Natsume Yuujinchou event!
Photobucket is still stuck, so I guess I'll talk about this first...
On Sunday night I went to the Natsume Yuujincho Go event~ It was so long! O_O The pre-screening event was only about an hour or so, and while the ticket prices for this one were a little higher, I didn't expect them to go on for three hours! Granted, I do remember some previous shows, like the Christmas one and Hotarubi no Mori e crossover one being that long (I listened to the audio of those over and over while studying kanji, lol)... But it was awesome being at an event like that in person! ^o^
Me and my friends weren't the only ones though - the hall was massive! We were on the second floor, 15th row, which felt like quite far back because I had to watch the screen (while squinting) most of the time, but it was only about in the middle of the hall. There were so many people even further back, and higher up O_O Guess we got pretty lucky with the tickets. ^^;
Just a small part of the hall... There were just as many people to the other side of us, and I don't even know how many downstairs... =O Apparently there were about 5000 people in total!
...Yes, I wore my Natsume sweater. ^^;
The show started out with general introductions from the five (Kamiya, Inoue, Horie, Suganuma and Kimura), and the hosts. Apparently the hosts were a manzai duo, who I never really heard of, but apparently they played Santo and Mikuri in "Kokoroiro no Kippu". =O
Then there was a talk segment in which the actors had to make confessions to each other. That gave us some really funny behind-the-scenes stories about what goes on during the recording of the shows. For example, apparently Suganuma (Kitamura) auditioned for the role of Natsume originally, so he talked about how awkward and frustrating it was at first, being picked for a role like "classmate B" and having to watch the person who DID get the main role in the studio. Then Kamiya said he was really glad he never knew about that, or else he wouldn't have been able to act properly due to the pressure. But in the end Suganuma was glad that Kitamoto and Nishimura got as much character development as they did. And yeah, they pretty much confirmed that the chapters about them first meeting Natsume are going to be animated this season. >www<
And apparently Kamiya used to have a cat named "Nyanko-sensei", which is how he originally found out about the manga.
Kamiya also talked about how he also auditioned for the anime, despite having been picked by Midorikawa-sensei herself for the drama CD that was produced first. Casts tend to change from those, so he wasn't expecting to get the role for the anime as well. When he was picked, he didn't know who would be playing the other characters yet, so he talked about how much he hoped the others would be the same too, and how happy he was when they were picked too. <3
Inoue "confessed" that he really loved the sound theater (Me too!), though he couldn't remember how many times they did it ("two or three"? No, only two... xD ), and he really wants to do another one. If he got to decide, it would be split into two parts - the first part being absolutely hilarious slapstick comedy ("sound theater!!" written in hiragana and spoken with Nyanko-sensei's highest pitched voice, and the second part being one of those typically heart wrenching stories (SOUND THEATHER written in English letters and pronounced with Madara's lowest, 'cool' voice, lol), and then he wants to watch the audience's reactions. Is he a sadist, or what...?
Those were probably the most interesting tidbits from the confessions segment. (Though I can't say I remember all of it right now... Sooo tired =____= )
Next they had a segment with random games... Really random... ^^; I think the idea was that if they won, they could "give back names" that were on the screen, and in the end a video would be played, but whether or not it was fully visible would depend on how many names were returned. But seriously, who comes up with these games!? One I remember was where they had to put umeboshi (dried plums) in order of how old they were. (50 years old, 25 years old, etc...) And the most surprising thing was that they got it right after only two tries. =O
Another game involved two people having to go behind a paper screen, so that only their shadows were visible (and their voices were deformed) and the others having to guess which one was which.
Then there was one where they had to guess which description belonged to which youkai (apparently even unnamed youkai are given "names" in the scripts for recording, like "two-horned youkai" "horse-faced youkai" etc, but some were so similar to each other they got most wrong at first.
Another question showed 9 screenshots of Reiko, and they had to guess which one of them was actually Nyanko-sensei pretending to be Reiko... Which was actually really easy, because it showed her in the 'transforming' pose that Nyanko-sensei does when he turns into a human. I mostly recognized it from when he transformed into Natsume... "Dou yo!" (And yes, we got to hear Inoue say that line in person! x'D )
They also had to guess how many times Nyanko-sensei was called something besides "Nyanko-sensei" throughout season 5, and it turned out to be 15 times, though the actors all guessed fewer than 10. Then they showed a video lining up all the instances, which was pretty hilarious. "Fat cat" "ugly cat" "mochi" "manjuu" "pig cat", etc... It was basically a whole reel of Nyanko-sensei being insulted, which Inoue found slightly aggravating. xD
They managed to clear the middle of the screen, and when the video played, I could immediately tell that it was scenery from Hitoyoshi. The actors guessed it right too (but only after the last shot clearly showed Tengubashi xD ), and then they won 100 manjuu to divide amongst themselves. (...I wanted some!)
Next, there was a segment where they had to pick the character, youkai or voice actor that was the most (blank), like "the one that left the biggest impression", or "the one I'd want to live with", etc... For the most impressive voice actor, they mentioned the late Aono Takeshi as Tsuyukami (T_T) and Hosoya as Shibata. Apparently the latter appeared really nervous during his recording for that episode with Shibata in season 6. The others mostly made fun of him sweating a lot in the studio, but it made me wonder if that had something to do with his illness...
Also, the voice actor for Chobi has this creepy habit of sneaking up next to people to use their microphones, instead of using his own, which makes recording with him really scary, apparently.
For the "youkai you'd want to live with", it was a tie between Nyanko-sensei and Kogitsune at first, so they made the audience decide by clapping... I voted for Kogitsune, because who the heck wants to live with a sake-drinking glutton cat!? (He'd eat all my food! xD ) But in the end, Nyanko-sensei won, anyways.
Next, by way of a "break" for the actors, they screened the second DVD special for Go, that only came out last week! I haven't had the time to buy the DVD or look for it online, so I was really happy to see it ! I was so confused as to which chapter it was covering though. Some parts from it seemed familiar, but I don't think I remember the complete story from anywhere... So it might be based on elements from the manga but heavily expanded upon? Or maybe my memory is failing me... It started out with Nyanko-Sensei disappearing off to a "special" drinking-party, and Natsume getting curious about what kind of party that would be (his imaginations are definitely anime-original, on the same level as the "Teacher!Nyanko-sensei" thing we got in episode 11 =P). Then he finds a rock that looks a lot like Nyanko-sensei (I'm SURE that happened in the manga somewhere...) and wants to show it to him, but when Nyanko-sensei doesn't come back, he starts looking for him and wanders into an abandoned mansion (This part actually reminded me a lot of the most recent light novel, so I was kind of getting excited for an adaptation of that, but it didn't turn out to be that, either...). Then he gets caught up in some youkai's game of hide-and-seek, and every time he falls asleep, he finds himself hiding from youkai that mansion again (and waking up screaming every time, including in class... Poor him >wwww< ) , until he finds the leader of the game and asks to be released. It SEEMS like it would be something from the manga, but I just don't remember... ^^; Any ideas?
Anyways, the next segment was an original voice drama performed live by the actors, with some audience participation. Well, only a little, but still... For some reason, they were selling Nyanko -sensei shaped light sticks at the venue, so people were wondering what we would need them for (It's not as if it's a concert, right...?), so I brought my own pen light just in case... And apparently during this story, they made the audience represent the scenery by changing the color of their lights. (Green for the forest, pink and purple for flowers, white and blue for a starry sky, etc...) It was kind of neat, but it was only a few instances... It would've been fun if there were more.
The story was about Natsume, Tanuma, Nishimura and Kitamoto going camping and fishing (with Nyanko-sensei), and Nishimura losing the pocket knife he got as a present from Kitamoto's ill father (to use it instead of him, aww... ;_ ; ) Nishimura runs off in the middle of the night to look for it, and because there's rumors of bears appearing in the area, everyone gets really worried and starts looking for him. Eventually Natsume finds him (after finding the knife, or rather, getting it back from the youkai that protects the river, who apparently picked it up), and, almost uncharacteristically, starts yelling at Nishimura for making them worry. (And surprising the heck out of Tanuma, lol )Then Natsume's afraid that he said too much, and Nishimura is mad at him for yelling, but it's quite the opposite - Nishimura is happy that Natsume feels comfortable enough with his friends to worry about them and yell at them like that. D'aww... <3 I hope they recorded the story somehow, I'd love to see it appear on a drama CD... (Or even better, have this whole event as a special on a DVD...)
As the "ending" to the story, we got a live performance by Aimer, singing Akane Sasu. OMG! I hadn't looked at the guest list or anything beforehand, but apparently it was a surprise that she'd be there. It was an acoustic version of the song, only accompanied by a piano, but it was so impressive. TT_TT Loud sniffling from the audience ensued... =P (And I, and everyone else, got out their light sticks and made them red and orange, I guess that was another reason why we needed them. )
After the song, the hosts and actors were too dazed to really say much anymore, and I don't really remember what they actually said as their final greetings, other than they're really grateful that the anime has been going on for nine years now, and hoping that it'll keep on going for a long time, and they'll do their best to create a version as faithful to the manga as possible. Kamiya also mentioned that he's really aware of how many fans are counting on him to deliver, as an essential part of the show, so he's working really hard to live up to our expectations. I can't imagine what it must feel like, the pressure of embodying a character in an ongoing show (and one that has YEARS between seasons...) the way he does... As much as I would've liked to hear Suganuma or the others who originally auditioned try, I really can't imagine anyone else playing Natsume, so I hope Kamiya will be in good health for a long time to come >w<
They had these cutouts in the lobby, as well as goods... Though the line was ridiculous! Not that it took that long in the end, but they made the line go onto the staircase, all the way up to the seventh floor, and then back down... What if you were injured and couldn't climb all those stairs?? (My ankle still hurt, but somehow I managed...)
I got the denim pass case (really needed a new one) and the clear file. Lots of stuff was already sold out by the time I got there =O
After the show, we also got this umaibou... Apparently they handed them out at another event (somewhere in Kyoto I think? Somewhere I couldnt' go, at least...), but they had leftovers, so they handed them out here as well. Yay... ! (I I kinda don't want to open it, though...)
On Sunday night I went to the Natsume Yuujincho Go event~ It was so long! O_O The pre-screening event was only about an hour or so, and while the ticket prices for this one were a little higher, I didn't expect them to go on for three hours! Granted, I do remember some previous shows, like the Christmas one and Hotarubi no Mori e crossover one being that long (I listened to the audio of those over and over while studying kanji, lol)... But it was awesome being at an event like that in person! ^o^
Me and my friends weren't the only ones though - the hall was massive! We were on the second floor, 15th row, which felt like quite far back because I had to watch the screen (while squinting) most of the time, but it was only about in the middle of the hall. There were so many people even further back, and higher up O_O Guess we got pretty lucky with the tickets. ^^;
Just a small part of the hall... There were just as many people to the other side of us, and I don't even know how many downstairs... =O Apparently there were about 5000 people in total!
...Yes, I wore my Natsume sweater. ^^;
The show started out with general introductions from the five (Kamiya, Inoue, Horie, Suganuma and Kimura), and the hosts. Apparently the hosts were a manzai duo, who I never really heard of, but apparently they played Santo and Mikuri in "Kokoroiro no Kippu". =O
Then there was a talk segment in which the actors had to make confessions to each other. That gave us some really funny behind-the-scenes stories about what goes on during the recording of the shows. For example, apparently Suganuma (Kitamura) auditioned for the role of Natsume originally, so he talked about how awkward and frustrating it was at first, being picked for a role like "classmate B" and having to watch the person who DID get the main role in the studio. Then Kamiya said he was really glad he never knew about that, or else he wouldn't have been able to act properly due to the pressure. But in the end Suganuma was glad that Kitamoto and Nishimura got as much character development as they did. And yeah, they pretty much confirmed that the chapters about them first meeting Natsume are going to be animated this season. >www<
And apparently Kamiya used to have a cat named "Nyanko-sensei", which is how he originally found out about the manga.
Kamiya also talked about how he also auditioned for the anime, despite having been picked by Midorikawa-sensei herself for the drama CD that was produced first. Casts tend to change from those, so he wasn't expecting to get the role for the anime as well. When he was picked, he didn't know who would be playing the other characters yet, so he talked about how much he hoped the others would be the same too, and how happy he was when they were picked too. <3
Inoue "confessed" that he really loved the sound theater (Me too!), though he couldn't remember how many times they did it ("two or three"? No, only two... xD ), and he really wants to do another one. If he got to decide, it would be split into two parts - the first part being absolutely hilarious slapstick comedy ("sound theater!!" written in hiragana and spoken with Nyanko-sensei's highest pitched voice, and the second part being one of those typically heart wrenching stories (SOUND THEATHER written in English letters and pronounced with Madara's lowest, 'cool' voice, lol), and then he wants to watch the audience's reactions. Is he a sadist, or what...?
Those were probably the most interesting tidbits from the confessions segment. (Though I can't say I remember all of it right now... Sooo tired =____= )
Next they had a segment with random games... Really random... ^^; I think the idea was that if they won, they could "give back names" that were on the screen, and in the end a video would be played, but whether or not it was fully visible would depend on how many names were returned. But seriously, who comes up with these games!? One I remember was where they had to put umeboshi (dried plums) in order of how old they were. (50 years old, 25 years old, etc...) And the most surprising thing was that they got it right after only two tries. =O
Another game involved two people having to go behind a paper screen, so that only their shadows were visible (and their voices were deformed) and the others having to guess which one was which.
Then there was one where they had to guess which description belonged to which youkai (apparently even unnamed youkai are given "names" in the scripts for recording, like "two-horned youkai" "horse-faced youkai" etc, but some were so similar to each other they got most wrong at first.
Another question showed 9 screenshots of Reiko, and they had to guess which one of them was actually Nyanko-sensei pretending to be Reiko... Which was actually really easy, because it showed her in the 'transforming' pose that Nyanko-sensei does when he turns into a human. I mostly recognized it from when he transformed into Natsume... "Dou yo!" (And yes, we got to hear Inoue say that line in person! x'D )
They also had to guess how many times Nyanko-sensei was called something besides "Nyanko-sensei" throughout season 5, and it turned out to be 15 times, though the actors all guessed fewer than 10. Then they showed a video lining up all the instances, which was pretty hilarious. "Fat cat" "ugly cat" "mochi" "manjuu" "pig cat", etc... It was basically a whole reel of Nyanko-sensei being insulted, which Inoue found slightly aggravating. xD
They managed to clear the middle of the screen, and when the video played, I could immediately tell that it was scenery from Hitoyoshi. The actors guessed it right too (but only after the last shot clearly showed Tengubashi xD ), and then they won 100 manjuu to divide amongst themselves. (...I wanted some!)
Next, there was a segment where they had to pick the character, youkai or voice actor that was the most (blank), like "the one that left the biggest impression", or "the one I'd want to live with", etc... For the most impressive voice actor, they mentioned the late Aono Takeshi as Tsuyukami (T_T) and Hosoya as Shibata. Apparently the latter appeared really nervous during his recording for that episode with Shibata in season 6. The others mostly made fun of him sweating a lot in the studio, but it made me wonder if that had something to do with his illness...
Also, the voice actor for Chobi has this creepy habit of sneaking up next to people to use their microphones, instead of using his own, which makes recording with him really scary, apparently.
For the "youkai you'd want to live with", it was a tie between Nyanko-sensei and Kogitsune at first, so they made the audience decide by clapping... I voted for Kogitsune, because who the heck wants to live with a sake-drinking glutton cat!? (He'd eat all my food! xD ) But in the end, Nyanko-sensei won, anyways.
Next, by way of a "break" for the actors, they screened the second DVD special for Go, that only came out last week! I haven't had the time to buy the DVD or look for it online, so I was really happy to see it ! I was so confused as to which chapter it was covering though. Some parts from it seemed familiar, but I don't think I remember the complete story from anywhere... So it might be based on elements from the manga but heavily expanded upon? Or maybe my memory is failing me... It started out with Nyanko-Sensei disappearing off to a "special" drinking-party, and Natsume getting curious about what kind of party that would be (his imaginations are definitely anime-original, on the same level as the "Teacher!Nyanko-sensei" thing we got in episode 11 =P). Then he finds a rock that looks a lot like Nyanko-sensei (I'm SURE that happened in the manga somewhere...) and wants to show it to him, but when Nyanko-sensei doesn't come back, he starts looking for him and wanders into an abandoned mansion (This part actually reminded me a lot of the most recent light novel, so I was kind of getting excited for an adaptation of that, but it didn't turn out to be that, either...). Then he gets caught up in some youkai's game of hide-and-seek, and every time he falls asleep, he finds himself hiding from youkai that mansion again (and waking up screaming every time, including in class... Poor him >wwww< ) , until he finds the leader of the game and asks to be released. It SEEMS like it would be something from the manga, but I just don't remember... ^^; Any ideas?
Anyways, the next segment was an original voice drama performed live by the actors, with some audience participation. Well, only a little, but still... For some reason, they were selling Nyanko -sensei shaped light sticks at the venue, so people were wondering what we would need them for (It's not as if it's a concert, right...?), so I brought my own pen light just in case... And apparently during this story, they made the audience represent the scenery by changing the color of their lights. (Green for the forest, pink and purple for flowers, white and blue for a starry sky, etc...) It was kind of neat, but it was only a few instances... It would've been fun if there were more.
The story was about Natsume, Tanuma, Nishimura and Kitamoto going camping and fishing (with Nyanko-sensei), and Nishimura losing the pocket knife he got as a present from Kitamoto's ill father (to use it instead of him, aww... ;_ ; ) Nishimura runs off in the middle of the night to look for it, and because there's rumors of bears appearing in the area, everyone gets really worried and starts looking for him. Eventually Natsume finds him (after finding the knife, or rather, getting it back from the youkai that protects the river, who apparently picked it up), and, almost uncharacteristically, starts yelling at Nishimura for making them worry. (And surprising the heck out of Tanuma, lol )Then Natsume's afraid that he said too much, and Nishimura is mad at him for yelling, but it's quite the opposite - Nishimura is happy that Natsume feels comfortable enough with his friends to worry about them and yell at them like that. D'aww... <3 I hope they recorded the story somehow, I'd love to see it appear on a drama CD... (Or even better, have this whole event as a special on a DVD...)
As the "ending" to the story, we got a live performance by Aimer, singing Akane Sasu. OMG! I hadn't looked at the guest list or anything beforehand, but apparently it was a surprise that she'd be there. It was an acoustic version of the song, only accompanied by a piano, but it was so impressive. TT_TT Loud sniffling from the audience ensued... =P (And I, and everyone else, got out their light sticks and made them red and orange, I guess that was another reason why we needed them. )
After the song, the hosts and actors were too dazed to really say much anymore, and I don't really remember what they actually said as their final greetings, other than they're really grateful that the anime has been going on for nine years now, and hoping that it'll keep on going for a long time, and they'll do their best to create a version as faithful to the manga as possible. Kamiya also mentioned that he's really aware of how many fans are counting on him to deliver, as an essential part of the show, so he's working really hard to live up to our expectations. I can't imagine what it must feel like, the pressure of embodying a character in an ongoing show (and one that has YEARS between seasons...) the way he does... As much as I would've liked to hear Suganuma or the others who originally auditioned try, I really can't imagine anyone else playing Natsume, so I hope Kamiya will be in good health for a long time to come >w<
They had these cutouts in the lobby, as well as goods... Though the line was ridiculous! Not that it took that long in the end, but they made the line go onto the staircase, all the way up to the seventh floor, and then back down... What if you were injured and couldn't climb all those stairs?? (My ankle still hurt, but somehow I managed...)
I got the denim pass case (really needed a new one) and the clear file. Lots of stuff was already sold out by the time I got there =O
After the show, we also got this umaibou... Apparently they handed them out at another event (somewhere in Kyoto I think? Somewhere I couldnt' go, at least...), but they had leftovers, so they handed them out here as well. Yay... ! (I I kinda don't want to open it, though...)