Nana Summer Festa 2007
Ever since the first summer tour back in 2003, it’s became a tradition that Mizuki Nana will hold a live tour during summer. It came as a shock to Nana devotees that nothing was announced for the year 2007, as in many ways 2007 is a special year to Nana-chan due to all the 7-related ties (Note: “nana” is a reading for the number seven in Japanese, this year is 2007 which is the year of nana, which also happens to mark Nana-chan’s seventh year as a singer since her official debute). Fans waited, months came and went, and finally just mere weeks ago, they announced that they will hold an event titled “Nana Summer Festa 2007″ at Zepp Tokyo, and the cruncher was that there was only going to be one session. One session? After the massive turn outs of the other concerts - the latest “Live Museum” with 12,000 people at Yokohama Arena for one session - trying to cram addicted fans hungry for Nana’s summer appearance into a venue that holds no more than 2000, in this special year no less? How could they? Shortly after they made another announcement that there would now be two sessions - a morning one and an afternoon one, probably because they don’t want angry mobs to gather outside the King Records building. Either way, it reeks of a hastily put together event, so even though I had good tickets in hand (269 out of 2000) for the afternoon session I still had to brace for the worst.
Thankfully, the event itself turned out quite alright, but then again you really can’t go wrong if you just give Nana-chan a mic, a decent sound setup and let her sing her heart out. On top of that, since they ran a poll on what songs the fans wanted to hear Nana-chan sing and did a top 10 countdown style event, only the best of the fan favourites are left. The top 10 fan-voted favourites are:
10. You have a dream
9. suddenly ~meguriaete~
8. New Sensation
7. Super Generation
6. Tears’ Night
5. Heart-shaped Chant
4. Crystal Letter
3. Eternal Blaze
2. Powergate
1. Innocent starter
Apparently only one vote separated first and second place. As I voted Heart-shaped Chant myself, it was great to see the song ranked high on the list when the song is fairly recent.
Donned in costumes from her previous concerts (including the fan favourite pink maid outfit), Nana-chan sang the songs in her usual top-quality performance. Short video clips of the number 11 to 50 songs take from various concerts, PVs and events where played on the projector when Nana-chan had to go change. Having been Nana-chan’s fan since her debuting album, there’s lots of nostalogia there watching those songs being played on the projector screen. A bit of trivia was revealed here that Nana-chan is close to having 100 songs under her personal name (no covers and no character songs), fans cheered loudly at the mention of this piece of trivia. Also another bit of interesting scene was that when they originally ran the poll without mention that the songs had to be from Nana-chan’s personal repetoire, and fans flooded in with other requests. The top 3 songs weren’t really a surprise - “God Knows…” by Hirano Aya (would’ve love to hear Nana-chan belt this song live), “Hoshizora no Spica” by Tamura Yukari (fans are all dying to hear Nana-chan cover one of the Yukarin Nanoha songs), and “Love Destiny” by Horie Yui. Other familiar titles like “Little Wish ~lyrical step”, “Sousei no Aquarion” and “Zankoku Tenshi no Teeze” also came up.
Besides the fan voted top 10, two more top 5 countdowns were also done - Top 5 Character Songs and Top 5 Enka, both chosen by Nana-chan herself. The character songs were:
5. Ouji-sama to Amai Hoshi (Aria, Sister Princess)
4. Drive away dream (Seizawa Kaho, Natsuiro no Sunatokei)
3. Tsubasa (Fate Testarossa, Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha A’s)
2. Hana, Hoshi, Sora (Tamamura Tamao, Shaman King)
1. New Frontier (Suzuki Nana, Shichnin no Nana)
I’m not a knowledgable in Enka so I didn’t remember much about those. Though some really interesting scrolling text did come up explaining her connection with these enka songs. A majority of them where songs which won Nana-chan grand prizes at various singing contests, and the number 1 song was one which won her the chance to come up to Tokyo to become a singer when she was still a junior high school student.
Although Nana-chan didn’t perform any of these songs on the spot, they did show video clips of her singing them at a karaoke, which is fascinating to watch in a way (though cheap). But in the end fan chanting got Nana-chan to perform a verse from her number one enka song list. Totally unplugged, it was really something to hear just how powerful her vocal cords are which puts many artists to shame.
After the countdowns, special guest Fukuen Misato, Nana-chan’s co-host for her radio program “Mizuki Nana’s Smile Gang” came on stage and they did a live stood-up of the program. Not being a regular listener to radio programs in general it was interesting enough. Then, two more special guest - guitarist Kitajima “Kenny” Kenji and keyboard player Oohira “Tom-kun” Tsutomu from Nana-chan’s band Cherry Boys came on for more accoustic goodness, performing “Piasu” (Pierce) and “Hoshizora to Tsuki to Hanabi no Shita”. And finally to round off the event, Nana-chan revealed for the very first time the eagerly anticipated second opening theme song to Nanoha StrikerS “Massive Wonders”. After the final performance it was time to plug the upcoming single for “Massive Wonders”, and Nana dropped another bit of juicy information that the single will also contain a Nanoha insert song titled “Pray”, which apparently will be played during a shocking scene in the series. It’s all very calculated and within expectation as King Records’ plans for the Nanoha franchise reads like an open book, but still it is something to look forward to.
Finally it was the “one last thing”, the final big annoucement was that Nana-chan will be holding a winter tour of 7 sessions which spreads across December 2007 and January 2008. Titled “Live Formula”, the sessions to look out for would be the countdown live at Grand Cube Osaka and the huge session at Saitama Super Arena - which holds anywhere from 12,500 to 22,500 people depending on the setup. Even at minimum capacity this will break the record 12,000 set with Live Museum at Yokohama Arena earlier this year, and I’m sure that’s what they’re going for in answer to my earlier question of where Nana-chan could go on to concert wise.
I guess this is the news that’s suppose to make up for the lack of the summer tour and this good but comparatively lackluster Summer Festa.
