All Aboard The Last Voyage
It’s really over.
Let me get this off my chest.
For the last time.
For now.
We’ve already said so many things, have exhausted our feelings from both ends. There are no words to explain this to a person who isn’t an Arashi member, staff, or fan. We’re done verbalizing what is impossible to pin down.
There were so many sad things in the last Voyage episode.
As we all expected, but still: daggers.
Brilliant, glittering daggers.
The cityscape blurring past on the way to Tokyo Dome.
Their silence in the green room, each one steeling himself his own way.
Their muted walk to the final stage.
The special kind of heartbrokenness as they practiced their songs for the last time.
Emotions hitting in waves-at one moment, just another song they’ve sung for more than a decade; the next moment, a burial.
Laying something so charged and so precious to rest, bodies moving along to notes and lyrics that have been so entwined with their lives, a melodic inventory of what they have poured so much of themselves to.
Saying goodbye. Making peace. Tucking it away.
For now.
The palpability of Sho’s dread: at once both refreshing and sobering. Never have I ever felt like we, as a fandom moving as one organism, needed to mobilize and metaphysically give this very grown-up man a bear hug. His vulnerability touched me. The feelings of not wanting to enter Tokyo Dome. His dream before the last concert, of messing up his parts, of being depressed about it. Dreams aren’t always beautiful, after all, and even after waking up, sometimes there remains a taste in your mouth that the morning can’t wash away.
It’s that inexplicability that Sho was able to express at that moment. The others did not demand it so harshly of themselves-and they didn’t need to. They were self-aware enough to know that they were experiencing something for the first and last time in their lives. They owed us no explanation.
Aiba’s soft eyes were a confession in itself: so hushed, stripped bare of any pretense of being the appointed heliotropic member. The sun was simply something that streamed in to the smooth drone of the van as he sunk into the captain’s seat, silent and ponderous, marinating.
Nino’s frenetic monologue, for everyone to see and hear. I’ll feel different. Hmm, maybe I won’t feel different. It will change. It won’t change. It’s almost like you wanted to shake his shoulders. Bean, it’s okay.
Ohno accepting that there was no stopping the tides, this one, of time: how very fisherman-like. As they pulled up to the driveway of Tokyo Dome, he knew that he was simply moving, neither forward or backward. And that it was what he needed to do, for now, feelings aside.
But Sho, in particular, was harsh in his expression.
It bled into his dreams, before, and even after the concert. There was a cast of fragility that we've never seen on him before. While that doesn’t make him better or worse than the others, it was much more relatable, to me, personally. His volatility felt similar to what I felt. Knowing that this was the finish line all along, but still being confronted by disbelief and loss as the day arrived. Sho Sakurai, lips pursed, his dignified features distorted by emotions during their last bow on stage.
Because there it was, the release he probably wanted to keep inside but could not. His tears spoke for him.
“Out of my way.” Jun. Of course.
It’s always a treat to witness more of Jun’s precise creativity, his single-minded insistence on finetuning the way we experience Arashi. His sometimes terror-inducing scenes as a producer was juxtaposed by him, saying softly, that he cannot wait for the members to see the stage.
He pulled out all the stops to wrap it with a ribbon.
The hiatus is by no means the end of his potential. But there is something distinctly mournful about wondering what else we could have gotten out of Jun at this moment in time, at the height of Arashi and his production prowess, flanked by their long-time team and collaborators. This has always been his show, and to see him push and strain for a momentous, one-night-only, career-punctuating concert was to see a creative heart convulsing on the table.
No glass casings, no golden plinths. Just a stark, sterile light into what motivates Matsumoto Jun, alive and beating. His blood was all over the stage to make this swan song happen, just like how he had envisioned it, and while that sounds unnecessarily dramatic, every fan will know it to be true.
Arashi put on a show worthy of their legacy. Jun wouldn't have allowed anything else.
Yet for me, no matter how special it was, there was a note of emptiness: a show-piece, installation element to the This Is Arashi concert. As idols, they have always riffed off of fans’ energy, the same way fans gathered strength and pure joy at partaking of their idol’s performance and energy in person. When you’ve been at it for long enough, this is a distinction that idol fans simply know and feel by instinct. Other musicians primarily create music for the sake of the music, but idol craft resonates on this energetic exchange between idol and fan.
Music and spectacle matter, yes. But there is something there that matters more than words can portray. There has always been a pure, life-giving, wholesome something that is at the core of the idol-fan exchange, and of course, as a biased fan, I feel that no other groups have done it quite like Arashi. Arashi breathes this energy, this love.
You know this feeling, right? You wouldn't have read this far if you didn't. This has always been a special relationship.
Without that energy, they were simply performing. Did it make it less heartfelt? No. Music and memories are potent, and they took us along with them for a journey. Did they not push it to the highest of levels and execution they could? Absolutely, no questions asked. Was the scale and number of fans reached amazing? You bet.
But after 21 years, they deserved the heat of bodies in Tokyo Dome, the emotional ringing of their name called out in person, cheers so loud and sonorous, the invisible sound waves would’ve etched itself into the white scalloped ceiling. We deserved to give that to them, in person.
A-RA-SHI. They are historic. But most of all, they are part of our personal histories, and us, theirs.
They deserved that one last coming together of idol and fan.
A-RA-SHI, we called out, our sincere digital voice recordings that Jun timed to perfection, to the millisecond.
They successfully created warmth out of technology, but there will always be a stain of bitterness in my heart that everything unfolded this way. This kind of goodbye, in the middle of a global pandemic. Their eyes, scanning a cavernous and empty Tokyo Dome, imagining we were really there too.
A-RA-SHI.
We hoped it reached them, really reached them.
Oh, our super boys, who wanted to take the world by storm but ended up giving us their world.
A-RA-SHI.
I’m sad to be old enough to accept with grace that things truly end.
Eras, jobs, relationships, dreams, all of it.
But I’m also glad we’re finally here. For Arashi, it’s been three or so years of them transitioning to this. There is relief, too. They have nothing but my gratitude and admiration for closing this chapter so neatly, yet so openly. We could not have been held more tenderly and honestly by them.
On fingers, hanging by breastbones, or displayed properly in our rooms, we have twinkling Swarovski crystals from their stage-their gift to us.
Within our easy reach, all their music and concerts, both old and new. The stunning amount of entertainment to go back to, if we ever felt a need to return for awhile and laugh like the old days.
We have four entertainment stalwarts, still blazing paths and creating work that pushes them but also makes us smile. We have one free spirit to rest upon our hopes that fighting for our own distinct version of happiness works out in the end. We still have them, really.
In our hearts, all the lessons of these 21 years. All the dreams dreamt and realized. All the friends we've met.
The music never ends, but time has caught up with us. The camera mercifully afforded us a healing view: after they say goodbye one last time, the first thing they do backstage was to hug one another. We saw something too brittle and all too human: Jun reaching out to embrace a silently devastated Sho.
If hearts could be crushed and mended in one go, that was it.
It's over, it's done. They smiled and held each other assuringly. They let it be.
There was nothing more to be said.
At the end of the episode, a montage of time passing, from debut to now-a dizzying array of Arashi, through the years. They made it happen.
The storm.
There will never be another day like December 31, 2020.
There will never be another group like this.
There will never be this feeling again.
Because it’s us and Arashi, and we're the only ones who know how it feels.
No matter what, it's a feeling to treasure.
I guess this is goodbye.
For now.