Million Live! 4th Anniversary, Take 2: The Story of the Missing Hoshii Miki

So the Bluray for Million 4th came out last week and I’ve been devouring it since I got it on Thursday. Somehow I squeezed in 2 showings of Mary and the Witch’s Flower in the same time, given the 4-disc set has 12+ hours of material, not counting the commentary tracks, but here goes.

Million 4th was probably the most important live I attended last year, at least on a personal level. It might rank only 4th overall but it was number one in terms of emotional wrecking that it did on me. I was a mess, because, as now I see from the backstage features, it left the performers in a mess too. Like, yeah, I get it, I know how it works. The feelings crossed not only stars, but oceans, cultural and language barriers, through the dance, music, and hard work of cast and staff. It sounds corny only because it’s what happened.

Million Live has a lot of songs about silly things, and it’s got a fairly diverse set of songs, but the most common category of songs are about friendship, hopes and dreams. Sometimes these songs felt like they are speaking to the audience and listeners. Sometimes these songs felt like they are speaking to the performers. And in the Million Live cast, that’s actually exactly what happens.

I’m not going to details to explain, because it will take a long time and my JP is just nonexistent for these kinds of purposes. But man, that Hoshikuzu no Symphonia on day 2 is a great example of what I’m talking about. Kokochan (Koiwai Kotori, who plays Tomoka) joined twitter publicly just the other day and she tweeted on her first day on Twitter about reaching for her dreams.

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

— ?????? (@koiwai_kotori) January 19, 2018

In short, Koiwai watched Animas in 2011 just as another P and an aspiring seiyuu, but in 2018 she has Mingos and Nunu tweeting with her. We don’t know what the future holds, so live on as such. Like, there was no guarantee that Mingos was ever going to remember the password to her Twitter (LOL).

I bring this up because watching Million 4th reminded me of her performance as part of Milky Way in Hoshikuzu no Symphonia. And you can watch the part in the backstage on the LE Bluray box to see the conclusion… It was a touching moment in that during the bridge, each of the four performers had a phrase to say that puts together the story of Milky Way, the unit that was detailed in LTH09. In truth, Milky Way has 5 members–Hoshii Miki being the one missing. The way the song connects the four Millionstars to Miki and to each other seemed to did Kokochan in as she started visibly crying during the performance, and thus yelling out from her heart that one line during the lead up to the climax of the song.

https://twitter.com/saku_osake_love/status/841273539848097793

Notice how the first word in each of the 4 phrases they said during the bridge spell out “Hoshii Miki” and then they say to connect it together? LOL. Here are the relevant lyrics (tl: project-imas), and I bolded that one line Kokochan yelled out:

There are other instances of this playing out in the years leading up to ML4th. There are other instances of this still playing out today. It’s why when Aikotoba wa Startup played during Hatsuboshi Enbu, MillionP eventers were in shock. Or like hearing Addicted or Just Be Myself or Tsuiyoku no Sandglass. It’s a bit heart wrenching if you are a fan, in that both you’re suffering only because Bamco decided their lives to become this way, and that you’re pining for a thing that will probably come eventually, and it’s more beautiful because of it. It’s a mixed feeling of happiness and regret, that reality of the industry comes in and stir things up, with a distant hope, at least personally, that everything, all together, will be better off because of these complicated circumstances.

I would say it’s a cheap shot except it takes so much to even build up to begin with. A long cheap shot, maybe. A road within a fandom that’s got a significant barrier of entry, yeah. But I guess some producers have no choices here!