Back in 2011, I fell in love with a new anime series called Hanasaku Iroha, thanks to my good friend, Animation Studio P.A. Works. I didn't realize that I was also going to be introduced to one of my favorite bands, nano.RIPE.
Most anime will have an opening and ending theme that is written and performed either by an established band, or by an up and coming one. Starting with the OP, they eventually wrote and performed more songs for the series, and I was inevitably hooked. I had a chance to try to see them perform a live (Japanese borrow word for concert), but I couldn't get the timing right. I always told myself that if I got another chance, I would switch around whatever I needed to, so that I could finally go.
Not only were my basic expectations easily passed, they were exceeded, then obliterated.
Here is the story of one of the best live concerts I've been to.
Some very quick concert context, whether it's sports or your favorite music group, there is a fanatical level that's reached. Items that would be simple merchandising swag in the United States, is proudly worn as badges of identification. T-shirts from various concerts, hapi coats (if you're an idol fan), and towels. Towels? More on that later.
Originally, when I was finalizing my core itinerary for the trip, I was finally going to give Kyoto a fair shake, by spending more than one day in the city.Of course, following the nano.RIPE twitter, reminded that there was going to be a live on Sunday, March 16th that would start at 5 pm. Doing a quick review of train schedules and presuming that the concert couldn't/wouldn't be longer than 2 hours, I thought it would be safe to take the next to the last shinkansen to Kyoto.
Based on another alert, I also found out that they would start to sell same-day tickets at about 15:15, including some concert swag. I headed over and there were already some people waiting. I purchased my ticket, and the newest CD, and threw my stuff in the concert locker. Eventually the number of people would swell, a fairly young and energetic group. Many people quickly changing into their concert gear, shirts along with a towel draped around their neck. (More on this later)
Finally, at 16:15, access was granted based on number. The number came either from the official fan club and possibly people that bought the CD early. They processed this queue by number read out one by one, and it went fairly quickly. Next, the major blocks of tickets were processed: A, B and C. Each group contained about 120-150 tickets. Having just bought my ticket, I was one of the last to enter.
And very quickly, 17:00 came and the lights dropped and we were asked to come closer if we would like and off we went. They opened with a very short pre-recorded number, and immediately went into one of their higher paced numbers. This introduced me to the general structure of watching this type of live. Depending on what made sense, the crowd would react and potentially coordinate with one another on what to do during a particular section of a song. This could be as simple as clapping, or various forms of fist or hand pumping, all the way to more complex clapping and chanting. Of course, there are a lot of songs that lead to general jumping and hopping, and these tended to evolve or evolve into almost mosh pits for some people.
For the live, they mostly did very high energy music, especially early on. In close quarters, with limited air conditioning on, and guess what? It's not going to take very long before you're surrounded by a bunch of sweaty fans. Hence, the towels. The crowd was really energetic and despite my late entrance, I was only about 20-30 ft from the stage. It wasn't too long where it was starting to feel very physically demanding. Other than some short band banter to allow for tech setup, there wasn't a lot of breaks. The indoor heat combined with standing and jumping and trying to prevent other people from jumping into to you and knock you down was quite a challenge to endure.
My initial estimate of less than 2 hours was horribly wrong. Not only did they come back for an encore after they first ended at the hour and a half mark. The crowd was able to coax out 2 more encores including the song I posted at the beginning. In the end, it took closer to 2.5 hours. I did make it in time to catch the last shinkansen out to Kyoto, and even the last subway train back to the station by my hotel.
It was a fantastic time, I'll definitely do this again. (Hopefully my doctor approves if my recovery goes well...ha!)
#3dc
-- wake.eat.sleep