blog好き

May 04 2007

Categories: anime, jpop, melancholy of haruhi suzumiya, top ten
Tagged: haruhi suzumiya

20 Comments »

I’ve been saving the 031807 Haruhi live event for a rainy day… and guess what? It rained.

Most successful anime series will put together some lame event for all the fanboys where all the seiyuu get back together, answer a few questions, and put on a concert. It’s kinda like a reunion special…. the first one I ever saw was the DVD for the Love Hina concert, and, well, let’s just say that it was the sausage fest to end all sausage fests. And that’s our setting for the recent Haruhi live event.

I couldn’t find a video feed of the event, but I can imagine. The seiyuu looking awkward on some stage. Cheap lighting. And rows and rows of fanboys who probably haven’t seen a bar of soap in the past week or a non-animated breast… ever. I did find the audio feed (search for “haruhi gekisou” on TT), and it’s presented in three parts:

Part One: Cast Interviews. I kinda sleepwalked through this portion as the bootleg quality audio and my poor Japanese conspire to prevent me from getting all the dialogue. I will say this… the number of times “Sugoi!” gets tossed around, I felt like I was watching Zero no Tsukaima.

Part Two: Aya Hirano Crying Intermission. I’m puzzled at where this fits in the whole event as it’s hard to make out the individual seiyuu in the background so I made up reasons as to why Aya is crying:

A. She’s happy that she has so many wonderful fans.
B. She’s happy that she wasn’t sexually harassed by a crazed fanboy before the event.
C. She’s sad because she was sexually harassed by a crazed fanboy before the event.
D. She’s sad that she can’t milk Haruhi anymore and needs to submit another pantheon role before we start lumping her in with Megumi, Horie, and the rest of the greats.
E. She realized that she’s singing and dancing in front of 500+ fanboys, which may or may not be a step up from being a stripper at Deju Vu. That reminds me… I was rewatching that old Love Hina concert, and it dawned on me that it was pretty much like a strip club…

Top Ten Ways Anime Seiyuu Events Are Like Strip Clubs

10. They perform to a 99% male audience.

9. If you’re a guy in the audience and not in college or not playing for the NBA or NFL, you might as well hang a “I give up” sign around your neck.

8. There’s a cheap ass stage with cheap ass lighting.

7. There’s always a manager wearing a cheesy Hard Rock leather jacket.

6. Bunny girl outfits?

5. There’s a 110% chance that at least one of the seiyuu are being stalked by a crazed fan.

4. All the seiyuu claim that they are 17 years old. All the strippers claim that they are 18 years old. And you know both groups are lying but don’t care.

3. Microphone stands, stripper poles… makes no difference to Clinton Portis.

2. Both seiyuu events and strip clubs are enhanced by Buffalo Wings.

1. Limited edition lap dances 4tw!

Part Three: The Live Concert. By far my favorite part where the cast perform all the songs from Haruhi plus the character songs… yes, even Kentai Life. They kick things off predictably with Koi no Mikuru Densetsu, but only poor Yuko Goto gets her vocals overpowered by the crazed fanboys, so she starts to basically scream the lyrics instead of whimpering them with the Mikuru voice. Of course, all the female voices that you hear belong to the seiyuu. Good luck finding one in the crowd.

Next up is Bouken Desho Desho? (YouTube audio), and the crowd (and me) were pumped to hear Aya. She sounds less feminine… and I pondered what a rock version of Bouken Desho Desho would sound like. I just hope that makes it into Lucky Star now. The crowd sang along a bit and shouted all the Engrish lines as if they were trying to help Aya pronounce those tricky words. After this song were a bunch of the character songs, most of which weren’t spectacular. I understand the financial motivation for these character songs, but most of them just aren’t very good. I think Aya should have broken out her rendition of Sorega Aideshou instead… and, of course, if she started “Kimi o kimi o” I would have melted into a puddle of fanboy goo.

My favorite character song in this sequence was Kuwatani’s Cool Edition. The crowd pop for it when it started was good, but what was better were the random shouts from the crowd as the song played on… like they were trying to get in character by contributing to the nonsensical ramblings. Kuwatani’s started off in Ryoko’s cool-as-a-cucumber voice, but near the end, she starts cracking the high notes. Here’s a YouTube audio link for Cool Edition as well as an MP3 rip. I have a soft spot for stabby, crazy anime femme fatales.

After “Jaa, shinde?” we get God Knows and Lost My Music back-to-back. Good times, very good times.

After some more character songs (I think we got everything), they end with Hare Hare Yukai to thunderous applause. Then there’s an awkward 9 minute (I timed it) period where the crowd just screams “ENCORE!” which is funny because I can think of nothing scarier than riled up fanboys and that I can’t think of what they would come out and perform as an encore. The cast eventually return to do the TV version of Hare Hare Yukai as an encore. They should have done something fun like attempted Last Regrets or even just did a punch-drunk version of Motteke! Sailor Fuku. Finally, some thank you’s, and we’re done.

Overall, not a bad way to kill sometime while jogging or driving. Seems like a fun time, and if I ever go to a seiyuu event, remind me to bring along a stack of dollar bills.