[2020.12] FC Video on ARAFES 2020 Reflections - Part 2
In late December, Arashi posted an FC video where they reflected on the different aspects of ARAFES 2020!
Here's Part 2 of the series! The members discuss the Greetings Shuffle and their thoughts on Jun's solo, Shake It!
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Greetings Shuffle>
Sho: That was really interesting!
Jun: Why was that again? Hmm, given that this time, we had split the concert into Parts 1 and 2, and we talked about how it wasn’t Arashi’s style to launch into the songs without a greeting from us.
Sho: It wasn’t like we couldn’t do it though.
Jun: And we said it would be tough to do the same greeting for Parts 1 and 2.
Sho: That’s right.
Nino: Since our greetings are fixed.
Jun: We definitely wanted to make Part 1, available only to FC members, more interesting, so we went with the shuffle.
Sho: Man, Aiba-san’s greeting was a masterpiece.
(Aiba giggles cutely.)
Nino: (deadpan tone) I really wished he would redo the greeting.
[T/N: Aiba got to do Nino’s greeting and he messed it up in a really cute way, to Nino’s lack of amusement.]
Aiba: It was a live recording! I couldn’t redo the greeting because it’s part of the live concert, I’m sorry.
Nino: I seriously wish you’d record the audio again!
Aiba: (bursts out laughing)
Nino: What was it that you said again?
Ohno: What did he say?
Sho: “Welcome~! Welcome~! Welcome~!” That alone was interesting!
Aiba: I meant to only get one thing wrong! (laughs uncontrollably) I really did! Ideally! But I seriously messed up the last line, so I thought I couldn’t recover from this and wanted to just push through.
Sho: What did you hear him say, Ohno-san?
Ohno: He said, “Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr!” and he left the stage.
Sho: (cackles heartily)
Ohno: He said, “Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr!” and left.
Jun: He laughed as he said it!
Sho: If the audience had been there, they wouldn’t have squealed at his greeting!
Nino: They wouldn’t.
Aiba: We needed captions for that. I’m really sorry for that.
Sho: We were confirming our respective greetings before the show, right?
Jun: Yeah, we did.
Nino: The more accurately we could replicate the greetings, the happier the fan club members would be, right?
Aiba: They would! I said, “I’d mess up a little!” I was really excited! I asked, “May I? Just mess up a little?” And (Nino) said, “Yeah, it’s fine!”
Jun: You totally bombed.
Nino: It wasn’t a minor mistake.
Aiba: (giggles)
Sho: When Nino said, “Hi~”, it was probably the same key as Ohno-san’s, right?
Nino: I was matching his!
Sho: You even replicated his key?
Nino: Yup! His pitch is higher. Even if I asked him, he’d say, “Just do it however you want,” and he wouldn’t tell me.
Ohno: ^__^”
Sho: He wouldn’t tell you?
Nino: He wouldn’t!
Aiba: Because that’s a trade secret!
Sho: It is!? But it’s funnier if you replicated his greeting exactly, right?
Nino: Isn’t it? And yet he tells me, “It’s fine! Just ask how they’re doing!”
Ohno: I told him, “Just say ‘Hi’ 3 times, then just do whatever you want!”
Nino: I’m telling you, we shouldn’t be doing whatever we want!
Sho: We haven’t done it since “ARASHI Blast in Miyagi”, so it’s been a while!
Jun: That’s right.
Sho: Now that I think about it, we could attempt the shuffle greetings because our concert greetings are fixed!
Jun: That’s true.
Sho: If we didn’t have a fixed greeting, people wouldn’t know it if we’d shuffled things around.
Jun: If we had done our greetings like we did in the past, the fans wouldn’t know what’s happening. At most, they’d realize that the order had changed.
Nino: Yeah, that’s what I thought during Miyagi too.
Sho: Shall we go in order?
Nino: The people watching might find it surprising that “Shake it!” was performed first!
Sho: You mean the order of the performance?
Nino: Yeah.
Jun: We didn’t say we’d be performing solos.
Sho: It’s like, “You’re kicking it off with ‘Shake it!’? What curve balls could be waiting for us next?”
Nino: Yup! It was like, “What!?”
Jun: It’s “Shake it!” I performed “Shake it!” three times at Arafes!
Aiba: I see!
Sho: It’s the Shakefes! (chuckles)
Jun: To me, it was Shakefes!
Aiba: >_<
Ohno: Shakefes…! (bends over in laughter)
Nino: It’s now in the Hall of Fame!
Sho: We performed it too!
Aiba: We sure did!
Jun: The very first (Arafes), yes?
Ohno: I liked Nino’s “Shake It!”
Nino: I was shaking it, right?
Sho: I wonder if there’s anyone out there who knows about it? When we were in our early twenties, it was popular in LA, this shaking move. (mimics the move)
Nino: That’s right, there was this dance. (Does the shake)
Sho: We just kept doing it. Then we did this little segment where we were like, “It’s not THAT kind of “Shake it”!”
Nino: I think the audience didn’t get it. But it started from there.
Sho: The 5 of us, or should I say the 4 members as seen from my perspective, the excitement that wells up within me in the first 2 to 3 seconds when the intro starts playing…
Nino: I feel you!
Sho: When we hear the intro for “Shake it!” playing, we’d go, “Whoa! So it’s that song?”
Jun: Um hmm.
Sho: We’d say, “It’s coming, it’s coming, right?” (subtly motions the moment when Jun rips open his shirt) “There it is! Nice Shake!”
Aiba: We were having such a blast backstage, right?
Nino: We sure did.
Aiba: When we saw that moment backstage, we said, “Here it comes!”
Jun: Oh really.
Sho: It was the work of a virtuoso.
Jun: Happy to hear that.
Ohno: It’s pretty impactful.
Nino: Um hmm! To send out Matsumoto Jun right off the bat! That’s Arashi’s strength for you!
Aiba: Our first batter!
Jun: I’m off!
Nino: The solo isn’t typical of a first batter.*
[T/N: The first batter in a baseball game is usually not the power hitters, which typically are the third or forth hitters. Nino is saying that for an impactful song like Shake It, it’s unusual for it to come first in the solo line-up.]
Jun: That’s not true. It’s how the song is, right?
Nino: That song is very much so, at the beginning.
Sho: Now that I look back at it, it was a good decision. When the sun was gradually setting and the fans are wondering what’s coming next, to have “Shake it!” as the first solo performance.
Jun: Sakurai-san’s part was good too, when he said, “We keep goin’ on!”
[T/N: Sho says this at the end of Fight Song and right before Jun’s solo.]
Sho: Seriously I was racking my brains on what to say, and that was how it turned out.
Nino: Well, it was good though! I even guided (the camera viewpoint) towards (Jun’s) stage.
Sho: Was it supposed to be that way? The camera would zoom in on Nino, who would then guide the camera’s viewpoint to Matsujun?
Jun: Yeah, that was the plan.
Sho: Oh, I didn’t know. When I watched it, I thought, “Oh, that’s pretty well done~”
Jun: (laughs)
Nino: J told me that the camera would zoom in on me, so I… (waves his hands and points towards an imaginary stage with Jun on it).
Sho: I was really surprised by that footage. It’s something that works especially in a live streamed concert.*
[T/N: As opposed to a concert which you attend in person.]
Nino: I think we connected to the audience, didn’t we?
Aiba: That’s true for all the concerts, right? Up till now, I’ve never really been bothered by the camera positioning. (A pause as the other members are silent.) Wait, am I the only one?
Sho: (laughs heartily)
Jun: Well, it bothers ME! (laughs)
Sho: I’m concerned about it too!
Aiba: It does?
Nino: Okay! Please receive the scolding later!
Aiba: (collapses in laughter)
Nino: Please receive the scolding later!
Aiba: No, I was focusing on the fans!
Nino: That’s enough! No more! Please receiving the scolding from the director later!
Aiba: I thought I wasn’t resonating with you guys…
Sho: So you do know what it’s like to stop a conversation for one and a half seconds! You were like, “Huh?”
Nino: “I stepped on a landmine!” (Sho chuckles loudly)
Jun: (gestures to himself and Sho) We’re conscious of the whole venue, so when we want to communicate to the entire audience, we tend to look straight into the camera.
Aiba: I see.
Jun: It’s very obvious when it goes to editing.
Aiba: I see!
[T/N: Aiba-chan, you’ve been doing this for 20 years… ^__^”]
Jun: But there are times when the instructions are, “At this point, look straight into the camera”, right?
Aiba: I did take care to (look into the camera) then!
Jun: I’d say that, so…
Aiba: When there’s a parallel shot of the 5 of us, I’d look straight into the camera.
Jun: That’s right.
Aiba: Other than that, I’m completely focused on the fans!
Nino: What an AMAZING excuse! (laughs)
Sho/Ohno: (laughs)
Aiba: I’m focusing on the people in front of me!
Sho: I think you’re right in your own way! It’s fine to have that style!
Nino: You value the community, right?
Aiba: (overly eager in defending himself) That’s right! Exactly!
Nino: That’s it!
Aiba: Hang on, aren’t the both of you (Ohno/Nino) also the same type? You mean you’re not?
Nino: You know, the two of us are always, erm,
Ohno: Um hmm.
Aiba: You care about the camera positioning?
Ohno: (completely ignoring Aiba’s question) Isn’t Nino’s solo up for discussion next?
Aiba: (bends over laughing and gives up trying to salvage his reputation)
Here's Part 2 of the series! The members discuss the Greetings Shuffle and their thoughts on Jun's solo, Shake It!
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Greetings Shuffle>
Sho: That was really interesting!
Jun: Why was that again? Hmm, given that this time, we had split the concert into Parts 1 and 2, and we talked about how it wasn’t Arashi’s style to launch into the songs without a greeting from us.
Sho: It wasn’t like we couldn’t do it though.
Jun: And we said it would be tough to do the same greeting for Parts 1 and 2.
Sho: That’s right.
Nino: Since our greetings are fixed.
Jun: We definitely wanted to make Part 1, available only to FC members, more interesting, so we went with the shuffle.
Sho: Man, Aiba-san’s greeting was a masterpiece.
(Aiba giggles cutely.)
Nino: (deadpan tone) I really wished he would redo the greeting.
[T/N: Aiba got to do Nino’s greeting and he messed it up in a really cute way, to Nino’s lack of amusement.]
Aiba: It was a live recording! I couldn’t redo the greeting because it’s part of the live concert, I’m sorry.
Nino: I seriously wish you’d record the audio again!
Aiba: (bursts out laughing)
Nino: What was it that you said again?
Ohno: What did he say?
Sho: “Welcome~! Welcome~! Welcome~!” That alone was interesting!
Aiba: I meant to only get one thing wrong! (laughs uncontrollably) I really did! Ideally! But I seriously messed up the last line, so I thought I couldn’t recover from this and wanted to just push through.
Sho: What did you hear him say, Ohno-san?
Ohno: He said, “Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr!” and he left the stage.
Sho: (cackles heartily)
Ohno: He said, “Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr!” and left.
Jun: He laughed as he said it!
Sho: If the audience had been there, they wouldn’t have squealed at his greeting!
Nino: They wouldn’t.
Aiba: We needed captions for that. I’m really sorry for that.
Sho: We were confirming our respective greetings before the show, right?
Jun: Yeah, we did.
Nino: The more accurately we could replicate the greetings, the happier the fan club members would be, right?
Aiba: They would! I said, “I’d mess up a little!” I was really excited! I asked, “May I? Just mess up a little?” And (Nino) said, “Yeah, it’s fine!”
Jun: You totally bombed.
Nino: It wasn’t a minor mistake.
Aiba: (giggles)
Sho: When Nino said, “Hi~”, it was probably the same key as Ohno-san’s, right?
Nino: I was matching his!
Sho: You even replicated his key?
Nino: Yup! His pitch is higher. Even if I asked him, he’d say, “Just do it however you want,” and he wouldn’t tell me.
Ohno: ^__^”
Sho: He wouldn’t tell you?
Nino: He wouldn’t!
Aiba: Because that’s a trade secret!
Sho: It is!? But it’s funnier if you replicated his greeting exactly, right?
Nino: Isn’t it? And yet he tells me, “It’s fine! Just ask how they’re doing!”
Ohno: I told him, “Just say ‘Hi’ 3 times, then just do whatever you want!”
Nino: I’m telling you, we shouldn’t be doing whatever we want!
Sho: We haven’t done it since “ARASHI Blast in Miyagi”, so it’s been a while!
Jun: That’s right.
Sho: Now that I think about it, we could attempt the shuffle greetings because our concert greetings are fixed!
Jun: That’s true.
Sho: If we didn’t have a fixed greeting, people wouldn’t know it if we’d shuffled things around.
Jun: If we had done our greetings like we did in the past, the fans wouldn’t know what’s happening. At most, they’d realize that the order had changed.
Nino: Yeah, that’s what I thought during Miyagi too.
Sho: Shall we go in order?
Nino: The people watching might find it surprising that “Shake it!” was performed first!
Sho: You mean the order of the performance?
Nino: Yeah.
Jun: We didn’t say we’d be performing solos.
Sho: It’s like, “You’re kicking it off with ‘Shake it!’? What curve balls could be waiting for us next?”
Nino: Yup! It was like, “What!?”
Jun: It’s “Shake it!” I performed “Shake it!” three times at Arafes!
Aiba: I see!
Sho: It’s the Shakefes! (chuckles)
Jun: To me, it was Shakefes!
Aiba: >_<
Ohno: Shakefes…! (bends over in laughter)
Nino: It’s now in the Hall of Fame!
Sho: We performed it too!
Aiba: We sure did!
Jun: The very first (Arafes), yes?
Ohno: I liked Nino’s “Shake It!”
Nino: I was shaking it, right?
Sho: I wonder if there’s anyone out there who knows about it? When we were in our early twenties, it was popular in LA, this shaking move. (mimics the move)
Nino: That’s right, there was this dance. (Does the shake)
Sho: We just kept doing it. Then we did this little segment where we were like, “It’s not THAT kind of “Shake it”!”
Nino: I think the audience didn’t get it. But it started from there.
Sho: The 5 of us, or should I say the 4 members as seen from my perspective, the excitement that wells up within me in the first 2 to 3 seconds when the intro starts playing…
Nino: I feel you!
Sho: When we hear the intro for “Shake it!” playing, we’d go, “Whoa! So it’s that song?”
Jun: Um hmm.
Sho: We’d say, “It’s coming, it’s coming, right?” (subtly motions the moment when Jun rips open his shirt) “There it is! Nice Shake!”
Aiba: We were having such a blast backstage, right?
Nino: We sure did.
Aiba: When we saw that moment backstage, we said, “Here it comes!”
Jun: Oh really.
Sho: It was the work of a virtuoso.
Jun: Happy to hear that.
Ohno: It’s pretty impactful.
Nino: Um hmm! To send out Matsumoto Jun right off the bat! That’s Arashi’s strength for you!
Aiba: Our first batter!
Jun: I’m off!
Nino: The solo isn’t typical of a first batter.*
[T/N: The first batter in a baseball game is usually not the power hitters, which typically are the third or forth hitters. Nino is saying that for an impactful song like Shake It, it’s unusual for it to come first in the solo line-up.]
Jun: That’s not true. It’s how the song is, right?
Nino: That song is very much so, at the beginning.
Sho: Now that I look back at it, it was a good decision. When the sun was gradually setting and the fans are wondering what’s coming next, to have “Shake it!” as the first solo performance.
Jun: Sakurai-san’s part was good too, when he said, “We keep goin’ on!”
[T/N: Sho says this at the end of Fight Song and right before Jun’s solo.]
Sho: Seriously I was racking my brains on what to say, and that was how it turned out.
Nino: Well, it was good though! I even guided (the camera viewpoint) towards (Jun’s) stage.
Sho: Was it supposed to be that way? The camera would zoom in on Nino, who would then guide the camera’s viewpoint to Matsujun?
Jun: Yeah, that was the plan.
Sho: Oh, I didn’t know. When I watched it, I thought, “Oh, that’s pretty well done~”
Jun: (laughs)
Nino: J told me that the camera would zoom in on me, so I… (waves his hands and points towards an imaginary stage with Jun on it).
Sho: I was really surprised by that footage. It’s something that works especially in a live streamed concert.*
[T/N: As opposed to a concert which you attend in person.]
Nino: I think we connected to the audience, didn’t we?
Aiba: That’s true for all the concerts, right? Up till now, I’ve never really been bothered by the camera positioning. (A pause as the other members are silent.) Wait, am I the only one?
Sho: (laughs heartily)
Jun: Well, it bothers ME! (laughs)
Sho: I’m concerned about it too!
Aiba: It does?
Nino: Okay! Please receive the scolding later!
Aiba: (collapses in laughter)
Nino: Please receive the scolding later!
Aiba: No, I was focusing on the fans!
Nino: That’s enough! No more! Please receiving the scolding from the director later!
Aiba: I thought I wasn’t resonating with you guys…
Sho: So you do know what it’s like to stop a conversation for one and a half seconds! You were like, “Huh?”
Nino: “I stepped on a landmine!” (Sho chuckles loudly)
Jun: (gestures to himself and Sho) We’re conscious of the whole venue, so when we want to communicate to the entire audience, we tend to look straight into the camera.
Aiba: I see.
Jun: It’s very obvious when it goes to editing.
Aiba: I see!
[T/N: Aiba-chan, you’ve been doing this for 20 years… ^__^”]
Jun: But there are times when the instructions are, “At this point, look straight into the camera”, right?
Aiba: I did take care to (look into the camera) then!
Jun: I’d say that, so…
Aiba: When there’s a parallel shot of the 5 of us, I’d look straight into the camera.
Jun: That’s right.
Aiba: Other than that, I’m completely focused on the fans!
Nino: What an AMAZING excuse! (laughs)
Sho/Ohno: (laughs)
Aiba: I’m focusing on the people in front of me!
Sho: I think you’re right in your own way! It’s fine to have that style!
Nino: You value the community, right?
Aiba: (overly eager in defending himself) That’s right! Exactly!
Nino: That’s it!
Aiba: Hang on, aren’t the both of you (Ohno/Nino) also the same type? You mean you’re not?
Nino: You know, the two of us are always, erm,
Ohno: Um hmm.
Aiba: You care about the camera positioning?
Ohno: (completely ignoring Aiba’s question) Isn’t Nino’s solo up for discussion next?
Aiba: (bends over laughing and gives up trying to salvage his reputation)