IRON ATTACK!, IOSYS and 5150 in Akihabara

Today, after helping my friend move, I went to akiba. I went there to see the live of IRON ATTACK!, IOSYS and 5150 that started at 18:00, but I got there around 13:00 so I had time to walk around and take some nice pictures.
Sundays in Akihabara re "walkers heaven" where the streets are blocked to cars, so it's ideal for taking nice pictures of Akiba, and since I got my new Nexus 5 with KitKat, I was able to get some pretty sweet photo spheres of Akiba. you can check them both here: (but you'll need google + to see the sphere effect)
Photo Sphere in front of Animate and Toranoana
Photo sphere near the Akihabara Station

Of course a trip to Akiba would not be complete without a few Itasha:

I also met a nice Miku cosplayer in the Sega arcade who let me took a picture of her

At 5 I headed toward the Live's venue.
The venue was again pretty small, and it was completely packed.

Now one thing that can be a problem when you become a little more know is that it's harder to write what you want. I know some people might read this blog, that actually performed at the show, but I'm still gonna try to say what I think, even if there are some negative points.
I hope those concerned won't take it too badly, as this is only my personal opinion, based on my personal tastes.

Te show started with 5150, I was actually surprised to see he was only singing and didn't play the guitar, he had another guitarist with him there. It was kinda funny too, because when he introduced the band members, he almost introduced himself as "on the guitar". His performance was pretty good overall, but I actually didn't know many songs, I think he played only 1 song from the albums I have. And... I guess this is my own fault, but I never knew he did a black metal album, his growling voice really surprised me. I actually don't like that kind of music, so I didn't enjoy the last two songs, but I can still say that his growling voice was pretty good... well, for a growling voice.

After 5150 was IOSYS. The problem... or good point of IOSYS is that there's so many members, going to see IOSYS can be very different from one time to the other.
The last time I saw them (you can read about it here) the vocalist was 山本椛 (Momiji Yamamoto), this time it was 96. The rest of the band was pretty much the same lineup as last time.
But a different vocalist means different songs (except for a couple). 96 have her own songs, and Momiji has her own, so of course that's to be expected. 96 was pretty good on stage, and has a cute voice, but her stage presence and energy is nowhere close to Momiji's. It was especially apparent in the 2 songs she did, that Momiji also did, 断罪ヤマザナドゥ！(Danzai) and Chirno's perfect Math class.
And don't get me wrong here, I believe 96 is a good singer, but Momiji was just a lot better.
It was still a nice performance, and Cirno's perfect math class was again the highlight of the show. Though Miracle, Hinacle was also pretty good.

Last was IRON ATTACK!
For those who knows the bad, on CD they have a lot of vocalist, but usually live it'S always Uma and まいなすいょん(minusiyon), but this time a third singer was also present. I think it was YAMA-B, but I'm not 100% sure.
They were solid as usual, but I think the best surprise is they played a song by Sister's spread-i (まいなすいょん's circle) ALICE IN HEAVEN. And I love that song, I was really glad they did it.
And Ion was really cute in her stage outfit, but sorry I didn't get any pictures this time.
I guess the negative point of the show was they they didn't do any Marisa song (Sparking or STAR DUST) I really love those songs, but at least they did a couple of other really good ones, and a few new ones that I knew a little less.

Overall a very good show, and a very good day.
Akihabara is the best!

Update:
Here's some pictures from yesterday's show via ToranoanaRecords Twitter: 2014-03-09 Live In Akiba

Top 20 Musical shares of 2013 (20-11)

Hello everyone, with this new year I went back and took a look at everything I've shared during the past year, and I've decided to make various top list of my shares of the year. I start with the Musical shares, be it songs or MAD, this is the top 20 of the most important shares of the year. The songs may not be from 2013, and may not be the best song of 2013, but if they are in this list it's because they were really important, or significant for me, or my followers, during 2013.

I hope you will enjoy this list!
PS: the list is in 2 part because a page full of videos can be really heavy.
Other lists will follow after this one.

20 - 600 AD on Guitar - Wind Scene - Chrono Trigger 

shared: June 22
I actually have nothing special to say about this video, it's there just because it's good. There was another Chrono Trigger arrange in the candidate, but I choose this one in the end. +Justin Nguyen was the one who showed this video to me. Thanks Justin.

19 - IRON ATTACK! -  Lady Night

shared: December 2
Most people know I love Mystia, and those who know me more knows I started to love Mystia because of her songs (both the level and the boss song) So it's no surprise that an arrange for both of their songs would find it's way in my shares of the year.
This song actually comes from a 2012 album, that I missed... It's about the only IRON ATTACK! album I don't have, and I'm gonna fix that soon.

18 - WHITE ASH - Crowds

shared: September 29
Most people agree, Gatchaman Crowds' OST was awesome, and it's awesome enough to be in my top 20 twice.
First here is the Opening of the anime, an awesome song, with awful lyrics. The Engrish in this song is one of the worst I've heard ever, but the song is still pretty awesome.
Also, in the Video, the singer actually looks like one of the characters from the show.

17 - Highend Color - ピンクフルサタデーナイト

shared: September 17th
From one of the best Doujin Music album this year, comes a really cute and catchy, and somewhat funny song, by one of the cutest voice in the Doujin Scene, ななひら (nanahira).
I knew about ななひら before, but this song is really the one that made me notice her more, and made me look into all of her older songs. She has a great voice, but somehow ends us with so so arrangers, I would LOVE to see her do an arrange with ARM, this would be epic.

16 - Rasputin vs Stalin. Epic Rap Battles of History Season 2 finale.

Shared: April 25th
The Epic Rap Battles of History are a pretty popular series, but this one was by far my favourite, the casting was perfect, and it was really funny. I really love the part with Lenin.

15 - Lapis moss - STARRY MAGIC -灯幻舞-

Shared: August 9
This one is a really interesting song from a circle I actually didn't know much about before. Kinda feel in love with this PV when it was released, and bought the album because of it.

14 - IRON ATTACK! - Star Dust (星の器)

shared: January 24th
Second song by IRON ATTACK! on my top 20, this is another song from 2012, but I've shared it just before a live I've been to, and I've been to at least 3 live by IRON ATTACK! this year, and he played this song every time. And this is actually one of my favourite songs by IRON ATTACK!

13 - MINAMOTRANCE - 艦CORE -母港 日英同盟Remix-

Shared: September 8th
I actually heard this arrange at a HARDCORE TANO*C live, and loved it, filmed a part of it to show to +Sandy Whitmore and he found the original on soundcloud.
It was before the rush of KanColle arranges, and still the best of them I think.
(if the player don't load, refresh the page or go to https://soundcloud.com/minamotoya/core-remix)
Burning Love!

12 - GO! GO! RAILGUN

Shared: November 13th
A really nice MAD I shared this year with Railgun and K-ON!
I love GO! GO! MANIAC, and I love Railgun/Index, so I love this MAD, it's really well timed and fits perfectly with the beat. it's also funny and cute!

11 - Gatchaman - Gotchaman ~ In the name of Love

Shared: August 28th
I said it before when I shared the OP, Gatchaman Crowds has an awesome OST, and probably the most awesome part of it is this theme, which was often played during the action scenes during the Anime.


Click here for the top 10!

Pretty awesome day in Akihabara.

I'm kinda busy lately, lots of work, and I'm also filling my time off with a lot of stuff to do, and meeting a lot of people...
The end of my life in Japan might be over soon, so I'm trying to make the best of the time I have left!

That being said, 2 week-ends ago I went to Akihabara with some (new) friends.
We went to a maid cafe called @HomeCafe, it was really nice, their service right now if better than MaiDreamin's but I still thing the outfits of MaiDreamin looks cuter.

I think the best thing about this maid cafe is that they still play games with people! I got my ass kicked by a maid at Crocodile Dentist.

I ordered some latte on whcih the maid made a nice drawing of Misaka Mikoto and a puppy curry.

After that we went to a figure shop I had forgotten about since my previous travels to japan, they have pretty nice and cheap used figures and goods, I got myself an Ayano figure and a really nice To Aru Kagaku no Railgun Pocket watch, both for the for 1000 yen!

After that we went to what some of my friends already told me is the best karaoke in Akihabara. And yeah the rooms are pretty damn awesome.
And at this points come the moment I should say that my friends I went to Akihabara that day are Iron-Chino and まいなすいょん from IRON ATTACK! and　龍５１５０ from 5150.
Two of them are singers, so I felt pretty embarrassed to go there with my horrible voice lol.
But we had a great time, it was really really fun.
I actually got to sing Rain in Vain as a duet with Chino, it was a pretty awesome moment!

After that we finished the evening in a cafe, talking randomly about random stuff. It was a pretty awesome day.

When they left I went to meet another friend with whom I planned a trip to Nara and Osaka for next week-end in front of a ... soso-steak.

Doujin music lives!

The last 2 weeks (3 weeks now because this post took me a whole week to write) I went to 2 live doujin music events, and I'm also gonna use this post to talk about another show I went during my Hiatus.

AdamKadmon, ButaOtome(豚乙女) and IRON ATTACK! (September 16th)

... Read that subheading again.... That was an epic show!
It was AdamKadmon's first live ever apparently, I really loved their singer, Tama-chan, even if she was a little shy on stage, her voice was great.

ButaOtome was really awesome. Ranko is so great live. So much energy, so much presence. I still wish they had a drummer instead of pre-recorded drums though.
And Onee-chan is as weird as always (a band member in a bunny outfit who only goes around and doesn't sing or play any instruments)

IRON ATTACK! was as good as usual, The show was great overall and they played most of my favorite songs.
Of course this show was a while ago so I don't remember much more, so that's why this review was a little short!

Anisong Domination (november 9th)

This live was pretty nice, it was all about anime song arrages/covers.
Some bands were doing only songs from a specific anime, for example, there was a Fire Bomber (Macross 7) cover band, who played only songs performed by the Fire Bomber in Macross 7, some did covers from a single artist, covering many anime.

I was there because of Absolute Area, an old, and discontinued(i think) band made by some of the members of IRON ATTACK! (CHINO and まいなすいょん). They did Metal arrange of popular anime songs.

First up were A-Project, made up from members of JAM Project. It was kinda messy, they forgot a lot of lyrics, and who was supposed to sing which part, but it was still enjoyable. One of their singer looked pretty damn cool!

 You can listen to one of their song here:



Second were Fancy times, a cover band of Yukari Tamura. It was pretty cute.

Third was Fire Soul Bird, the Fire Bomber cover band, It was pretty awesome. Macross 7 songs are really nice, and this band performed well.
Their guitarist is one of IRON-CHINO's friend, and we watched them together.

That pirate girl looked nice

After that came Absolute Area, It didn't disappoint, they were great as usual(usual=IRON ATTACK! since I never actually saw them as Absolute Area before).
I was expecting them just to redo the songs from their old albums, since they are not an active circle anymore, but they actually did new songs, one of them being a metal arrange of NO, Thank You!, this song if one of my favourite, and this arrange was godly. I really wish I could get a copy of it to listen at home.

まいなすいょん was pretty cute with that outfit!

After this I went outside Absolute Area's part, I went outside the stage area, to the place where they served drinks, I met CHINO there, and he introduced me to his band members.

After that there was a Gintama cover band, I dot remember their name, and I've never watched Gintama, so it wasn't so interesting... the music isn't that great either.

And finally there was a ふたりはブリキ屋, a Precure cover band. I also never watched Precure, but the music was pretty nice (I think it was metal arranges though, but since I don't know the original it's hard to say.) It was really fun, and their costumes were really nice! I was in the back at that point though so I couldn't get really good pictures.

At the end they did a song with almost all singers from every band from that evening, it was also pretty nice

That was the last part, so after this I went back home, but just outside the venue I saw this itabike so I took a picture of it!

 Flowering Night 2013 (November 16th)

Usually Flowering Night is around may, in spring, when... flowers are flowering, but whatever, I was still happy they did it, even if it was really late!

Flowering Night is a Touhou only Doujin music Live event. I went last year too, you can see the post about it here flowering-night-2012

This year the event was a little smaller (only 1 day) and the bands were a little less interesting for me (Kimino-Museum was not there). But it was still a really nice show, and I went there with 2 friends from work. One of them is not a Touhou Fan, and the other has never been to a concert before, so for both of them this was a first, and both of them loved it.

The lineup was:
幽閉サテライト (opening act)
SOS -Sound of Swing
Unlucky Morpheus
Sound CYCLONE
回路 -kairo- 
Liz Triangle
(I’m not actually completely sure of the order, but it's almost that)

幽閉サテライト were pretty nice, the songs were good, but they only did 3, and most of the instrument were pre-recorded unfortunately.

SOS were good again this year, but I wish they had cosplayed again haha!

Unlucky Morpheus was pretty damn awesome, I love their guitarist, he did some pretty nice tricks, and he plays really well.

Sound Cyclone was probably the most boring part of the evening, their music is really bland, no flavor, sounded just like regular pop-radio music. They pretty much took out whatever made Touhou music good.

回路 -kairo- Was pretty Epic, I really don't like 556t(their lead vocal)'s attitude when she's speaking, or walking or doing anything else than sing, but when she perform, she's awesome, her voice is really good, and she seem to really be out there in her own wold. (one of my friend told me he really love her false-shy attitude though, not so surprised it's "kawaii" I guess, but it gets on my nerves).

Liz Triangle was good, but not extremely good, I kinda liked the song where they made the crowd wave their towels around though.

The highlight of the evening was really Unlucky Morpheus and 回路 -kairo-

That concludes this post about Live doujin music events, and It's probably my last for... ever maybe? (or for a long time anyway).

Expect another post, completely unrelated to this, soon!

Bunkasai (Culture festival) and M3

Hello everyone, This post is about current events, and not about things that happened during my Hiatus, I'll actually post more about the hiatus later, but I tough talking about currently happening stuff would be interesting as well.
Especially since that stuff was pretty interesting!

Jinssei Girl High School's Bunkasai

A bunkasai is a culture festival, as far as I know, all schools in Japan host these kind of events. There's two major festivals at schools in Japan, the Sport festival, and the culture festival. The sport festival is usually a school competition in sport events, kinda like school Olympics, and the culture festival is everything else.
We other see this festival in Anime, the classes do either Haunted house, cafe or things like that, the clubs do club related stuff like presentations.
According to the girl who invited me to her festival, it's the second most boring in Japan (which one is the first?) because the teachers won't allow them to use costumes or make haunted houses.
Boring or not, it was my first time seeing one for real, outside of Anime, so I was really curious!

There was a lot of things I only learned about Japanese school through anime and games, like how the change their shoes before entering the school and stuff like that, so I was kinda scared to do something bad while I was there, so my technique was to follow people around, and do like them.

First place I went to see was their Gymnasium, where the kendo club had a presentation.

After watching them for a while I wandered around in the school, entering in random classes to see the expositions. There was flower arrangements, art galleries, a sweet museum. Their English club had little games, and I spoke with them a little.

In the end I was never able to find the girl who invited me at the festival... maybe she was on a floor I didn't visit because I didn't know if I was allowed to go there or not (if nobody walked there, I didn't go either).

The most interesting part of this festival was probably their Light Music Club's live shows. It seems like they have a big club because they had 11 different bands, and while I only saw 3 of them, I saw 13 different members of the club.
Some of them are actually really promising, one girl had a really awesome voice.

The genre were pretty diverse too, the first ones I saw did regular pop, the second one was metal, and the last one was punk/rock.
It was really interesting to watch the crowd of little girls headbanging and slamming to the music... It's not everyday you see a slam of 14-17 year old girls... so I took a video of it!



The festival lasted 2 days. but I couldn't  go on day 2 because I was at...

M3 2013 - Fall

 So it's my 3rd time going to M3, you can see the previous reports under the M3 label here M3
This year when I checked the list of circles I usually go see, I was dissapointed. Most circles released their latest albums for an event in Osaka a couple of weeks ago, and a bunch of circles didn't seem to participate... but I was wrong, it was mostly because all these circle just don't update their stupid websites! I went there thinking I would buy only 6 albums, including 3 albulms released in Osaka a couple of weeks back, but ended up buying 21 and running away without checking the whole event because it was getting just too much.
I really love this event, there's a lot of good music, and it's a good place to discover new circles, but it gets expensive fast because when people ask you to come and listen to their album, it's hard to say no. and if it's good, well I but it, so it really stack up quickly.

One of the biggest difference between this M3 and the previous one was that there was a lot of KanColle arrange albums... KanColle is the new Touhou! I think two of the album I bought are about KanColle, but there was a lot available.
I also asked IRON CHINO about this, and asked him if he planned to do a KanColle arrange album, and he said it's interesting and that he will probably do it.

Once again I also took the time to speak with Miko, she had a weird Wig this time, but she's as Kawaii as ever!
She released 3 albums (well 1 of them seem to be a DVD but I didn't check it yet).

Heres a picture of my M3 loot:

That ends this post, Lots of things coming up in the next week, so I should be posting a lot. Also expect the continuation of the "Hiatus" posts.

Back from Hiatus, part 1 - Comiket 84 report

Why did I stop writing? I don't exactly know, I got fed up with it, and with my life in general I guess, maybe the lack of money hit me mentally and stopped me from writing? I don't know.
It's not like I didn't have anything to talk about, a bunch of stuff happened in the last 2 months.... oh well, I'll do a couple post about what happened ion the last 2 months and start posting again, hopefully regularly...

Comiket 84 report:

So last time I wrote was just after comiket, so here's a very late, and very short report (since I forgot a lot of what happened)

Day 1:

So during day 1, I decided to try and go buy something at the corporate booth. We started with Shaft...
Reaching the Shaft line took 1:45, then we waited in that unmoving line for more than 2 hours, under the burning sun, in the hottest day of this summer, which broke heat records. I tried to stay hydrated, but I failed, I almost fainted, I had to bail out, fortunately my friend, which can handle the heat more than I can, was able to finish the line and get some stuff.
After finishing the Shaft line, my friend came to pick me up where I was resting, and we went around the rest of the corporate booth, everything was pretty much sold out at that point though. And we were so tired we didn't actually look around for real, so we decided to call it a day and leave.
Overall Day 1 was not fun.

Here's some picture of hell:

I can't imagine how you could wear a costume like this in that kind of heat. It's suicide!

Day 2:

Day 2 was pretty fun overall, we went to the cosplay area, took a bunch of pictures, and wandered aimlessly while looking around in the doujin area and the corporate booths. We tried to find the KanColle book everyone wanted, but couldn't find it. I found the 5pb. booth however and got myself some awesome loot!

I remember I bought some stuff in the doujin area as well, but I don't remember what.
I don't know if it's always like this, or if's the first year, last time I came I thuygh the cosplay area changed location depending on the day, but now I think the 3 area are always open at the same time... well it was this way this time. We spent quite a while in there so here's my favourite shots:

This one is pretty awesome because it looks like Cirno is melting from the heat

Simply the best girl of Comiket

This girl had the most beautiful smile I have ever seen

Her again

You can see all the pictures from Day 2 here: Summer Comiket 2013 Day 2

On a side note, there was an Itasha and Itabike on the way from the station to the event, and I took some pictures, the bike looked especially nice!

I want that bike

Day 3:

Day 3 was Touhou day, and Doujin music day, so it was shopping day, the first half of the day was us running around circles and getting CDs. I spoke with IRON CHINO, Miko, DJ Noriken, and maybe others, but I forgot. This is the reason why I love Doujin event so much, you get to actually talk to the people who make the stuff you like. It's awesome.
Miko is still Love.

After the shopping I went to see Raide (a guy I met on G+, who worked on Katawa Shoujo) at the Katawa Shoujo booth, spoke with him a little and then went to the cosplay area for more pictures.

Unfortunatly we were there late, and they were about to close, so I couldn't get as much as I wanted, but here are my favourite shots from day 3:

You can see all Comiket Day 3 pictures here: Summer Comiket 2013 Day 3
And that's it for the Comiket report, I apparently didn't take a picture of my loot.
Hope you enjoyed, stay tuned for the part 2 of my what happened during my hiatus!

Updated (2013/10/19 13:44 JST): added link to day 3 album