much fun she had coming to NYC. After she left, the FC "leader" put up his beacon and tried to start an encore chant but unfortunately it kind of fizzled out since not enough people were chanting "Mi-no-rin". Lights came up soon after so we left the arena and freed up seats for people who were there primarily for masquerade.

Afterwards, some fans had BBQ and afterparty but given how much energy I expended at Minorin concert I was on the verge of collapsing so I headed home for the night.

Final goods:

Autographed Minorin poster and CD

Not pictured, signed Puffy Ami Yumi CD.

Posted by Paranda at 12:44 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Starry Candy Stripe in Sendai

For Sendai, I won't go into songs since the set list was the same as Niigata which you can read here. I was hoping to catch Koiseyo if Yukari was going to mix up the encore, but looks like all the tracks are going to be identical for each live. Still, there are some interesting experiences to mention, because the MCs are different and the fans are different.

Sendai Sun Plaza Hall was very cozy, and even though it seated more people they felt closer to the stage. Since I had no pressure to buy limited goods this time, I came only one hour before the live thus skipping all the lines and arriving fresh with maximum energy. When I went to the goods table, I was surprised to see the limited Sendai-only t-shirts hadn't sold out so I bought one. It must be the unappealing green color and weird drawing on the back this time that killed the sales. After I got into the hall, I found that my ticket, originally thought to be 6th row center based on a seating chart, was actually third row again since the hall was using a compact layout. My section was a tiny little patch roped off by cords way in the front and the best seats in the house. Wow that's lucky! When I sat down this time, all the fans in the area around turned around and said "yoroshiku", a little bit of camraderie building that was repeated for everyone who entered the section. Since people were being really chummy in this section, I introduced myself to the fan next to me and he showed off a Nanoha costume that he put together himself for the "Cherry" puppet. I'd have taken a picture, but the staffers were being very strict about cameras even attached to phones and I didn't want to get kicked out for any dumb reason.

Yukari has been in Sendai before so the tone of her MC was kind of like that of a reunion. She remarked this time that people looked like bugs with all the green t-shirts, and what was up with that? The audience went "EEEHHH? This is your own T-shirt!" Well she was totally taken aback "WHAT? That's the gentei shirt? Sorry, I really didn't know. I'm serious I really didn't see it before!" In the middle of talking she noticed the ropes that were sectioning off the different zones, and said it really looked like a cats cradle. We got called the dangerous section since we were roped off from all sides. When she followed the lines, she also found that left and right sections' seats come to a single point. So she rallied up cheers for the people who had solo seats on the tips. Never trust Yukari's kindness though, because she continued "How come you're sitting alone? Don't you have any friends?"

She followed up by asking how many people came to Sendai the same day like her, so I and a big group of people rose their hands. Then she asked who came in the day before, and another small group rose their hands. Finally she asked who was in Sendai about even before that? Another big group rose their hands. "What? Why? What did you do before?" Fans yelled out "Well we live in Sendai" to explain, but she shot that down with "Oh, if you live in Sendai then shut up I don't wanna hear you." She revealed that she herself was part of the first group, and that she actually didn't come to Sendai until that morning. So what about that tweet she posted the previous night about eating gyutan (Sendai's local specialty)? "Actually I had that in Shinjuku lol." Another huge "EHHHHH" from the audience. Oh Yukarin...

In the second MC, Yukarin joked that everyone probably staked out at the Sendai Animate for nothing, since she only just came to Sendai today and the only thing she did was go to eat ramen. She said the full name of the restaurant, but I don't think anybody knew where it was.

In the third MC right after acoustic corner where she had changed into her frilly skirt, the audience coordinated claps and she got really interested and wanted to try. She became de-facto clap leader. It started out innocently but of course with Yukarin, it ended up with her trying to fake out the audience with surprise claps and odd patterns. Yukarin asked who came from Niigata and some fans cheered. Then she asked who was coming to Sendai for the first time, which was the majority. She said she was disappointed. "Did you check online to see what the set list and stuff was gonna be?" Fans replied yes, so she said "Ok then, quiz! What dance did I do in Niigata?". She proceeded to once again do that ridiculous dance (only halfway this time though).

She was in the middle of talking when a staffer tried to move from one side of the hall to the backstage area. Unfortunately, he wasn't stealthy enough as he caught Yukari's attention when he was hunched over. Since his shirt was riding up, Yukari yelled "Ahh I can see his underwear!" as he embarassedly scuttled away. Then she debated whether it was boxers or briefs. As she was on the topic of underwear, she suddenly asked the audience "know what I have on underneath this?" For this dress, she implied she was wearing something that wasn't safe to show to keep the form (not bloomers) and teased lifting up her skirt but then said "I'm definitely not showing you." Since she brought it up, it was fair game for the audience to keep calling for it. I didn't quite understand the exchange after, but somehow Masanyan and the drummer Hatabou ended up taking the blame for the fan reaction, and Yukarin loudly exclaimed "The H in Hatabou stands for HENTAI." It became a running gag for the rest of the evening that the drummer wanted to see Yukarin's pantsu and the rest of the band tried to assist him with this like positioning his seat directly under the big staircase where Yukarin stands to perform. They also joked that he had a camera hidden in his shoe when he was standing awkwardly near her.

The Sendai travel video was less interesting than the Niigata one, probably because she only had one day to shoot it. She went to Sendai station to buy some omiyage and had some noodles at Tanaka. Actually the most interesting part was just when she was sitting in a car trying to guess what HDTV stood for (HAADO, no, HAI...HAI...DISSOLUTION? DIMINITION? DEBANATION, DEFEENEESHON? HAI DEFEENEESHON *whips out portable english dictionary* DE-FUH-NI-SHUN. DE-FUH-NI-SHUN. HAI DEFUNISHUN TEREBI SETTO!). The engrish was cute, but her attempt to imitate the american accent in her dictionary was just so damn funny. But I guess the humor is lost to non-english speakers - I was the only person laughing at the final "correct" pronounciation.

During MERON time, Yukari tried to find her staff but this time they wised up and were nowhere to be seen. Angry and disappointed, she resorted to using just using band members to demonstrate this time. She also meroned the girl holding the camera (during which we suddenly became aware that unlike Niigata this event was being taped). Then she turned to the audience. Since this hall had balconies, she did meron and reverse meron starting from the 3rd floor down to the arena. It was standard fare for the 2 balconies, but when it came to our turn in the arena, she froze it, and froze it way longer than last time. Then she went to get water, and everyone in the arena, still frozen in back bridges, managed to force out strained "omizu oishii" yells. She thought it was funny how painful the calls sounded and did an impression of it. "Even though your'e meromero, you'll still yell that?" She threatened to start the next song without releasing meron.

Aside from unique MCs, the live mostly went the same as the one in Niigata but I had as much fun the second time as the first time around, and I gained a further appreciation for just how wonderful the acoustic corners are.

Goods for the day: just a green "mushi" T-shirt

Bonus:

Yukari fan spotted on the Matsushima island cruise.

Posted by Paranda at 11:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

MOSAIC.WAV Jouraku Live in Uzumasa

On 9/25, I attended the MOSAIC.WAV Jouraku Live in Uzumasa

I've been to Uzumasa's movie themepark in 2008 before, but since MOSAIC.WAV was performing this time I decided to make the trip to Kyoto once again. Their "Jouraku Live" was part of Uzumasa Sengoku Matsuri, which is a Sengoku themed event held annually at Toei Uzumasa Eigamura since 2006. The the mascot of the festival Karasu Tengu Uju is voiced by MOSAIC.WAV's lead singer MI-KO, and her images songs are created by the band.

I arrived at the park in the afternoon with nyol, though we felt a bit out of place with all the fujoshi cosplayers there for COS-PATIO. But once 4PM rolled around, MOSAIC.WAV fans started filling the area and we soon met up with some Kansai Momoists. For obvious reasons, there is plenty of overlap between UNDER17 and MOSAIC.WAV so it wasn't unusual to see them there. Seeing as they also carried ave;new straps, we got along pretty quick.

Fan engineered "light claw" held together with rigid bar reinforcements and plastic fasteners

Before the live started, I went to the goods table and got some Uju tea, Uju Maccha candy, and the latest Uju image song CD. The tea purchase included a special card from Uju's illustrator nanamin (designed like a playing card), and the CD purchase included a numbered autograph lottery ticket.

At 5PM, we started lining up outside the Nakamuraza theatre, a big building that doubled as a meeting hall in old samurai movies. Though my number was 197 to get in, I was able to get pretty close to the stage and there was plenty of space to move around.

Nakamuraza Theatre, way overexposed (sorry)

While waiting for the event to start, the stage projected videos of interviews with Uju's creators and artist. Close to showtime, cosplayers (same girls pictured here) officially acting as Uju and Enmusubi Tengu Ai came on stage to prep the crowd and members of MOSAIC.WAV followed shortly. MI-KO appeared in a festival getup, Kayamori showed up in a classy looking top hat with rabbit ears, and finally Koike aniki, who pretty much looks the same as from the UNDER17 days only he's traded his trademark black coat for a wool skullcap and ripped jeans.

MI-KO started talking oddly and in a thick accent, which I assume was Kyoto dialect which got some laughs from the crowd. The band started with Ujutama Ujurinpa Kyoukotoba version a slow song which makes use of Japanese instruments and Kyoto dialect, but used the closing to transition seamlessly into the fast paced original version like it was one big song. The effect was enormously successful.

Next song was the 2009 Uju single, Tenshinranman Nyubabababa-n (aff. links). It was so incredibly upbeat I fell into the rhythmn immediately. This is one of those songs that fits classic MOSAIC.WAV's mold of old school denpa exactly, and many parts of it were pretty much crafted specifically for calls (BABABAAN, GOGOGOGO, etc) so by the end I was completely exhausted from getting so into it.

Then the band continued with Katamichi Catch Ball from the most excellent anime Potemayo. Since I haven't been keeping up with MOSAIC.WAV in the recent years, I was originally worried I wouldn't know much of the set list. But after this, those fears were put to rest. So far they played 4 songs in a row that I knew and liked, and hey after hearing something like Katamichi Catch Ball at an Uju event, I think I can accept whatever else they throw at me. People were spinning all over during "guru guru mawaru planet" and generally having a good time. This is just such a happy and uplifting song.

Uju, Suzuhime, and Ai. They were greeting as you went into building. They are NOT the cosplayers who danced on stage though (see link above)

Next was Sennou, Sakushu, Tora no Maki, another supremely fun song from their Superluminal AKIBA-POP album. MI-KO lead the chorus chants and provided hand motions for everyone to follow. Same deal with Zensekaiteki Touch Panel. Touch Panel was the first song I didn't know, but no worries because we got a whole room miming touch panel actions with UOs MI-KO conducting up top as the queen bee Post-live research says this song was released during this year's C78, and is now likely to enter into heavy rotation on my upcoming playlists.

During MC, Koike asked if there was anybody from Australia (I guess he must have gotten mail from somebody saying they would be there). But, it was a no-show. Then he asked if there was anybody from overseas, so I yelled New York. I was hoping to fish out some engrish conversation from them, but they asked me in Japanese if I was here specifically for this event. Of course I said "yes" though technically, I'm here for a lot of lives, but yeah I'm in Kansai specifically for MOSAIC.WAV. Fans did the whole "ohhhh" thing and clapped.

After MC, they did Yuri Seijin Naoko-san. Since I don't know the song and it wasn't that interesting I'll skip it in favor of the mega surprise she threw next. Even hardcore fans next to me went nuts when MI-KO started chanting AKIBA-POP, and then the tune hit. Bliss to my ears. This ranks up there with hearing Popotan at A-North. Goddamn it's We Love AKIBA-POP!!, a song that I have probably looped 8 zillion times when I first got interested in MOSAIC.WAV. I never thought I'd hear this at an event in 2010 and I was totally stunned at my excellent luck. "A. K. I. B. A. AKIBAPOP, YAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!" during the song's swell is the most fun chant to do in the world. That's right, if we just go word for word, it's more fun than even any Momoi or Yukarin chant.

Finally MI-KO announced the last song for the night, their newly released single Nou Nai Sai Sei ~Ecphoric Dance~.

Like Momoi, MOSAIC.WAV has a unique encore chant of "A. K. I. B. A. AKIBA POP!" instead of the typical "EN-KO-RE". During the chant, even the stage crew got into it and flashed the spotlights between pauses. The encore session was very short, and the band reappeared after only a few minutes.

During the encore MC, they made fun of themselves for how fast their songs are (measured his average BPM at 230). When Koike said he did work on the new Ikamusume anime, he said "this time it's a slow song. Only 180BPM" which got "uh that's still pretty fast" response from the audience. They also brought back the cosplayers for the encore, where they would stay as background dancers (just doing really simple dances). During their intros, Uju and Ai would each come up to the stage, spin around, and fans would scream kawaii (for Uju, MI-KO also did a surprise voice-over from behind). Fans called for MI-KO to do the spin too, but she got embarassed and wanted all the MOSAIC.WAV members to go up with her. So everyone went up and crowd screamed kawaii. Before MI-KO could reply though, Koike took the mic and and said "thanks" much to everyone's amusement.

The encore tracks were Uju's 2010 theme song Jintori Batoru! (sp?) Marutake Ebesu and Dennou Kassen X Uju no Jin, two very fast paced songs that burned the rest of the crowd's energy and UOs.

After the live, we stayed around to wait for the autograph raffle results. The uju cosplayer started picking drawing numbers and I got called as the second winner. I went up to the stage to get autographs and handshakes with the band members. When I got to Koike, he asked if I was native Japanese living in NY, which I denied. Kayamori didn't say anything, but he's a silent kind of guy so it was expected - looking back I really regret not saying something to him. Anyway, he had a big friendly grin and had a firm handshake. When I got to MI-KO, the first thing she said was New York must be cold and did an exaggerated shivering. Then she asked if I was flying back that day. In the spur of the moment, I just said yes (even though I've got another week) so she gave me a good luck wishes on my journey back.

Signed copy of latest Uju 2010 image song CD

Out of all the events I've been too so far, MOSAIC.WAV audience energy is probably the closest to Momoi's style. The chants and movements are heavily coordinated, and the cyalume policy is pretty much a choice between max out lights or ultra orange.

Final goods for the day: Uju CD, maccha candy, Uju tea, and Uju collectible cards. No picture because I packed them real deep in my suitcase and don't wanna unpack them now

Posted by Paranda at 12:26 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Starry Candy Stripe in Niigata

On 9/23, I attended Tamura Yukari's LOVE LIVE 2010 Starry Candy Stripe in Niigata

I arrived at 5 AM and there were already about 30 people in line, probably from the night before as they were clearly in for the long haul with folding chairs and thermoses. More people showed up around 7AM and the line grew very quickly after that. Looking at the line, most people were wearing Yukari shirts from the previous year's fanclub event or live, and a lot of girls were cosplaying as Yukari. I guess it's kind of easy to replicate since a lot of her wardrobe is from Baby, The Stars Shine Bright line, but a few fans went the extra mile and duplicated costumes such as her bunny outfit from Love Live Chelsea Girl (aff. link). This wasn't a great day to wear expensive clothing though. Niigata was cold and wet. It rained the whole day, very heavily at times, so by the time the goods booth opened at 12:00, almost everyone was totally drenched even though they had umbrellas.

After entering, there was a big prop sign welcoming people and speakers playing Citron no Ame album tracks in the background. Multiple tables were able to process people quickly. The most popular goods were obviously the limited stuff, but especially the Chibi Yukari doll - virtually every single person in line bought one. Gentei shirt this time was an orange T-shirt with onigiri drawn on the back (rice being a specialty of Niigata). The hoodie was also a popular choice, and even though it wasn't limited it sold out pretty quickly. Pink wristbands, pink towels, and pink shirts were also selling faster than their other colors since it's the official Yukari Kingdom colors. I got everything I needed, but when I went back to check on the booth at around 4pm, all of the above were sold out. After goods, I played gacha to try and get the special prize. I ended up winning on my fourth try, and turned in the winning ticket for a leather Yukarin pocket book. I decided to keep playing gacha anyway though because I wanted to see what other stuff came out. Exhausting all my 500 yen coins, I ended up with some neat stuff like mint tins, tiny dolls, and a bunch of posters (many extras). I've got Poster A x 3, Poster B x 2, and Poster D x 2. I'm happy to give away the extras, but will gladly trade for a Poster C if you got it (trades get 1st priority).

Fans waiting in the rain for goods

After gacha, I just chilled on the couches in Niigata TERRSA's lobby with other Yukari fans until they started letting people into the hall. When we were walking in, some fans gave out callbooks which looked pretty professional and had full color pages.

I found my seat in the third row and immediately noticed that the stage was very close - about only 3 feet away from the front row's do-not-cross line. The rows were also close together, so I'd judge that the stage was probably about a total of 12 feet away from me. Not only that, but I was sitting on the inside corner towards the center of the stage so it was a great unobstructed view. Around starting time, people started taking out the Yukarin happi coats and tying headbands. I had mine with me but I decided it was too hot and just stuck with T-shirt. I'm not that hardcore of a fan anyway to go in uniform.

Around 6pm the lights dimmed and there was a brief countdown before Yukarin stepped out of the mist and came down the steps. Her first outfit was a spotted red & white top, a poofy dark blue skirt with white frills, and white lace-up boots. She launched a strong opener with Heavenly Stars, then Chelsea Girl. I probably watched and memorized various performances of Chelsea Girl about 200 times across different DVDs so often it was really hard to fight the urge to copy her movements, since I should be harmonizing with the fan calls instead. Looks like some fans next to me had the same problem, and were trying to decide whether to copy Yukarin or just go with the crowd actions and would switch from one to the other and back again. Next was Oshiete A to Z, another recent favorite with its own unique synchronized clapping.

After she finished there were lots of very loud "YUKARI" screams. She opened up her first MC asking if anyone actually knew the full name of the venue. Nobody replied, so she read out the concert hall's incredibly long english name "Niigata Town Employee Relax Refresh Social Amenity" (Niigata TERRSA) and its introduction. When she went to get water, some dude yelled out "omizu oishii" which became a main focus of MCs later on.

Niigata TERRSA

The next song was Kamisama Rescue Me!!, a tropical sounding tune with steelpans that was choreographed with hula hoops held by each dancer. When this song started, Kusundeneko and Kusundenaineko, who I didn't notice were missing for the first few songs popped out onto the stage. She tore off her blue skirt to reveal a frumpy pair of short red bloomers. Following was Goody & Happy with a very jazzy feel to it, and Little Wish ~first step~. It was pretty surprising to hear Little Wish so early. This is a fan favorite which everyone in the audience knows and loves, so all the calls and hand motions were practiced to perfection. During the final chants, she went behind the stairs to change costumes while a video narrated by Donna Burke played to introduce the band members and dancers. When she came back, she had changed into a short cyan dress and matching slippers. Then, she did Shooting Star and Suna Ochiru Mizu no Kyuuden before she took another break to talk to the audience.

This was a fan teasing segment, as Yukarin started to talk about how she got creepy messages on twitter where people said they licked her thighs in her pictures. Secretly, she's actually quite proud of it. Since she was wearing that really short dress, she teased hiding her thighs by crouching down and turning to the side. All the upper rows started going "eeeeeeh" and yelling "let us see!" When she was gloating to most of the audience, she suddenly looked in our corner's direction and went "Ah, even though they can't see, you guys have a nice position right?" Yeah Yukarin, lined up a pretty open view for the bottom left side from that angle. If this were an anime, it would the part where the entire row shoots nosebleed fountains.

Lobby just as they opened doors into the live hall

When she got back up, unrelated to any topic at hand, she did this incredibly stupid looking dance out of nowhere which looked like a sumo prep routine but with more stomping and flapping your arms. After she did it once, the audience started chanting "mouikkai" but she became embarassed about it and refused to do it unless everyone else did it too. So we did! The entire audience started doing the same ridiculous looking dance while she lead on.

Next was Hadashi no Princess. She went ran back and changed into a red dress with fringes and an elaborate skirt that folded around the back but left most of the front open to show off her legs before coming out to do Tomorrow. The song included some pyrotechnics, so there were flames shooting out from parts of the stage. Next was Cursed Lily and Love Sick. During Love Sick, the audience tried to do motsu's parts. I barely knew this song so I just mumbled gibberish - you can't tell the difference during a live anyway. But, it didn't seem like too many people knew the parts in my section either. It must be too new. Yukari's dance for this song was nice though, and it had her doing a lot of interesting steps outside of her usual predictable idol moveset. She was really moving around a lot for it.

There was another break for costume change. We watched a video of the cats trying to wake her up. They starting with yelling, then escalated to banging pots and pans, tickling her with cattails, and throwing ice on her. At one part, they came out in Yukari Happis and started doing Yukari PPPH which got the entire crowd to follow along. This woke her up, but she told everyone to shut up and went back to sleep. After a long time, she finally woke up and the cats put on her new outfit and stepped toward the screen. Real Yukarin synchronized her exit onto the stage in the same outfit, an elaborate pink lolita dress with ribbons. During the video, the band members had swapped out all of their electric instruments for acoustic ones to do Namida no Loop. For the song, Yukarin came really close to the audience and sat in a chair to sing the ballad supported only by these instruments. Everyone stayed pretty quiet and just enjoyed her singing voice. Acoustic corners are one of my favorite moments because there's no pressure to do any calls, and the complete silence from the audience allows you to just sit there and really take in the atmosphere and focus 100% of your attention to the singer on stage. You could listen to all the intricacies of the singing and it was really nice. I never really listened to this song much on albums, but it sounded really great live. I guess she uses corners like this to remind people that yeah she's actually a good singer and it's not all about idoling and cheering.

During MC, she showed off her changed costume. Fans yelled out that the ribbons were cute so she told them jealously if they liked ONLY the ribbons so much they should just marry it. Continuing the theme of the evening, every time she went to get water, or even reach for water, people yelled "omizu oishii." She tested it out with other band members and had the same thing happen to them. Then she had every band member drink from their water bottle while the crowd cheered, and asked them "omizu oishii?" When they said yes, the crowd exploded into way overly enthusiastic celebration. IDGI I guess Yukari fans are really easily amused?? After all the band members had water, she asked if everyone in the audience also brought water, and people held up their water bottles. What happened next was crazy: she went to each section (middle, left, right) and picked a random person in the first row. Then she went over and sat REALLY close, like legs dangling over the stage close, leaned into them, made them drink and asked the same question. As a bonus for our section, when the guy started drinking she started panting really heavily and said in this totally deep ero voice like "....is...is...that water good?" Even for us in the third row, it was the best and closest view of Yukarin all night. In another segment, she asked fans what specialty should be eaten in Niigata, and the prevaling answer seemed to be yakisoba with meat sauce. Gotta try that when I'm back in Niigata next week.

She announced her next song Sugar Tune, which got a loud crowd reaction and also made people bring out the koiseyo puppets. The song also has its own hand motions which had to be copied, so it was a good thing I watched some concerts beforehand and followed along. Then, Metausahime came. If there was any UO song, this was it, but from what I've seen Yukari concerts only accept one color: pink. During the "hizamazuke" line, the ENTIRE crowd just went down quickly and it was an awesome sight to see. The "Haaahaaaaaa" chants also involved throwing yourself down in a bow, immediately followed by scrambling back up again to yell out "Hime, hime, hime hime hime." In all, it was pretty intense and definitely one of the highlights of the night.

Another break this time. She played a clip where she went to the animate store in Niigata the day before. At the store, her goods were selling at the end of one aisle so she hid around the shelf to see if anyone was buying it. She was really disappointed when nobody was looking at her goods so she tried to hide close to where customers were standing, yell a really quick "AHEM~SELLINGYUKARIALBUMSHERE" in a disguised voice, and then duck away. When the people ignored it, there was a huge EEEHHHHHH from the audience. After a lot of tries, someone finally came over and Yukari happily ambushed the surprised customer. When he revealed he bought the album, she signed it for him and initiated a handshake. This got a huge reaction from the concert hall. She did this with a few more customers and was then asked by animate staff to sign her name on one of animate's store posters. She couldn't spell the kanji for Niigata so she was trying to copy some tiny text on the bottom corner of the poster, but messed up with a hilariously ugly looking 潟 and had to write "niigata" in hiragana on top of it to clarify - if you go visit animate in Niigata you'll find this amusing mistake still displayed on the wall for all to see.

After the video, Yukarin came back in a white sailor (officer style, not the school kind) blouse, layered checkered skirt, and knee high white boots. She did one more song Koi no Time Machine before it was Meron time. The fans pre-empted the great reveal because they saw Meromero stick on the counter and called out for it while she was still talking about other stuff, so she had no choice but to cut her MC short and bring it out. For the usual demonstration, she caught several staff members (trying to flee) and lined them up execution style alongside the band members and meroooonnned them all. Then she said "I wonder if this works in reverse" and waved them back into standing position while going "nrooomeeee~". She tried the same thing with the audience, MERON and then reverse NROME. On the second pass, since we were all expecting backwards meron everyone froze after doing the meron wave but she just cut it off after meron and went "wtf are you all doing?"

After we got all got our fill being zapped with meromero, she did You & Me. There was a lots of hype for this song since everyone was pumped to do the motsu rap part. Yukarin feat. kokumin was a great success and very very loud. During the rap, Yukarin looked like a kid who just made a huge heist from the cookie jar with that smile on her face. I guess she had a good time getting everyone to yell out such long segments. Then the band immediately transitioned into Fancy baby doll. There are two kinds of people in this world, people who have yelled out "Sekai ichi kawaii yo!" during a live FBD performance and people who haven't. The latter is missing a vital life experience, which I'm glad to say after years of waiting I finally got. She also continued the usual tradition of throwing out usagi dolls randomly into the audience. Before the final sabi, there was a segment to introduce band members and dancers. When the song resumed at the climax ("and I'm Tamura Yukari, 17 years old") the crowd just went into insane overdrive. The next few songs had almost no breaks, but there was just so much energy I think we all forgot to be tired. She went through Love love baby happy star, a song from the new album which will probably become one of the most fun and energetic live pieces in her repertoire, and candy smile. In the middle of candy smile, she removed her top and skirt to reveal a tiny orange one-piece. For the last two songs, Gratitude and Love me now, a ton of people busted out pompoms that they must have kept from FC events earlier this year (recall Love me now PV). Also during the Gratitude climax, there was a big pop and gold ribbons dropped from the ceiling onto the audience. For the rest of us without pompoms, we just continued to use pink penlight or ribbons that we caught. Again, Love Me Now had a special dance that was taught to fans during the FC event so you couldn't just rely on usual call instincts. Luckily the dances have a certain predictable pattern to it, and I was able to copy easily.

During the encore, I took time to turn around and fully absorb the feeling of an entire mountain of people behind chanting and waving pink penlights. Yukarin quickly came back in a pink concert t-shirt, miniskirt, and Chibi Yukarin doll attached to her hip. She thanked everyone for the encore and launched into Douwa Meikyu, which always ranks very highly during the FC events. Next was Super Special Smiling Shy Girl which was so much fun with fans singing part of the chorus and yelling "SUPER SPECIAL SMILING SHY GIRL" together.

During the last MC, she was supposed to blow a dinky little trumpet and surprise everyone while GOD (saxophonist) secretly busted out a sax solo from behind, but she missed the cue and messed up the timing causing everyone to laugh at her.

For the final song, she sang My Wish My Love, an appropriate track to wind everyone down for the night. At the end, she held hands with everyone on stage and asked everyone in the audience to do the same to take a huge bow. Some guys were hesitating, but she used some reverse psychology which appears to have worked. She said, "if you don't want to do it, just shake off the person's hand like this" while doing a disgusted throwing motion. After that, everyone started reaching across even between the aisles until all the lines were connected and then the whole audience took a huge coordinated bow with Yukarin leading.

I thought there would be a second encore, but Yukarin signaled it was the true end and stood on the stage to wave at people for a long time - like a really long time. She moved really deliberately from each aisle to aisle and made direct eye contact and waved to every single person who attended, which was pretty cool - you could just see her eyes moving across each row slowly, waving, and doing a smile. Whenever she reached a new aisle, the aisle coordinated a big "Se-no, YUKARIN" yell that she enjoyed getting each time. Finally after almost half an hour of waving she gave one last actually sincere sounding "thank you" and left the stage while blowing kisses. When the lights came back on, fans led the post-concert chant and everyone did the clap-clap-clap-HEY thing that you see in at the end of DVDs all the time.

Goods table

Outside in the lobby, they had tables that were selling a ton of Yukari CDs and DVDs, including some really older ones like Sugar Time Trip. They were giving away special items for purchases over 2000 yen, so I picked up a B Gata H Kei vocal album in order to get a clear file. I also talked with the fanclub staff near the Yukari passport stamp counter for a bit, but unfortunately they said they had no way of handling overseas addresses (Momoi spoils us so good).

Even at 9:30 PM, it was still pouring outside, but as I stepped into my cab I could only think about the overall fantastic set list, with more of my favorites than I could have hoped for. Her MCs were a lot closer to her radio personality this time too given how dirty some of them were, maybe because Niigata isn't being taped. Performance-wise, Yukari and all of her costumes are totally adorable up close, and her live singing is the real deal. My only wish is that I could have heard Yukarin-solo version of Koiseyo (only heard Yukari x Nana version at Anisama 2008) but it's a minor complaint considering how many good songs I did get.

Final goods for the day:

Bonus:

Close-up of super limited Chibikko Yukarin doll (only one per person)

Next, MOSAIC.WAV and Yukarin again in Sendai.

Posted by Paranda at 2:41 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

KOTOKO live in Sapporo

Though I've only been to a few places in Japan so far, I feel like Sapporo is going to stay up there as one of my favorite cities. It's like the perfect modern city - clean, spacious but not barren, and most notably, laid out to make sense to anyone with an ability to interpret coordinates. (Or maybe I've just been successfully bribed by their food)

Downtown Sapporo is designed as a grid so it's quite similar to Manhattan. But it does better, because Sapporo actually bases its origin on a logical city center of Odori and counts North/East/South/West from there. So, if you get an address of 2 North, 2 East you just remember where Odori is and count 2 streets north, and 2 streets east to find it. In New York, if you get an address of "East 45th Street", even if you know the system you might still need a map to know where to go and where you are at any given point. In Sapporo, I arrived with my phone battery dead and not a single map, but managed to find my hotel right away by just following the street signs.

The goal of the day was to attend the KOTOKO concert, so as soon as I checked in I followed the grid over to Sapporo Cube Garden on foot. Cube Garden is an extremely small club house that's very easy to miss, especially since it's next to Sapporo Factory, a huge former brewery now converted into Sapporo's primary shopping mall.

Upon arriving, I noticed there was no crowd. Initially fearing a "Budokan" mixup like with JAM the day before, I was only calmed after spotting KOTOKO's fanclub van parked outside the small venue. I guess I was still in the TGS mentality of "huge crowds, limited spots" so I was surprised to see nobody around even though the concert was only 3 hours away. After milling around in the Factory for a while and returning, it was reassuring to finally see a small group waiting around the area.

Everyone got through the goods line in just a few minutes, and the rest of the time was just spent hanging out in the parking lot until showtime. The Sapporo group was very tight knit and every time someone came out of a taxi or walked in, the core group waiting in line recognized them.

Squeezing into the floor was a very difficult ordeal. Once entrance time came, we filed into the live house. Although there were only about 300 people, the small space meant you were elbow to elbow with someone and uncomfortably close. Luckily, like Momoi fans, KOTOKO fans are also quite friendly. Since I wasn't familiar with the new style of wristbands, the guy next to me helpfully volunteered to show me how to fold it, which really broke the ice. And taller fans would constantly turn around and check for shorter people and rotate them up front even though they originally entered the hall based on ticket number.

Then lights dimmed and, KOTOKO LIVE TOUR 2010 Natsu da, Raibu da, Zenkoku Angyu Matsuri! in Sapporo began. KOTOKO ran onto the stage wearing a matsuri themed costume of designer yukata and rope headband which held her huge ponytail in place. Since I missed my chance to see her at AX a few years back, I was knocked back with a huge rush of "OMG KOTOKO in real life". The kind of impact these "first time sightings" cause is always pretty great, and as a fan for almost 8 years, this particular incubation period was even longer than Momoi (who I saw after only 5 years of fandom).

First up was two songs from her latest BLAZBLUE single, Hekira no Ten e Sasoedo and Digital Snail

Unlike JAM Pro, I actually do keep up with newer KOTOKO songs so I was able to cheer for this. The crowd was still trying to adjust to the tight space and we weren't sure whether we should use glowsticks or not given the crampedness. Some people put away their stuff and just used hands, myself included.

During MC, KOTOKO got massive cheers of "Okaeri" as she tried to pump the crowd. She explained one major premise of the Matsuri Live was fan participation, including the selection of the set list. Many of the songs which would be playing tonight weren't limited to her latest album or promotion, and would instead come from popularity polls she conducted on her website prior to the live.

She continued by going into Ao Iconoclast which is a song she did under her Kotoko name.

By this point, we were really exhausted as I don't think anyone had anticipated how hot the room would get, especially with so little space or ventilation. To give us a break from the blistering heat, she went into a slower selection of songs like
La Clef ~meikyuu no kagi~
Imaginary Affair
flow~mizu no umareta basho~

KOTOKO pointed out flow was a very nostalgic song from very long ago, and branched out into an MC asking how many people in the room were new fans or old fans. A lot of 10+ year fans rose their hands, but KOTOKO focused on people who said they were newer fans and went to great lengths to explain her older songs to them, like what album they were from or games (she was very tongue-in-cheek with explaining the game content).

At this point, KOTOKO pulled out an iphone with a sound level meter and explained that to further increase interactivity with the crowd her next songs would be decided by live vote. She would give us the song options, and then sing one based on cheering loudness.

Between Allegretto and Leaf Ticket, Leaf Ticket won the vote at somewhere around 113 decibels.

Second choice of the night was between
Face of Fact and Restoration ~chinomku no sora~

We voted for Face of Fact which she gladly obliged. Satisfied with the voting minigame and anticipating the now heightened nostalgia, KOTOKO then launched into Love a Riddle and won major points with the crowd. The floor predictably erupted in cheers, UO, and whispers of "Ontei" at last.

Another old favorite
β- Nendo no Wakusei

For every song played, KOTOKO would also tell us the year it was released, making the whole live feel kind of like a career celebration. She continued with more voted songs, like jihad and Collective, during which she put on a ridiculous headbanging display and started whipping her pony tail around, causing everyone in the crowd to follow suit.

Then, without any warning, she launched into Re-sublimity which I figured would be a final song. UOs flared up everywhere and the whole room pretty much exploded with synchronized calls. With no MC break, she continued with Shooting star (where we all learned new hand motions to follow), and then transitioned into Wing my way. Basically, 3 of my favorite KOTOKO songs in a row.

This was KILLER. As each track was reasonably upbeat, we were all dehydrated and practically dying from heat stroke from jumping the whole time. But there was no mercy, as she followed up with Oboeteteiiyo and even included a special request that everyone sing the choruses. It seemed like the finale was about to come.

Finally, she closed with the top voted song Onaji sora no shita de.

Cue almost 20 minutes of encore chants until she came back. KOTOKO apologized for taking so long to come back for the encore and asked if the guys chanting for so long were OK - because if they were, then this next set should finish them off. As it is well known, KOTOKO's encores almost ALWAYS go into her claim to fame and this time was no different. She announced her final weapon: moe kyoku.

Before the mercy blow though, she introduced the band members and did a final MC asking if they visited anywhere in Sapporo. In an amusing segment the drums guy said some flirty stuff, and KOTOKO shot him down hard ("I'll punish you for that remark later") and told the crowd not to believe his lies. Another guy, maybe the same guy, said he went to Susukino and KOTOKO asked why guys always seemed to enjoy it. "Oh, I guess for reasons I can't mention" (implying he went there for red light districts).

Seishun Rocket

The interaction in this was insane. 300 people singing the chorus and chants in tune is truly something else. All the otagei in the world doesn't beat a well executed chant which actually works with the vocalist parts.

She then teased with Just as time is running out which was another round of calls and responses, with her enthusiastically throwing the microphone in our direction several times.

Sadistically to eliminate anyone who was still clinging to life she announced the true last song for the night Bumpy Jumpy.

At the end, the band members came in with giant sign congratulating her on 28 concerts well done and she teared up for the final MC, repeatedly thanking everyone for coming and hoping to see them again next year.

When we filed out of the hall, you could see everyone completely soaked from top to bottom. As soon as you got out of the room, you got hit by what felt like a blast of cold air (actually just room temperature). We crowded around the goods table which was now selling CDs after the live. KOTOKO came out to meet fans. I didn't get anything signed since all my stuff was in a locker but I got a handshake instead. My memory is fuzzy after this but I remember looking at the clock when I got back (almost 10pm) and remarking how incredibly long it was. To be honest it only felt like an hour to me, but I guess that's just a testament to how well she managed the pacing of the live. KOTOKO is a true concert master.

Final goods for the day:

Towel, 3 shirts, charm, pamphlet, 2 coats, and a wristband

Posted by Paranda at 9:17 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Pencil Live 2010 thoughts

Well I've had a long sleep deprived day now I'm finally home again

When Pencil Live 2010 advertised Momoi, Sakakibara Yui, KOTOKO, and others...I was sort of expecting Pencil Live to use them as key acts between a variety of artists and that ultimately we'd only see 3 - 4 songs from each performer. It turns I was wrong - this event was completely dedicated to them. The only unlisted performance was a special number by Sanch who flew in especially from South Korea.

What a combo huh?

The feed went up at 16:30 as promised (3:30 for me) and they started playing a lot of recognizable game music. A couple of death screams were heard, but all around the crowd was pretty subdued, maybe they warned them not to be rowdy. Of course whatever reservedness they had was filed away as the countdown started.

I always forget that in Japan, concerts actually start punctually and not 55 minutes past the billing time like in the U.S. Within half a minute on the turn of the hour, a guy came out to do a short intro and Momoi jumped in immediately after, dressed in full Tsurupeta cosplay. Intentional or not, the costume's style, accessories, and hat called strongly to her old UNDER17 outfits.

Momoi gave us a very impressive set list with a great mix of old favorites and newer songs, with the majority being from Pajamas Soft's series of Prism ____ games.

1. Shokuzai no rhapsody
It's a good opener that highlighted her singing abilities, with a lot of comments just remarking on her vocal mastery. But only after this track the moe song fan service begins.

2. Kyouryuu shoujo
Pencil's website telegraphed it was coming, but I still got overcome with nostalgic feelings form this wonderful callback to the UNDER17 era. When singing it, Momoi still sounds exactly the same as then. During MCs, Momoi spotted a guy with the T-shirt and towels from her old concerts with that unit.

3. Chiccha na bouken
Next was a blatant nya~nya~ track to get the comments box flooded with exclamations of cute. One of her rare cutesy songs in the last few years. Have not heard anything like it since Utamaru Ekaki Uta.

4. Majokko Tsurupeta Magical
Momoi also came armed with a brand new song from the new Prism Magical game, showcasing a warm airy tune that combined orchestral instruments with computerized bleep-bloop.

5. Naito de Naito
uuuuuUUUU HAI! Fast paced...UOs...the best kind of track for a live house.

6 Opera Fantasia
Another Shikura Chiyomaru track. Opera Fantasia is pretty standard Momoi fare which is reliant on strong vocals.

7 Yuuen no Amulet
A fan favorite. There were LOTS of UO lit up for this one, and an especially loud crowd coordinated perfect PPPH and stealth romance. This was a fitting closer that left everyone satisfied, tired, and thankful of a big break to come. (there was also Momoi singing about 30 seconds of Saisho to saigo no mahou but we won't count that officially)

So, did the Niconico format work? Overall, it was worth the $20. For one, psychologically just knowing something is in real time already provides a greater enjoyment similar to how we enjoy watching sports live rather than taped. Plus there's the running commentary from the viewers. But, even beyond that, there is a surprising bit of participation, which while at face value sounds incredibly lame, actually does provide a pretty unique and amusing experience. For Nico viewers, synchronized comment spamming fills in for cheers and color coded text fills in for coordinated glow stick coloring.

On criticisms, my main complaint would be to improve the stream quality. For $20, we had the feed get cut twice, and while the audio was good, picture-wise we got some grainy video that looked like it got uploaded from some guy's cell phone set on a tripod. The other is not directed to Niconico but to Pencil Live itself: don't waste the lineup! You're putting Momoi, Sakakibara Yui, and KOTOKO together and NOT doing a collaboration? When there was no encore I was incredulous. It's not like there's a shortage of songs. I mean there's even a Momoi and Yui duet already in Pajamas Soft's library (Prism Knight ~nijiiro no kioku~). Just jam KOTOKO in there and be done with it!

I do hope they made good sales on the web cast though. Dwango has a good thing going on here, and one that is sure appreciated by those of us who live on the opposite side of the world without the means to attend multiple events per year.

Other stuff I want to say (in order of appearance):

On Sanch-san.
She's a cute but really REALLY quiet girl who made her first trip to Japan from Korea. She got a big welcome though, maybe even a little too big. I didn't know the song she sang, but everyone else there did and their cheering was so intense sometimes the crowd actually drowned her out. A lot of comments were just cheering her on and asking her to throw herself into it more. I can understand the nervousness though. There are big fish there. Actually I would kind of like to know what song she did because it was pretty good, and she did a good job. That kind of soft-spoken voice was not a bad fit for the tune after all.

On Sakakibara Yui
I think Yuinyan's anti-otagei reputation is a bit overblown - when she appeared people were wondering if the audience would be banned from doing PPPH. Come on she's not that scary! I'm pretty sure she just dislikes the extreme stuff since some dude actually launched a glowstick onto her stage in the past, but regular jumping and cheering hardly falls under this umbrella. She looked absolutely welcoming of the crowd support. In terms of singing, Yuinyan always seems to be the most artificial to me. Her voice is very heavily processed and half the time I feel like it's actually just a recording in the back, especially since her dance moves are so incredibly hard - it seems nearly impossible to sing properly with that level of activity. Luckily to make up for it she has an excellent arsenal of songs, an absolutely fantastic "おk" which resulted in a zillion comments being posted gushing over it, and also the awesome Soshite boku ha which could have only been improved if she showed up in her skimpy nun costume. Ultimately, she is a good performer with a great repertoire even if all of her singing is prerecorded.

On KOTOKO
When KOTOKO did her MC, it really hit me that every that Momoi, Yui, KOTOKO...they are hardcore veterans with 10+ years under their belts. They know what they are doing. KOTOKO just really ruled the end like an iron fist dictator. Her command over the music and the crowd was just so complete. Just look at dis coordinated EEEEEEEEEHHH when she announced her last song.

And with her projection, she really is the one who earns the moniker utahime the most. Despite her gangly appearance, tongue-tied mishaps, and cutesy hairstyle, we all know the massive experience she has stowed away under all of it. Plus, everyone knows there are two KOTOKOs. The cute one we see here who forgets the names of her own songs (Genzai no Prism...uh I mean....Requiem), and the stone cold LED sunglasses wearing white haired alien space lady who shows up in videos like epsilon and Re-sublimity. Somehow she expertly plays both two images with minimal dissonance.

Posted by Paranda at 11:26 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Let's watch Momoi in Pencil Live 2010

On May 3rd, the sold out Pencil Live 2010 will feature Momoi, KOTOKO, and Yui-nyan celebrating exactly what made them legendary in the first place back in the day. Erogame music.

Given that it's probably the first time those three ever stood together on one stage, It's already a powerful combination and persuasive argument to attend the live event in person, but this time there IS a second best alternative. The very interesting thing about this event is that there will be a live broadcast. If you participated in the (failed) live feed of Momoi's concert, or even just twittered concerts with Yukarin and really had fun for that, then this may worth looking into. Although it's a pay broadcast, 2 of the major international credit cards (Visa & Mastercard) will work with Nico's point system.

Mercifully, the concert time translates to 4 AM EST for me, so I can wake up early and watch the whole thing before I book it to work (any later than that and I'd miss it like I've missed every Momoi radio broadcast in the last year). Let's meet on the day of the live and cheer virtually! If you've got a broken sleep schedule and a spare 2000 yen burning a hole in your pocket what better way to spend a Monday?

I documented the points process in case anyone is new to this system. I know it took me a few tries and a call to my bank to clear up some automatic fraud detection flags. People who know Nico inside out can just skip this.

First things first, if at any point in the purchasing process you see this page, that is basically Dwango telling you that it does not give a shit about you, a customer who is trying to give them money, and you need to fuck off and try again later.

Basically before you can buy the online ticket you need to set up your NicoNicoPoints account from http://point.nicovideo.jp/index/bank/. Scroll down and click through the disclaimer and you should see this page. From hereon out I'm just going to circle everything to click and hopefully by some miracle, it will work the first time and you won't have to see that enraging "we're too busy" page mentioned above over and over.

It's pretty straight foward. Get 2000 points. 1 yen is 1 point. Of course as a dirty foreigner you'll wind up paying more than 2000 yen after various credit card fees.

Click for credit card.

Input credit card number, enter date, hit next.

Confirm the purchase

If you see this page, it means you succeeded. If you DON'T see this page, then it means your credit card got rejected and you now have to call customer service for your card and explain to them that you are trying to buy access to a Japanese video site, while casually throwing in the fact that Dwango is a legitimate Tokyo Stock Exchange listed public corporation to distinguish it from 99% of other unwholesome internet transactions involving online video.

Now you can head over to the ticket purchase page http://live.nicovideo.jp/sticket/pencilpro_live_10th and hit the big red button. Be prepared to try a zillion times.

Eventually, you'll succeed and see this glorious page. Save the serial code, you'll need it later. It also goes to your email address, assuming you provided a real one when you signed up for your nico account so you can use that as well.

On the day of the live, go to the lobby http://live.nicovideo.jp/gate/lv15414926 and put your serial code in the box to join the feed.

Seating begins at 16:30 JST. Be there or be square.

Thanks to mandi who diligently keeps us all up to date on Momoi's Niconico activities.

Posted by Paranda at 1:13 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Wandafuru Revival

Leave it to a rapping puppy to spur my first post in a few months. I just couldn't resist commenting on Sakura Saori's latest LoveLoveLovable #82. This week's show features 27 minutes of Sakura Saori Chiwakura-san (sproing) doggedly trying to cram as many "wans" into a sentence as possible.

Chiwakura-san, who turns 2 years old this coming June, redubbed the show WanWanWandafuru and sat in for Saori while she was off busy preparing for ave;new's 3/13 appearance at Club Citta. Fans took the rare opportunity to learn more about Chiwakura-san, as well as try to slip in some questions about Saori behind her back. However, the real gem this time was the big reveal of some serious rapping skills in the ave;new camp. And we're not talking about Kent and U-key. In the closing Memory ave;new segment, MC Chiwakura dropped some serious beats in "Chiwaku-rap." - the special bonus track produced for last summer's Comiket which finally made its radio debut.

Since it first began broadcasting in 2007, the show hasn't changed much. The general format revolves the sole host, 25 year old ave;new singer/writer/art designer Sakura Saori reading and answering listener mail categorized into "theme corners" as determined in the previous episodes. During each corner, she picks out a few listeners "Lovable Names" and reads their mail aloud, which almost always starts with "LoveLoveWa" (she will scold you if you don't start your letter correctly).

Anyway, I figured I would give a brief overview of the theme corners. Note: while I'd love to link to every example I reference, it's going to be based mostly on memory since older shows aren't up anymore.

Futsuotasan
Nandemo OK. As general Q&A, this is the most frequent corner and the largest component of the show. It is in almost every episode as an opener for Saori to get things moving with 3 - 5 questions, though some episodes are dedicated to her blitzing through dozens in rapid fire. While you do learn useful information like what kind of glowsticks to use in her concert (white), a lot of the entertainment comes from the personal anecdotes, in which Saori goes to great lengths to fill in details of her character. Half of it sounds like fiction, but what do I care?

Among other things, we learn about her love and struggles with beer, her apparently boring and secluded hermit lifestyle, and her inability to get valentine chocolates except from ave;new coworkers

Once a fan indirectly asked about her voice in real life and she basically affirmed (so she would love us to believe) that it's her default real life voice and strangers will even laugh at her for it. Sounds like bullshit to me. If it actually is true, then I might as well believe the stuff about the hermit lifestyle too. Try to get through your formative teenage years with that voice - it will fuck you up real good.

Oshiete my sweet
Oshiete my sweet is a segment where fans choose some kind of dessert for Saori to eat in the studio. The only rule is that it can easily be bought from a convenience store. Despite that, somehow these usually wind up being weird as hell confectionaries that nobody has ever heard of like curry flavored popsicles. I think she should combine this with Challenger Saori and just drop the "dessert" part. Then we'll see if she can take requests to get drunk on shots mid-broadcast or eat all kinds of nasty creepy crawlies.

Anata ni Yell!
Always nice when it appears, this corner is entirely for fans. Saori becomes a cheerleader and drops a goldmine of cute inspirational lines (that is if you find things "ei ei OOOOO" and magic incantations to be inspiring). Saori gives these out quite liberally, and they can get LONG and incredibly personal. This is less creepy than you think though. Surprisingly, most fans who write in betray the kimo-wota stereotype and are usually ambitious young students trying to ace exams and stuff, not 50 year old dudes asking for courage to leave mom's basement. Among various things, she has recorded wake-up messages, job and commuting mantras, and exam passing charms. I was almost tempted to send in one of my own but I don't want my name called out on a show like this :3 Sorry Shaori

LovableLetter
Possibly no longer relevant. I think this used to let fans ask questions to other members of ave;new. Recently Saori has mostly done away with referring to guest Q&A as a corner at all though and just brings on guests to answer questions directly. You get people asking a.k.a.dRESS random stuff like who was his favorite character in ToLoveRu. It's informative when it happens, but dRESS apperances also have the downside (upside?) of having the show's background inexplicably replaced with his own theme song, which sounds like some 70s style porno soundtrack. Too bad there's no accompanying video where we can see his famous hair.

Nandemo Lovable 3
Ask Saori for her top 3 whatevers. Favorite drinks, music, candies, cafes, perfumes, soaps. Anything is fair game. Sometimes she just answers them straight up, but other times it can go on to an interesting tangent. Generally, this is the weakest corner for me, not because it's a bad idea, but because a lot of this involves everyday products/foods/locations that can only be found inJapan. A lot of the fun for listeners is probably going out and actually buying or trying out the "top 3," but all I can do is make lists of "oh yeah I gotta go try that next time" which pile up.

Challenger Saori
Opposite of Nandemo Lovable 3, this is the most fun corner where Saori attempts any challenge sent in by fans. It can sometimes be very teasing because she saves really good challenges for the next show. These segments always own tremendously as they tend to take her out of her element.

Memorable challenges include
- An entire episode where she's forbidden from using keigo, which she uses very heavily by default. This of course ended in cute miserable failure, with Saori inventing ridiculous nicknames for readers in order to make them sound more casual, and her tendency to mash up fake suffixes that were half formal, half informal whenever she slipped up.
- A challenge to sing low notes. I suspect this was almost certainly a fan trying to get her to break character by forcing her voice to go into the lower and presumably "real" registers. Of course Saori bailed at barely 1 octave below middle C. Come on Saori I know you can go lower dan dat!!!
- The episode that spawned this entire post. LoveLoveLovable #82.

Kikasete Memory Avenue
The request corner. Each show winds down with one song request from Saori's discography. Usually, she'll offer insight on the creation of the track and what it's generally about, but sometimes she seems confused about her own niche genre. Whenever she plays some blatant moepop track she says she hopes you will enjoy it with your "special someone" or listen to it with your family during sentimental moments. I guess she's not wrong. You can use it to initiate break ups of the "whoa I didn't know you were into that" nature. And what could be more sentimental than the sight of parents crying out where they went wrong?

Minna no Chiwakura-san
Finally, we have a common show closer. Chiwakura-san is a dog that you can write in about. It's very open ended and can range from discussing her hobbies (like her being a hardcore surfer), surprise appearances, and so on.

Recently I've been insanely busy due to work obligations during a time of major events in my industry, so I've had to choose my time wasters carefully, but LoveLoveLovable's content never disappoints even if I do gripe about some corners being worse than others. Plus its slow and infrequent podcast schedule manages to be one of the easier and funnier things I can actually keep up with without feeling overwhelmed. What's more, there's a kind of familiarity with the letters since 99% of the time it's the same 8 or 9 guys who rotate in and out every few broadcasts. They're practically members of the show (especially this one dude who knows he always gets read and has begun addressing letters to the listeners).

Well, I wrote a lot of words but I guess all I really want to say is go listen to Chiwaku-rap right now.

Posted by Paranda at 11:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Shirasawa Rie

Take KOTOKO from her denpa glory days (circa 2003), crank up the kyunkyun dials a few dozen degrees, and you get 21 year old Shirasawa Rie (白沢理恵) - a sharp young ave;new singer with a voice so cute it causes brain damage.

Rie-chan, winner of "ave;new vocal audition" in 2007, made her public debut at that year's Winter Comiket. Soon after, she began appearing quite regularly as both a blogger on the ave;new website, and as a frequent target of Sakura Saori's "LOOK AT MY CUTE LITTLE SISTER" posts in LovableNote. In February 2008, she had her first song released on the ave;new album 'Orb' (Jewel Colors). Since then, despite her busy schedule as a full time university student, she has maintained a consistent blogging presence on ave;new, released four solo songs of her own (with one more on the way), and appeared as a background singer during Animelo 2008.

Though these accomplishments are impressive for a newbie part-timer, and not an episode of LoveLoveLovable goes by without her senpai Saori plugging Rie-chan this or Rie-chan that, the pitifully small discography hasn't helped her gain much real exposure. To make things worse, half of Rie's current works aren't even available on album or maxi single - they are single tracks bundled with obscure erogame soundtracks or drama CDs.

Luckily, I do not expect this to go on much longer. Lately, Rie has been drafted to support avenewproject initiatives which have been wildly successful. She collaborated with Shaori and Miyu to make fantastically catchy tracks for the Twin Angels series, all of which were released this June in the second AvePro album, A LA MODE 2. Her latest duet with Shaori in Momoe Pulchu's theme song "Double Shooting Pulchu" released at Comiket 76 also displayed considerable skill and was the primary motivation for me to write this. I now feel that Shirasawa Rie is ave;new's most underused singer. Ok so she may be going to school now, but once she graduates...please PLEASE lock her up in a moesong sweatshop with dorechu and throw away the key! This is someone who needs to make up for lost time.

Pros:

• Able to sing insanely cute songs at 21 years old while being a full time student.
• Cosplays and makes funny faces
• Learning quickly from Sakura Saori. She even shares some of her speech patterns and habits

Cons:

• Not enough songs!
• May not be immune to aforementioned brain damage effects of own voice. It's kind of funny how her commentary went from fairly run-of-the-mill to WTF psych ward patient?

Posted by Paranda at 1:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Upcoming AKIHABALOVE releases

Momoi is no slacker regarding her startup label it seems. She'll be putting out three new singles in the next few months.

1. Ruzi Guzi
This first AKIHABALOVE RECORDS release features the strangely named Yurumeitsu OVA opening theme (Ru-ji- Gu-ji-?) coupled with "Brand new music" from the "full voice drama movie" Dvorak no Kyuujitsu.

Available 4/29 from CDJapan.

2. My resolution ~ano toki no shita de~.
The first of Momoi's "Summer of Love" collaboration series. Momoi doesn't sing on this but the Akihabara Queen will compose and arrange two songs for the Anisong Diva Okui Masami.

Available 5/27 from CDJapan.

3. Jienotsu Song
Momoi joins forces with a cosplaying kickboxing champion on her third single, and has been tasked with creating his theme song. Denpa no sekai has a nice writeup on the background behind this. Despite allusions to CM Punk, unfortunately kickboxing is non-staged (as far as I know) so we grudgingly have to rule out the possibility of Momoi playing heel manager and doing ringside run-ins with a big pink hammer.

Available 6/17 from CDJapan.

Posted by Paranda at 9:58 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Punkolle - listen once, then sweep it under the rug forever

After over a month of waiting due to some shipping snags and the delay of another accompanied item, my copy of Punkolle ~voice actresses' legendary punk songs collection~finally arrived last weekend. Well..where to start?

It's fitting that the cover features moe avatars of the six seiyuu all delivering the middle finger squarely to the listener. I suppose that is exactly what was promised though - terrible renditions of songs pronounced with atrocious engrish accents in ridiculous voices. In fact even the "engrish" part is suspect as many tracks are utterly incomprehensible. The liner notes naturally do not contain any lyrics, since it is clearly a wasted effort. I suspect the recording process involved the recording crew ambushing stumbling drunk seiyuu on the way home from a bar with a microphone and betting if they could sing from memory.

Of course for everyone who happily listens to the Moetans, Maritans, and countless other "this is a pen" style attempts in the world by seiyuu to cutely mangle the English language, concerns about quality or clarity take a backseat to novelty. With this in mind as context, Punkolle was generally a success. Sure some songs had a few wasted opportunities to get creative with the source material, but most tracks met expectations nicely, and three particular ones exceeded way above and beyond. In order of preference:

1. Sex and Violence. This song practically defines the entire compilation.
Momoi opens the album on a high note, taking generous artistic liberties with "Sex and Violence." In order to compensate for having exactly one line, each slightly-too-happy reptition is done with a slight variation on the voice or background effect that progressively escalates into the absurd. By the second half, Momoi has gone clearly lost her mind and has gone from just adding "cha cha!" in between lines to declaring herself to be a cat, yodeling in high falsetto for the backing vocals, slurring her speech like an old man, and inexplicably screaming "Oniitan!" (in a song about Sex and Violence). Listen carefully and you can probably pick out more than two dozen different voices in all.

2. God Save The Queen. I have no future.
Ikezawa Haruna's take on God Save The Queen is excellent and probably my second favorite track on the entire album. Ikezawa has a decent enough voice, but what really distinguishes this performance is that instead of just singing the words, she makes a ridiculously cute attempt to throw in an accent, tons of vocal slides, and plenty of style. She even rolls the R's! The effort is quite amazing and at some points it almost seemed as she really did believe she was a punk superstar. The song sort of runs away with its own personality and makes for highly amusing listening. She does this well in Basket Case as well, although to a lesser degree. Either way, Ikezawa's strange accent is something I can't quite pin down but I know I like it.

3. Pretty Fly (フォ・ア・ホワイト・ガイ)
Since "Pretty Fly" is already a satirical work in itself, intentionally corny, and a popular target for parodies, I figured there wasn't really much potential in this song aside from maybe the humor in Kadowaki Mai calling herself a white guy. Yet somehow, Mai manages to create a musical abortion that few people can ever be ready for. The entire song sounds like it was done by a second grade student desperately trying to recite lines for the school play while making "> <" eyes and running out of air. The delivery is occasionally broken up by her piercing "ahaa ahaa" that is enough to make me nervously check over my shoulder for policemen (explaining the situation probably wouldn't make things better). This is the track you can show to annoying people if you want them to look at you funny and leave you alone.

While there are a few other nice covers, these three tracks are all that make the entire album worth getting. Of the remaining titles, Momoi's Call Me was probably the strongest in terms of singing ability. Other fun tracks included Goto Yuko's surprisingly non-abrasive "Smells like Team Spirit", "London's Burning," and Shimizu Kaori's "Blitzkrieg Bop" which sounds like it was ripped out of an Adventure Island level. The weakest tracks were Tanaka Rie's covers which, while not actively bad, did suffer from extreme dullness. Punkolle could be a historical album noted to be one of the few song compilations where Goto actually comes out ahead of somebody else.

So I guess I lied in the subject, because the truth is I actually might listen to it a few more times, but only certain songs and I probably wouldn't admit it under any non-otaku social setting. In the right situations though, it is a nice CD to bring out especially since it appears to have flown under the radar in the English speaking community (I only read 2 - 3 sites talking about it at all). As proven in Hawaii by another Momoist, it can be weaponized for highly effective use during road trips - great for springing on a captive audience. To avoid severe bodily harm when listening in a group setting such as the above, make sure everybody involved has a safety word established in case things get out of hand.

Buy it!

Also, I got the Momoi card :P

Posted by Paranda at 11:15 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

LoveLoveWa

Hmmm an ave;new and ave;new project event presented by dorechu (a.k.a.dRESS)? This may be the first time I can remember them hosting their own big event - usually they would be an act in some larger festival/promotion.

Hopefully the first of many. Now if they can time one for the summer...

Also, a happy birthday to the princess.

Posted by Paranda at 9:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Spring concert plans

Since my vacation days are about to replenish when 2009 rolls around, I have already started thinking about some events that are coming up. I'll post my plans early in case somebody else making the same trip would like to enter into some sort of buddy system to make traveling safer and easier and less boring.

First thing I am eyeing is Tamura Yukari's LOVE LIVE 2009 *Dreamy Maple Crown* tour from mid February to early March. Back when Pinkle Twinkle Milky Way came out, I swore to myself that one of these days I would run the Yukarin gauntlet and attend a bunch of concerts back to back. Love Live Chelsea Girl reinforced those intentions, and finally the "sample" Animelo performance pushed me over the edge. I can't wait any longer. I must attend this tour!!! An early search for airline tickets is showing me about $950 for a round trip during most of February. This is about $200 less than my flight for last September's Animelo trip, plus it is eligible for a first class seat upgrade thanks to a bunch of unused frequent flyer miles that I accumulated from the last trip. Additionally, if I factor in President's Day, it is entirely possible to attend 3 concerts in this tour while only using up 7 vacation days: Leave New York morning of 2/12, arrive in Tokyo 2/13, take shinkansen to Fukuoka and attend the 2/14 concert, do some random stuff in between, attend Osaka performance 2/21, Tokyo performance 2/22, and return to the US on 2/23 (arrive same day thanks to the time zone difference). This makes this trip very attractive economically, but things could get pretty expensive if I start bidding on FC front row seats instead of just buying general public tickets.

Second event I am looking at is the 2009 Honolulu Festival. US fans who missed out last time rejoice, because Momoi is a guest once again. Given the incidents that happened in Hawaii that time (wotagei on stage, going for a swim, shooting a fan video with Momoi), this trip is very very difficult to turn down if only for that 0.001% chance that they might happen again. This would be a short trip using just 4 vacation days (Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Monday). Honolulu Festival itself is FREE, so the only costs would just be flight, hotel, and a few cases of glowsticks. Unfortunately, seeing that this takes place March 13-15, there is less than one month to recoup costs from "Dreamy Maple Crown." This makes budget a rather large concern, and may require a strictly enforced diet of bread and water, freezing cold nights without heat, and giving up all figure/CD purchases from now until March...especially as it would be unwise to dip into savings given the current environment.

So..if I had to pick only one, which should I choose?

Update 01/05/09:
Much to my dismay, I discovered there is a mini Momoi event (part of a larger Ani-Uta live) in Japan on the same day as one of the Yukari concerts. There is a slight gap in times, but it is too risky to attempt the two consecutively. Since the purpose of the trip is to attend Dreamy Maple Crown, I am forced to choose Yukari who has the more focused event. I will of course go to Hawaii in order to ease the pain of choosing one over the other. Also, I will likely shorten the Yukari trip to just one weekend 2/21 - 2/22 in order to conserve vacation days and expenses thus making the cost of all the trips manageable (spending another week in Tokyo to see only one more show costs nearly as much as simply flying out again in the future - not worth it). My second motivation for this cost cutting is due to anticipation of another *unconfirmed* Momoi event in May that, if finalized, I will attend (you know the one).

Posted by Paranda at 1:47 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

More details on 'Punk Collection' tracklist?

Bookservice.co.jp is the first site that I've heard of with an update to the Omniverse Seiyuu Punk Collection item on their order page.

Based on this list, some singers and trackes have been changed. None of this can be corroborated with any other source so far though, so take It with a grain of salt.

[update: 12/26/08] Amazon has the same list up which I guess is a confirmation of sorts.

1. Sex Pistols - God Save The Queen (Ikezawa Haruna)
2. Green Day - Basket Case (Ikezawa Haruna)
3. Iggy & The Stooges - Search & Destroy (Kadowaki Maii)
4. The Offspring - Pretty Fly (Kadowaki Maii)
5. The Clash - London's Burning (Goto Yuuko)
6. Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit (Goto Yuuko)
7. The Clash - White Riot (Shimizu Kaori)
8. Ramones - Blitzkrieg Bop (Shimizu Kaori)
9. T.B.D (Tanaka Rie)
10. T.B.D (Tanaka Rie)
11. The Exploited - Sex & Violence (Momoi Halko)
12. Blondie - Call Me (Momoi Halko)

They should have gotten Ueda Kana to do one since she rages against the machine (presumably the establishment consisting of old men). Someone obviously spent too much time on XBL.

[update: 01/06/09] Release date pushed back to end of February :(

Posted by Paranda at 11:30 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Seiyuu Punk Compi[lation]

Let's talk about the punk cover project that Momoi is participating in. People who get the CDJapan newsletters have probably already seen the advertisement for Seiyuu Punk Compi preorders.

The current roster consists of Momoi Halko, Sakura Nogawa, Ikezawa Haruna, Kadowaki Maii, Kuwashima Houko, and Shimizu Kaori. According to mu-mo, this CD will have twelve songs so I'm guessing we'll either see these six seiyuu covering two songs each or another six announced to make it one seiyuu per song (which would be awesome*¹). We know Momoi can pull off some radical style changes, but the rest of the cast is untested in this genre as far as I've ever heard - pls. post examples if they exist. I suppose of the remaining group, Sakunyan is most likely to pull off something that doesn't sound like a donkey braying as I have a good idea of what voice she will probably use. This is not a knock on the member selection though. If they announce more artists, seiyuu like Morinaga Rika or Watanabe Akeno would probably feel right at home but I like this theme they're going with where they apparently select people at random with a dartboard and no regards to how much anything fits their projected persona or musical history.

So far we have a pretty diverse group of songs revealed (in no particular order):

Sex Pistols - Anarchy In the U.K.
The Crash - White Riot
Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
U2 - With or Without You　
Green Day - Basket Case　
Ramones - Blitzkring Bop
Rancid - Rudy Soho　
The Offspring - Pretty Fly

There is no indication of which seiyuu is covering which song and I have not been listening to any radio recently, but looking at the above list my guess is that Momoi would probably cover "Smells Like Teen Spirit" given that she is a Cobain fan. I don't know if the singers choose their own songs and how strict the genre guidelines are but another possibility could be Momoi covering a Weezer title. There is no mention of whether these songs will be rearranged to be more suited to the seiyuu, or if they are expected to imitate the originals. It is also unknown whether the lyrics will be Japanese or English. If they go with the latter options, the results will probably be a lot of fun in that jaw dropping train wreck sort of way, but something that any self respecting person could only hear exactly once before taking out a sledgehammer, smashing the CD to bits, and then if the hammer is still intact, smashing themselves to bits (assuming having lived through Kadowaki - hopefully she is placed at the beginning to put us out of our misery early). Therefore, for my own sadistic sake, please let it be the trainwreck.

Sound work will be done by FREE-WILL who has worked with some big names like DIR EN GREY so at least we can expect it to get polished to a mirror shine. Maybe it can even be used as a weapon for blinding.*²

P.S. Momoi's Hot Shot Jr. released tonight!

*¹ No Hirano Aya please.
*² Add Goto Yuko and it will become an illegal weapon of mass destruction.

Posted by Paranda at 2:31 PM

Matsuki Miyu owes 27% of her best songs to Momoi?

So I've basically been MIA for the past few weeks due to the unique combination of insane credit markets, CFA cramming, presidential election obsession, and an inability to resist reading economist blogs when I should be sleeping. A.K.A. "Getting the Grima Wormtongue makeover." But I will come out of my cave to mention that Matsuki Miyu's new "Best Songs" album released in late September caught me by surprise when hitting the playlist. Four out of the fifteen songs in there are written by Momoi including "Musume Gokoro Otome Gokoro," which I actually had never heard before. It's interesting stuff. In fact I hadn't realized Miyu was the singer for the Coco version of Kokodayo. It also has Camera=Mannenhitsu (Miyu's labeling doesn't include the !!! part even though it probably should), a bit of an amusing coincidence because I was really looking forward to hearing the same song in Momoi's self cover album coming out next month. Matsuki says they are really cheerful songs. Momoi is not mentioned by name in the liner notes commentary though

Posted by Paranda at 12:53 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Some photos taken over Animelo weekend

Ikebukuro. This will be home for the duration of the trip to Japan.

There is lots to see and do. But since this is a Momoist/otaku blog, let's just skip all the other touristy stuff I did and get to the substance...

animate! 9 floors of stuff. Took a good 4-5 hours to look through it all.

k-books (lots of good used stuff and comiket items)

Only bought a few things...spent conservatively since if I want to waste money on things that should never see the light of day, there was still all of Akihabara and Nakano Broadway.

Spotted while heading toward Animelo on 8/30.

Was so excited to be walking toward Saitama Super Arena

The Arena.

Merchandise tables. Combo sets and wristbands were sold out unfortunately by the time I got there. Picked up 2 shirts, towels, and pamphlet.

Outside map. Momoists set up camp in the marked area the next day.

Crowd began to swell as time got closer.

Had a blast at the concert. Jaw dropped when trying to find the number marked on the ticket and then the realization they were direct stage-side seats. Damn this thing was long. A great time was had, but I learned my lesson this time. 2 ultra oranges, 2 pinks, and 2 neon sticks is NOT ENOUGH. Wanted to UO on so many good acts but blew my entire stash right out the door with Yukari.

Goods obtained from the concert. Managed to catch a streamer that got shot out of the cannon during the encore. Since the thing was right next to me, when it went off I thought something exploded and nearly ducked for cover.

8/31

Posing with another Momoist.

Huge group of Momoists hanging out in the lower food court while waiting for seating to open. It was the same reliable group that has been to every concert I've ever seen so far. They came from all over. Some big trips to see Momoi include travellers from Osaka, Aomori (8 hrs by train), and even Korea.

T-shirt present for Momoi. Everybody included their own personal message. Takayama Saki (actress of Momoi from Haruko Update) was also attending Animelo to support Momoi and showed up to sign the shirt and say hello to Momoists.

These seats were actually pretty good and you could get a clear view of the performers as well as the entire arena. The "not as lucky" comparison is only relative to day 1, but otherwise it was awesome.

Lesson learned from day 1: stock glowsticks!!! Used up 15 ultra oranges, 6 ultra pinks, 2 ultra greens, 4 red and blue glowing bracelets, and fully drained 6 AAA batteries for neon red and neon blue light sticks.

Picked up 2 MOSAIC.WAV shirts along the way.

Still in Japan right now this is concise to save time. If you want to see parts of day 2 including Momoi you can probably find some recorded segments on Nico or Youtube although I won't bother posting the links since they will be constantly deleted/reuploaded. Also consider visiting seiyuu3 for a more detailed description of other artist acts.

Visited Akiba and a few other famous Momoi spots and specific stores/buildings thanks to a local fan who took a full day off to play ad-hoc tour guide. Maybe will visit more Momoists in Kyoto and we have a Suara concert to go see on Saturday. Let's see how it goes.

Posted by Paranda at 11:35 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Blah

Day 1 of Animelo just passed. It was a bad idea to explore Ikebukuro in the morning because the concert itself is a massive test of stamina. After tomorrow I will never walk again. Too tired to title this post.

Highlights of the day include seeing Suara, Mizuki Nana, Minorin, and Yukari. ESPECIALLY YUKARI...getting to draw hearts to Koiseyo Onnanoko, getting zapped with the MEROMERO stick, and actually implementing the moves taught to the meron song in the latest Chelsea Girl DVD (good thing I watched that before I left).

Posted by Paranda at 10:29 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

MOSAIC.WAV interview from DNS

There is a lot of overlap between Momoi fans and MOSAIC.WAV fans including myself as I have posted in the past, and from other commenters here. So everybody who likes MOSAIC.WAV should read this fantastic English interview by DENPA NO SEKAI.

It's so impressive I had to make a post just to link to it. Plus Koike is referred to as "legendary." Yep, that's the kind of rep you can get for being one half of UNDER17 8)

Also, willpower to study steadily deceasing since two weeks ago...relearning all the fast habits I had with my trusty TI-89 all these years and re-ingraining them to hp 12c for financial math has been great fun.

Posted by Paranda at 3:07 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Just returned from seeing JAM Project

Still collecting thoughts. Sleep now.

Posted by Paranda at 4:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Yells ~It's a beautiful life~

The new Animelo theme song has come out this week. Since a version has begun floating around online I couldn't resist but preview it while I wait for my copy. The song is rather simple but I derived great enjoyment at the constant switching up of singers, which occurs much more frequently than the previous three Animelo theme songs. Aside from a slightly annoying pronunciation of "Yell", the song has quickly grown on me after multiple listening sessions, and I currently rank it somewhere above Generation A and below Outride.

This year, Momoi got to have three solo lines, slightly up from last year, and more noticeable thanks to more balanced artist rotation (though some still got more coverage than others). Meanwhile, Mizuki Nana, Arika, and most of JAM Project except Makkun got major cuts in their line count, possibly in favor of promoting some newer acts and also because of how many verses they had in previous years.

Unfortunately despite her increased role, Momoi does not appear much in the accompanying video since she was not present during the taping of the group session. The only Momoi footage was of her individual recording session, which is played during her solo segments. This is a shame because she appears in the video very sharply dressed and in perfect makeup, giving off an incredibly radiant smile that would have been sure to draw some attention from anyone getting their first exposure to Momoi in this video. One thing that Momoi is really good at is smiling. Also as consistent with last year's DVD reveal when responding to a comment by Yoffy, Momoi always records sitting down so it was interesting to see her posture again in contrast to other artists who did their singing while standing up.

Thoughts on other artists:
1. Best delivery goes to Suara, for her version of "立ち止まらずに歩こう" compared to everyone else who sang the same line.

2. Tanimiya looks WAYYYY different from what I expected him to look since he is usually so clean cut in cast pictures.

3. I almost didn't recognize Ishikawa Chiaki despite seeing her in person at AX last year, and almost missed it since she only got one solo line like Arika. She looks like she reverse aged 20 years.

4. Kitadani is awesome as usual and likes to acknowledge the camera. Yoffy still does his handwaving. I miss seeing Naonii do his neck twisty thing whenever he sings though...this was not the year he should have sat out now that I'm finally going to see it dammit!

5. I have no clue who the hell May'n is, why is she part of Animelo again? I guess I am ok with her though, based on the video.

6. It is going to be fun seeing how they are going to split this up between like 40 people on stage for each day. I also seriously cannot picture denpa singers like Shaori or MI~KO doing anything this poppy at all. My mind will be blown.

Posted by Paranda at 1:53 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Happy Love Live 2007 was pretty bad

In anticipation to clear my watching queue for when Momoi DVDs arrive, I finally found some time to watch two other seiyuu concerts I had been putting off.

Biggest letdown: Sakakibara Yui's Happy Love Live 2007. I really enjoy listening to Yui, so it was a major disappointment to discover that she can't actually sing very well live. You have some seiyuu idols who sing so perfectly on DVD that you can't help but wonder if there is some sound engineer heavily doctoring up all the audio before release and piping in a studio-recorded dub (Yukarin, but maybe she's just that good), and then you have performances like Yui who gets winded by her own movements. I think I will stick to listening to her CDs from now on. I managed to go about 4 minutes before I could no longer resist the urge to hit fast forward. Even the MCs were boring.

The concert was just two hours of mediocre singing and dancing, two things which Yui can't seem to get to mesh together well. In fact she is so unremarkable, the only way I could tell her apart from her own background dancers was knowing to look in the center.

I fared better with Chihara Minori's Contact First Live Tour, although I already had experience with her live singing from earlier Animelo and Lovedol DVDs so I was familiar with her approximate live singing skill. Even so, I still did a lot of skipping since a lot of the songs just didn't really appeal to me...I think I just stuck to the more well known songs that she released in singles earlier. Since I don't really follow Minorin closely, one thing that I was surprised about was that she seemed much more subdued than her "strawberry" loopy uncontrollably giggling self shown in last year's Lovedol concert or from her AX appearance. MCs were still interesting to watch through though, and Minori could still get a good reaction from the audience. My favorite part was probably the encore, which I didn't skip any of at all.

Posted by Paranda at 2:24 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Going to Animelo 2008 Challenge

Well, it just became official. I am going to Japan this year for Animelo 2008 with Arena A tickets. Having MOSAIC.WAV, coorie, and yozuca added just today further sweetens the deal.

Posted by Paranda at 10:47 AM

Suara LIVE TOUR 2007

Well my Suara concert DVD came yesterday. Speaking not as a Momoist, but as a voice fan in general, I consider Suara to be, probably, one of the best professional singers I have ever heard within the limited scope of Japanese anime/game related music.

Suara has fantastically unique sweet earthy sound and a tremendous amount of range in her voice. She is also one of the few singers who can draw out very deep notes and hold a tune without overly abusing vibrato. Having combined her raw skill with a great selection of songs, Suara managed to easily outshine many other widely respected artists in the same field, including a majority of the people she performed with this year at Animelo. She was no less amazing live in the tour concert DVD. With a great deal of vocal control, she sang nearly each song to perfection, matching or exceeding the quality of her album recorded versions.

Overall, the concert was a great way to show off Suara's strength, training, and discipline as a singer. I have absolutely nothing but praise for her in this aspect. In fact, my only complaint about the entire concert is a highly superficial one regarding her movements. It may be because I am not used to this particular style (most concerts I watch have PPPH-obessessed crowds and singers flipping out harder than Kaneda Tomoko on Schedule I stimulants), but for the first half of the concert Suara just seemed completely rigid and robotic. Her two feet never shifted an inch from the spot they stood, and this was especially obvious since she was wearing a skirt that only went down to her knees. If you muted the audio, she came across like one of those electronic mannequins at theme parks with can only twist their upper torso and arms in certain patterns. While this is something I could expect in solo recording sessions, in front of a live audience, I think there is a lot of wasted potential. It's not like she was at a recital or anything. This was a full blown publicity tour. Once the novelty of "OH SHIT IT'S SUARA SINGING LIVE" wears off, the visual part of the concert started to get a little boring. You may as well have just watched a Suara gif loop a lot.

It wasn't until she sang Ichiban Boshi that she really started moving around, smiling a lot, making direct eye contact with her fans, and really trying to sing to her audience. As a result those segments were my favorite parts out of an already amazing concert. In my blog, I have frequently referred to my numerous attempts to hide my wota tendencies in real life, but this particular DVD is something I would not be ashamed to display on my shelf to even non-anime fans, as I would highly recommend it to all fans of music. It's just quality singing. I almost want to buy a PS3 now so I can order the blu-ray version of this.

Posted by Paranda at 10:39 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Shaori :3

Sakura Saori promos for her in-progress first solo album, and talks a bit about taking care of her throat after recovering from a cold on a new LoveLoveLovable posted today. She started doing these weekly internet shows in September, but this was the first time I actually listened to the whole thing and I found I became seriously uncomfortable after listening to her talk for a while. I was cringing most of the way through, because just thinking about her go on and on in that voice for nearly 20 minutes straight at a significant volume makes my own throat start hurting. Saori is not human. Within 10 years she's going to be speaking through an electrolarynx..

Lovable is probably my most anticipated non-Momoi album of the year though. Primula juliae remix hell yeah!

Posted by Paranda at 6:41 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

New respect for Rita

I've had exposure to Rita since forever, having heard numerous examples of her work from Gwave compilations, remix CDs, and so on yet I never really noticed her. Until now. In the end, the tipping point was due to a little bit of accidental repeated exposure to one song, after listening to disc 3 of the Little Busters. which played several versions of its opening theme. Rita may not have the greatest singing ability, but holy hell does she have an arsenal of awesome voices to sing with. Little Busters! -Little Jumper Ver- is now a regular item on my playlist.

Posted by Paranda at 3:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Impressions: 4-EVER - Music of the Eternities, Sakakibara Yui - Far Away.

I finally got around to listening to 4-EVER's CD "Master of Epic Original Soundtrack - Music of the Eternities" that was released last month. I've only seen two episodes of the show, and it's not that special aside from having a few amusing puns, Chuu*Bukotsu scenes, and CLOVER cast as Waragecha V. The soundtrack on the other hand, is pretty standout. I'm not going to go as far as to compare it to masterpieces like Satou Naoki's work for Eureka Seven, but "Music of the Eternities" is probably too good to be wasted on a seemingly cheap generic show like Master of Epic.

4-EVER uses a large mix of instruments creating a lot of nice and sometimes surprisingly complex sounds. There's stuff using the harpsichord and accordion, full-on orchestral tunes, and cheesy synthpop to provide a theme for every possible setting, and none of it is boring. Other nice bonuses, also composed by 4-EVER, are the Waragecha V theme song and Wonderful World sung by CLOVER, both of which will forcefully drill themselves into your head and make it hard for you to resist singing randomly in public at great social detriment. Koike Masaya once again proves himself as a capable BGM musician, and his new unit is off to a good start if this soundtrack is indicative of what is to come in the future.

Another single I have picked up lately is Sakakibara Yui's new release, Far Away. This CD follows the same formula as her previous two singles, coupling one upbeat fast-paced pop tune with one slower acoustic track (Ai no uta) to show off her range. The production is solid, and although the Far Away lacks the insanely addicting qualities of "Beautiful Day" it is nonetheless fine looping material. Plus, if you enjoy looking at your track play through spectrum analyzers, this one is especially frantic. I also think Ai no uta is one of the better slow tracks that she has put out lately, further adding value to this single. Importing is expensive, and although I regularly sing hyperbolic praises of many many seiyuu, I am actually relatively picky on which artists to buy as routine. At the current rate, Yui is very close to moving herself from my "sometimes buy" to "always buy religiously" list.

Other music suggestions for this month:

Edelweiss Vocal Album "Sunset Sunrise": YURIA and yocuza* are present, which already makes this worth getting, but the real treat on here is some great stuff from Satou Hiromi (the singer, not the porn star) and Nakahara Ryou.

Love Planet Five - Tenjou wo Kakeru Mono Tachi: Standard I've stuff, but this is the first time I've seen a single with this many I've singers since "See You". A good kickoff to the special unit that is possibly here to stay, if Rondorobe giving them their own section means anything. Fans of Kawada Mami should also consider grabbing the Mami Kawada First Live Tour 2006 "Seed" Live&Life vol.1. Although, word of warning for obsessive types, "Vol.1" means you will inevitably be lured into buying more volumes to complete your collection. Goodbye paycheck.

Posted by Paranda at 6:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Windows Media Player 11 still sucks

Since my specially DIY-upgraded 40gb H-340 was snatched away by a thief in October, I had been shopping for a replacement for some time. Unfortunately, the excellent H-340 model had been discontinued by iRiver and followed up by newer (yet somehow inferior) H-10 models. Aside from that series, there was no other HD player I wanted so I decided to go with the flash player instead. Originally I wanted to wait for the Cowon iAudio D1 model, but as Blip Festival came up I decided I couldn't wait any longer.

Apparently, photography, recording, video-taping, etc..was encouraged by the festival organizers, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone by buying the 4GB Clix which had just come out since it also had a recorder. I always record events when allowed now - a lesson I learned after MISSING THE CHANCE to do this with Kawasumi at Otakon. Here's a short clip of YMCK's Opening at Blip Festival

I've now been using the Clix for a week. As an mp3 player, the clix is OK so far, but a major MAJOR downside is they force you to use WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER to synch files to the player. Although WMP11 is an improvement over WMP10, and it looks fancy and glossy, it is still a huge crock of shit when it comes to supporting ID3v2.4 tags - it doesn't, and it'll overwrite to ID3v1 or the equally crappy ID3v2.3 if you look away! As a foobar2000 user for God knows how long, I refuse to switch over to this slow and buggy abomination of music software until at least ID3v2.4 support is added.

So far I've been compromising by making a backup of my entire music collection (hooray for 2TB - I can't stop buying drives) and a disposable folder specifically for when transferring over to WMP. In short, it sucks.

Posted by Paranda at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)

Esper Mami Tribute Song by Momoi

The ESPER MAMI DVD-BOX, part 2 was released today. Along with it comes the Esper Mami Tribute CD. Momoi shows her love for the series with a new original song, "E.S.P. Thanks to Mamichan" which she wrote, composed, and sang herself. I really love it whenever Momoi composes her own work, it always ends up being catchy. I want this CD so bad right now.

animate.tv has kindly uploaded the short version PV to their website. Danger section: watch out for "beep! beep! beep! beep!" accompanied by hand motions, it is easily over critical mass in moeness.

Animate.tv PV page

I think this may be the best she has ever looked on TV while not in cosplay. Very nice hair, makeup, and wardrobe. It's hard to believe she's only one week away from her 29th birthday.

Also paying respects to Esper Mami is her fellow seiyuu and friend, Ueda Kana. Both videos can be found on the page. Make sure you click the video links on the right if you want a nice broadband version.

Posted by Paranda at 7:58 PM

Yume no Baton release

Momoi's brand new single, Yume no Baton came out in Japan today. There is a CD format as well as a more expensive limited edition version that includes a DVD. Yume no Baton is the ED theme to Haruko Update, and coupled with song is Koi no Meiousei.

Chuo Line, which was sung during her Wonder Momo-i live tour, was erroneously reported to be the c/w song by CDJapan many months ago. I somehow missed this until I looked at the cover just now.

Also possibly of interest to fans of moe music, Makino Yui's first album is out. I've been following her ever since season one of ARIA, and so far she has been putting out pretty good singles, especially the ED to that NHK anime (I still haven't gotten around to watching it). I think I'm really going to like this album. If so, Makino may be the ninth Japanese artist to cross over from the "download" to "buy" category for me.

Finally, Chihara Minori's Lovedol character single is out too. She's done a great job singing for the Haruhi singles, and I've heard nothing but praise from seiyuu3 about her album, so I'm pretty curious. I've been ever so slightly let down by her voice work in Lovedol, but as I've learned, her singing and voice acting are on completely different levels so the song itself will probably still be good.

In general, there's lots of stuff this week.

Posted by Paranda at 8:19 PM | Comments (3)

Again ranks 29 on Oricon weekly chart

Yui-nyan's two singles released last week have both made the top 50 in Oricon singles charts. "Again" reached number 29, and "Magical Generation" reached 36. That's pretty impressive. Actually, that's ridiculously impressive for someone who has never released any singles on a major label before. I don't think even Momoi ever got that high. UNDER17's most popular single is probably "Love Slave" which reached a high of 55 (although Love Slave did manage to stay on the charts 6 times, which shows for something).

Then again, the OP singles of the same anime are also on that chart. We've all seen from Haruhi that otaku do indeed have enough sway in Japan to influence charts heavily like these. Then again, Haruhi is one thing, this is......Otoboku? Happiness? Honestly, aren't these niche shows or does Japan currently have a massive fever for cute crossdressers like Mizuho and Jun?

Whichever way, by her own merits, by association with her more famous peers (Aice5), or by riding her way up with a successful anime series, Yui is going to be a seiyuu superstar at this rate, and once she makes it, I have confidence she'll be able to maintain her position. Yui seems to have a well honed ability for cuteness, and plenty of experience to promote herself very well without a manager breathing down her neck.

While many seiyuu are indistinguishable from pull-string voice box dolls puppetted by their agencies, Yui is more similar to Momoi in that she has a specific vision for herself, and she's doing everything in her power to take control of where her career path is now going. Since childhood she had her sights set on being a self-made singer, and that kind of drive is showing itself through her work. Although signed under Hobirecords, she basically produces every aspect of her product: writing her own lyrics, choreographing her music videos, managing her fashion for photo shoots, and arranging much of her own advertising and networking.

She also fields difficult questions very well from what I've seen. In a recent interview, the subject of her "loli" roles in the past was brought up, a rather embarassing topic. She managed to laugh it off, focusing more on the skill aspect than the context or content of the voice. She talked about how she had to work consistently in the high ranges to perform them well and now rejects them because she would rather explore more ranges, but invited those still interested in these specific characters to visit her site where all of her work, questionable or not, was proudly displayed.

She acknowledged that Yes there are adult roles that can make her look bad, but effectively disowned the roles by reducing their significance to all but a resume bullet point, writing them off as professional jobs without disowning those fans who discovered her through them. She provided no ammo for which a critic could use to attack. Yui understood very well that a scandal is only a scandal if you treat it like one, and by being so frank with her history, she gave off the attitude of a moe-friendly progressive thinker. How's that for PR sense?

For the record, despite writing this piece of praise, I am still strongly of the opinion that Momoi > Yui.

Posted by Paranda at 12:02 AM | Comments (0)

One week until Saigo no Rock release

Quick reminder for everyone: November 8, Saigo no Rock, the OP to Haruko Update will be out. You can hear a sample of it on the radio program I mentioned ealier.

With the OP/ED and DVDs being released within 3 months from now, Momoi is making the rounds on the magazines and news again, proving to everyone that she can still somehow look cute in seifuku at age 28. This month, she is featured in the November issue of PAM! and has an interview in "HM3 Special."

You can read PAM! free (and hi-res) online at http://www.avexmovie.jp/pam/comic.php?vol=078.
There are preview screenshots of the DVD inside!

As for HM3, I am back at school now so I have access to a scanner again. I may scan the HM3 pages too when my monthly magazine package comes (I finally broke down and subscribed to Megami and HM3 in September ;_;. No "Seiyuu Grandprix" unfortunately, I heard she was in that last month too)

Posted by Paranda at 8:11 PM | Comments (2)

Sakakibara Yui pumps out two excellent singles same day

Sakakibara Yui is rapidly climbing to fame this season with voice roles and songs in two bishoujo anime. People are already starting to take notice, and the dual CD releases today will only gain her more fans. Too much? Dilution? No way. Both releases feature Yui-nyan at her best, each containing one upbeat cutesy song (super addictive; I've been playing them all day) plus one other slower track showcasing her wider singing range.

Purchase Links:
Magical Generation
Again

Tip: Beautiful Day is amazing. Listen to it, love it.

Posted by Paranda at 11:32 PM

Sakakibara Yui's album "Honey" released

Sakakibara Yui, who I recently became a fan of, released her second album today. Based on her first album "yuithm" and her four singles, I'd say her regular singing isn't the kind of stuff I would usually listen to. I wouldn't call it substandard, but it's heavily outclassed by what I consider to be her strength, that is, to sing in the cutest way imaginable. After seeing the PV for Honey, the second album may contain more her cute singing style than the first (which only had about 3 under that category), so I will probably be picking it up.

Also, although Yui-nyan on the surface appears to be a suspiciously good "newbie" with a surprising amount of seiyuu contacts (she links to some famous names on her site, and many of those link back to her), apparently she did a ton of idol and stage work since 1999 under the name Hinano Mayo, including being in an idol group with Asano Masumi. So...we can say she has a bit more experience than her profile would let on. Why she dropped that name, I don't know, one thing is clear and that is she gets a lot more work under "Yui." Either she's finally been discovered or, she previously sucked and has improved enough to deserve promotion. I won't speculate because I don't know anything yet.

Two anime that she has roles in will be broadcasting shortly this season. She has only appeared in games (that I haven't played) so far, but I have heard her voice work elsewhere. I enjoy her music videos, her radio acting, and especially game singing so I'm looking forward to seeing what she can do on a television anime series.

Posted by Paranda at 11:51 PM | Comments (0)

Ippozutsu and other Momoi news

Last month, I offhandedly mentioned how excited I was about the new TV anime Lovedol. Specifically, I was excited about the concept of an "idol anime" with a great cast, because it signals an inevitable stream of character CDs. But that was all speculation then. Now, it's confirmed.

According to the September issue of avex's free monthly publication pam!, there will be a series of single releases: one per week starting in November at 1260 yen each. Probably more as they release compilation vocal albums. The ultimate hope I have here of course is to have lasting seiyuu stables as a result, releasing single after single and compilation albums reaching "Sister Princess" levels.

Here's the release schedule if you're having difficulty reading the flash file on that site:

11/01 - Nogawa Sakura - Koi, hajimemashita
11/08 - Nogawa Sakura - Hateshi no nai sora
11/15 - Nakahara Mai - WISH STAR ni na.a.re
11/22 - Momoi Haruko - Ippozutsu
11/29 - Goto Yuko - Kiipon! Kiipon!
12/06 - Chihara Minori - Candy(bitter&sweet)
12/13 - Sakai Kanako - Junjou ko wa RARURARUN♪

Although I've bolded Momoi's song for emphasis reasons, I'm pretty much looking forward to every single one of these releases - especially more singing from Minorin.

But anyway, Ippozutsu is not the ONLY interesting Momoi news lately. According to her Avex page, tomorrow Momoi has a mini-live event at Osaka's Days Pier, where she will show a preview of her OTHER newest song, Saigo no Rock, the opening theme to her upcoming DVD. Toranoana will also be having a mini-live on October 1st. The single will be on sale officially November 8th this year.

Finally, Momoi's Komugi character has undergone somewhat of a surprise resurrection. Check out this month's character radio special "Komugi's Magical Nurse Station ZZ."

Speaking of radio, fans of Koike Masaya, YURIA, or Kesugi should tune in to "Moe Music Station," an online radio program broadcast every Friday by their band Sweets Tankentai. It's been on for a while but I only started listening two weeks ago. On most older sites, the show is billed under YURIA and Kesugi only, but Koike has been on every single time I've listened so far - I think he's just officially part of the show. His picture is part of the radio icon anyway so maybe he was added to the roster, I don't know.

Fun facts about Sweets Tankentai band members gleaned from listening?
1. Koike still uses and answers to the name Aniki.
2. All three are exclusive Mac users (although you probably already knew Koike was a mac fan just by visiting his homepage).
3. All of them love Haruhi Suzumiya!

edit: Apparently I misspelled "resurrection." That'll show me for playing too much Discworld.
edit2: I claimed earlier in this post that Momoi's new song was called Moe wa ROCK da. This is incorrect. An update on "Momoi no Homupage" indicates that the new song is actually titled Saigo no Rock. It appears that Moe wa ROCK da is just tagline of sorts for the promotion.

Posted by Paranda at 11:59 AM

Why do people think Aya Hirano's voice change on Hey Hey Hey is the greatest thing ever?

So I guess this post sounds a bit like flamebait for the Haruhi fanboys out there, but um...pretty much all seiyuu have an incredibly wide range of voices. Even Asami Sanada can convincingly play a guy in Rozen Maiden and then switch to fucking Dejiko or Vita for chrissakes. Hirano's voice change, while neat, was not OMG BEST SEIYUU I BET NOBODY CAN DO THAT LOL. Plus Hirano was already using a fake high pitch voice so the switch to low made the change sound more impressive than it really is (she claims that's her "real" voice but that's so obviously bullshit, just like her staged all-female audience). Hey I don't have anything against Hirano, but let's not hype her to the moon okay? I'm just slightly bitter because she's taking up like 10 pages in every damn seiyuu photobook I've bought for the past 6 months. Aya Hirano is the John Cena of voice acting. She's cute and all but I just don't like having people crammed down my throat as THE NEXT SEIYUU SUPERSTAR SENSATION. Now Tomokazu Sugita or Minori Chihara...there's two people I can get behind as being awesome.

Also Hirano is way too hot for her own good. It's hard to measure objectively just how skilled she actually is as a voice actress when everyone is screaming "KAWAII" in your ear. She only has one series where she's had a decent amount of lines or range of emotion, so I suspect a lot of current fanboyism for Hirano is either residual Haruhi love OR based on her being a 19 year old cutie. When the Haruhi fanaticism inevitably dies down, will her career last on talent, or will it crash horribly the moment she gets facially disfigured?

Maybe I'm exhibiting elitist internet maleism or coming off sounding like someone who's desperately trying to be "indie," but keep in mind I have openly declared my love for Yui Horie, Yukari Tamura, and Nana Mizuki...all of whom could certainly be considered very very mainstream. Remember I am not against Aya Hirano on a basic level. I recognize she has some ability (in fact she is my 32nd most played artist on Last.fm) and I honestly want her to do well, like I do for all rookie seiyuu with a lot of potential. While I'm not so fond of her acting, I will admit she is an amazing singer by ALL standards. Still, I feel they are pushing her too fast too far and I'm personally getting annoyed by her ubiquitous presence in every voice actor related thing I read now. Take that as you will.

Oh and in case you've been living under a rock for the past few months or something, here's the segment I'm talking about.

Update: The original video was taken down due to usage violation less than a day after I posted this. That's so strange. New link up.

Posted by Paranda at 5:31 AM | Comments (3)

LOVE.EXE PV rumors clarified

According to Exafield, it seems the "PV" is actually live footage from her recent concert (in the above outfit). However it has been restricted to playing in Toranoana store windows for now, so I highly doubt we'll be able to see it (maybe on the DVD later) unless somebody sets up a cam outside the store and posts on youtube or something. Searching for LOVE.EXE on youtube will get this fun little video of Yuki Nagato kicking large amounts of ass though.

Speaking of Yuki Nagato, there's an interesting little entry on Minori Chihara's blog (VA for Yuki). Apparently she went to Momoi's concert. They are on good terms it seems. That makes Minorin twice as cool as previously thought. And I had already liked her in-character singing best out of the Haruhi seiyuu trio. She and Momoi both have roles on the upcoming TV anime Lovedol ~Lovely Idol~.

It should be noted that Lovedol, although at first glance appears to be utter garbage concept-wise, has a wonderfully interesting seiyuu cast even if we exclude Momoi. After seeing the results in Magikano, God knows I will wade through any kind of shit for Mai Nakahara and Sakura Nogawa cast together. Not only that, as an idol anime we are guaranteed plenty of character CDs and image songs, so even if the show winds up as a swirling vortex of suck, at least we'll be left with some great residual merchandise. Remember Wandaba Style? Same deal.

Posted by Paranda at 6:49 AM

MOSAIC.WAV's first major label single

If you are living outside of Japan like me and have ever tried to buy MOSAIC.WAV, you are probably familiar with how frustrating it can be. Aside from getting lucky in auctions, MOSAIC.WAV albums simply aren't sold anywhere that agrees to ship overseas for a reasonable cost. The individual singles are even more difficult to find, sold usually only instore or at events like Comiket. However, this may soon change. For the first time, online shopping sites like cdapan.com, yesasia.com, and even amazon.com have all put up MOSAIC.WAV preorder pages for "Kyun Kyun Panic," the ending theme to TV anime Mamotte Lolipop which began broadcasting last month (subs by NnK, although I can't see why anyone sane would possibly want to watch this).

Backed by Lantis, it seems MOSAIC.WAV is finally getting their long deserved first major release, and hopefully not the last. Kyun Kyun Panic will be on sale August 23, 2006.

Update:
I forgot to mention, Koike Masaya is in the production credits. Also, here is a tracklisting:

01.キュン・キュン・パニック
02.らりほるらりほ
03.キュン・キュン・パニック（off vocal)
04.らりほるらりほ（off vocal)

Now if someone can tell me what the hell "rarihorurariho" is supposed to mean...

Posted by Paranda at 8:14 PM | Comments (0)

I am now a Yui Sakakibara fan.

This was the song that finally did it: DokiDoki ga Tomaranai.

That is all.

edit: Also check out MUSIC in my heart, which I didn't upload but I'm sure you can find it somewhere.

Posted by Paranda at 7:23 PM | Comments (0)

Seiyuu and Anime Song Music Guide

On the way back from work, I stopped by Kinokuniya to see if I could get my hands on the august issue of Anikan. While the mission failed, I did manage to come back with something equally interesting:

Aspect's Seiyuu and Anime Song Music Guide, a full color voice actor and anime song guidebook with some 100 artists and 200 titles listed, most with a brief description/review and lots of pictures. There are also articles and additional photoshoots with certain artists like Round Table featuring Nino and Ryoko Shiraishi. Most importantly, a large section is dedicated to a Momoi interview with plenty of photos. Unfortunately, I don't have a scanner so I can't scan any pages...but I do know how to rip DVDs! And it just so happens that this guidebook also includes a 22 minute "message" DVD with many of the featured artists.

See Momoi's message on youtube (1:23)

Posted by Paranda at 9:02 PM | Comments (2)

Momoi CD, Otakon loot, and other things

momo-i quality ~Best of Momoi~, Halko Momoi's first independent album, has arrived. Somewhat disappointingly, the "photobook" is not a real separate book but actually a hybrid built into the first edition album jewel case. The case is a hardcover book format, with adorable Momoi baby and school pictures (with commentary) as well as a collage of recording studio photos attached to the inside cover. There is an additional booklet neatly sandwiched between some pages of the photobook, containing lyrics accompanied by photos of Angel Momoi and Demon Momoi in various stages of DBZ-style battle before finally reconciling their differences on the last page. The disc is a fine black with the text "momo-i quality" printed in a futuristic silver font.

Lyrics booklet:

Photobook:

Inside Disc:

A separately packed B2 (20"x28*) promotional poster is included.

Although momo-i quality is a compilation album of past songs, upon listening it actually feels quite new since most of the songs previously released have been remixed. Here are the tracks I've picked out that have not been previously released:

Opening - dreaming more! more! - is an instrumental intro remix loosely based on Motto Yume Miyou and was composed by Momoi herself.

LOVE.EXE -momo-i quality version- features more complex instrumentals this time, arranged professionally by Shinya Saitou. The vocals have also been significantly stripped of distracting effects, and the overall result is a much cleaner song that maintains the catchiness of the original.

Far and away ~party night~ -new mix- is my current favorite on this album and a wonderful remix of Feria's theme song from Prism Ark: Prism Heart II. Slow clear vocals set to a good tune always always tend to sit well with me. The arranger is Haraddy.

Akihabalove -summery summer version- A very impressive remix by Halko Momoi, who according to the credits also played composer/arranger on this one. I find the background instrumentals a lot more varied and interesting than the pure synth sound by Perfume. As for whether she does a better job of singing, I think her pronouncing of "dekiruyo" is a thousand times cuter than Nocchi. I will not say more at the risk of starting a Perfume vs. Momoi holy war.

As for Motto, Yume, Miyou!! -now I feel...version-: although it is "new" in name, it appears to be the exact same song as bright future next step version. If someone can correct me on this and point out any subtle differences that I may have missed, please let me know.

Overall, given the new tracks and the extras, this album is solid in terms of content and a good buy for any Momoi fan, especially since many of the singles featured in this CD are no longer available for purchase.

But aside from Momoi stuff, my mail today also contained a few other goodies which had probably been sitting in CDJapan's offices for months before I finally relieved them of their misery and let them ship everything together:

Clockwise from the top-left corner: momo-i quality, Mami Kawada's Seed, two Kimiko Koyama albums, To Heart 2 Soundtrack and Character Songs, Marinarina and Zoku Marinarina.

And lastly, because I forgot to post about it...I returned last week from Otakon. The trip was fairly productive, and I managed to cram in most of the presentations I wanted to see, excluding 4chan because fuck that idiotic line and the powertripping staffers who tried to herd it.

Out of the video showings, I most significantly came away with newfound appreciation of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha, which I previously dismissed as retarded magical girl pedobait (I was ESPECIALLY put off by this genre ever since the steaming turd that was Magical Canan - which I forced myself to watch solely for Rokku character designs and Mizuki Nana voice - who by the way probably realized this show was shit and mailed in an absolutely dismal performance that I still haven't completely forgiven for someone of her caliber). Now realize the error of my judgmental ways. In the 4 episodes of "A's" that I saw, I learned that Nanoha is not a panty flashing girly girl moe show but actually about powerful mages wielding awesome steam-releasing pump-action cartridge-loaded rocket-powered polo-playing jackhammers scored to a John Williamsesque full orchestra soundtrack (HELL YEAH). Goldenboy was also pretty good and I will probably be tracking it down eventually. Out of all films, my favorite showing without question was Osamu Tezuka's Cleopatra, a terrible low-budget and unsubbed 18+ movie which was simultaneously the best and worst thing ever.

Industry-wise, I attended about 12 industry panels during my trip. Notable guests I met include Madhouse founder Masao Maruyama and director/character designer Kazuto Nakazawa, two great guests who both had CRIMINALLY low attendance (like 20-30). Interestingly enough, Masao Maruyama went to see Nobuteru Yuki's panel, and sat down directly next to me - I scored an early autograph this way. I had to miss most of the J-Rock panels due to scheduling reasons, although I did get into the MUCC/Nana Kitade concert thanks to some incredible luck. Out of everything, Ayako Kawasumi was probably my favorite for obvious reasons, and I'm still kicking myself today for forgetting to bring my iRiver with me to record it. During the autographing session, she signed my Maritan book and was particularly amused that I even knew about it.

Here is the Otakon haul, limited not by my funds but by the size of my backpack (Sunday in dealer's room was AWESOME. My budget was only $200 but I filled up wayyy before that):

As you can see, a couple of good things up there..such as two Aria figure collections, new YURIA album Honey Bee, an issue of HM3 (seiyuu photobook magazine), oh and the crown jewel + ultimate goal of the trip:


Two autographed items by Ayako Kawasumi! :) I'm quite the happy camper.

By the way, Ayako is much MUCH cuter than any pictures would have you believe. She's just not very photogenic.

Posted by Paranda at 7:33 PM | Comments (5)

momo-i quality on sale now

Album is now in stores. My own package has shipped and is due to arrive in 2 days.

According to some Japanese blogs, there are additional extras aside from the photobook. However, they will remain a surprise for those of you ordering :).

Also, AVEX has a new feature at the top of their page. MOMOI PROJECT!!! It seems like there will be a three part project with the first part, her "essay" coming this fall. A DVD drama disc is planned for next spring, and opening/ending songs for the DVD will be out in November and December.

Posted by Paranda at 10:06 AM | Comments (2)

New Halko Momoi album release date set for August 9th

Way back in January, I posted a small note about a planned Momoi album. Then it was never discussed again and I forgot about it. So imagine my surprise when Plug announced a release date for "Momo-i quality ~Best of Momoi~", a new compilation album featuring much of her post-UNDER17 work. The album will go on sale August 9th, 2006 for 3000 yen (3150 after tax, which is irrelevant if you are ordering outside of Japan).

Although Momoi may have dropped some hints during her fanclub concert earlier this Sunday, Plug says they will release more details at a later time so there is no official word on goodies or the tracklist yet. However, only hours after the announced release date, CDJapan has listed the product here and promised to include a promo poster if you get the first pressing, so definitely preorder if you want one!

Here's mine:

Also, I finally managed to buy the elusive "Akihabalove" DVD from last summer, so expect some videos making the rounds at Youtube very soon. :)

Posted by Paranda at 10:13 AM | Comments (8)

Sweets Tankentai first album "NA NA NA" released.

This is a bit late, but hey I had tests.

Sweets Tankentai released their first album earlier this Wednesday. The band features YURIA, Masaya Koike (of UNDER17 fame), and K-SUGI. Release details can be found at Broccoli. It seems like most of it is filled with various OP/ED songs they did in the past year, but there are also some original songs in the mix. Guest artist MOSAIC.WAV is in one of the songs.

Subjectively speaking, I feel it is probably MUCH better than YURIA's first original album released two months ago. Examples of their excellent work can be found in the Canvas 2 OP/ED, which despite the horribly disappointing ending, is still a pretty good show. I suspect my forgiving attitude to this series must be attributed to the hypnotic nature of this music.

Posted by Paranda at 2:00 AM | Comments (1)

My turn

Now it's my turn to flaunt this DVD after everyone else already got theirs. Stupid SAL shipping :(. So anyway, the pacakge came after much waiting. Final projects are coming up and I have too much to do this week so I am going to put off comparing this new DVD with the old one until i have more time. A lot more time. Like.."after final exams/start of summer" time. I'll say this though - the extras are a bit disappointing. A single folded sheet as a liner note, with a B&W image on the back? No stickers/booklets/anything? I think they fixed the aspect ratio though, and got rid of the stupid interlacing. That's good at least. More on this later. In addition to Wonder Momo-i DVD, I have also received KOTOKO's new single "being," limited edition version, and Arisa Nakayama's mini album "Heart to Heart." This is significant since I rarely import non KOTOKO/Momoi CDs. Heart to Heart is just that good to be worth getting, so consider it a big deal I guess.

Posted by Paranda at 11:42 PM | Comments (0)

Mebius Ring

A short version of Halko Momoi's new song, Mebius Ring, is now up. It is the opening song for the H-game Sweet Room which will be released April 28th. Information can be found at the game's website (NWS!!!)here(NWS!!!). H-game songs often tend to bring out Momoi's best work, so I'm very glad she doesn't consider herself beyond doing these just yet. It is pretty catchy.

I've ripped an mp3 copy for anyone who wants to throw it on a portable player without WMA support until the full version comes out. Please enjoy.

It is back to studying for me.

Posted by Paranda at 1:33 AM | Comments (2)

Wonder-Momo-i DVD and Mami Kawada's SEED out today.

Well Momoi's DVD is finally out. Let's see if I preordered early enough to get in on the limited extras or not. There's not much new to report yet that I haven't already said in my previous anticipation posts, but in the coming days I will be scouring the blogs of Japanese fans who bought it for some reactions and information.

Regarding today's second significant artist release: Mami Kawada is the second I'VE singer to to catch a big break, having signed on with Geneon last year and released several singles. Her first album, Seed, came out today. I unfortunately did not know about this album release soon enough to have packed it together with my Wonder Momo-i DVD which shipped this morning. Earlier in the month, Mami also announced her first Live Tour in Japan which will begin in May. Advance tickets were made available through ThreeNine.

Posted by Paranda at 11:32 PM | Comments (4)

YURIA 1st Album

An amusing note on my last update: it seems someone linked to my front page in a Perfume thread yesterday on 2ch and it got hammered to shit in record time, which is why there was some downtime earlier today. I suppose getting slashdotted by those guys is an honor though. Thanks 2ch!

Anyway, my purpose for today's post is simply a reminder that YURIA's first album will be coming out TOMORROW!

As I mentioned earlier in this entry, YURIA basically kicked my ass back in November 05 after a chain of events turned me into a diehard fan. These included watching Shuffle, Canvas 2, and rediscovering Rurun Heart in my long lost unsorted denpa folder, among other things. Now YURIA is finally going to make her album debut, and hopefully a sign of more good things to come. --Please more voice roles!

Posted by Paranda at 4:43 AM | Comments (0)

Some ramblings on Perfume

Today I am going to write about the rising popularity of Perfume, the techno-pop trio that permanently gained my respect after an awesome performance at Wonder Momo-i. Be warned, this is gonna get long. In case you've never heard of them, take a look at their latest music video on YouTube, it might just prompt you to read this thing: Computer City

The members, Ohmoto Ayano (Nocchi), Nishiwaki Ayaka (A-chan), and Kashino Yuka (Kashiyuka) were recruited from the Actors School Hiroshima in 2001 to form pop idol group Perfume. They released two limited singles the following year: Omajinai Perori in March and Kareshi Boshuchu in November. In 2003, they signed with Bee-Hive to produce what is considered their first real indie single, "Sweet Donuts." They followed up with Monochrome Effect and Vitamin Drop in 04. At this point in time, Perfume's personality had been defined as "cute," but their sound was messy - it was all over the place and inconsistent in quality. Frankly I have trouble listening to their early stuff.

2005 was a big year for them. Perfume started going toward techno-pop which was a great move. That summer, Halko Momoi switched on her DJ Momoi personality and gave Perfume a huge push with the Akiba crowd by producing and promoting Akihabalove. This would be the release that eventually hooked me into Perfume fandom. Later that year, they put out their major national debut single "Linear Motor Girl" (this was a big release, you can even find it on Amazon.com in the US). Most recently, Perfume released their second major single "Computer City" this January.

Talent-wise, Perfume has what it takes. Their biggest weakness was their highly inconsistent sound, which has since been fixed now that they appear to have settled in with the electronic theme. Both their two new major albums have been very good and consistent, and their website makes it very clear they're shooting for a futuristic look. The group definitely has the performance part down too - they have great coordination and dance very well together. The music videos feature some extremely cool coordinated moves, and their live shows are equally exciting.

However, there is a lot of improvement that can still be made now that they're in the big leagues. Nocchi is quite obviously the weakest singer although she appears to be the most popular based on her fan club numbers. This is probably because she is ridiculously cute and acts pretty crazy when she's not singing, but I think in the long run, it will be more important to have passable vocals - Nocchi has screwed up repeatedly during live segments, and she sounds quite shaky even on mastered recordings. Sometimes it gets so bad she can ruin a good song. Needs a bit more practice there, but hopefully Perfume's new improved national presence will encourage her to work on her vocals a bit more - maybe get a voice coach.

A-chan appears to be the most comfortable on stage, which is why she appears to have the only speaking role in the group. She also seems to have the most common sense when appealing to fans (for a very obvious example - if you watch the Momoi video, when the fans start waving to Perfume A-CHAN IS THE ONLY ONE OUT OF THE THREE WHO REALIZED TO WAVE BACK. I mean..that's pretty basic right?) Unfortunately, as leader of the group (I say if you speak for the group, you are the defacto leader), A-chan does not have a very strong voice (although much much better than Nocchi), and a lot of times she comes across as mumbling.

Kashiyuka is my top pick right now, with no obvious flaws that I have seen yet. I may be biased though, because I basically decided she was going to be my favorite after about 30 seconds into the Momoi concert, after she delivers two simple introduction lines in the most awesome intonation possible. I have a weak spot for skilled voice work, and that great first impression of Kashiyuka will not be undone easily. Hopefully she starts getting some more attention.

But I don't want to get in too deep to discussing each person, or even just writing a few more extra paragraphs fawning over Kashiyuka because it just doesn't make me feel comfortable. During my research, I found out that apparently all three members of Perfume are actually younger than me: age 17, with A-chan being the youngest having her birthday just 5 days ago. This comes as a great shock considering my original estimate of their ages was somewhere around 22 to 25. Holy crap I was way off! Suddenly I feel dirtier than before in my fandom...especially since I used to consider it a mark of pride to be able to distance myself from those creepy guys who like the Morning Musume teens. Now I have nothing to hold myself above them. But, it is too late to turn back; after hearing Kashiyuka's promo and seeing the group perform at Wonder Momo-i, I have decided that they are going places.

Like an investor in the voice securities market, I am going to back Perfume early so I can hopefully reap the greatest reward any internet nerd knows: the right to say "I so called that shit" years down the line. Feel free to join me; we can be investor buddies :)

Link:

In an unrelated event: I signed up with Mixi today after Priz sent me an invite. My profile link is here if you feel like adding me and have an account. It looks like some sort of Japanese myspace/facebook, and while I usually hate joining up for websites like these, so far I find the various discussion communities formed on Mixi to be pretty useful for keeping up to date with seiyuu news, especially the calendar feature which is extremely neat - A LOT EASIER compared to say..browsing the 2ch behemoth (but I've only been browsing mixi for 2 hours so what do I know?).

Posted by Paranda at 5:56 AM

Chuo Line

As I said in my last post, I was going to find out where the hell Chuo Line came from. It turns out it was a song from a live event very long ago by Momoi called the Mail Me Campaign. As far as I know, and I looked pretty hard, there are no CD copies of it in existence.

Thus, I did what I had to do..rip directly from DVD.
Chuo Line (Wonder Momo-i Live tour final version)

edit: bonus Akihabalove track :)
Akihabalove (Wonder Momo-i Live tour final version)

Posted by Paranda at 1:04 AM | Comments (4)

We love Space Akiba-Pop

Technically not Halko news, but it's time see what Koike's been up to, as we haven't heard from him in a while. As you may or may not know, Masaya Koike (Aniki of UNDER17) recently teamed up with dempa-song duo MOSAIC.WAV and is featured as a guest artist on their brand new album, Space Akiba-Pop, contributing his arrangement and guitar skills to several songs. Sold in limited quantities earlier last week at Comiket 69 and with a street date release of January 20th, it has surprisingly found its way onto the Internet, allowing us commoners an early listen. I express surprise only because this album seems to be getting more coverage (aside from the usual Japanese P2P sources, two IRC groups have also released mp3 versions through torrent sites) than MOSAIC.WAV's previous album "We Love Akiba-Pop" which cannot be found anywhere online as far as I know or cared to search for.

MOSAIC.WAV consists of MI-KO on vocals and Susumu Kayamori on keyboard, veterans to the dempa* song business. They work for Sham Studio. Space Akiba-Pop is their second full length album released to date. On this album are all the familiar electronic beats and MI-KO's adorable vocals and cheerleader-esque choruses. It clearly does not disappoint with respect to the first album, with tracks like "Space! Wave! Akiba-Pop" being just as addictive as its predecessor song...or even the cover art, this time an illustration by master-of-cute artist Poyoyon Rock. Plus it has Koike and we know what he can do! With KOTOKO now firmly in the "rock/pop" genre of music and no signs of turning back, we desperately needed another top-tier moe song performer to fill her gap. MOSAIC.WAV was a worthy claimant to this position for quite some time, and their second release now cements their long-term establishment in this field.

If you question my judgment being blurred by my obessions with UNDER17, let me state that I was a MOSAIC.WAV fan even prior to Koike's involvement with them. Not to take away from him or anything, but this album would have received my full endorsement regardless of its ties to the former UNDER17 member. I strongly suggest checking this out if you are a moe song fan like me and have not already heard of this group. Samples of some songs may be found freely available for download on their studio page, but if you plan on buying the CDs anyway (or are feeling particularly unethical) I suppose you could also hunt down the previously mentioned rips on P2P. I need more listening time on the new album to make an accurate recommendation for the new songs, but I can confidently push my old favorites like the original "We Love Akiba-Pop" and "Futsu no Uta." You can't go wrong with these.

* Someone correct me on this, but I believe dempa song is the original term for moe songs - UNDER17 has been credited with coining the word "moe song" according to an article on Excite which has now largely replaced dempa song in usage. The two terms can still be used interchangeably however (with exception to mature content), it appears MOSAIC.WAV has chosen to stick to the older term for consistency.

Posted by Paranda at 8:01 PM

YURIA has finally won me over.

This graph is actually rather misleading, as YURIA has always been awesome. Instead, the low points only indicate the time when I myself was TOO STUPID and TOO DEAF to know it was so. I have since been enlightened.

I had heard this song before when randoming through my mp3s, but I never bothered to really pay attention to the voice or who was singing. Today I randomed to it again, but thanks to Shuffle I became fully aware of this song's quality. (Thought process: "Hmm whoever sings this sounds strangely like the actress for Ama Shigure, who I really really love the voice work for. Hey this song is pretty good now that I am listening to it. And I love that voice, let's check the tags: wait..this is Yuria? Hold on, now let me check the Shuffle staff listing...*click*...AAAAAHHH YURIAAAAA!!!") Yuria really is at her best when she does the whiny, ditzy, yet somehow mind-meltingly cute high pitched voice. She also seems to have slight pronounciation quirk on certain consonants and vowels that I can't pin down or describe, but I know I can't get enough of it.

Posted by Paranda at 5:04 PM | Comments (0)

Mami Kawada is unstoppable.

Mami Kawada is probably the only I'VE singer other than KOTOKO that I follow with invested interest. To most people, they sound rather similar and often indistinguishable (usually to Mami's disadvantage - I can't tell you how many times I've seen the Onegai Teacher and Twins ending themes miscredited to KOTOKO), but I vouch that after repeated listenings, it becomes very easy to notice the unique and very ear-soothing inflection in Mami's voice. In fact, I would go so far as to say that she is now a better singer than KOTOKO. Her earlier songs simply weren't catchy enough to gain any sort of attention, and were often relegated to features for games, or used as anime ending themes.

That is quickly changing, and this year is a particularly good year for her. Like KOTOKO, she signed on with Geneon and started getting more attention, from both fans and her own composers. Her first release under Geneon was Radiance, the opening theme for Starship Operators. Radiance totally blew me away, and contains what I believe to be the most addictive intro sequence ever in anime song history. At the time, I considered Radiance to so ridiculously awesome that I instantly declared it the pinnacle of her musical career.

Apparently I was wrong, because her new single, Hishoku no Sora, is even better. It is by far the best opening theme this season, for the highly promising Shakugan no Shana animation. She is now 2/2 for hits, and headed in a great direction with Geneon supporting her. As of now, Mami Kawada is unstoppable. I am almost afraid of hearing her next song; will I be able to handle it?

Posted by Paranda at 1:25 PM | Comments (1)

Holy Weight Loss

A rip of the Wonder Momoi and some scans were released by LonE today, so I grabbed them to take a look until my package arrived. Here are the jacket pictures.

Jeez Halko got wayyyyyy too skinny. Oh my god where did her cute squishy face go? She needs to smile to bring out the cheeks. But I have no complaints with the songs. Or the angle on the lyrics page.

edit: now with OMG CHATLOGS. Because they make me feel better.
[23:11:29] ******: o you know what it is
[23:11:33] ******: its the angle they took the picture
[23:11:38] ******: but she did get stick skinny
[23:11:43] ******: now i must go on a diet too
[23:11:59] ******: and her makeup made her face look longer
[23:12:16] The Paranda: oh wow you think it's the makeup too?
[23:12:23] The Paranda: makeup can do that?
[23:12:29] ******: im a girl...
[23:12:30] The Paranda: i mean..it looks like the physical dimensions actually changed
[23:12:42] ******: its the angle and the makeup
[23:12:48] ******: youre not looking at her from the front view
[23:13:14] The Paranda: yeah but..i've seen her from this angle before.
[23:13:42] The Paranda: and that arm..it appears to be getting thinner as it travels up
[23:13:46] ******: the red blush made it seem like her cheek bones arent sticking up
[23:13:53] ******: and notice that she isnt smiling
[23:14:02] ******: or barely
[23:14:11] ******: well thats what happens when you lose weight
[23:14:22] ******: i want arms like those
[23:14:25] ******: :(
[23:14:30] The Paranda: :(
[23:14:48] ******: or maybe this is because she is getting old
[23:14:49] The Paranda: i want my momoi to eat more burgers and icecream again

Posted by Paranda at 11:07 PM

Sale date for Wonder Momoi

Yeah...

Should arrive in a week.

Posted by Paranda at 5:43 AM | Comments (0)

More Wonder Momoi anticipation

Only 6 more days until Wonder Momoi is on sale. Here is a shot of the cover. WONDER-MOMO COSPLAY! BRILLIANT!

Tracklist:
1. WONDER MOMO-I-NEW RECORDING-
2. ONCE UPON A TIME-FAIRY STORY-
3. WONDER MOMO-I-NEW RECORDING-
4. ONCE UPON A TIME-FAIRY STORY-

Posted by Paranda at 9:06 PM | Comments (0)

Wonder Momoi countdown

Hello friends. I am here again with some good Halko news. WONDER MOMOI release is only two weeks away. The cover art is still undecided, but we are fortunate enough to have something even better to satisfy our curiosity until release date. Despite not updating her website for over a month, Halko Momoi is still very much alive and still keeps fans up to date on her radio show instead. Last weekend on URAMOMOI, she gave us a preview of the upcoming single! I finally found some time today to check it out, and if you don't already listen to URAMOMOI then here is your chance to do the same:

WONDER MOMOI, Uramomoi version.

This song caused my brain to explode. This song exhibits what made me a Halko Momoi fan in the first place, before I even knew what she looked like or became entranced in her moe-moe mannerisms: the voice talent! She frigging changes modes mid-song and goes from one spectrum allll the way to the other. It's almost like there are two people singing. In fact, to someone who hasn't listened to her a lot they probably thought there WERE two different people singing. I was already on the edge of cracking when she starts going "rabu rabu momoi", but when she just shifts from hypercute and goes all opera-style near the end, I just lost it and started hooting. This single is gonna be good. So so good. ~Wowowowonder Momomomoi~

Posted by Paranda at 2:18 AM | Comments (2)

I've Girls Compilation 6

Why yes, despite all my Momoi love, I AM still partially an "I've" fanboy, so I have not forgotten about them. I haven't written about them much lately, but that's because it's been a while since "I've" last released something big. Now is finally that time.

A little background: I've stands for "I love, I live, I leave" and was founded by Kazuya Takase in 1998. Like UNDER17, their gimmick was to generally make G-rated songs for, well, X-rated games - with the exception of MIKI's "FUCK ME" - where the hell did that come? They also do a lot of trance work independently, although you can often hear instances where their trance influences their pop. Recently, their songs have gotten a more serious and harder feel. According to Lina, some duded named Yasutaka Ippoushi was also involved but I have never heard any of his work under any I've label EVER so I can only assume he dropped off before it was formed.

"I've"'s success is mostly thanks to a single singer, KOTOKO (Totally understable - she is the best :heart:), whose explosion of popularity earned "I've" much well deserved recognition. However, "I've" has actually had many many singers including AKI (runnerup for best, but sadly appears to have disappeared from the face of the earth), Kaori Utatsuki (lol replacement AKI. Cute, but AKI is a tough act to follow), Eiko Shimamiya, SHIHO, Mami Kawada (new runnerup after the realization set in that AKI is probably not coming back), MELL, MOMO, LIA (who is now part of Key), and a few others. They have even made songs for Hiromi Sato and Marina Ohno. The singer talent is rather varied, but voice talent doesn't matter because the music is almost always good.

Why? I'VE's true value is in the composers, who make the awesome JPOP/trance beats. Kazuya Takase and Tomoyuki Nakazawa are absolutely insane. You can always rely on them to come out with something ridiculously addictive no matter what. Even their solid trance outshines most of the others. For me, they are the two most important members of I've. The only I've member that can even come close is C.G. Mix. Seriously, how the hell do they come up with some of these tunes?? Atsuhiko Nakatsubo (FISHTONE) is also responsible for several gems but he tends to pull out turds way too frequently to receive the same amount of adulation. For a more complete guide to I've, you should check out http://www.ivesound.jp/ which happens to be the absolute best I've website out there, period. Even if you can't read the moonspeak, it is probably more useful than some random blog (such as this one :p) or any outdated low-content pitiful poorly written english fanpage (also such as this one if, say, you swapped 'Momoi' with 'I've' :p).

Anyway, they released I've Girls Compilation 6 yesterday. I have managed to obtain a copy through Winny, but I have yet to listen to it, so I will hold off my review until I get around that. I believe there is also a torrent on TokyoTosho if you look hard enough. Currently, there is no way to import a real copy of this, because Amazon.jp decided to list it as software (just like all the 5 previous compliations before) and their crazy restrictions mean software doesn't ship overseas. They did this with AkibaPop too, and it is one of the little things that Amazon likes to do for the sole purpose, I think, of being annoying and also because they enjoy the feeling of losing out on potential customers. Somebody please drop a comment if you know another place that will ship this to the U.S. at a REASONABLE PRICE.

Here is a link so you can look at it with envy.

Posted by Paranda at 1:30 AM

"Akihabarabu" news

It's two days too late, but I figure I might as well update on it. Nakid badly needs to implement a mailing list so I know about these things ahead of time.

On August 29th, Nakid released CD/DVD packs of "Akihabarabu" which contained recordings of the Uchimizu event I wrote about earlier. "Akihabarabu," which is a play on words "Akihabara," the number-one Otaku district in Japan, and the "Love," was sold in extremely limited quantities on the first floor of the YamagiwaSoft shop for 1,980 yen each (holy crap that's cheap!). According to some Japanese blogs, you had to reserve a ticket to buy this with representatives on Nakid.jp first to even have a shot at buying it.

The CD single contains "Akihabarabu" in its original and karaoke version. The DVD contains 2 videos: A promotional video of the Uchimizu Taisaku Ikusa event, and a choreographed music video.

Since I entirely missed my chance of owning this in any way (I have no way of travelling to Japan anyway), and this will not be mass produced or sold in any other stores..I will be watching the P2P networks extremely closely for the following weeks in hopes that some kind soul will rip and upload this. Hopefully, I will be able to grab something and share with the rest of us American fans. This was how I managed to get my hands on the Da Capo secret concert in 04 with Momoi as Utamaru at least, so it's not entirely impossible.

In the mean time, good luck with your own Momoi hunting, and please please email me any additional details you may find about this release.

Posted by Paranda at 5:00 PM

WONDER MOMOI

Today, I learned of Halko's brand new single WONDER MOMOI. Slated for release on October 19, it is yet another collaboration work between Momoi Halko and Manzo (they might as well stop beating around the bush and just officially form UNDER17 II together). The song is one of many for NAMCO's "Taiko no Tatsujin Tobikkiri! Animation Special" released earlier this month, from a series we english-speaking folk may recognize as "Taiko Drum Master!"

If you are looking to pre-order like I did, its catalogue number is COCC-15804. Happy Hunting. More details as they develop.

Posted by Paranda at 10:42 AM | Comments (1)

Ton Dol Baby pics

Ton Dol Baby scans were uploaded on the Internet yesterday. I decided to grab them to take an early look at what I'll be getting in the mail shortly. I opened them eagerly with overflowing excitement, expecting to be completely blown away.

Well I was blown away, but not in the way I had expected.
Hi-larious.
I certainly didn't expect this. LOL at keyboard guitar. Reminds me of someone else, but I can't remember who. Someone..

Wow. I didn't realize that was a horrific mockup of "baby lingerie." Padded flowery bra and exposed midriff.

I'm on the fence about this one. I think I like the costumes, but they just seem so different from "the usual." My pro-Momoi bias will result in me giving me the thumbs up, although if someone else were to wear these I'd probably call them hideous. One absolute that hasn't changed though, is the awesome music. "Ton Dol Baby" full version is wonderful. "Eigo to Koi wa Umaku Naranai" also features highly enjoyable words. Glad I can find stability in that.

~How are you today? How do you do tonight?~ <3

Posted by Paranda at 7:16 AM | Comments (0)

Overdue Enlightenment

Ever had an album that you didn't really enjoy listening to the first few times and dropped it, only to relisten to it months later and discover it was awesome? This magical phenomenon of your brain suddenly "getting it" happens to me far too often, but even with my veteran experience...I was totally caught off guard this time with Yuki's recent album, "Joy."

Yuki Isoya, as many people may know, was the lead singer for the 90's j-rock band "Judy and Mary." After the breakup in 2001, she moved on to pursue her solo career and has been fairly successful. Joy, released this February, is her third album following "Prismic (2002)" and "Commune (2003)." While I was not really a fan of Yuki or JAM in general (I liked 'Radio' and 'Overdrive', but that's about it), I decided to grab "Joy" back in February simply out of curiosity and need for new music. After only listening it about two times, I got that "ehh it's okay but I will get around to it again a little later" feeling. A little later turned out to be a lot later: July, and totally by accident.

I am a pseudo-shuffler. This means I like to load up every single song I have in my collection onto my iRiver, and play it on shuffle..but I don't actually listen to the songs in the order that get shuffled. I usually start with a particular song on my mind and just hit the next button until I randomly get to it. If there is anything good along the way I might stop, but otherwise my thumb gets a really intense workout any time I'm listening to music. So, even though I shuffle, I never really try many new songs since they always just get skipped over after the first 2 seconds. Yuki was categorized as "skip." However, last Friday, I was dead tired from working and I fell asleep on the way home (good thing I wasn't driving huh?) with my iRiver still playing. About a half hour later, I woke up refreshed to a very pleasant sound. My mp3 player had shuffled to "Walking on the Skyline," track 4 of Joy. After it finished playing, I hit back and listened to again, then a third time.

It was time to become a Yuki fan. I turned off shuffle and let the album play out. Next was "Sweet Seventeen," which had the most ridiculously nasally vocals I've ever heard in my life, and it was so cute I wanted to melt. And I did melt, because next on the playlist was "Cider." Yuki constantly sounds like she's got a frog lodged in her throat, yet it's not a bad thing at all. It's an addicting voice. She's also got a flair for mangling words and vowels. With all her "schleins" and "schlas" and "ü's" or whatever the hell she's saying, sometimes I can't tell if she's belting out Japanese or some weird variation of German. Jerman, perhaps? I seriously wonder if she purposely constructed her singing voice or if she really just does sound like that in real life. This style of singing was fairly prominent when she was in JAM too, probably even moreso, and now I am busy cycling through old JAM stuff to give it another chance. If I end up liking it, I'll be pretty busy with 9 years of stuff to go through. That's a lot of music.

Joy wraps up with a few slower songs, which are also nice once again because of the voice. "Tinkerbell," track 11, gave me the gay temporarily because I really like it and I should not like songs named after pixies, but I digress. "Joy" is a great album which has resparked my interest in Yuki, and I can't believe I've been skipping over it all these months. So if you've got time, check it out.

Posted by Paranda at 5:01 PM | Comments (0)

New Songs

With the airing of Akahori Gedou Hour Love Game, two brand new Momoi songs have surfaced. Well, one and a half. The opening theme, "Nesshou! Rabuge Night Fever," is performed by Love Pheromone & Gedou Otometai featuring Momoi Haruko, Kageyama Hironobu, and arranging credit to some other guy that I didn't bother to research. Momoi and Kageyama have worked together many times in the past and have covered famous anisongs together on the radio. This new song has recognizable traits from both of them, but especially recognizable is Momoi's trademark yelp, "~fuu~fuu," which appears in favorite songs such as "Ichigo Go! Go!," "Tenbatsu! Angel Rabbie," and "Koko da yo." Unfortunately, this sound effect is not done by her in this particular song, and the result once again proves that if your name isn't Momoi Haruko, you should not attempt to make this sound. Download OP here. The single will come out on July 27th and will have the full version of the song. I like Neowing so I am going to pimp their site again, because they ship insanely fast and are cheaper than Amazon after you factor in shipping. Thanks Amazon.jp, for $20 "economy" shipping on $10 items.

Do not despair however, because TV shows always have an opening AND an ending. In the same show, the ending theme is a Halko song featuring full blown cutey moe moe vocals. The arranger this time is none other than Manzo (also the arrange guy behind 'Hide and Seek' and 'Friendship'), who seems to be adapting very well to Momoi's style of music, as each of his newer songs with her gets better than the previous one. In fact, he is starting to carve out a style of his own instead of churning out carbon copies of old UNDER17 tracks. As much as we all miss Aniki, this guy is looking to be a pretty good replacement. This actually sounds like an original song while still maintaining the things that make Halko songs so good. Ton Dol Baby features cute melodies, cute vocals, and even cuter lyrics. "motto baby" Download ED here.

The full version of this also comes out July 27th on CD, so preorder your copy now. I'd love to get both OP and ED singles, but I am just so poor. If you have to choose, choose this one: it has more Halko.

Oh, and another reason to buy this...the frigging cover! Jeez just look at it (click image for big). There are just so many "WTFs" on so many levels with that image that I absolutely have to get at the liner notes and see where it's going. There is bound to be more pictures inside..rattles and pacifiers are a possibility. It's so odd yet so funny. Why do I suddenly feel like a creepy fetishist? Order it. Yes I am getting it for the music, not the pictures. No really. Seriously. I am. Those pics just..uh..happen to be a bonus, you know..if there are going to be any.

Oh by the way, it's not the first time Momoi has dressed up in baby gear; bet you didn't know that. :O

Also, my images are randomly floating over my borders when there's not enough text so I have to add this filler crap to make sure that doesn't happen. This is probably due to my shoddy beginner level CSS, but what can I say? I'm sure there's a way to fix this with one line to my stylesheet, but that's for skilled people. I, on the other hand, happen to suck.

Posted by Paranda at 7:37 PM | Comments (0)

Angelrabbie PV finally in hand.

After noticing a rather large spike in bandwidth usage this month, I decided to go check out the logs. Apparently, a particular site had been hotlinking my Koi no Milkyway PV videos. Although I would usually throw fits about hotlinking and such, when we are dealing with Halko my hostility towards these kinds of practices are overridden by curiosity and satisfaction (plus he was even nice enough to link back to me. Thanks guy); that another site exists that would host or even leech remotely UNDER17-related content..the more the better, and I chalked it up as another victory for the Halko fanclub. Yes, I realize I sound like a huge faggot.

Anyway, it turns out this was the best thing that could ever happen to me because today I followed the link and BEHOLD: Direct download of Tenbatsu Angel Rabbie PV (ZOMG SO HOT)! This particular one had escaped my eye in both Winny and Share, and now that I have obtained it my day has been made. I'd like to say once again, "Thanks Somdan you are pretty awesome."

http://ncity.net/~somdan/tt/index.php?page=1

Posted by Paranda at 11:36 PM

Glass no Kaze anticipation

There are only five more days until Glass no Kaze comes out. Today, I finally broke down and decided to preorder a copy from CDJapan.

Track list is as follows:
01. RETRIEVE
02. Wing my Way
03. Oboetete Iiyo
04. Tameiki Clover
05. Meconopsis
06. Sasakure
07. Kohaku
08. Re-sublimity
09. Glass no Kaze
10. 421-a will-
11. Free Angels
12. ß-Nendo no hoshi
13. Akai tama, aoi tama

It doesn't have much new stuff, but neither did Hane and I did not regret buying that. I think the bundled DVD will be worth it.

If you understand a bit of Japanese, you can find more information about Glass no Kaze at KOTOKO's official website.

Posted by Paranda at 9:15 AM | Comments (0)

Let me love you

About two weeks ago, I came across a very strange Momoi song called "Let me love you." Its strangeness comes from the style of the song which, as any dedicated fan may realize after listening, is a little different from anything she's ever done before. This song does not sound like Momoi. Where normally there should be hyper cries of "chu chu" and an onslaught of really addicting guitar riffs and electronic sounds, we find instead soft soothing vocals set against gentle acoustics.

Although Momoi has a long and varied career, her music has always maintained a certain flavor. Whether she was UNDER17 or Poly-Phonic or Virtualian-co, her lyrics were often sugar-coated with girly innocence (Magi-cu), geeky references (GURA GURA), or general insanity (Ichigo Go!Go!); her voice was always cute; her tunes were always horrifically ear-bleedingly addictive. While some songs, like as "Figure ni Naritai" and "Kotae," broke this traditional formula, in them you could find influences of her unique style. The general rule was, "You can always know a Halko song when you hear one."

This was not one of those songs. Here, I found myself listening to it several times on loop and still wondering to myself, "Did Momoi really sing this?" Here, I found a serious attempt at a conventional love song. Momoi's old music had carved such a distinct impression on me that I was unable to adapt to change. But, if there were any song that could break the pigeonhole, this was it. I found myself enjoying it more and more, and now it is one of my favorite songs.

Yesterday, I finally discovered the origins of this song. It came from School Days Vocal Album which was released in late April (thank goodness for ero-games and their demand for character music). This was a new song, a display of her excellent vocal range, and possibly a hint of things to come. It is fun to think what could have happened if Momoi stuck it out singing standard Jpop back in 97 and never moved on to moesongs. Then perhaps all of her songs would sound like this. However, objectively speaking, this song is not really special and it sounds like every other love song out there. The catch is that it is Momoi, and thus the appreciation is boosted knowing that it is so different from the old. For her, it is fresh and groundbreaking. I like this song, because through it, I witness Momoi's evolution. It's always nice to see something like that...

Sparingly though. She still needs to stick to the cute stuff: I like that best.

Let me love you.ogg

Posted by Paranda at 11:16 PM

ironic

More adventures in Winny (because Share sux and doesn't work)! This time I have grabbed a copy of Ironic, which is a song I have been looking all over for since May of last year. It does not disappoint.

No, not Alanis Morissette. Poly-Phonic.
Let me tell you...Momoi armed with a vocoder...that just blows my mind.
Also, last night's Uramomoi was pretty funny.

You know I should really really be studying for exams right now.

Posted by Paranda at 2:55 PM | Comments (1)

Momoi butchers classic anisongs

Picked up 4 episodes of Uramomoi, a new weekly radio show that Halko hosts late at night. Although it's not as feature-packed or organized as KOTOKO's show on Air-G, it's still very cute and has many funny moments. She answers fan mail, takes requests for songs (and she's pretty damn good, if she's really improvising all those requests on the spot), and talks about the various things going on in her career. I suggest all other Momoi fans to make an effort to catch at least one episode. Even if you can't understand a word, you'll find yourself enjoying it.

Not convinced?
We are living, living in the eighties
We still fight, fighting in the eighties

Posted by Paranda at 7:44 PM | Comments (1)

Koi no Milkyway

Today I was sent an incredibly awesome and very rare file: an old UNDER17 promotional video produced by Nakid! It is by far the cutest music video I have ever seen (the song is called "Koi no Milkyway"). There are just so many things that are perfect about this video: the bewildered anime nerd, the body pillow, the absolutely over-the-top false enthusiasm and subtle insanity in Momoi's smile...ah it's all just too great. Words cannot describe the coolness of this thing..you'll just have to see for yourself. Temporary Download Link.

I love this woman.

Posted by Paranda at 2:14 PM | Comments (1)