Animazement 2012: KOTOKO Live

[6/7/2012 Edit: Updated track listing!]

I was going to include this in the wrap post, but it got way too long so I’ll spin this separately here and for now–

I think it’s never an exaggeration to say I enjoy the hell out of her lives, at least the ones I’ve been. Having her play at Animazement seals the deal for the con for not just me but a bunch of others; in fact other than the locals everyone else I went with had her in their sights as #1. That said, I wasn’t sure if that was the case for me.

It wasn’t much of a question; after her concert Saturday afternoon (3:30pm EDT) it was pretty much settled that was the case. I went all out, to say the least. Luck would have it that I had a front rail spot and hung all out cheering. The problem was that there was this dance floor thing and my footing was at the edge of it, which was sloping down to the carpet, where the rail was. It made jumping pretty difficult, especially because I was sandwiched between two guys taller than I am. One happens to be JAMBO MOMOTATO (sorry for bumping/running into you so many times). Anyway, I had a lot of fun.

The physical damage as a result of Kotoko’s live was significant because she played an “anime best” set, which I believe is similar to her Asia Live Tour sets, just shorter. By shorter I mean “hey let’s get rid of some slow songs and have shorter MCs!” Which means “hey let’s have fast songs back to back to back to back ARGH.” Which means my arms kind of fell off at the end, and I was drenched in sweat. Which makes sense; if you do a best-of-KOTOKO of anime (and some games) it’s going to be mostly fast dance beats with some rock stuff mixed in there. Chi ni Kaeru and Being became necessities because of their anime-tie-in-ness but also because they are songs where you (meaning the band as well) can take a breather.

Oh did I say there was band? KOTOKO concert is the best with a band, and if you haven’t seen it you are missing out. Coincidentally the band members dressed up as Lupin characters. The dummer was Lupin, guitarist as Jigen, and the bassist Goemon. That got me at the beginning. Kotoko had an outfit change. Her first outfit was this modified ninja-kimono-thing complete with swordplay. Her second outfit had her in this weird, but more usual, skirt thing. And then there was the t-shirt for the encore. I imagine the second outfit was one of the Asia tour outfit.

My overall impression on the show was obviously quite positive. It wasn’t flawless, but I was too wota’d out to care. It was great to relive Suppuration and Re-sublimity and I was thoroughly impressed with Light My Fire. Most of the MC was in simple Japanese. I think she has a lot of stuff translated in her cheat-sheet/floor-monitor thing, but she didn’t read off it much so there wasn’t much English speaking going on. The front-and-center view was glorious. I was just left of the stage center. Lots of eye contact. I can’t ask for much more. I think the killing blow that made me go “kyun” was Oboetete Iiyo when she sang the last chorus. Man!

Set list (now updated! to be determined, because uh I need to verify it when someone gets home to his mac):

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Animazement 2012: Day 3

Before I crash from being in an automobile all night, some statistics for the weekend:

  • Best round-trip time to-from Baltimore region: 2:42
  • # of tweets in timeline: 13157
  • # of sweaty T-shirts handled: 2; one used to be someone else’s
  • # of “Macaroni & Gratin” consumed: 0.5 (something like 1.5 servings)
  • # of types of beers had: 4
  • # of UO: 3
  • # of sketches: 1…..I guess
  • Hours spent on Wi-fi: about 3.5
  • Hours spent watching anime in the car: 1.5

Day three was uneventful despite being the longest “day 3” I’ve had for Animazement. We stuck around Raleigh until 4:30 or so. The highlight must’ve been Nagahama’s panel. I hope I can get a recording of it and write it up, because he talked about Simoun and I learned something new. Simoun! Amazing. It’s also amazing with lots of other tidbits, so yeah, hopefully I can write it up.

Furukawa told his Natto joke again. It gets ’em every time. It’s best you hear it from him, because I just can’t do battle attack sound SFX the way he does.

The charity Auction pt. 2. got on today as well. I think Itano’s Macross sketch fetched the highest price. Then it was Kotoko’s shirt. I think my group was the only people bidding on it, partly because we were the only people who had the head’s up on it? I am not sure. I asked about it on Saturday. Well, maybe for the wrap. Needless to say a lucky fan walked away with one of Kotoko’s shirts, and others with other autographed goods.

I never expected to see Densuke at the con, even more so when it was a sketch request. Really? I mean, he was credited as a key animator, but wow, that was way back in the days. Anyways, more on that hopefully later as well. And how that Masaru autograph came to being!

Theme in the car: Lots of iM@S (I’m sorry to those who had to be subjected to it) and something about a dollar getting you a huge piece of pie at the Waffle House.


Music May Be a Thing

There are some spoilers, however light, in this post.

Some opinions for you to consider:

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Seraphim Call

There is this 1999 Sunrise moe anime about 11 girls and a Christmas holiday celebration on an island made of academic studies and science. All it needed was X-men-style superpower heroines and trashy light novel origin in order to become something just a passing curiosity. It probably isn’t one of my all-time favorite anime, but it’s a show that I have a hard time forgetting. I blame it on Mochizuki Tomomi, but I eventually fessed up and decided to just say “I like it.” The show is Seraphim Call, just in case you were wondering.

During the days of the moe and Akiba boom, this was just one of the many projects created to cash in. In some ways it might be just too early for its time; we were not ready. The word moe hasn’t really reached its status at the time. Seraphim Call combined romance and that lonely, chilly, heart-warming (and occasionally heart-rending) package into 1-episode chunks. Mochizuki is a pretty creative cinematographer and he applied these tropes, in good 80s-extravagant-OVA-era ways, to the series. The end result is unconventional but also very memorable for me. I think it’s fair to say that this show was at least a little experimental.

I didn’t like the way the marketing for the show worked; it was pretty extreme, selling DVDs (and LDs!) of each episode individually. There was a CD single for each episode, as each episode focused on one girl and that girl fronted the ED theme for that week. Yuko Sasaki’s moe voice rolled in the OP very nicely and I didn’t think I had a similar reaction until Yakushimaru Etsuko got into anime.

I think the problem with this show was that the franchise has nothing to hook itself on. It was not consistently executed; there needed be something–idols, games, whatever–beyond just the anime and its characters. Kita E was a notably better example, but that also didn’t go very far. It is also a better example because it was dated actually after the year 2000, but hey. To be clear, this has not much to do with the experimental nature of the anime and franchise; I suppose looking back, it was one of those things that taught some people a lesson on what to do and what not to do, when they create projects like this.

One thing that bothered me about Seraphim Call was how it appealed to a set of characteristics that bothered me but yet appealed to me. It’s kind of like the irrational dislike I have for furries, but yet I can engage those tropes on some level in the mind and analyze it. Seraphim Call taps into the “Asian winged sad female[also male variant available] in piles of airborne white particles” set of tropes. It’s like games with the word “Valk-” in it. These things have this…stench. It was massively popular in Asia in the late 90s and early 00s. Thankfully for Seraphim Call, it steered mostly clear of the adhered tropes until the very last episode. I am also not particularly adverse to it, although in general I avoided those kind of things. (Valkyria Chronicles seem to be my only other vice in this category.)

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A Week of Many Cons and Ds

Just another post of random notes.

That “Girls und Panzer” anime so reminds me of this:

What a surprise! Takaaki Suzuki is behind this thing. By surprise I mean OMG OPPOSITE MEANING. The man is a bro though, so I’d like to support his efforts.

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Sayonara Ponytail is the weird kind of band with a weird presence. Weird because they were an indie cartoon band and now a major-label cartoon band. It’s just three girls, but it seems one of them is responsible for most of the creative direction of the group.  They debuted for the major label last year, but I read about it back when j1m0ne was just starting to post about indie stuff she found. You can hear them cover Spitz’s Sora mo Taberu Hazu in Tsuritama at the usual places. (Scroll to the bottom of the tag listing to see j1m0ne’s post lol.) Well, if she found it in Tower Record, just how indie was it??

Anyway, you know me and 2.5D, and Sayonara Ponytail are very much so. Think of it as the pickup of the week, as their Tsuritama single comes out this week. There are three versions of this crap:

The double-sided poster that comes with the single features the Tsuritama boys on one side and the witches on the other. The LE version and the Anime version come with a bonus CD. But I guess you might have to shop elsewhere to get that poster as CDJ is out of it.

Actually I have sort of an opinion on Sayonara Ponytail, and it’s mostly made of ambivalence. That said I haven’t listened to their album from last year, which probably means my opinion doesn’t count. I sure don’t count it myself. Anyway, there’s a lot of stuff to be unsure about, but you can read about some of that here.

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In the US, Memorial Day Weekend marks not only the start of Anime Con season, but also of Summer vacationing among people who have PTOs, rather than mandatory school closures (though the period largely overlap). This year’s lineup are the three usual familiars: Anime North (most notable for English-language-tweeting Asakawa Yuu along with Sasanuma, also a p. cool DJ), FanimeCon (Aizawa Mai, the usual Yamaga crew, Kia Asamiya, Koyama Shigeto), and Animazement.

I’m going to Animazement. See you there? And if I make it to Kotoko’s concert alive that would make her one of my most-attended Anison artists at 3 concerts! Well, not counting Yoko Kanno. The three big Memorial Day weekend cons have pretty good guests as usual, but I think Fanime had some problems this year so all their announcements were pretty late. On the other hand Animazement called it out, well, when Mr. Ishiguro was still with us. Besides that, the usual old crew of voice actors and directors and producers will be there, specifically Itano (the circus man), Nagahama (director of Mushishi), Orikasa Fumiko, Kaikan Phrase mangaka, and lots of others.

I wonder if any of the cons are going to move their dates next year… Please peruse the links to the respective sites for the detail guest list!

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There’s that anime power ranking thing and I guess I’m suppose to vote for shows every week–makes sense if/when I am able to watch that week’s anime that week–just wanted to point out Tsuritama was great this past week. It’s a good week for the show too this week come to think of it…

I thought Sencolle, too, was quality this week. Tho I’m a sucker.

What’s more I didn’t even vote this week, because I was too busy partying! Perhaps fortunately this non-voting doesn’t happen all the time (translation: it happens way too often). If I had my way with Kevo, I’d retool it with a lag period–you rank the shows from Saturday to Friday, but make the ballot due like, Monday or something. Also if he’s good with spreadsheets, explore the wonders of Google Docs to automate polling and results? A resounding yes.