The Yard Sale
This is a very long post about a two-day concert. I touched on various of things but I sort of had to stop writing because it’s simply way too long. So this is just kind of the key notes I wanted to jot down, some impressions, and stuff that I don’t want to forget.
The anime con season in North America is getting into swing. Kill la Kill seems to be trending among top costumers and the like.
It’s times like this I wish the guys at Trigger would fess up that they made these scandalously dressed heroines partly to get some cosplayers to show some skin. Of course, this being just my own wish and probably does not reflect the truth, but I think if Kojima would fess up this much, it might just be a matter of semantics.
So I think it’s important to track where Trigger dudes are going this summer? So far we have Director Yoshinari plus Kaneko (art director) and Hori (animator?) at Animazement, so maybe these guys will make some comments to this degree. We’ll see. American cons are a great way for fans to mix with creators, so I hope Trigger dudes will get an eye full at North Carolina. And maybe we can ask why … are the two (somewhat titular) characters dressed that way.
Either way, if you are man or woman enough to parade out there in battle mode Senketsu or Junketsu, you have my respect. I’ll save the question for your wisdom later.
Let’s break it down before IM@S breaks me down.
Encore 1
Encore 2
Check Kotoko’s blog for pics of her outfits. And all the stuff I was gonna say until I read it www.
So let me keep it personal and point out the big things. First, there were two costume changes in the main set. Encore has the usual t-shirt + skirt combo and she puts on No. 11 jersey for Shoot! She also tried to score a couple handicapped freethrows, and makes the last one of three.
The “Winter” set is in her snow-fairy-peter-pan inspired getup. I really like how it gave her an excuse to sing all these old snow-theme songs. The stage had this fake snow setup where it’ll spew out mysterious snow-like substance that floats down much slower than actual snow. It would be neat except I’m kind of sick of snow at the time given how it interrupted travels so much.
The first costume change happened during a really long instrumental solo if I recall correctly. The second outfit I remember liking more, because it’s got this weird white theme going on and is a little bit like a wedding dress except the huge ribbon-like thing on her shoulder. I could be wrong.
I was too busy rocking out to have an opinion of the third one.
KOTOKO isn’t so much what I call “a sight for sore eyes” both visually or musically, but the strongest immediate reaction was that I really missed her, and I didn’t even know it. Her music in the live context just gets me.
The crowd was another point of observation. I’ve never seen her live over in Japan so it’s not clear to me how the fans move. So it turns out they move the same way as they do in the States, basically. There aren’t too many songs with calls, and those that do tend to be just anime or game songs that go by the usual pattern and/or hooks into some other franchise, like Shoot, which has the full cheer-ppph-thundersnake thing built in. Just rock and thrash as usual guys!
Can’t wait for her Raleigh stage!
I never got to wax much nostalgia about my trip last April when I went to see that PA Works show, along with Coorie and Tamayura. I traveled for about 10 days and did the otaku mecca thing, while focused on taking it easy, eating (and didn’t even do much of that beyond local recs) and hanging out. Watched a couple anime movies, at least. It was actually quite a blast, but I definitely could’ve done more if I was more organized or adventurous.
This year I’m going with a herd of other foreigners and in the span of about also 10 days, I would have hit up 2-3 theater greetings, probably will watch the same two anime movies like, in four different occasions (funny considering I could also watch Buddha 2 or the new Tiger & Bunny film that’ll get a theatrical run in a month), will attend a radio recording, plus at least five concerts. FIVE. Maybe more if I want to do that underground idol thing. So most likely this means I won’t have time to try my luck at Kancolle cafe, just a couple days for shopping, and who knows how many places I can go eat? I get the feeling those things will take care of themselves however.
Here’s the event list, at least the confirmed ones. A few are not yet and are marked TBD:
There are a ton of events that I wished I could attend, either because it runs against one of the other events, or because I can’t get the proper tickets (like WUG handshake sessions…or Yui Ogura handshake sessions…or Milk Lariat S conflict with KOTOKO…or Kanon 2014 conflict with IM@S with Yanagi Nagi live etc).
And that’s just events! There are tons of other stuff on the agenda, none perhaps less epic than the chronicles detailed here. But I will do my best with the whole enjoy Japan thing. Food, scenery, shopping, you name it. Definitely want to revisit A-Button and Garten once.
Anyway, if this blog stops updating the next 2 weeks, you know what’s up. Actually I will still be updating the non IM@S stuff here, so watch for that; but as you can see there’s not a whole lot of that.
So this is a story all about how
my life got flipped, turned upside-down
And I’d like to take a moment
Just type it out
I’ll tell you how I became a P as an American.