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.