Still Thinking about Hellshake Kanno

My first Japan eventing trip was when I flew to Japan in 2009 and attended the Super-Dimensional Supersonic Tanabata concert, taking place around 7pm on July 7th, also a Tuesday.

Unlike that show, today’s online tribute is a 77-long video which I didn’t get to watch due to not buying a ticket early and having it sell out on me. I also woke up a bit late so I would have had missed the first part of the event, which is the set up.

Here’s the microsite for 2020’s Tanabata online event. Oversea viewers can still watch the last timeshift, which starts at 10pm Eastern time.

The traces for the 2009 show was removed deliberately after it was over. All the promo went down. It was meant to be a thing that had a short shelf life. Maybe that’s just how art works with Kanno. Maybe that will happen for the 2020 version?

In a lot of ways, the 2009 Tanabata event is literally that once-in-a-lifetime event that you may never forget, as fans of the composer and producer, and her output generally. It was art AF. So art that my post about it got eaten by the void when my site went down and lost about 1.5 years worth of posts back last decade. Just stubs left.

The experience of that show carved its shape into my psyche and I still remember rolling out of SSA with Wah and AlexD like it was some wild and crazy thing, even if at the end it was just Kanno marching around the stage with the musicians tooting a rubber duck.

I woke up at like 6am today Eastern time trying to watch the Japan stream. I ended up staying up watched the 9am Asian stream. Man, that stood with me. Without spoilering, I wish I watched the Europe timeshift too. I will catch the Americas one, so maybe I’ll write more about it then.

It seems that the Asian TS is shorter and doesn’t include additional stuff in the Japanese one, which is also 1000 yen more expensive. Oh well.

I’ve been thinking about this show for over 10 years, and it took the Coronavirus being a global pandemic to bring it back. I think that’s two once-in-a-lifetime events happening at the same time. Please take advantage of this online delivery and watch something really, really special.