ミツル ２２：Arashi 「untitled」Concert Report: Tokyo [2017.12.24, Aiba's Birthday]
Second Arashi concert, and my first in Tokyo.
I normally don't write concert reports for Arashi because I figured a lot of people are already doing them and I feel really unworthy as a fan (I didn't write any report for Japonism; I don't go for multiple shows nor do I pay close attention / have their music on repeat as much as I do for NEWS), but there were circumstances this year that made this experience worth documenting, and I want to have this report written down so that if ever I fall down into the depths of despair once again, I would remember how I felt during these past few days and be saved over and over again. Sounds like an exaggeration, but it's true.
Since September I started battling work, personal and health mental issues. It all started with two blunders at work - and because I don't normally cause blunders nor do I encounter situations like those, I started doubting my capability. As much as everyone else tried to reassure me that everybody makes mistakes, I was not consoled at all - until the ballot results for Untitled came. To be frank, I had even forgotten I applied, so it was a happy surprise to find that I had hit for my second Arashi concert - and to make it even more special, I had hit for the show on Aiba's birthday on Christmas Eve. Before the ballot results came, I was on the verge of booking a sudden trip home to take time off, but receiving the ballot results mail, I resolved to hang in there for 2-3 more months until the concert. It wasn't easy especially for the month of December (the same month I was officially diagnosed with work adjustment disorder and depression), but I managed to hang on.
I flew to Tokyo a day before the concert and was able to hitch-stay over at a friend's AirBnB accommodation for the night. Unfortunately I woke up quite late on the day itself and had even more lengthy conversations so it took us almost noon to finally hit the road. And for some reason, I decided to go all the way to my hotel in Narita to drop off my stuff instead of finding the nearest luggage locker. So thanks to my inexistent time management and decision-making skills, I made it to the dome 30 minutes before the concert started. It was a good thing my friend bought my goods for me!
Prior to entering the dome, we both cracked jokes about what our seats would be like. I had come utterly uchiwa-less (and was only armed with the tour's mini group uchiwa) and my friend had an Ohmiya one and the usual フィリピンからきた one. I told her I was the worst fan ever for not being prepared enough to make a personalized uchiwa (for my favorite member's birthday, even!), and that hopefully, we would be seated in a place where we would be unnoticed. We then got our tickets printed, and for some reason we couldn't find our seats, so we had to ask for help. For Gate 23, it should be fine; we won't be that close! I joked to my friend on the way. So imagine our horror and surprise (and later, unresigned delight) when we found out our seats were here:
WTAF, way to go, Gate 23. LOL
I panicked and then asked my friend if I could borrow her one of her uchiwas, and good thing she readily agreed. I sank back and while I was utterly happy that we got really good seats, I couldn't help feeling that I was not worthy at all because I usually end up forgetting more than half of the concert until the DVD release (and as previously mentioned, I don't consider myself a good Arashi fan; and I only listened to the album for 3-5 times this time around). It was only my second time hitting for an Arashi concert, and both times I had been blessed with great seats (the first time, we were in arena), so I felt really guilty, but at the same time I wondered if it was Arashi's way of trying to make me switch bias groups. I'M SO SORRY ARASHI I CANNOT DO THAT; NEWS HAS KEPT MY HEART AND SOUL HOSTAGE AND UNDER LOCK AND KEY. BLAME YOUR KOUHAIS, UGH
Around the start of the concert I noticed that mostly everyone had set their penlights to green. Being an Aiba fan my penlight was in green by default, but my friend was Nino-biased so she looked around and changed hers from yellow to green. I told her it was fine, but then by now the dome was 99% green so we looked at each other and decided to keep our penlights green. It was actually a great gesture by the fans and it was heartwarming and quite moving.
A minute or two before the concert actually started, we noticed some people filing into the section below us, and then we realized that we were seated right behind the VIP section! AND WONDER OF WONDERS I SAW KATO SHIGEAKI. I AM UTTERLY ASHAMED TO ADMIT THIS but that at that very moment I actually forgot whose concert I had gone to see! 8DDDD
The stage was incredible - there was a really big screen, and there were "frames" everywhere. There was one with the members' faces (merged, I read somewhere), and then when the concert finally started, two parts of the screen revealed the orchestra / band providing the music. I didn't quite realize exactly how big the screen was, until everything lit up and Arashi finally showed themselves. It was awesome!
So since I have quite a poor memory of what happened, I will only be writing about the songs / parts that I can vividly remember!
- I'll Be There! I wasn't quite fond of Aiba's Kizoku Tantei but I had watched it and the song grew on me, particularly the chorus. I especially liked the part when they casually stick their hands into their pockets and swayed from side to side, and the one during the "I'll be with you, you you" part.
- Attack It! Everyone went crazy over this song and I was quite puzzled why (because my one and only Arashi pump-up song is Oh Yeah and unfortunately they didn't include it in the set list this year), until I heard the chorus and realized it was the song played in the ending credits of every VSA episode I had first watched during my few months into the fandom.
- Happiness! YamaTarooooooo ahhhh I sometimes forget how much I like this song! I always thought it is quite overused, but seeing the audience hyped up made me really excited as well. And for some reason, this time Happiness was like an indirect message to me - to be happy when I want to be, and never care about anything else! And I'm not sure if it was during this part, but they got on the carts and Nino came really close and pointed / waved in our direction. He might have been directing it at the VIP guests, but we didn't care, lol.
- UB! OH MY GOD THAT NINOAI DANCE WAS TERRIFYING GOOD. How had they managed to think of the choreograhy for that song?! There were a few times I held my breath because I thought they wouldn't be able to pull off some of the moves, but their teamwork was astounding and I found myself clapping really hard at the end.
- Bazuri Night was HILARIOUS. At the start they had somewhat like a group messaging app on the screens among the three of them, and then when the song started they all went out dressed in otaku fashion (the male fan type, complete with penlights!). At one point the whole stage became dark and the juniors did an otaku penlight dance, and when the lights came back on, all three of them were dressed in gal style (Harajuku? Sorry, not sure) and had ridiculously long wigs and short skirts / lower garments that showed their thighs! I couldn't stop laughing at this point and it was tremendously funny that I found myself still laughing even after it finished. After the performance Nino and Jun came up with untitled con shirts on, and then the three of them took off their wigs - one of them (Ohno?) - their mic caught on the wig hair and it became difficult to properly take them off.
- Tsunagu! Right before the song, Ohno danced alone on the stage, as if he was a puppet and there was an invisible puppeteer controlling all his moves. Since we were seated at the sides the effect was a little lost (because we could see the space between the "strings" and Ohno's body), but I was pretty sure that if seen from the center of the dome, it would have been really perfect.
- GUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTS UGGGGHHHH you will NEVER know how much this song meant to me. It was one of my earlier Arashi songs and I sang it like I've never sung it before - with complete furitsuke XDDD And Doors too! I watched SakiBoku this year and frankly enough I really like the song, so I sang it out loud so much ahaha.
- MC time! They talked about how they were moved by everyone's effort to turn their penlights to green at the start of the concert (and not sure - Jun talked about how he was a bit perplexed to see it and thought they might have accidentally set everything to green). They also brought out a cake for Aiba's birthday - we sang him a birthday song, and Arashi took a lot of pictures. Sho did a panorama shot of Tokyo Dome and apologized about how the MC turned into a normal birthday party XDDDD
- Speaking of penlights, there were certain moments when particular members would talk, and then the whole dome would slowly change their penlight color into the member's color. When Nino talked about Kouhaku, we turned yellow. When Sho talked about the Olympic games, we turned into red. Sometimes we even laughed because we would click our penlight controls in a hurry to turn them into a particular color!
- Apparently Aiba gifted Ohno and Sho tshirts that had a Bazuri Night pic of them. The conversation then turned to tshirts they would wear at home, and Ohno said something about how he'd stay home when he hears his neighbor opening his door.
- They said something about how they normally don't get to celebrate Sho's birthday during a tour (and I think they joked about him / Jun having to change their birthdays).
- They promoted their New Year programs, and then Nino (I think) told all of us to prepare enough HD recorder space, lol.
- Nino talked about Kouhaku, thanked us, and said he's looking forward to everyone's support. They made him introduce the second half of the concert in Kouhaku style too!
- They had an accent dance of Step and Go / Zero-G / Truth / PARADOX, which was quite cool to watch.
- Now or Never WAS WAY TOOOOOOOOOOOOOO CUTEEEEE.
- At one point during the concert, Jun was on a cart and was coming towards us, and then he peered into my direction. I honestly couldn't make out his face because the light was too strong, but our eyes met and I held his gaze for around 5 seconds XDDDDD
- Honestly, the second half of the concert was a trip down memory lane. Pikanchi Double, Hadashi no Mirai, Believe, Monster, and A-Ra-Shi. There was also Wild at Heart during the first encore!
- GDI Song for You was way tooooooo long for me, I'm so sorry! But the message of the song was great though - just my legs were killing me. After that, they did Mikan, which was my favorite in the album. It kind of made up for the PV, tbh, so I was quite contented.
- Sometime during the first encore (Kanata E?), we didn't expect that the streamers would shoot up so soon. I had expected them to be shot during the final encore, when Arashi asks us for their name (like how NEWS usually does it), but apparently they're different. And this was the worst part for me, because even with our great seats, the wind blew all the concert tape away and we were literally left with nothing. As a result, I wasn't able to fully enjoy Kanpai Song, because all we did was to look longingly at the space below us where some of the tape had fallen. After the concert however, a guard gathered a lot of tape and we were able to get some! The fan next to us was not able to get any, but my friend had brought her medical scissors (lol) and was able to cut a portion of her own tape for that fan. How generous :)
- Aiba did his Disco Star dance at the end, during the goodbyes :D
- At some points during the concert I sneaked glances at Shige and was utterly amused seeing him looking all serious / unemotional / unmoving / stoic. I figured out that maybe it was his way of being respectful to his senpai, but I still couldn't help laughing because his kouhais legitimately looked like they had a lot of fun, but Shige was just..... too serious. XD
After the concert I had to run for Narita again so I said goodbye to my friend momentarily (because we would be seeing each other again in Cebu, anyway). It was indeed a great concert and a great way to spend Christmas Eve - though it was kind of a pain to get home, with all other couples who had romantic Christmas Eves.
On the way home, I kept on thinking about the messages during the narrative bits of the concert, and remembered how they were all speaking of meetings, departures, fate, and meaning in them. It made me think about my own life and how I've met so many people - people who had hurt me, people who became my friends OL and RL, people who came and left, and people who changed my life for good. I'm very thankful especially for Arashi - because despite them not knowing who I am personally, they had made my life take a positive turn. For the past two days I was in Tokyo, I managed NOT to take my antidepressants, which is saying something - I didn't need to rely on any medicine for me to feel better, because Arashi's presence was enough for me to forget my depression. They might be "small" or "trivial" things, but this concert made me realize that they had played an important and crucial part in my "survival", and by realizing this, their presence isn't something "small" nor "trivial". For making me come this far, for helping me out in times when I was down, I am immensely grateful, and thankful for the five of them.
May I never forget "untitled".