This weekend I finally really started "Living The Dream", I finally started doing what I came here to do, and that means, enjoy what only Japan can offer!
Saturday there was a Live concert from IRON-ATTACK!, IOSYS and HALOZY + Digital Wings in Shibuya. I bought the ticket a while ago, and while I expected it to be great, it was probably better than I expected!
First up were Halozy + Digital Wings + 3L.
At first they were... not interesting, The Male Vocalist and Keytard player just seemed... not into it so much, Momo, the lead female vocalist seemed like she was really inexperienced and probably ... shy? After 2 ou 3 song, they switched singer, the second singer was a lot better, less "kawaii" but she had a good voice and good scene presence. I also started noticing at that time one of the girl was doing Para-para of all their songs on the right side of the stage (I was on the left) It's a nice touch. After that They switched singer again and 3L came in. She's really impressive. She's really small and has a really good voice. Her style was a little extreme with a flower covering half of her face, but she was great. Later Momo came back on stage and I think she felt more secure with everyone there, and had more scene presence. The second part of their prestation was solid and I really enjoyed it.
Since the headliner of the show was IRON-ATTACK, I didn't expect this kind of music in a metal show, but I like it anyway so it was fine!
Second up was IOSYS, and this is the part that surprised me the most. Since it was a metal show I was pretty much expecting to see Minami doing only instrumental songs from his metal albums, but no! They did a lot of classic and popular song by IOSYS, mostly metal and rock, but all Vocal arranges. They had
山本椛 (Momiji Yamamoto) there to do the Vocals. She is wonderful on stage. That's what I call stage presence! she played with the crowd, answered our calls and spoke to us, she was just Awesome! On Guitar was void and of course Minami. Minami's tapping skills are really impressive, and he was just in face of me so I got to appreciate it from up close! The Bass was しんしん(shinshin), and there was unfortunately no drums, they were per-recorded. They played metalized versions of a lot of Popular IOSYS songs like 断罪ヤマザナドゥ！(Danzai), キャプテン・ムラサのケツアンカー (Captn murara's ass Anchor),
真夏にハジケるインドアヴァンパイア , and a really nice Metalized version of
チルノのパーフェクトさんすう教室 (Cirno's perfect Math class) And this is where Momiji shined the most; usually this song is sang by Miko, but Momiji did it wonderfully, and her scene presence during that song was just incredible. Whenever the crowd was singing "BAKA! BAKA!" she was doing hand sings toward herself as if saying "come on! bring it to me! Call me baka!" and the she would do Cirno's answer with so much energy and charisma, it was ... AWESOME! (I need to find more words!).
I really feel bad that I forgot what other songs they played, and I knew and loved all the songs they played too, but I forgot =/.
They had an encore, but I think they really didn't expect it, so they told us, because they have no drummer, they have to play one of the songs with pre-recorded drums again, and made the crowd chose between Cirno's perfect Math Class or Captn Murasa's ass Anchor. It was split 50/50, but in the end they decided to play Captn Murasa's ass Anchor but with Minami doing some of the vocals.
IOSYS part was really awesome, and I was really pleased I finally got to see them live!
And finally came IRON-ATTACK!
I don't remember the name of every band members, sorry, but there was 2 vocalist, 勇舞(Isamu Mai, singer from Lightning) and まいなすいょん(minusiyon). While minusiyon was good on stage, Mai was just incredible, he literally owned the place. He has so much energy and power in his voice. He represent metal at it's best. On the guitar IRON-CHINO was just incredible. His shredding skills are on par with pretty much any other guitarist I've seen so far (that includes Guitarists from bands like Rhapsody, Sonata Arctica, Stratovarius, Kamelot and a bunch of others).
They didn't play my favourite song (Into the shade) but they played a whole lot of their most popular songs. They started with Burn in Hell (the Title song of the Album this show was promoting) they did at least 2 of Marisas' songs (Sparking, Star Dust) or maybe more. Star Dust was the greatest moment of the Night for me, I love this song so much! They the encore was Poltergeist if I remember well, which was pretty epic too. The whole evening was really great!
Picture of Minami and IRON-CHINO before the show
After the show was over I got to speak with Chino, he's such a nice guy! He introduced me to Mai, but my lack of Japanese made it a little akward. I spoke quickly with Minami to congratulate him, and I tried to have a conversation with Momiji, but... god I need to get better at Japanese soon! She was really nice though, I think she understand my feelings ^^;
All this took place on an incredible 21 degree day in February!
This would have made my weekend awesome even if I slept all Sunday long... but I went to Comitia, a Doujinshi event for original works, with my new friend Jiyu. The best way to describe this event is... like a mini Comiket (around 1/6 of comiket's area, and only 1 days instead of 3) with only original works allowed, no fanart. While the event itself was nice, (and made me waste way too much money) the greatest thing was that I got to meet and speak to Renji "Range" Murata. This guy is my favourite artist. I love his drawing so much! For those of you who don't know him... SHAME ON YOU!
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He did among other things the character designs of Last Exile and Shangri-La, please visit his website http://www.pseweb.com/
I bought his latest book "Long Voyage" and posters and he signed it for me!
He's also a really nice guy... everyone is nice :D
Here's a pic of my Comitia loot:
And that's pretty much it for my weekend.
Next week is Wonder Festival!
Expect a lot of pictures!
