It's certainly been a long time since I've written anything for this. I can really only blame laziness as to why I haven't bothered doing anything here, but I've recently gotten my hands on a camera (Sony a6000 to be exact) that I've been playing around with. I had the chance to go to Japan so I decided to bring it along to try my hand at random photography. That being said, fuck photography is hard and certainly something I'm not used to, but it's a pretty interesting thing to mess around with. Because of that I think a lot of my shots are either under/overexposed so bare that in mind.
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| hey look it's girls frontline |
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| hey it's akiba |
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| The nightmare kirby himself |
So during my past trip to Japan, I was there for about weeks, the first week working in Tokyo and then attending Anisama. The second week was traveling eastward from Fukuoka all the way back to Tokyo, making stops in Hiroshima, Kure, Onomichi, Takehara, Kobe, and finally Osaka to see Sphere. The third week was spent working in Tokyo, ending with the Yama no Susume Autumn Fes.
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| the mysterious box with kitkats lol |
Since I was working the first week, I spent most of the time in the office, but I did get to spend some time around Tokyo, visiting the usual things like Akiba, Shinjuku, Shibuya and what not, but I didn't take too many photos. I learned that Akiba has a weird little corner there's a weird vending machine corner. There's a lot of machines you normally don't see like a popcorn vending machine, mysterious boxes with weird stories on them that are priced at anywhere between 500 to 1500 yen, and just other weird signage in general. My friend got one of 1000 yen boxes which happened to have just 3 packs of KitKats in them.
A random list of other things that I did was eat at a great curry place called カレーは飲み物 which a good friend brought me to, watch a couple movies Girls und Panzer das Finale Chapter 2, and Tenki no Ko - Weathering With You and play some MaiMai Deluxe and Pop'n Music.
ANISAMA!!!!
Now one of the reasons for this Japan trip to begin with was Anisama over at the Saitama Super Arena. I had tickets for all three days which let me see a lot of fun stuff. There's some random stuff at Saitama Super Arena aside from the actual concert itself. There's a mini stage that have smaller acts, DJs, and other Anisong related stuff throughout the day, a food stalls and of course there's buppan. Though there was also booths from Bushiroad, and Good Smile Company. |
| As you get closer, you see buppan and one of the entrances |
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| The evil Aniuta can badge gacha for artist's signatures, and potentially a signed t-shirt. Also has a speaker where they blast songs in Aniuta, generally related to artist at Anisama |
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| What you see after you walk towards Saitama Super Arena from Saitama-Shintoshin Station |
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| Some mobage called CUE! where you manage your own seiyuu |
The following section is just kind of a dump of how I felt during each day of the lives so it's going to be a mess of thoughts. They seemed to be doing a lot more things that incorporated footage from anime compared to 2018 which was interesting to see. Day 1 started off strong with Youkoso Japari Park with Kemono Friends x i☆RiSphere along with a cameo appearance by Oishi Masayoshi for the S2 OP. It had a whole bout of Garupan from Sayaka Sasaki starting with the first movie's OP, a surprise Ankou Dance into High Flying Future!!. The set ended with Enter Enter Mission! with a collab with Fuchigami Mai, the seiyuu for Miho. Aoi Tori live was a surprise, but very welcome. Similarly seeing a Teekyuu OP live (ファッとして桃源郷 by Mimorin) was absurd, but very much appreciated. i☆Ris didn't do any of their Pripara stuff, but Ultimate Magic is a very very fun song. fhána came out and did Aozora no Rhapsody and alluded to KyoAni and remembering them in these times. Closer was Sphere which was a nice little thing to help prepare for the live later in Osaka
Day 2 was my personal highlight. This Anisama, they had a mini stage at the very back of the arena where they would from time to time bring people up and my seat happened to be right by it which was very very cool. Day 2 also opened strong with Minori Chiara collabing with TRUE to sing Paradise Lost. Minoringo is always super fun to watch live with how much energy she brings to the stage. Oohara Yuiko was put on the back and sung the Takagi-san 2nd season OP. The song that followed was a surprise appearance by Takahashi Rie (seiyuu for Takagi) who sung Kimagure Romantic, a song I listened quite a bit back in college so that was a real treat. Star Divine by Starlight Kukugumi is always a crowd pleaser. Last year they did Sakura Taisen's Geki Teikoku Kagekidan, but this year they did The Galaxy Express 999. Minoringo made appeared during Asaka's SHINY DAYS, popping out of a tent. TRUE had a nice medely of Hibike! Euphonium songs starting with Finale's theme Blast!, followed by Dream Solister with Kitauji Quartet. It was nice to see how well TRUE and Kitauji Quartet got along on stage. Kitauji Quartet then did Tutti!, going around the stadium on the carts. I was hoping that they would also do Vivace, but it was not to meant to be. angela (Lady Gaga) fucking killed it. During their MC, Atsuko mentioned that in all the years they've been at Anisama, they've never ridden the carts around stadium. Apparently when they asked management, they said only let you ride the carts if you're cute which followed by everyone calling them cute. So they began with their cutest(?) song Zenryoku Summer! and began the carts. But they went one step further and made a meme come true live and went further by going back to Zenryoku Summer, then to Sidonia. All throughout this, they're on the carts and they ended up doing a figure 8 pattern, going every single part of the arena that the cart that they could visit. Most artists don't do and you could tell why. The people moving the carts had to push them at fucking lightspeed, just making those carts fucking go. I personally appreciate it since again, most artists don't do this so it was a super nice gesture. I honestly can't wait to see this on BD. TrySail always gets the crowd going which is always good too. Aqours closed day 2 and their choreography is always dynamic.
Day 3 started off with Aoi Eir and Aoi Shouta doing Preserved Roses. Very very cool collab, but I also wouldn't have minded if the originals were there too... Before the last act before the intermission, they had a video to introduce the next group. Now, throughout these three days, people were guessing that Houkago Tea Time would appear since this year was the 10th anniversary of K-On! and a couple years ago, they brought back together SOS-Dan. Out of all the days, it made most sense for Day 1 since Sphere appeared which has both Toyosaki Aki (Yui) and Kotobuki Minako(Tsumugi). But with nothing on Day 1, people definitely thought that the dream was dead. But, there were some that still believed. As the movie played there was a mic, some wires and a blurred out guitar. The first assumption was Popipa since they were scheduled for Day 3 and instruments would be a natural way to introduce them. But as they focused in on the guitar, it was Yui's Les Paul, Gi-tah. But what really confirmed it was Mio's lefty Elizabass. They proceeded to show everyone else's instruments and when they turned the lights back on, all five were standing on stage in their Don't Say Lazy outfits (with Azusa's being from the Bluray box) and started with Don't Say Lazy, followed up by Go Go Maniac. Being only a high schooler in America when it aired, there was no way I was making it to a live back when K-On! was much more relevant so to see this live was very touching. Not to be one upped, following the intermission, JAM Project set the stage finishing with Skill. A little surprising since I think most people expected JAM Project to close Day 3 like last year, but I guess they wanted to give the highlight to another group this year. Ogura Yui and Uchida Maaya came out afterwards to the Hamtaro OP, made famous through Anikura. Of course to accompany this, there was plenty of mix and calls. Popipa has fun songs. Aoi Eir was the closer which was nice to see since her come back last year.
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| hi jason |
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| otsukare anisama |
Something that I would like to mention is that there was a surprising amount of repeats of particular songs, but those songs also were from KyoAni anime like Aozora Rhapsody so there was a lot of nods to KyoAni, but nothing explicit that was said which I think is unfortunate, but I imagine it might have been the artists wanted to do, but couldn't explicitly say it due to adult reasons.
Mika Pikazo Art Exhibit!
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| The actual entrance with the same illustration as the cover of Mika Pikazo's art book! |
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| Not the actual entrance, but very cool |
Oh yea, I also visited the Mika Pikazo's (aka Mika-Mama) exhibit which was cool. It had a bunch of her doujinshi there too that you could flip through and see what she's been up to. Also featured statues of Kaguya Luna and last year's Magical Mirai designed by her. Her official artbook was on sale early and if you were there early enough, you could get a autograph ticket as well (not that I knew about it early enough or would be in Tokyo for the sign session).
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| Half of the doujinshi laid out to read! |
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| Kaguya Luna - Beyond the Moon! |
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| Pinky Pop Hepburn herself |
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| Magical Mirai Miku and Kaguya Luna :O |
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| and posters of them! |
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| I wish I could have one of these posted on my wall Also why the fuck did blogger put you down here |
Well this ended up being a lot longer than I expected... which is scary since I have a lot more pictures to deal with for the second week since I ended up doing a bunch of anime pilgrimages where I tried to recreate shots so uhhhhh we'll see how those go... Hopefully those get done as the week goes by....
Also holy shit blogger's fucking shit at formatting photos properly. It takes a surprising amount of effort to massage the dumb pictures where you hopefully want them to go... Maybe I'll move this dumb blog over to something else that will not fuck up image formatting
