Today was the day! My first Hello! Project collaboration concert. The amount of excitement I had was immense beyond belief. I started off my day with a simple order of zaru udon, so as to not risk getting an upset stomach. I headed to Nakano Sun Plaza and got lost for a couple minutes before finding the place. Funny enough, I was lost right behind the building, since I hadn’t bothered looking up what the building looked like. DOH! It’s really cool how fans would set up little booths with stuff to trade or sell while some would even leave freebies lying around for other fans. One such person shoved a ridiculous amount of items into my hands since he was so delighted to see a foreigner. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. After that, I ended up spending over half of my remaining trip money just on goods, having gone through the line 3 times. Some of the stuff I wanted was sold out, which was probably a good thing. I thought it was neat that the gacha they had was more than just little trinkets like it was at the Berryz final. You could also pull a ticket which would give you an A5 sized photo randomly based on the number you pulled. Overall my haul was really satisfying, with only a couple of randoms that I truly didn’t care about (incidentally, of Tsubaki Factory members). I had picked up an egg sandwich at a Family Mart on my way to Nakano Sun Plaza so I ate that right before the concert, since I’d likely have no time to fuel up once I got in. The venue was pretty neat but nothing special, for my first time being there. I ended up with a seat on the first floor almost all the way to the rear on the right side. It was just far enough to be out of real notice of the girls but just close enough for me to be able to make out who was who. So all in all it wasn’t a terrible seat, exactly.
The first concert was Rainbow Carnival, which revolved around themed shuffle units based on member colors. I really loved this concept as it was really clever and it actually helped to show how similar in style and quality the members who shared colors really were. There were also a lot of fun songs and I consider myself blessed to have seen some of my all-time favorite songs performed live, including but not limited to: Jinsei wa Step, Utakata Saturday Night and Tsugitsugi Zokuzoku. I was particularly happy that Akane took over for Zukki’s solo part in Utakata. I also want to mention that you don’t really understand how hype Tsugitsugi Zokuzoku really is until you see it live. Overall the concert was phenomenal and I’m so happy I got to go.
After that I headed back into the goods line to buy more stuff, mainly because I’m a monster. Soon after that I headed back in for the second concert. For clarification, what they did was split the summer tour into two separate themed concerts called ‘Rainbow Carnival’ and ‘Sunshine Parade.’ They both would had somewhat different set lists and different shuffles. Rather than doing shuffle units based on color then choosing a song that matches the color, they went the other way around for Sunshine Parade. Rather, it felt like they chose a song then matched girls into the shuffle unit who fit the song. Even though I liked the colored shuffles more from an aesthetic perspective (especially since you’d see the whole crowd unified under one color), the method used in Sunshine produced much better results in my opinion. Since the unit was built around each song each of the shuffle performances were simply more coordinated, more enjoyable and more fitting to me. As a result of this, the Sunshine Parade felt way more energetic, had far more refined and fun performances and was overall much better to me. This is important because I actually liked the set list (overall) a little better for Rainbow Carnival.
Since Utakata Saturday Night was performed again, they had Haruka take Zukki’s part this time, which didn’t fit quite as well as Akane to me, but she still fantastic. Morning Musume also performed Shabondama which made my heart soar. They weren’t perfect, but they certainly have enough of a dynamic within the group to successfully pull off that song. There was some song trading between groups too. Of particular note to me was that Morning Musume did Itooshikute Gomen ne. They were wearing extremely adorable fluffy outfits for this and even while wearing that, Erina came in doing a super cartwheel and wowed the whole crowd (myself included). Erina and Ayumi got the ‘Gomen ne’ parts and they were so freaking cute I died. I left the concert in awe, thoroughly impressed.
I really enjoyed both concerts but there is no denying that I liked Sunshine Parade more. I was in total bliss and on a high, so I decided to go through the goods line yet again. Monster is an understatement. I relaxed outside the venue chatting with some other fans and comparing gets while snacking on an onigiri, before finally heading back to pass out. I was fully satisfied with the concerts. Everyone had told me that the Summer concerts are oftentimes some of the best, and I wasn’t even remotely disappointed. This will be the first H!P collab concert that I purchase on Blu-ray. It was that amazing. Nothing in the rest of the trip would compare, I realized, but after that super hyped and tiring weekend I looked forward to a slow and relaxing next day.