seiyuu3

In celebration of its 10th anniversary, Lantis has announced that it will hold a two day outdoor concert at Fujikyu Highland Conifer Forest on September 26th and 27th. The official homepage can be found here.

Hailing itself to be the first ever big size outdoor anisong concert, the venue’s capacity is up there with the likes of Super Arena capable of seating some 18000 people. The line up of artists contains a lot of familiar names that we’ve all seen at Animelo, some other fairly well-known/experience artists/seiyuu, plus a few more of the less active seiyuu artists that usually won’t be seen much at live events, let alone one of this kind of scale. With Kageyama Hironobu/JAM Project at the helms leading there shouldn’t be much to worry about, and I fully expect this will look and feel a lot like Animelo, though we are obviously lacking in a couple of the big acts of Animelo from other music labels. The line up is by no means shabby though it remains to be seen how well Lantis can pull something of this scale and size off all by themselves. One thing is almost certain though, with only Lantis behind this event, there shouldn’t be any rights issues and we can probably expect that they will release this event on disk sometime in the future. Just hope that it is not as bad as the 2007 Animelo disk set that Lantis was responsible for.

Official PoRk sauce.

I know that a lot of Japanese guests and companies planned attendance for overseas anime and game cons/events had been heavily affected by the swine flu, and understandably fans aren’t happy. Just thought that I’ll throw in a balancer so that people can know that the Japanese domestic fans are getting hit too (well they should, considering that Japan’s confirmed cases of swine flu is so high and still going up by the day).

FWIW, the Fukuoka session is still a go, while the Tokyo session is under review.

While most will already know about the upcoming new album (Nana-chan said it should be coming out around May), the “one last thing” for today’s final concert at Budoukan was a summer concert at the Seibu Dome on 5th July this year.

While this is not THE Tokyo Dome we are talking about, it is a baseball dome revenue capable of seating some 36,000 people (Tokyo Dome holds 48,000) and one of the only two dome structures in and around the Tokyo area. This would very likely make Nana-chan the first seiyuu artist as well as anime song singer to have a dome scale concert.

Tokyo Dome and Kouhaku might really be just around the corner.

Linky.

There’s 20,000 spot this time. Admission starts at 18:50 Tokyo time (GMT +9) on the 23rd and the event starts at 19:00. There’s a countdown clock on the page so it’s easy to work out the time in your own timezone.

キラッ☆ and out.

A quick piece of news that was announced during today’s fanclub birthday event which took place at Shibuya O-East. Minorin’s second music clip collection DVD is coming out next year.

Although I would really like to write about today’s event, my position for the event was so bad (at the back of the second floor) that I couldn’t see anything at all so all I’ve got were just sounds. So all I can do is give some brief summaries.

The beginning Minorin and her manager apparently showed some footage of Minorin going on a trip somewhere and taking the JR train that is also named Minori, but that’s about as much as I’ve got as I don’t get to see the footage.

After the talk it was the live corner section. First Minorin sang 3 character songs as voted by the fans - they were Chiaki of Minamike’s 過度の期待にご用心。 (Kado no Kidai ni Goyoujin), Nanaka of D.C.2’s 桜笑み君想う (Sakura Hohoemi Kimi Omou) and of course Nagato Yuki of Haruhi’s Yuki, Muon, Madobenite. After the character song section it was the accoustic section with Minorin and her guitar and she sang two songs she composed herself - Iddosen (I think that was the name) Ittousei 一等星 and La La La. I really love her own accoustic songs and wish someday they would release these songs on CD. And finally she finished off with Paradise Lost.

After the singing we gave a surprise to Minori per her manager’s instructions - everyone broke out an ultra-white glowstick which we recieved at the door and sang Junpaku Sanctuary in acappella. While I couldn’t see Minorin’s face, from her voice I’m almost certain she cried. A cake was probably brought out as well as calls for blowing out candles was heard, but I really can’t tell. And that was about it for the event.

Finally we also got to shake hands with Minorin before going. As there were about 1300 people today the handshake was expectedly brief. However I’ll still complain that one person only got about 2 seconds which is even shorter than the Nana fanclub events with 3000 people, so I’m not too happy with the management there.

Didn’t get much satisfaction from this event, especially compared to the likes of Nana and Yukarin’s where there are much more interaction with the fans with all the games and audience involvement while this just felt like a normal concert event, so I hope they can do better next time.

Taken from Nico Nico Douga.

As the event was live streamed on Nicodouga (just like Animelo) so access was limited on the day (9th Nov). This is a screen-captured video of the the live streamed so can’t do anything about the Nicodouga comments. There’s also two more parts after which is the talk section but I’m not going to bother, people who understand moonspeak can find it themselves, and those who don’t won’t get anything out of it - that would be my excuse for not uploading them.

The songs she performed are “Be MYSELF” and “Tenshi ni Naritai” (天使になりたい - lit. want to become an angel) - two of her own original songs which you can purchase on the iTunes Music Store listed under “Megumi Nakajima” (Japan store only, sorry folks, the usual region blocking applies, but I’m sure you can use the Giftcard tricks to obtain them)、Sony’s “MORA” digital music download service (not even sure if this store is available outside of Japan), and the usual mobile phone ringtones stores (no chance of using these if you don’t live in Japan). The songs are currently not released on a CD and there’s no information about a CD release yet. According to various reports, apparently she also sang her signiture キラッ☆ song aka Seikan Hikou from Macross Frontier after the talk section but it was not streamed on the day - most probably due to rights issues.

Megumi seems to be putting a lot more effort into her singing career now - not unlike her predecessor Iijima Mari - and there doesn’t seem to be anymore voice acting roles that she’s taking on in the near future. So the question is whether she’s going to continue to be a seiyuu, or will she just merely use Macross as a stepping stone to get her into normal stardom. Though if her management has any brains, they really should get her more voice roles, as it’s very clear that her current fanbase are entirely made up of otakus, and you don’t want to alienate them so quickly.

Famitsu is on their game again so official track listing can be found here.  As predicted, today was Niconico Douga Meme Song day, if you are a fan of nicodouga, especially of the Nicodouga Kumikyoku, you’ll no doubt get a massive kick from hearing the meme songs being performed full live - we definitely did.   Anyway again some highlights:

*  Omoide wa Okusenman performed by JAM Project as an opener.  What a starter!  Hang on, Makkun isn’t in there but replaced by Misato Aki.  Hmm what happened?

*   After the song, Kageyama Hironobu announced that Makkun fell sick, and her condition worsen because she forced herself to perform yesterday and the doctor gave her the order to not to perform today.  DAMN.

*  Misato Aki sang nicely - taking over Makkun’s role in such short notice and as the first performer, great effort on her part.

*  Elisa’s voice is simply beautiful.  After 2 acts the bar for the night is set pretty damn high.

*  After two slow songs from Elisa, angela Domestic Love Band started the night’s long run of goth-metal music.  It’s quite a departure of her old stuff.  Yeah, even Shangri-La was pretty out there.

* Sound Horizon had some interesting sounds, and lots of members and vocalists. My favourite part though has to be the electric violin in their music. Might check them out later.

* Yui’s goth band is a good gag act. I like how they made fun of themselves with the whole “toilet break act” gag, even though they were far from that level of terrible.

* Momoi Halko did a real-life Idolm@ster-style “performance accident” - she literally tripped and fell on all four after missing a landing from a jump. She recovered from it straight away though, that’s a pro performer right there.

* Mosaic.wav’s Gacha Gacha Kyu~~~ I was waiting for this piece and the fun metre explodes when everyone in the stadium does the hand gestures.

* Everyone sang true my heart - the call for “Kishimen!” was insane, Lelouch by the power of the Code Geass MAD meme orders you all to obey and sing!

*  Sakura Saori’s talking voice scares me since it sounds just like when she sings.  It’s like she’s constantly on helium or something.

*  No Kiss My Lips.  That is just not right. :(

*  miko (IOSYS) for Marisa - complete with the original flash movie on the big screen.  There’s something magical about everyone yelling “yi er san yi er san one two three one two three ichi ni san” at the same time.

*  Tori no Uta, another totally expected piece.  It’s a nice song except that for all of the 2 to 3 times I’ve seen it live Lia can never perform it well in a live situation and this time was no exception, which is a pity.

*  iM@S performed a medley of their most famous songs, which is awesome because there is just no way they can get through all their cool songs any other way.  Asapon was the most in character, Mingosu did well with her solo Aoi Tori section, and even Nakamura Eriko managed to sing pretty well too.

*  Makka na Chikai was sooooo intense.  I’ve never seen so many people get so psyched up, except for JAM Project’s SKILL.

*  May’n does her Macross Frontier Sheryl act.  That’s all there is to say about it.

*  Psychic Lover does a ballad, wow.  It’s so not their usual image.

*  Hirano Aya improved her singing - it is no longer as painful as last year’s because she stopped trying so damn hard to do her weak attempt at a vibreto (thank god).

*  anisong Uninstall was another piece that I really want to hear live, and Ishikawa Chiaki delivers it in spades.

*  Woo, another new unreleased song in full - Gundam 00 second season’s ending Prototype.

*  Gundam-gasum continues with a medley by a Ishikawa Chiakii/Yonekura Chihiro duet doing their most famous Gundam themes.

*  I can fly!  You can fly!  We can fly! Motto motto! 

Today’s concert was enjoyable in a completely different way compared with yesterdays.  While yesterday’s - as expected by such a strong line up of strong singers - wins purely by the sheer high quality of the performers at performing live, today’s was exciting for the concentrated bursts of pure FUN as meme songs and recent cult hits gets performed live on stage and how everyone joins in with the acts at the same time to create an unbelievable live atmosphere.  So both days were awesome in their own rights.

Also it looks like they’re already planning for next years Animelo, so see you next AniSummer!

The full track listing can be found here for those who can read Japanese, I might get around to translate it later.  In the mean time just some moments worthy of mention:

*  Concert kicks off with - what??  Yukarin’s “Koiseyo Onnanoko”!  But wait, there’s one more person!  OMG it’s a duet with Nana-chan!

*  Nanoha Yukarin and Fate-chan Nana-chan than sang Nana-chan’s “Anone - mamimume☆mogacho”, wow, Yukarin doing the monkey too!

*  First solo performer is Yukarin, despite this being her first Animelo appearance.   She did three songs in her usual top performance.  She even got the entire stadium to do the melon stick wave, it’s a great act to get people to warm up for the concert.

* AAA is a very well packaged mainstream Avex J-pop young band - complete with the pretty boy singer, rapper, girl vocal formula sang to eurobeat songs topped with well chronographed dances.  Bonus for them being actually able to pull it off.

* Karen Girls were not bad, but still a very painful act to watch.

*  yozuca, Minorin and savage genius sang FictionJuction YUUKA’s “nowhere”.  That really came out of nowhere.

*  savage genius  sang a new song “Just Tune” which is the opening to one of the autumn show “Yozakura Quartet”, not a bad tune.

*  Akino!  愛してる (Aishiteru)!

*  bless4 were pretty amazing with their a cappella.   Really talented group of young people.

* GRANRODEO (lead vocal is Taniyama Kishou) replaces Takahashi Naozomi as THE male seiyuu act of Animelo.  They brought with them some pretty heavy J-Rock which is a welcome change.  While Takahashi Naozomi is by no means a bad performer, one has to admit that one thing Animelo doesn’t lack are feminine acts.

* Suara sang the only slow song for the night.  Her performance is still so perfect.

* Kuribayashi Minami covered up even more parts of her body this year, even though she’s still wearing a really skimpy skirt.  I guess the organisers still think she’s wearing too little?

*  Minorin got a big share this year, performing 3 (4 if you count Contact which IMO isn’t really a song) solo pieces.

*  Minorin Makkun Rondo Revolution duet!  But they sang it to the inferior Makkun tribute album remix of the song, so last year’s Nana-chan/Makkun duet is still the one to top.

*  Nana-chan’s super-awesome Dancing in the Velvet Moon performance complete with sexy costume.  Every year she still simply OWNS the show as she bursts onto the stage.

*  The last piece is Eternal Blaze, ZOMG it’s a Nana-chan/Arika (Ali Project) duet!  They kept their promise!

*  Mic volume level problems during the final 3 group songs.   Hope its just a live-mixing problem such that they can fix it for the DVD release.

One more day to go!

News had gotten out that famous Japanese online video website Nico Nico Douga will be streaming, live, selected sections of the Sunday session (August 31st) of this year’s Animelo in their Nico Nico Live section.  The live-cast is to start at 4pm Tokyo time (UTC + 9) and is limited to the first 10,000 users.  Don’t know why they aren’t doing the Saturday session as well, but besides the usual rights problem, I’d wager that it might have something to do with how the Sunday session currently looks awfully like they took a artist roll-call from the songs used in the Nico Douga Kyumikyoku.  Afterall, the people behind Nico Nico Douga, dwango, is also the major sponser to Animelo, seems like a perfect opportunity to cash in on some cross-promotion.

Either way, this maybe a great opportunity for those overseas who can’t make it to get a glimps of what it is like - provided they don’t put in IP blocking that is.

Fellow seiyuu3 reader dodgethis has a spare Sunday Animelo ticket and asked me to lend some shouting space. So here it is:

Hi guys.

Currently I have a spare ticket for the second from Yahoo Auctions. If you’re interested in it, please e-mail me at mobiledeath underscore sg at hotmail dot com. We’ll sort out the details through that.

Thanks

dodgethis

Anyone interested should contact him directly while he still has it!