Wow it was finally hype enough for me to start writing about again!!!

Day 0

Japan Kawaii Live

Here are my mild takes from Front Row Center:

Cinderella Girls – Star!! / GOIN’!!! / Yumeiro Harmony / Yes! Party Time!! / Onegai! Cinderella

• Random selection of members is still random (Kanade, Frederica, Mika, Kirari, Anzu, Miria)
• Set list was good, YPT was a nice surprise since I was only expecting anime songs
• MC was poorly thought out… Basically they voiced dialogues from the anime (and Cinderella Gekijou in the case of Frederica (I think? Didn’t quite catch that)) so that people unfamiliar with CG could “get to know them better” but out of the people in the audience who don’t know CG, probably 98% of them don’t understand Japanese either… And watching them read off of scripts is really low-tension for an opening act
• I would’ve been more excited if my oshis were there
• As my first time seeing CG in person I’m just glad I finally got to see Onegai! Cinderella live

Wake Up, Girls! – Tachiagare! / Shoujo Koukyoukyoku / Koi? De Ai? De Boukun desu! / Beyond the Bottom / 7 Girls War / Gokujou Smile

• I was expecting WUG to be amazing and they were AMAZING
• Holy shit
• Boukun was godly
• Actually everything was godly
• Miyu was right in front of me half the time and it was blessed, literally the best possible seat
• Miyu’s smile is contagious
• Miyu looked right at us in the front so much
• Miyu is my goddess
• (Miyu later wrote in the blog that she spotted our Miyu happis right away)
• (Miyu mentioned me (“a girl wearing an orange happi that said あなたの心をストマックホールド！ on it”) on the 7/4 WUG Channel and I am so happy)
• みゅーちゃん最高
• WUG did 6 songs even though every other group only did 5, I am thankful
• I only have one complaint and that is that BtB transitioned into 7GW way too fast and so I had to scramble to change penlight colours
• I’m too short to be visible in the illegal recordings except for when I jump during Tachiagare lol

Walküre – Koi! Halation THE WAR / Ikenai Borderline / Bokura no Senjou / Ichido dake no Koi nara / Rune ga Pikatto Hikattara

• Easily took second place for me
• JUNNA’s voice is still amazing
• Walküre is still hype even with only 2 members present
• JUNNA and Minoringo now know to go to In-n-Out for burgers
• Minoringo was so surprised when we already knew what to do for Runepika and it was great
• I really hope at least Kiyonon joins them next time(??) so that we can get AXIA too, apparently I want to cry

Aqours – Aozora Jumping Heart / Kimi no Kokoro wa Kagayaiteru kai? / Koi ni Naritai AQUARIUM / MIRAI TICKET / Yume Kataru yori Yume Utaou

• Aqours is technical-ly solid but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I was hoping to since I’m not that into the full group songs (give me Guilty Kiss)
• Arms and legs were basically dead by the time they started
• The pit had been well behaved up until this point but once Aqours came out the tigers did too and honestly it was a bit distracting
• I’m still not really sure who my oshi is (was switching colours between Riko/You/Yohane)

Other remarks:

• They were all surprised that a lot of us understood what they were saying in Japanese without an interpreter
• Minoringo said “In-n-Out is #1!” during the closing
• JUNNA wasn’t at the closing or the VIP event because she’s only 16 and not allowed to work after 10 PM :( It was a bit awkward with Minoringo by herself at the end of the goodbye event line but she got excited when I flashed the Walküre sign at her lol
• Everyone is so precious

Other Day 0 Things

• I didn’t have time to grab a CG callbook even though I donated lol, oh well
• Buppan lines were really bad
• TFW I bought an Aqours penlight just to determine what exactly sakura pink is
• The airport check-in machine refused to acknowledge my booking reference which was mildly terrifying
• WUG won over a lot of people at this concert and it warms my heart to see so many new fans

Day 1

• I didn’t want to overnight the autograph line so I didn’t get WUG autograph :'(
• avex was having a separate WUG autograph session too but it wasn’t announced anywhere besides FB and the avex booth isn’t even listed in the AX directory so I had no idea until they were already out :'(
• There wasn’t a premier line for the FF 30th thing so I didn’t go
• CCS OVA was cute although purely fluff; Sakura is a JC now; apparently Iwao Junko was secretly in the audience so she got to see everyone cheering when Tomoyo appeared
• Mahouka movie got rescheduled to overlap with JSL >:(
• I couldn’t go to the MG panel because of JSL but their announcements were great! Damekoi is a good acquisition and Evenicle is a really fun RPG; I highly recommend playing it when it comes out
• This was the ONLY day that I ate at Yardhouse this year!!!! O_O

Japan Super Live

Suzuki Konomi x angela – Zankoku na Tenshi no Thesis

• You know a live is going to be epic when it opens with a Konomin x angela collab of Zankoku!!!

Suzuki Konomi – This game / Blow out / Redo

• Konomin hype!
• It was all great
• No DAYS of DASH :'(
• Tfw everyone obeys the “NO DASH!!” because there is literally no dash

Ayano Mashiro – vanilla sky / NEWLOOK / ideal white

• The only Mashiron song I knew going in was ideal white
• Mashiron is quite good

GARNiDELiA – ambiguous / grilletto / SPEED STAR / Yakusoku -Promise code-

• MARiA and toku are qt
• Good hype
• Maybe I could’ve been familiar with SPEED STAR if the Mahouka screening didn’t conflict with this concert

GARNiDELiA x Ayano Mashiro – Sorairo Days

• Omg

ALI PROJECT – Boukoku Kakusei Catharsis / Yuukyou Seishunka / Seishoujo Ryouiki / Rara Eve Shinseiki

• I’m glad they had anime visuals going because Alipro songs all sound the same to me
• No one had any idea wtf to do with penlights
• “I’m the world’s most difficult artist to wave cyalumes to”
• Agreed

Chihara Minori – Paradise Lost / TERMINATED / Kyoukai no Kanata / Hare Hare Yukai / Freedom Dreamer

• Minorin is lovely
• Hare Hare was a nice treat, she built up to it talking about how the last time she was at AX was 10 years ago as part of the Haruhi cast

Chihara Minori x ALI PROJECT – Celestial Diva

• Performed in the middle of the Minorin set list
• This Minorin song is the theme song for some mobage that none of us know, but they sang it together because the lyrics were written by Takarano Arika (Alipro vocalist)

fripSide GARNiDELiA angela – Boku wa Boku de Atte / Ashita e no brilliant road / Sidonia / KINGS / Shangri-La

• Acchan and Kacchan are the best manzai duo
• MC had everyone dying from laughter
• Seriously how can I book angela to MC an event for me
• Sidonia is hype as fuck
• Can’t believe I got to see fripSide live
• Dogeza is a traditional Japanese greeting

Day 2

• Didn’t wake up early enough for Sakaguchi panel
• SP announcements were solid too with Rewrite+, more Yuzusoft titles, and Nanairo Reincarnation; NarKarma looks interesting too and I still have no idea wtf Eternal is
• Missed Tsunako panel because it conflicted with SP
• Went to the ClariS screening because it promised penlights but it was really just 2 glowsticks… It also got moved half an hour later so instead of leaving early for Monochrome, I left before the screening even began lmao
• Miss Monochrome concert was fun; Hocchan is cute
  • “Miss Monochrome always sings and dances perfectly, so whether the live is a success is up to the audience”
• Not much new at the Denpasoft panel if you already knew the SP announcements from earlier, but Maitetsu 18+ was confirmed lol

Day 3

• Lol what’s an AX
• Went for dimsum with a bunch of people \o/
  • I swear it’s only when I cosplay that I end up far away from con territory and totally out of place
• Went to karaoke \o/
• Hocchan panel was great because Hocchan is super cute and funny and she was in-character the whole time
  • As Hocchan is only 17 years old, she debuted at 0 and voice acted in Love Hina at the age of 1-2
  • She thinks of MM as a business partner rather than a daughter or little sister
  • People who didn’t go to the MM concert should be ashamed because there couldn’t have been anything more important to do
  • etc
• Hocchan so cute
• FFXIV escape game was pretty fun! The staff were part of the puzzles as quirky NPCs and they really did a good job

Day 4

• Did some last minute shopping at AA/Dealers
• Chilled at Lumica booth for a while
• We went to a friend’s place to play mahjong and watch idols and coincidentally fireworks
• The best Million Live songs are the OG iM@S songs
• You know this is true because I didn’t lose a game until relations came on and I was too distracted singing along
• Ramen mgmg
• While packing we lamented that we hadn’t had a chance to play ping pong during the con, and the result was pulling out the AWM VIP penlights and using them for their true purpose
  • Fun fact #1: I have 58 video files from failed attempts at this scene
  • Fun fact #2: There was stuff all over the desk plus it was in the corner of the room, so we originally attempted to use the ironing board but the surface was not conducive to ping pong ball bouncing
    • Emi was in the shower while we were trying to figure it out, and by the time he finished we had transitioned to the desk, so he came out from the washroom and was immediately dumbfounded as to why the ironing board was right in front of the door

Misc Notes

• The Stormblood/FF12:ZA themed bag was really pretty! SE shelling out that promotion $$$ (Too bad I had to get it from someone else because premier doesn’t get it…)
• Having to explain to Uber drivers in layman’s terms what anime shows are about is a thing now, examples witnessed:
  • Driver: “What’s your favourite anime character?” […] “Kuroneko” “Who’s that?” ‘She’s from a show called Oreimo, which is about a girl who really likes games and anime, but her parents are against it so she has to keep it a secret and one day her brother finds out; Kuroneko is her friend who also likes anime but she’s really open about it and everyone knows–‘ *arrive at destination* “Basically it’s about incest” *we leave the car*
  • Driver: (at Yousoro neso) “What’s that from?” ‘Love Live’ “What’s that?” ‘It’s a show about schoolgirls who dance and sing’ “What is that, Little Mermaid or something?”
• New bonds can be formed through agreeing on P5 waifus
• I got in an argument about FFXIV job balance in 4.0 with random strangers in Artist Alley; some things don’t change no matter where you are in the world
• I didn’t buy much merch this year (no space for it) but just in case you ever wanted to know what ~$400 of P5 charms look like
  • My only regret is that I only made it through 1/3 of AA before I hit budget