Animax Musix 2011

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March 18, 2012

Animax Musix 2011
Contents:
The event was held on 2011.11.23 at Yokohama arena and later (about 3 months later, judging from the time HDTV version appeared on torrents) was broadcasted on TV. In case you want to see complete review, proceed to Paranda's entry, I will cover mostly Chihara Minori and Kotoko's performances as well as my opinion on this kind of events.

Warning: a lot of engrish and IMHO inside, you might want to skip to the players to actually watch video w/o irritation. Note that this is the first time I am putting online video into my blog so I am not guaranteeing it will work. Do report if you experience any difficulties watching. As for the videohosting, Youtube became too unreliable for this purpose, getting all bitchy about copyrights, so I decided to use another network, more tolerant (isn't it trendy too?) towards us, sharers.

TV version is about 4.5 hours long, you can still get it from Jpopsuki (3 parts 10 Gb each, but freeleech). Considering the amount of performers there and the overall scale of action it could count as mini-Anisama. Despite I know only few performers (full list) and care about even less number of them, the overall impression those two left was quite good. Though the manner of announcing every artist in English sounded quite stupid, this shivers me since Animelo 2008, but oh well, this stuff is "trendy". As for the performers, there weren't many decent ones other than already established Minori, Kotoko, May'n, Faylan, Kalafina and Granrodeo with angela perhaps. Out of all others maybe only ayami's was likeable for me, either because she was cute in a right manner, or because song was composed by Masayoshi Minoshima. (The song, by the way, is Freedom - Battle Spirits OP. Anime indeed looks like some BS, if you know what I mean, but the OP is good.) Another song of my preference could've been HIMEKA's one, it does have good ballad style and looks classy, just what I need, but alas, performer is not japanese. I guess I will cite Paranda on that:

More than once you could see her shut down for a few seconds and go into deep recall, but the audience was supportive and she always managed to find the right words after a pause. It was cool to see: like when harddrive LED flashes when it seeks, when HIMEKA went into word-search mode she gets a puzzled look and her eyes start blinking like crazy.

Man, I lost it at the HDD reference. Poor Himeka, at least her image is OK, unlike Faylan's totally wannabe-western style.

Most of the others weren't really about singing, but rather dancing, and this is not my cup of tea. I was even less impressed with the attempt to resing Mami Kawada's once awesome JOINT by some other singers, but got it rather ruined instead, simply because you can't make anything better than it was originally. Seriously, if you can't sing AND dance, choose one. You have option to use prerecorded vocals and sing vocoded, like someone clearly did judging by the difference in her (dunno the name) singing and talking voice, but don't expect much respect in either case.

Speaking about respect - for me to fully appreciate artist simply likeable looks and good voice is not enough. I need to respect performer to really care about him/her. I just can't stress this enough. This is not something easily achievable (not that I am saying the looks and voice are, but considering the amount of new "stars" appearing every day in huge packs like these AVKB48 and clones it looks like agencies produce them at no cost, with corresponding quality as the result.) Respect depends on a lot of different things and overall image of artist. Difficult to say exactly what gives the artist ability to gain respect, other than just "hard work" and "dignity", maybe also following their respective style without unnecessary changes and "tryings". Looks like Kalafina possess all of those, thanks to the ideology of their manager. I mean, can you name at least three groups having well-developed Ideology? It's something precious nowadays, allowing the owner to resist Time's evercrippling influence and to follow their own way without succumbing to popular trends and losing once available awesomeness.

However, I can definitely say what drains respect from the performer. That would be tasteless clothing and senseless dancing. Truly said, the more clothing is on the songstress, the better she sings - for the absence of the need to compensate for the lack of skill visually. Behavior matters no less. You might be wondering, why I express such a disapproval over the dancing, some people even call more dancing an "improvement" compared to previous performances of the same artist with less movement. That's because unless we have someone with really perfect skills in everything, both singing and dancing (like Nana, which is noticeable from her Lives) - dancing affects quality of singing simply because it is too difficult to maintain voice while moving. I remember Minorin standing still at her first Contact Tour and singing perfectly, same applies to Parade. And how gorgeous did she look this way. Now... is this a good tradeoff? Sound for video? Teh Public demands the latter and managers have to cripple the performer's image to follow it. And even in case with Nana it still affects quality indirectly - artist have to wear headset microphone instead of handheld one - which isn't capable of delivering sound as clear as the latter does.

That said, I still liked Minorin's performances, maybe due to the amount of them (she got 6, being second after May'n in terms of songs performed) and the fact that it was her debut on Animax - liked maybe first time since Animelo 2008, as I wasn't much happy with the way her style changed afterwards. Or simply because her dress was awesomely blue lol. Reminded me of Lenne from Final Fantasy X-2.

Now onto actual songs.

Chihara Minori part.

1) Paradise Lost (Ga-Rei Zero OP)

Impressive as ever, Paradise Lost could have been even better if they used red color for lightning instead of default Animax Blue. Organizator's mistake, since I remember first TV performance of this song on Music Japan Anison SP and man, it was all red and awesome. Like this:

2) Terminated (Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon OP)

Reminds a bit of Voyager Train, though maybe it's due to the PV.

3) Yasashii Boukyaku (Suzumiya Haruhi no Shoushitsu theme)

Finally, a ballad (or how it is called).

4) Rinbu-revolution (Shoujo Kakumei Utena OP)

Usual song for this kind of events since Anisama 2008.

5) Eternal Blaze in collab. with angela (Nanoha OP)

Nana's most famous song performed by somewhat unexpected duo (or should I say trio?). I've heard this song performed by May'n alone and together with Nana, by Nana alone and with Ali Project (that only fail Anisama 2008 contained, otherwise being perfect and still is) and now we have another weird combination of voices. To be honest, I think the song with this magnitude of epicness should only be performed by Nana herself and alone (though I do admit myself dreaming about seeing someday Nana x Minori duo. Guess I'd have to wait for a long time, if this still haven't happened. Maybe they're having troubles with Lantis making Minori perform PVs copied from Nana?), but well, this one is still better than one 4 years ago.

6) Anna ni Issho datta no ni (Gundam Seed ED)

Acoustic performance, gem of the whole show. I really liked the style distinctively different from other performances and music too. Minorin's dress looked a bit too tight, but I guess style-wise it was the best choice for this song. This would be my bonus part - you can download my rip of this performance here so that if you can't afford downloading source 600-mb TS file you still can enjoy the video in 720p and HQ.

All in all, pretty good performances and a nice debut in Animax.

KOTOKO part.

Now, as for Kotoko, who visits Animax second time, I completely agree with Paranda - "KOTOKO owns, so badly." She seriously rocks, and out of all performers here she gets all my respect. I mean, just listen to this.

Re-Sublimity (Kannazuki no Miko OP)

Just check out 04:45-04:55 part, no one in the whole concert was able to do something like that - to sing so long in one breath without failing a single bit. Look at her face moments after she finished that part - she looked completely exhausted, giving all her effort to the song and it was worth it. This is some serious dedication and skill and this is what deserves true respect. Kotoko indeed has the most powerful voice among all singers there - and she does move and sing perfectly at the same time. I think she can even compete with Nana in terms of voice power.

In fact, Kotoko never fails to impress me, being in the industry for more than 10 years. Her style did change over the flow of time - but unlike many, she managed to keep her way unique as it is and while changing the style to maintain quality and awesomeness of her songs. I liked her 2000 album - and I like her 2011 one too. Not even change of music agencies affected that. More to add, she is a songwriter too, this is what a true talent is capable of.

Light my Fire (Shakugan no Shana III OP)

Sobakasu (Rurouni Kenshin OP)

Both epicness and cuteness modes available - just choose what you prefer.

Sword Summit in collab. with May'n and Granrodeo (Sengoku Basara II OP)

Also, teamwork.

Download links:

As for the sharing part, from now on I will be posting it into comments section, unless specified otherwise. This would be useful for both me and you - if you're really that lazy to read my long-long entries just to grab some links, you can skip to comments area and get them (still, careful readers are most likely to notice bonus downloads I put somewhere inside the entry). In the same time, those reading my blog updates via RSS (implying there are any) will have to give my site a visit to obtain links, as comments aren't available in RSS mode. Fair deal.