Animelo Summer Live 2008 - Challenge (day 2)
(to be C/Ped to MT later)
Today was pretty much the Nico Nico Douga half of Animelo, filled with songs pulled from the Internet thanks to major sponsor dwango. There were a whole lot of unproven acts thrown next to whoever didn't fit on the Saturday ticket, and I was pretty nervous about the general quality of the acts. Let's get straight into the mini-reviews here, since it's already late and I have a LOT to get through.
JAM Project (+Misato Aki -Okui Masami): The first act to get the audience primed for the show was a Rockman fan song that got huge on nico video, known affectionately as Okkusenman. The song isn't exactly good, but it's fast, fun, and audience-friendly. There was one problem: when JAM Project came out of the lift at center stage, a lot of people cocked their heads and asked "Who the hell is that girl, and why isn't she Okui Masami?"
It turned out that Okui Masami was forbidden to perform under doctor's orders, and the poor overmatched girl was Misato Aki, who had been drafted to replace Okui for just that number. The whole time, she had the kind of bemused look that you'd see on some poor schmuck pulled out of the crowd to play quarterback for a professional football team. Partially joyous at having a lifelong dream fulfilled, but mostly frightened by the prospect of being blindsided by a bloodthirsty monstrosity.
She tried her best, but she was just overmatched by the difficult vocals and the four bellowing titans surrounding her. It wasn't the greatest way to open a concert, but I couldn't fault Misato Aki for being a last-minute substitution.
Misato Aki: I didn't expect much from her, because her songs don't really stick out in my head. That changed when she started singing. Kimi ga Sora Datta, a forgettable song I must have fast-forwarded through at least twenty-four times, never sounded so good. She injected it with vibrancy and life, and made me rethink my blanket dismissal of her talent. I haven't decided if I like her work or not, but a strong solo performance is at least enough to make me look at it again.
Elisa: I'd only ever heard her music in a commercial before, and that's pretty much all I remember. Sent, Houkoholic, and I all spent her first song asking each other "why the hell does this sound so familiar?" The rest is a blur, so I will call a mulligan on this one. I didn't react negatively, so she was at least decent. I wish I could remember more, but after around the 8th hour of nerd concerts, you can barely remember which way is down, much less what you thought of every act.
Domestic Love Band: The act formerly known as Angela kept reminding us that they were no longer Angela, and they hammered that into everyone's heads with an incredibly strange opening to their number. They had a bunch of masked guys march in while getting the audience to chant "Kazoku ai!" ("Family love!") for about 3 minutes before coming on stage and singing a hard rock version of (of all things) Happy Material, the Negima opening. Since Negima is on my hate list just under the Stanfurd football team and above acid reflux, I was very happy to hear its most popular and most remixed song gleefully massacred by a singer whose abilities I greatly respect.
Atsu... err, I mean Aiko, then proceeded with a hard rock version of her own signature song, Shangri-la. I absolutely adored the original version, and while the "DLB" version was super-different, it was still fun to hear the new, faster take on it. Hell, it was even more impressive than hearing the original version, because those vocals are hard enough at the original tempo, and she nailed it with gusto at the newly metal-fied tempo. Good vocals are good vocals, and transplanting a complex melody into a rock act doesn't make the song any worse (well, sometimes). I definitely enjoyed the show they put on, though it was pretty disorienting to hear everything Atsu...Aiko said echoed by each member of the band.
Sound Horizon: Sound Horizon proves that you can have too much of a good thing. I like their vocalists. I like most of their instrumentation. Their stage shows are elaborately produced and impressive. The problem is, these three elements don't blend together consistently. Between the 7 vocalists (6 female, 1 male), two narrators, the strings section, and the pitched battle at center stage, I lost track of who was doing what and why. It turned into a cacophonous assault on my eardrums, and it didn't help that the mics of the narrators were mixed way too loud. I couldn't understand a thing they were saying, and half of the narration was in native English! My one distinct memory of their performance is this thought: "Why are those girls doing the robot during the guitar solo?"
So yeah, thumbs-down on Sound Horizon live. Every once in a while, they get a song to come together properly, but I'm just not willing to put up with the whole audio-visual assault in exchange for an interesting story told through music.
Later, I found myself wishing that Sound Horizon stayed on stage longer, because right after them came the Pain Train, a string of acts that culminated in me turning to Sent and asking him, as politely as I could, to shove a glowstick through my eardrums as a defensive measure.
Kurobara Hozonkai (AKA Horie Yui's Goth Band Thing): There was a brief period of time in the late '90s where I thought that Horie Yui music was pretty good. Then I heard her try to hit a high note and fail utterly. In the decade since, her quest to hit even one high note has become Sisyphian. Often, she will make it halfway up a scale only to fall right back down into her natural, limited range.
Kurobara Hozonkai is her latest way of surrounding herself with more talented performers without giving up the spotlight. They're a decent way for people to digest Horie Yui music, with a good sense of humor about themselves that makes them a good comedy act - they even made fun of their Toilet Time status, which got a good chuckle out of the crowd.
Sadly, they had to play music at some point, and I prepared myself for the worst. According to Houkoholic and Sent, Horie was having a good day, but I still winced when she tried to warble her way through Hikari, a song she probably knows inside and out. She didn't do terribly per se, but about a third of the song is outside of her range (hell, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is probably out of her range).
I probably have a bunch of hate mail waiting for me when I get back to the States as it is, so I won't pile on - it's not like I hate Horie Yui, I just don't think she should sing.
Momoi Haruko: I would love to sit down with Momoi Haruko for a few hours and pick her brain. From everything I've read from her, she's a bright girl who knows a lot about Japanese fan culture and isn't afraid to talk about it. She would be an interesting interview, to say the least. This does not change the fact that her singing voice resembles the dying squeals of a crushed ferret.
So, when she took the stage, I braced myself for impact. She ran out of breath halfway through the first song and struggled to keep up with her own energy level for the rest of her set. Her singing was suspect as usual, but the audience ate it up anywayThe only thing that saved my will to live was a song from Baldr Force, one of my favorite games of all time. It didn't make me feel good, since LOVE.EXE pales in comparison to the theme it replaced. The residual goodwill from thinking of Baldr Force at least got me through to the next act.
Momoi Haruko and MOSAIC.WAV: My will to live took another hit when MOSAIC.WAV took the stage. They play the worst kind of cutesy denpa, which in some twisted minds (I'm looking at you, Cenon) is the best kind of denpa. Things took a turn for the worse when Momoi reunited with her old guitarist to re-form Under 17, an act I loathed back in the day. They sang Tenbatsu Angel Rabbie, which got a great reaction from the crowd but made me want to flee screaming.
Personal prejudices aside, the duet worked out really well, as the MOSAIC.WAV singer helped keep Momoi from running out of breath, and her voice fits in well with Momoi's sound. In some deep, dank pit of my soul, I found myslef starting to like MOSAIC.WAV - if they could make Momoi sound better, I was willing to hope that they could sound pretty good themselves.
MOSAIC.WAV: I have spent long hours ranting about how denpa is a musical blight on the earth, using dance beats and cute sound sample overloads to cover up the fact that the songs just aren't that good. There are some denpa songs I like, but overall, the genre makes my stomach turn.
I have to give denpa this, though: it's really fun to see live. MOSAIC.WAV had the audience primed and put on a good show, and I could swear that for half of a song, they sounded more like speed metal than denpa. I got interested at that point, and when they performed Gacha Gacha Cute, I actually found myself liking it. I turned off my good taste for a few minutes and just had fun. So, I guess I can give MOSAIC.WAV a thumbs up for being fun to watch, though I don't think I'll recommend their music to my friends any time soon.
ave;new featuring Sakura Saori: Another act that got popular on the internet, the main draw of Sakura Saori is her ultra-high singing voice. It makes her songs hard to understand, so misheard lyrics versions of her songs are a huge hit on youtube and nico. I was a little surprised that she managed to go up so high and stay there for all of her songs, but when I heard her speak for the first time, I understood why.
She actually talks like that. It was a bit disturbing. I kept looking around her costume for where she was hiding the helium tank. I wondered where Simon and Theodore were. I giggled a lot when she spoke. I had a lot of fun and I like most of ave;new's songs (it's a weakness), so I give them a hearty thumbs-up.
miko: This wasn't exactly an act as much as an interactive karaoke session. The only song she sang is impossible to sing live, and so most of the music came from the sound system and the original flash video played on the screen. Miko filled in when she could, and 27,000 cheering fans filled in the backup vocals with gusto. Hearing tens of thousands of people go "An an an an a-an an!" is a somewhat frightening experience, but it was fun, if brief. It was definitely a crowd-pleaser.
Lia: I like most of Lia's songs. She has a pure quality to her voice that reminds me of my cousin's time in a girl's chorus, and it makes me chuckle whenever someone tries to match her range and fails utterly.
Regrettably, she doesn't really have the ability to pull off her own songs live. She did okay, but you could tell that she was struggling to keep up and stay strong. Her voice wobbled at a few points and she had to try and play catchup each time, so color me disappointed that she's a studio-only act. I still like her songs, though. As a parting shot before I move on, here, listen to Light Colors.
The iDOLM@STER: I make it no secret that I like imas. They did a medley of their most popular songs, and even though there were a few mic glitches (we didn't get to hear Tokachi!), it was a lot of fun to hear the girls on stage doing a medley of their most popular songs. Two of their best singers (Takahashi Chiaki and Imai Asami) were present, along with their most popular cutesy act (Shimoda Asami, who I keep confusing with Imai even though they look and sound nothing alike). Even the big question mark (Nakamura Eriko, who at this time three years ago was... suspect at best) did well.
There was a fun part during their free talk portion where they primed up the crowd with their catch phrases, with Takahashi Chiaki introducing the crowd to JPY - Juicy Polly Yay, which she explained as a meaningless phrase with a grin. When it got to Imai Asami, she laughed and said "I don't have much of a catch phrase, what should I do?" She then asked the crowd to turn their heads and scoff, which didn't really take off but was still amusing.
It was a foregone conclusion that I'd like this act, so let's move on!
Fukuyama Yoshiki: He only played one song, but it was aaaawesome. The whole crowd veritably burned with energy as he fired up Makka na Chikai, and it was something to behold. He's a well-established act and great to hear live, and there's really not much more to say than that.
May'n: Anyone who's heard the Macross Frontier songs knows exactly what May'n/Sheryl sounds like live - she nailed the act, and while I'm not really a big fan of Iteza, her voice was strong and she was definitely in charge the whole time.
Psychic Lover: Just like GRANRODEO the previous day, Psychic Lover injected the day with a fresh burst of testosterone with their J-rock act. What threw everyone for a loop was their second song, which was a power ballad titled Kodou - Get Closer. I don't think many of us even knew that Psychic Lover was capable of singing a ballad, so it was a pleasant surprise to hear something other than their usual high-octane butt rock. I had fun, even though I'd never heard either of the songs before.
Hirano Aya: Hirano Aya is mega-popular these days and I can't understand why. She has mega-hit singles even though she's a very, very raw singer. She appeared in Japanese Playboy even though she's not particularly good-looking. She just keeps getting more and more exposure, and each time I see her, I'm still unimpressed. She's an unfinished product, and aside from her Haruhi work, I can't see why people still like her.
I'm giving her another two years to get better at the singing act. If she can't cut the mustard by then, she'll never do it. Sent, Houkoholic, and I all sat down and took a break at this point, and I saw a surprising number of people doing the same thing.
Ishikawa Chiaki: I saw her at AX last year, and she was great live. She doesn't necessarily have a strong presence on the stage, but she sings incredibly well and I like almost all of her work. It was fun going "ooeeaaeeoooooee" for Uninstall, and then we got a special treat by hearing her new Gundam 00 song months before it hits the air. We got a REAL special treat a few minutes later, when we got
Ishikawa Chiaki and Yonekura Chihiro: This was easily the best duet of the two-day concert. The two complemented each other perfectly - Ishikawa with her rich timbre and Yonekura with her power. It was Gundam heaven to hear them singing the Gundam 08th Team opening and the Gundam SEED ending together, and I was walking on air by the end.
Yonekura Chihiro: An old hand at the anison game, Yonekura Chihiro didn't disappoint, giving the assembled masses another big treat with the other unreleased Gundam 00 song. A classy act and a great singer, and she got the crowd primed and ready for the last act:
JAM Project: I have a love/hate relationship with JAM Project. Their music is burning to the extreme, but sometimes it just sounds like they're screaming. This is especially evident in one of the songs they played, Rocks. I hate that song... but it blew away the crowd.
SKILL was incredible to hear live too - I screamed myself hoarse during 4 minutes of "I CAN FLY! HEY! YOU CAN FLY! HEY!" "MOTTO MOTTOOOOOO!" JAM really knows how to work a crowd, and it was crazy to be part of the audience. It was unfortunate that Okui couldn't be there, but they did well nonetheless.
Overall review for the day: Notably weaker in musical prowess than day 1, but way up there on the fun factor. As I was leaving, Houkoholic, who got me the tickets in the first place, turned to me with a knowing look on his face. Instead of goodbye, he said "See you next year."
"I hate you," I shot back, knowing that barring disaster, he was right.
Okay - off to catch a plane. See you guys in the States!
Today was pretty much the Nico Nico Douga half of Animelo, filled with songs pulled from the Internet thanks to major sponsor dwango. There were a whole lot of unproven acts thrown next to whoever didn't fit on the Saturday ticket, and I was pretty nervous about the general quality of the acts. Let's get straight into the mini-reviews here, since it's already late and I have a LOT to get through.
JAM Project (+Misato Aki -Okui Masami): The first act to get the audience primed for the show was a Rockman fan song that got huge on nico video, known affectionately as Okkusenman. The song isn't exactly good, but it's fast, fun, and audience-friendly. There was one problem: when JAM Project came out of the lift at center stage, a lot of people cocked their heads and asked "Who the hell is that girl, and why isn't she Okui Masami?"
It turned out that Okui Masami was forbidden to perform under doctor's orders, and the poor overmatched girl was Misato Aki, who had been drafted to replace Okui for just that number. The whole time, she had the kind of bemused look that you'd see on some poor schmuck pulled out of the crowd to play quarterback for a professional football team. Partially joyous at having a lifelong dream fulfilled, but mostly frightened by the prospect of being blindsided by a bloodthirsty monstrosity.
She tried her best, but she was just overmatched by the difficult vocals and the four bellowing titans surrounding her. It wasn't the greatest way to open a concert, but I couldn't fault Misato Aki for being a last-minute substitution.
Misato Aki: I didn't expect much from her, because her songs don't really stick out in my head. That changed when she started singing. Kimi ga Sora Datta, a forgettable song I must have fast-forwarded through at least twenty-four times, never sounded so good. She injected it with vibrancy and life, and made me rethink my blanket dismissal of her talent. I haven't decided if I like her work or not, but a strong solo performance is at least enough to make me look at it again.
Elisa: I'd only ever heard her music in a commercial before, and that's pretty much all I remember. Sent, Houkoholic, and I all spent her first song asking each other "why the hell does this sound so familiar?" The rest is a blur, so I will call a mulligan on this one. I didn't react negatively, so she was at least decent. I wish I could remember more, but after around the 8th hour of nerd concerts, you can barely remember which way is down, much less what you thought of every act.
Domestic Love Band: The act formerly known as Angela kept reminding us that they were no longer Angela, and they hammered that into everyone's heads with an incredibly strange opening to their number. They had a bunch of masked guys march in while getting the audience to chant "Kazoku ai!" ("Family love!") for about 3 minutes before coming on stage and singing a hard rock version of (of all things) Happy Material, the Negima opening. Since Negima is on my hate list just under the Stanfurd football team and above acid reflux, I was very happy to hear its most popular and most remixed song gleefully massacred by a singer whose abilities I greatly respect.
Atsu... err, I mean Aiko, then proceeded with a hard rock version of her own signature song, Shangri-la. I absolutely adored the original version, and while the "DLB" version was super-different, it was still fun to hear the new, faster take on it. Hell, it was even more impressive than hearing the original version, because those vocals are hard enough at the original tempo, and she nailed it with gusto at the newly metal-fied tempo. Good vocals are good vocals, and transplanting a complex melody into a rock act doesn't make the song any worse (well, sometimes). I definitely enjoyed the show they put on, though it was pretty disorienting to hear everything Atsu...Aiko said echoed by each member of the band.
Sound Horizon: Sound Horizon proves that you can have too much of a good thing. I like their vocalists. I like most of their instrumentation. Their stage shows are elaborately produced and impressive. The problem is, these three elements don't blend together consistently. Between the 7 vocalists (6 female, 1 male), two narrators, the strings section, and the pitched battle at center stage, I lost track of who was doing what and why. It turned into a cacophonous assault on my eardrums, and it didn't help that the mics of the narrators were mixed way too loud. I couldn't understand a thing they were saying, and half of the narration was in native English! My one distinct memory of their performance is this thought: "Why are those girls doing the robot during the guitar solo?"
So yeah, thumbs-down on Sound Horizon live. Every once in a while, they get a song to come together properly, but I'm just not willing to put up with the whole audio-visual assault in exchange for an interesting story told through music.
Later, I found myself wishing that Sound Horizon stayed on stage longer, because right after them came the Pain Train, a string of acts that culminated in me turning to Sent and asking him, as politely as I could, to shove a glowstick through my eardrums as a defensive measure.
Kurobara Hozonkai (AKA Horie Yui's Goth Band Thing): There was a brief period of time in the late '90s where I thought that Horie Yui music was pretty good. Then I heard her try to hit a high note and fail utterly. In the decade since, her quest to hit even one high note has become Sisyphian. Often, she will make it halfway up a scale only to fall right back down into her natural, limited range.
Kurobara Hozonkai is her latest way of surrounding herself with more talented performers without giving up the spotlight. They're a decent way for people to digest Horie Yui music, with a good sense of humor about themselves that makes them a good comedy act - they even made fun of their Toilet Time status, which got a good chuckle out of the crowd.
Sadly, they had to play music at some point, and I prepared myself for the worst. According to Houkoholic and Sent, Horie was having a good day, but I still winced when she tried to warble her way through Hikari, a song she probably knows inside and out. She didn't do terribly per se, but about a third of the song is outside of her range (hell, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is probably out of her range).
I probably have a bunch of hate mail waiting for me when I get back to the States as it is, so I won't pile on - it's not like I hate Horie Yui, I just don't think she should sing.
Momoi Haruko: I would love to sit down with Momoi Haruko for a few hours and pick her brain. From everything I've read from her, she's a bright girl who knows a lot about Japanese fan culture and isn't afraid to talk about it. She would be an interesting interview, to say the least. This does not change the fact that her singing voice resembles the dying squeals of a crushed ferret.
So, when she took the stage, I braced myself for impact. She ran out of breath halfway through the first song and struggled to keep up with her own energy level for the rest of her set. Her singing was suspect as usual, but the audience ate it up anywayThe only thing that saved my will to live was a song from Baldr Force, one of my favorite games of all time. It didn't make me feel good, since LOVE.EXE pales in comparison to the theme it replaced. The residual goodwill from thinking of Baldr Force at least got me through to the next act.
Momoi Haruko and MOSAIC.WAV: My will to live took another hit when MOSAIC.WAV took the stage. They play the worst kind of cutesy denpa, which in some twisted minds (I'm looking at you, Cenon) is the best kind of denpa. Things took a turn for the worse when Momoi reunited with her old guitarist to re-form Under 17, an act I loathed back in the day. They sang Tenbatsu Angel Rabbie, which got a great reaction from the crowd but made me want to flee screaming.
Personal prejudices aside, the duet worked out really well, as the MOSAIC.WAV singer helped keep Momoi from running out of breath, and her voice fits in well with Momoi's sound. In some deep, dank pit of my soul, I found myslef starting to like MOSAIC.WAV - if they could make Momoi sound better, I was willing to hope that they could sound pretty good themselves.
MOSAIC.WAV: I have spent long hours ranting about how denpa is a musical blight on the earth, using dance beats and cute sound sample overloads to cover up the fact that the songs just aren't that good. There are some denpa songs I like, but overall, the genre makes my stomach turn.
I have to give denpa this, though: it's really fun to see live. MOSAIC.WAV had the audience primed and put on a good show, and I could swear that for half of a song, they sounded more like speed metal than denpa. I got interested at that point, and when they performed Gacha Gacha Cute, I actually found myself liking it. I turned off my good taste for a few minutes and just had fun. So, I guess I can give MOSAIC.WAV a thumbs up for being fun to watch, though I don't think I'll recommend their music to my friends any time soon.
ave;new featuring Sakura Saori: Another act that got popular on the internet, the main draw of Sakura Saori is her ultra-high singing voice. It makes her songs hard to understand, so misheard lyrics versions of her songs are a huge hit on youtube and nico. I was a little surprised that she managed to go up so high and stay there for all of her songs, but when I heard her speak for the first time, I understood why.
She actually talks like that. It was a bit disturbing. I kept looking around her costume for where she was hiding the helium tank. I wondered where Simon and Theodore were. I giggled a lot when she spoke. I had a lot of fun and I like most of ave;new's songs (it's a weakness), so I give them a hearty thumbs-up.
miko: This wasn't exactly an act as much as an interactive karaoke session. The only song she sang is impossible to sing live, and so most of the music came from the sound system and the original flash video played on the screen. Miko filled in when she could, and 27,000 cheering fans filled in the backup vocals with gusto. Hearing tens of thousands of people go "An an an an a-an an!" is a somewhat frightening experience, but it was fun, if brief. It was definitely a crowd-pleaser.
Lia: I like most of Lia's songs. She has a pure quality to her voice that reminds me of my cousin's time in a girl's chorus, and it makes me chuckle whenever someone tries to match her range and fails utterly.
Regrettably, she doesn't really have the ability to pull off her own songs live. She did okay, but you could tell that she was struggling to keep up and stay strong. Her voice wobbled at a few points and she had to try and play catchup each time, so color me disappointed that she's a studio-only act. I still like her songs, though. As a parting shot before I move on, here, listen to Light Colors.
The iDOLM@STER: I make it no secret that I like imas. They did a medley of their most popular songs, and even though there were a few mic glitches (we didn't get to hear Tokachi!), it was a lot of fun to hear the girls on stage doing a medley of their most popular songs. Two of their best singers (Takahashi Chiaki and Imai Asami) were present, along with their most popular cutesy act (Shimoda Asami, who I keep confusing with Imai even though they look and sound nothing alike). Even the big question mark (Nakamura Eriko, who at this time three years ago was... suspect at best) did well.
There was a fun part during their free talk portion where they primed up the crowd with their catch phrases, with Takahashi Chiaki introducing the crowd to JPY - Juicy Polly Yay, which she explained as a meaningless phrase with a grin. When it got to Imai Asami, she laughed and said "I don't have much of a catch phrase, what should I do?" She then asked the crowd to turn their heads and scoff, which didn't really take off but was still amusing.
It was a foregone conclusion that I'd like this act, so let's move on!
Fukuyama Yoshiki: He only played one song, but it was aaaawesome. The whole crowd veritably burned with energy as he fired up Makka na Chikai, and it was something to behold. He's a well-established act and great to hear live, and there's really not much more to say than that.
May'n: Anyone who's heard the Macross Frontier songs knows exactly what May'n/Sheryl sounds like live - she nailed the act, and while I'm not really a big fan of Iteza, her voice was strong and she was definitely in charge the whole time.
Psychic Lover: Just like GRANRODEO the previous day, Psychic Lover injected the day with a fresh burst of testosterone with their J-rock act. What threw everyone for a loop was their second song, which was a power ballad titled Kodou - Get Closer. I don't think many of us even knew that Psychic Lover was capable of singing a ballad, so it was a pleasant surprise to hear something other than their usual high-octane butt rock. I had fun, even though I'd never heard either of the songs before.
Hirano Aya: Hirano Aya is mega-popular these days and I can't understand why. She has mega-hit singles even though she's a very, very raw singer. She appeared in Japanese Playboy even though she's not particularly good-looking. She just keeps getting more and more exposure, and each time I see her, I'm still unimpressed. She's an unfinished product, and aside from her Haruhi work, I can't see why people still like her.
I'm giving her another two years to get better at the singing act. If she can't cut the mustard by then, she'll never do it. Sent, Houkoholic, and I all sat down and took a break at this point, and I saw a surprising number of people doing the same thing.
Ishikawa Chiaki: I saw her at AX last year, and she was great live. She doesn't necessarily have a strong presence on the stage, but she sings incredibly well and I like almost all of her work. It was fun going "ooeeaaeeoooooee" for Uninstall, and then we got a special treat by hearing her new Gundam 00 song months before it hits the air. We got a REAL special treat a few minutes later, when we got
Ishikawa Chiaki and Yonekura Chihiro: This was easily the best duet of the two-day concert. The two complemented each other perfectly - Ishikawa with her rich timbre and Yonekura with her power. It was Gundam heaven to hear them singing the Gundam 08th Team opening and the Gundam SEED ending together, and I was walking on air by the end.
Yonekura Chihiro: An old hand at the anison game, Yonekura Chihiro didn't disappoint, giving the assembled masses another big treat with the other unreleased Gundam 00 song. A classy act and a great singer, and she got the crowd primed and ready for the last act:
JAM Project: I have a love/hate relationship with JAM Project. Their music is burning to the extreme, but sometimes it just sounds like they're screaming. This is especially evident in one of the songs they played, Rocks. I hate that song... but it blew away the crowd.
SKILL was incredible to hear live too - I screamed myself hoarse during 4 minutes of "I CAN FLY! HEY! YOU CAN FLY! HEY!" "MOTTO MOTTOOOOOO!" JAM really knows how to work a crowd, and it was crazy to be part of the audience. It was unfortunate that Okui couldn't be there, but they did well nonetheless.
Overall review for the day: Notably weaker in musical prowess than day 1, but way up there on the fun factor. As I was leaving, Houkoholic, who got me the tickets in the first place, turned to me with a knowing look on his face. Instead of goodbye, he said "See you next year."
"I hate you," I shot back, knowing that barring disaster, he was right.
Okay - off to catch a plane. See you guys in the States!