Anime Festival Asia Part 2

マクロス　ダイナマイト

Pics will be forthcoming, provided by an unnamed source. (!?!?!??!?!?!) Only cosplay though.

I arrived at around 12pm or so. After camping around for some people I needed to meet, we went straight to the main stage for the K-On Live Dubbing session. It was around 1pm when we went in, and the event was slated to start at 1.15. So we started to squeeze around to find a good position. We managed to squeeze almost up to the stage, since there was this little space for people to stand right next to the main seating area.

And then as we were getting comfortable, they dragged the voice dubbing machine onto the stage. And they had invited random audience to use the machine. When we arrived, two girls were on stage, and amazingly, they went for SUUPAAAAAA INAZUMAAAAA KIIIIIIIIICKU!!!! I WA SHOCK! Next was these two dudes... and they picked the scene from Getter Robo Armageddon with Hayato yelling CHANGE GETTA at the end. YOU WA SHOCK! And to top it off, I just tried those scenes yesterday. WE WA SHOCK! I almost expected someone else to appear and do that Athrun self-destructing Aegis to kill Kira scene from Gundam SeeD, but it was not to be. It was time for the K-On live dubbing event!

...And we waited pretty long before they finally showed up. So first they came up and introduced themselves. I'm actually not very familiar with K-On (because I haven't watched the anime), but if I'm not wrong everyone appeared except Mio's voice actor. And true to Japanese form, they had ridicuously high-pitched normal voices. No one spoke at a lower pitch than their character's voice (tl;dr version: normal talking pitch >= character's voice pitch). A bit nuts if you ask me. So they voice acted two hilarious scenes from the early episodes (one involving band practice and cake, another involving Yui getting her guitar serviced and not knowing she had to pay for it), then settled down to a Q&A session. Then after that I zoned out here and there. Incomplete question list:

1. Do you find any similarities between yourself and your character?

I totally can't remember their answers for this.

2. Was it difficult to portray your character's voice.

I'd say no for all of them, but I zoned out there too, so I shall not put words into their mouth.

3. What's your favourite line for your character?

The line Yui's seiyuu picked was hilarious. ANTAN ANTAN ANTAN Everyone laughed. The next person picked a more serious line. Something about a promise. To another band member. I guess it's only awesome if you watch the anime. I totally couldn't compute the third member's line. And the fourth person picked N-nyaaan~ which set everyone off laughing with a dose of MOE!!!

4. Do you think your character resembles you in any way when you were still in school?

IMHO it was a pretty standard response for everyone, so I didn't bother remembering. Or I just plain don't remember.

5. If you weren't a voice actor, what job would you pick?

Also somewhat standard; everyone said they always dreamt of being a seiyuu. And two of them stuck to using the voice to do something. If I recall correctly, the third person ranted a bit about a pretty interesting range of jobs, then ended off with "But the bottomline is I will keep changing jobs." Chuckle-worthy. And the last person said "Detective." Ahh.

And that was pretty much it.

You know what? I totally know nothing about K-On. So read other person's blog here. Ok? Ok. Scroll down, yeah.

Good part about the K-On thing was that I met two interesting people there: There was that guy who was watching us when we sang "TOBE! GUNDAM" yesterday and then all three of us hijacked the machine for Nekki Basara goodness; he was out in front, trying to tape the conference. The AFA crew didn't let him though. In fact they were pretty harsh on photography today. There was this guy behind me just sending a message, and this huge guy shone a torch straight at him and asked him what he was doing and demanded he keep the phone. Scary stuff. Then there's a guy from some international school who likes SRW, loves JAM Project, and is also going to the concerts. Yes. And he was gonna take photos. But I haven't heard from him, so I'm not using his. :X There's also other interesting stuff about him, but let's move on...

I thought of going to the Maid Cafe, but long queue and confirmed expensive food put me off. So we went to hijack the karaoke machine again. We tried to sing Ai Wo Torimodose (YOU WA SHOCK) but we couldn't because it was supposedly copyrighted. =3= The dubbing machine got pretty damn good publicity when it was onstage just now, because suddenly all sorts of fanboys hijacked it, picked the Super Inazuma Kick scene, and started inserting lines from other mecha anime in (very prominently Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. I must have heard GIGA... DORILL... BUREAKAAAAAA at least five times in 15 minutes or so). Of course, there were the *normal* people who actually voiced that scene, and other scenes. Anyway, we managed an "Eien ni Amuro" with a lot of wrong lyrics. Then some dude picked Dynamite Explosion and we sang with him. On the bright side, some dudes gathered eventually and all sang Tobe! Gundam together. Ahh. And some Fire Bomber songs. Whoohoo!

Anyway, after that I went to buy a sword... I tried to buy Urahara's sword (Bleach dude) but I didn't know which one it was and no one else knew. :/ Not that I like Bleach; I need to buy it for my club's Urahara cosplay. So in the end I bought a boken (wooden sword). It's no bokuto, but it's pretty stylish since it has a sheath and all, and is much lighter compared to bokuto I've swung. Of course it probably means it's more fragile.

After that I found the graffiti wall... I'm lazy to upload the three pics I took (including two of my own pictures), but of note were:

1. Huge Mudkip/Marshtomp feature. So I herd u liek Mudkips and All Your Base (are) Belong To Mudkip. Yeah.

2. Miku screaming "MY EYES THEY BURN". Of course there was more Miku, and cuter Miku.

3. Horde of awesome drawings from anime I don't know.

4. In katakana accompanied by a mangled steamroller drawn lightly in pencil: ZA WARUDO! TOKI WO TOMARE! WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

5. Huge Cloud in blue ink with the caption: CLOUD IS EMO KING

6. NCH's trademark cat, obviously drawn by someone else, with caption: I see no NCH

7. Cool-looking dude's head and shoulders drawn by some guy, then blue marker dude continues it and gives him a ballerina dress and pose. That fag.

8. Huge-Onizuka lookalike that I don't recognise.

9. Someone copied the K-On! Live Dubbing advertisement off the Festival Brochure and damn it looks close.

I added Nimue screaming Giga Drill Breaker (I got influenced by the fanboys) and Jorryn being stoned and denying that she's a Yellow (from PokeSpecial) lookalike. :3 Hey, she actually has chest. There's one big difference. [/pervert]

After that, because we wanted to see the stage clearly later during the concert, we started queueing. Even at 4pm, a good amount of people had started queueing. Lucky us. We sat down and played on our DS/PSP respectively, and the other people wandered around more. The concert was due to begin at 6.30pm. Meh.

Eventually we got in... And *then* they tell us they're selling albums of all the performers at the AFA booth. Damn. Can't get out of the concert now... It's my own fault for not going just now. ;_;

Concert start!

Only two people today: Yoshiki Fukuyama (JAM Project member), and May'n. Totally looking forward to Fukuyama: I've listened to him a lot in JAM Project songs as well as Fire Bomber songs and of course assorted other songs. Strangely enough, I have more of his songs than anyone else's. This guy is forty-seven and going on but he sings like he's freaking twenty. Every time you listen to a JAM Project song and think "That guy sounds screamo and twenty-odd" you're listening to Yoshiki Fukuyama's voice. As for May'n, I don't know much about her other than that she's the singing voice of Sheryl Nome of Macross Frontier (and I haven't even watched that yet). Considering plenty of people are going for her (apparently she pulled in even more people than Aniki last year >_>; yes she was here last year as well, but I didn't know about Frontier then). Anyway, two Macross singers. Duet? You betcha life on it.

In true adrenaline-pumping fashion, Yoshiki Fukuyama pops onto stage singing King Gainer Over! There was no space to do the Monkey like in the actual OP, but with the words Love and Courage, we could feel Power. [/reference to the lyrics] After that he sang something I didn't recognise... And then after that he pulled out his acoustic guitar and started on a rampage. He started with Makka na Chikai, and we all went "O~h O~h DAT DARA DARATDA!" together, and it feels so good to not be drowned out by electric guitar. Awesome sauce. And fun. Then he went on a full-on Macross 7 rampage, starting with Remember Sixteen. I haven't watched that far into Macross 7, but it's not an energetic song. Something to soothe the nerves. Totsugeki Love Heart (TOTSUGEKI RABU HAAAAAAAAAAAA~TO!) was next. It really sounds different on acoustic. He messed up one of the first few lines in the song by singing the corresponding second verse line over it, but I forgot exactly which one it was. And then after that the audience started calling for Angel Voice, and he said "That one will have to wait a moment," and launched into Try Again, Basara's final song in the original anime run of Macross 7. FLY AWAY! FLY AWAY! TRY AGAIN! TRY AGAIN! In my opinion, it sounded better the the acoustic, but it could just be the way he sang it today. Yeah. It was still nice and loud during the chorus, and all of us who don't know Japanese yelled out the Engrish. FLY AWAY! TRY AGAIN! After that he settled down more, and sang Angel Voice. It's really soothing. Pretty apt considering it was used to calm space whales. I mean in the anime. There are few other songs that contain that much hot-blood and energy but yet are good lullabies. WAAAAOH WAAAOH WAAAAAAOH

Man, you can tell Fukuyama's getting old though. His vocal range isn't nearly as ridiculous, but it's really good nonetheless. He coughed a bit here and there, but didn't take much water. I guess that could be why he coughed. :x

After Angel Voice Fukuyama split, and May'n came on stage... After like five minutes of either no one being on stage, or only her dancers dancing or stoning. And then when she finally appeared on stage, she started singing her new songs... that are not anisongs. For a guy that pretty much came for Macross spam, I got pretty bored, and I'm sure a lot of people were the same as well. People started stoning. She even went backstage for a costume change after one song. Until she finally started singing Macross songs. Then everyone was happy. I'm no Macross Frontier geek, so I'm relying on outside sources: Northern Cross, Lion, Iteza Don't be Late, Welcome Fanclub, Infinity. I only remember Lion, mostly. So I'm going to talk only about Lion. The people at the karaoke machine ruined my image of it. It's actually a pretty good song. Lion is powerful ^w^ (I'm referring to the lyrics again).

Then "encore". INCOMING DUET But it was just two songs. Fukuyama brought out his acoustic again and played back-up singer while strumming and May'n sang Diamond Crevasse, which was pretty damn good ^w^ Then Fukuyama abandoned the guitar, and we got DYNAMITE EXPLOSION DUET. That song is too infecticious. It really helps that the chorus is in English, so EVERYONE AND THEIR COUSIN CAN SING ALONG. DYNAMITE! DYNAMITE EVERYDAY EVERYNIGHT EVERYWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

And that was the end of the concert. It ended on time, which sort of sucked, but at least I could still get those albums since it was only 8.30. Or so I thought. The guys at the AFA booth were packing up and refused to sell me the albums. I was sad. D: Still angry at myself for not checking out the booth at all. >_<

After that the rest of my day went downhill. We wanted to go to a friend's house, but my annoying friend refused to take "You can't come" as an answer and kept following, so in the end we had four people in the back of one car to go to the guy's house. Pfft. And in addition to the usual trouble-causing antics, he went ahead and broke my boken by swinging it. ._. I got pretty angry. I must have cussed about 50 times before I got home. At least superglue fixed it, and he's paying me back for some of it.

It wasn't as fun as Day 1, but at least it was pretty close. Heh.

Anime Festival Asia Part 1

ああ、疲れた～

Wow, Anime Festival Asia Day 1 was awesome.

...I don't have pictures. Go away.

While waiting for my friends to show up, I glanced at the floor below... Lots of cosplayers. Looking all nice. Quick count: 2 or 3 Hatsune Mikus, a couple of Vampire Knight Yukis; one Rosette from Chrno Crusade; a bunch of girls dressed up as various Prince of Tennis people; another bunch dressed up as the K-On! main characters, complete with instruments; one Suika from Touhou; 2 Narutos (surprisingly, no Sasukes were spotted); 3 Ichigos (Bleach); a couple of Cloud Strifes (Final Fantasy 7)... I don't really remember anything else. OMG I remember that plump woman cosplaying as Franky from One Piece. Oh, that was lulz.

On to actually going in.

First thing I saw upon entry was the Gundam exhibition booth. Lots of display cases with Gundams. Perfect Grade 00! ...Perfect Grade of lots of other stuff! 1/40 scale Gundam! Gundam SeeD VS SeeD Astray series of mash-up Gundams! Where are my Super Robots... oh. Okay. Let's move on.

We went around for a while and checked out the shops. Lots of figurines and model kits. And of course there's the T-shirts. And then there's the really out-of-place stuff like the tour agency booth. I took a major double-take when I saw the booth. Serious. There was a booth for a recently held drawing competition, and there were quite a few people sitting in front of a tablet and drawing. In fact apparently you could try to challenge the artists there. Wow. There was a maid cafe, but I didn't go. Long waiting queue and expensive food probably. Yeah.

Now for what I found the most fun!

There was an Animax booth. At first I thought they were trying to sell subscriptions, but actually they were letting people try out dubbing :o They only had 4 roles: Edward from Full Metal Alchemist, Ichigo from Bleach, Kagome from Inuyasha, and Yui from K-On!. I went for Kagome. The guy after me was cosplaying as Roy Mustang and was shooting to wreck the minds of anyone watching Inuyasha after hearing his dub, as he announced to his friends (one of them was Riza Hawkeye, interestingly). I told him I was going to do it first. He said, "Shit."

I missed nearly all the cues and went too fast and made Kagome sound like a little boy. Eheh. FAILURE

So we wandered over to where people were mass-spamming God Knows (as in the Haruhi insert song) and it was actually a karaoke booth. Free-of-charge. Awesome. People were getting really sick of God Knows. But there were a bunch of people queued up. So we went to the adjacent booth. Oh, it's another dubbing booth, but only in Japanese and even more scenes/animes/characters. The scenario was geared for 2 people at once though. There was the translated script for all the scenes, but I winged it and read the lines in Japanese off the screen. We totally messed up the Gunbuster scene because we are guys and can't really manage the hot-blooded screams of females, and then my friend totally screwed up his lines for our Shin Getter scene (and admittedly I couldn't read a kanji and slurred it, as well as messing up a cue), then after that we did a three-line Gundam SeeD scene, and in my humble opinion I made Athrun sound way more eager to totally wreck Kira. Which I think was what he was trying to do, especially since he was berserking and trying to kill Kira in that scene as revenge for his friend who Kira killed by accident. Confused? Uh, forget it.

After that we went for the concert. Line-up: Shouko Nakagawa (wildcard), Hatsune Miku (yes the Vocaloid) and Ichiro Mizuki (ANIKIIIII). The queue for the public audience had gotten really, really, really long, and we couldn't cut the queue (eheh) so we had to go to the back of the class. After making it in, we were blocked by hordes of tall guys. *bleep* On the upside there's all the people trying to film the concert (pretty blatantly too considering it was "prohibited"). Thank you poor suckers for holding up the camera to film the concert for us. Hehehe.

Shouko started with Cruel Angel's Thesis, the Evangelion opening. People were happy. And she was really hyped. Pumping her fist in the air and shouting "Hey!" during instrumentals. She was infecticious. Next was Sorairo Days, the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann opening. She was pretty pumped. And then a lot of people were pointing at the sky. That's "breaking through the heavens with drills" symbolism for you. After that was a couple of songs I didn't know. Upbeat mostly. After those, she asked us if we knew Pokemon. Resounding "YES" echoing throughout the hall? Check. It wasn't just me, it was everyone. Then she asked if we knew Pichu. And proceeded to sing a song from the Arceus Movie. Which I watched in English. Apparently she voice acted the Pichu in that movie. Damn, now I so want to watch it again in Japanese. After that she told us she was going to spam more Gurren Lagann, and she gave us three more songs. I only recognised the first: happily ever after. The other two... One was an insert somewhere, and one I didn't recognise at all. :o Are you sure that's from Gurren Lagann...? After the Gurren Lagann song she sang a song that sounded oddly familiar, talked some more, made all of us point to the heavens and someone took a photo, and she left. Eheh. She even posted it on her blog: http://ameblo.jp/nakagawa-shoko/entry-10393680698.html She's awesome.

Next was Miku... I was going to cover my ears, but it wasn't so bad. Miku was cute. She sang her character song, then sang two or three actually pretty nice songs. Apparently one is pretty famous. Some guys were yelling out the beginning lyrics. Something about the world ("sekai"). Blah. Anyway, my friend was telling me the quality sucked compared to the Japan one some time back, which was really, really crazy awesome apparently. And worst of all the screen lagged near the end of the performance when snow effects popped out. Eww. Bad Miku showing. 15 minutes of bad Miku. People were disappointed. And you could tell a lot of people were around just for her, since there was a small crowd disappearing after there was no more of her.

Lastly was Aniki. He walked in singing Bokura no Mazinger Z with a shiny silver coat. Which I don't really know. But it's a nice song. It's Zetto's ending song. Ahh. And then after that he gets going with Mazinger Z no Uta. MAZIN GO! PAIDA ON! Instead of singing the whole song, he sang the first verse twice and tried to get everyone to sing along. I guess it was because last year he tried to get people to sing along for the whole song, but not many people knew the lyrics for the second verse. Yeah. And the translator promised us a horde of Super Robot songs from Aniki. And he delivered. Cue "DASH! DASH! dan dan da dan~" as he starts singing Ore Wa Great Mazinger. Sweet! I just memorised this song last month. And I love this song. It's so awesome and cute and funny at the same time. Immediately after that was Combattler V no Uta. Which is one of my favourites. V V V! Victory! Chodenji Yo~yo! Chodenji Tatsumaki! Chodenji Spin~ Then next was Getter Robo Armageddon's Ima Wa Sono Tokita. Aniki's Change Getter was as cool as ever. The song itself was nice. Then he threw Tornado from the Mazinkaiser OVA. Which actually went over weird. He changed his rhythm for quite a few parts, and kept gesticulating the meaning of what he was saying. Later on the translator/MC explained that he was trying to let us understand the meaning of the song that we might actually all be from the same place. (FROM THE WIND, as the song goes.) Then after that he kept drinking water because he was feeling unwell and singing a bunch of tokusatsu show songs I didn't recognise. And then he tried to make jokes when drinking water... His real name is Hayakawa, and apparently there's some composer with the same name. Um, okay. And then there's the genuinely funny one where he compares himself to the water, then slugs it down. (Water = mizu in Japanese. Aniki's name is Ichiro Mizuki[水木 一郎]) I laughed. The language barrier was truly a problem here... It was awhile before he sang some Kamen Rider. Then I finally had something to go on. Then I can't really remember if he sang anything after that, then he went backstage after the MC told us what he was trying to do just now. We shouted for encore, of course. It came.

Out walks Aniki... In a red coat! That trademark red coat! It's time for the concert to start up again! He went straight for the kill with Kotetsu Jeeg's OP. Build-up! da da dada Build-up! da da dada After that he went on with a hot-blooded Gekiranger song (don't know what title though). Then there was some more talking. Then I'm not sure if there was another song, but screw that, he asked if we should call Shouko out, and we did. She came out. More pointing at the sky. They talked by themselves for awhile in Japanese (which I still am bad at) and the MC was left kinda useless at the side. Then Aniki said duet. Everyone's ears perked up. Then Shouko agreed. Awesomeness start! They started with Shouko's favourite sentai song, which I think was Time Pink's character song from Mirai Sentai Timeranger since Shouko loves that character and that show. In fact she's an otaku, according to Wikipedia. Then after that they talk some more. I think they were deciding on a song when someone yelled "CROSS FIGHT!" They heard. And they agreed to do it. And so there was a period of epic awesome with two awesome singers and an awesome song! Cross Fight~ CROSS FIGHT! atsuku Atsuku ATSUKU TATAKAE~ Dangaioh~

And then after that song, everyone decided it was time to wrap up for the night. And we just have to do it with Mazinger Z no Uta. MAZIN GO! Everyone sang along, and looks like a lot of people came prepared for that second verse. Ahh, bliss. Sure is a nice change to hear a girl sing that song though.

And that was it. Yay.

Today was totally, totally awesome. w00t.

I gained a lot of respect for Shouko today. I might become a fan. I thought she was just some singer. Now I know they weren't wrong to pick her to sing songs for a Super Robot show. I mean, she was so hyped and enthusiastic. And if you voice-act in Pokemon (especially anything in the Pikachu line) you gain an auto-win in my book. Rawr.

I really enjoyed today.

Huzzah.

Hopefully tomorrow can match today.

There's a postscript: I did some research on Shouko, and I found out she's basically an otaku. :x Yeah, the comments related to the wiki link was in retrospect. And I went to peek at her blog. And holy crap she posted 5 posts on her blog while she was backstage between her performance and her encore. And then immediately after the concert was like 3 posts outta nowhere. Even more hilarious was that one of the posts was related to her Pokewalker. Now I know why she was moving that much on stage: Earning steps for her Pikachu (OMG PIKACHU SQUEE) to gain EXP. She got an extra 4000 steps from moving that much while performing. This is conjecture though. :x I can't really read that post...

Shouko Nagakawa is awesome.

Reading her blog will help me learn Japanese.

I will doit.