Every year after the first day of the Utsunomiya Gyoza Festival, Izu-sama hosts a dinner show at a local hotel. As its name implies, there is catered food that could be eaten throughout the dinner show, and it consists of an evening full of watching Izu-sama having fun talking, singing, and whipping fans for 3 hours.
Yes, you heard correctly.
She whips fans.
Aside from gyoza, the other items she is well known for are her strong sadistic tendencies, blatant honesty, and love for yuri.
It is said that as she becomes more comfortable around her fans at this yearly dinner show, she tends to whip harder year after year.
I believe it.
Because she whipped hard.
I could hear the whips from across the room (we were in a banquet hall with over 100 fans).
The event lasts 3 hours total with a 20 minute break in between.
Setlist during the first half of the event:
ギョ!ギョ!ギョ!ギョーザ! (Gyo! Gyo! Gyo! Gyo-za!)
年下の男の子 (Toshishita no Otoko no Ko - Originally sung by Candies)
セーラー服を脱がさないで (Sailor Fuku wo Nugasanaide - Originally sung by The Onyanko Club)
アンパンマンのマーチ アダルト ver. sung by Sakuma Rei (Anpanman no March Adult ver. - Anpanman original OP theme song)
時の流れに身をまかせ sung by Sakuma Rei and Kitta Izumi (Toki no Nagare ni Mi wo Makase - Originally sung by Teresa Teng)
Setlist during the second half of the event:
かもめが翔んだ日 (Kamome ga Tonda Hi - Originally by Watanabe Machiko)
Gorgeous Sensitive
私の居ない世界で君は明日を迎えられる？ (Watashi no Inai Sekai de Kimi wa Ashita wo Mukaerareru? - Lyrics written by Kitta Izumi, originally sung by STARMARIE)
乙女♡危機一髪 (Otome♡Kiki Ippatsu)
DESIRE (Originally sung by Do As Infinity)
バイバイエール！ (Bye Bye Yell!)
木綿のハンカチーフ (Momen no Handkerchief - Originally sung by Ohta Hiromi)
The dinner show consists mostly of talking interspersed with Izu-sama live sequences throughout the 3 hours; it resembles more of a musical in the banquet hall. Our randomly selected seats were printed onto our tickets, so all we had to do was get our ticket looked over by staff, and walk to our designated seat and table. The tables were in alphabetical order from A-T with tables closer to the beginning of the alphabet next to the main stage. Previous years, seats/tables were randomly selected upon entry to the hotel so it was dependent upon our luck of the day, but it seems they decided to try something new in hopes to streamline the process more.
I got seat S-2, so naturally, I was at the very back row right next to the corner of the room. It pretty much was the corner considering table T was actually a guest table (plus 2 lucky otakus who got to sit with the guests that Izu-sama invited).
Previous years, she invited fellow seiyuu who are close to her to either do MC or as guests, but due to everybody's hectic schedules this year, she decided instead to invite people whom are close to her who are not Hibiki seiyuu. So I got to sit at the table right by her third year high school teacher, 2 yuri manga artists, wrestler, gyoza restaurant owner, etc. However, out of those that were invited, three guests total were invited to talk on stage with her to give fans an overview of her current life and how she was in the past.
The dinner show first began with an appearance by Izu-sama from the back door, so that means...She was pretty close to us in the back row!!! She came in singing the song she sings yearly, "Gyo! Gyo! Gyo! Gyo-za!". If you have never heard the calls for this song, it is a great song to do calls to despite the childish sound of the song! She then moved on to sing "Toshishita no Otoko no Ko" while weaving her way around all of the tables. This song is literally translated to "Younger Boy", so she asked who amongst the fans are younger boys; naturally, we all raised our hands even if some of us may not be younger...or boys (i.e. I am younger, but not a male). As we all eagerly waved our arms in the air, we notice that she has a picnic basket in tow with her cute 80s idol themed dress, and she pulls out a tiny apple while singing. She then started holding the apple above a few people's heads enjoying the sight of men trying to bob for apples above them. She handed out about 10 apples or so in this manner, and...I was one of those few people who won an apple!
Naturally, the fellow wotas at my table were all laughing after the song was over because I, a female, had gotten an apple from Izu-sama while nobody else at the table did. I even made friends with a few other individuals after the event due to this particular incident.
Izu-sama then made her way onto stage and talked a bit about the theme of the dinner show: 80s idol. She also explained every item we received from staff upon entry: dinner show exclusive towel, head band, megaphone, and what she called a Yes or No pencil board. This pencil board we would use later, because she used this as a sign for us to indicate to her if we wanted to be whipped by her or not (yellow Izu-sama means "Don't hit me, I want to stay pure", and black Izu-sama means "Please whip me. I've been bad.").
But also, she explained that this pencil board can also be used as a calendar! Wow! Awesome!
Except it is a calendar that only ever displays the month of November for the next 10 years. Her exact words: "November is obviously the best month of the year! And I want you guys to think about me and shamelessly use my pencil board at school and work for the next 10 years!" November is when the yearly Gyoza Festival and Dinner Show in Utsunomiya are, but it is also Izu-sama's birth month! In a way, those words sound like what an idol would say.
Izu-sama is usually fairly crude because she doesn't care to impress anybody and will voice her opinions no matter what, so this sometimes makes her words sound darker than an average person, so seeing this fairly normal idol look from her was somewhat surprising. She exclaimed that this is the one and only time she will wear a short skirt and a yellow dress; she only wore this outfit because she wanted to have an 80s idol themed dinner show, and her dear friend Mimori Suzuko (Su-chan, as Izu-sama likes to call her) told her, "Kicchan, you can't have a showa themed party without showing off your legs! And you need to wear bright clothing!" Good job, Mimorin. This is why you are my oshi; you have superior taste. The towel, headband and megaphone we received were representative of the gear that idol wotas would wear back in the showa era, so although we had come to the dinner show in suits and dresses, we donned the wota attire to please her (it was a very funny image to see wotas so well dressed, returning to our wota roots).
After the explanation about the merch we received, she went straight into "Sailor Fuku wo Nugasanaide". Those who do not know the lyrics or translation for this song...Please look this up. She sung the full song un-cut. ( *´艸｀)fuu~ We all kind of held our breaths when she continued singing past the B-melody...! And she sung this song in the most idol voice I have heard her use...ever; she doesn't normally sing so high pitched so this was a very pleasant surprise.
Once this song was over, she finally called up her first guest: Suzuki-san from the Utsunomiya Gyoza Commitee. He was the main reason she was finally invited as a guest to the Utsunomiya Gyoza Festival those many years ago, so he went in-depth about his first impressions of Izu-sama. His first impressions: she must just talk about liking gyoza because every seiyuu and idol needs to talk about their favorite food; her love can't be that hardcore!
He was proven wrong after she was interviewed by a popular gyoza magazine. After he read the article, he reached out to her producer and asked if she wanted to be invited to the Gyoza Festival to at least visit. Her producer, OkadaP, at first did not know much about Utsunomiya and brought up the e-mail to Izu-sama casually at a family restaurant after work. She heard "Utsunomiya" come out of his mouth, and she claimed that she was so excited she jumped up from her seat and almost yelled in excitement in the middle of the busy restaurant. She had always wanted to do more gyoza related work, and what better place to be contacted by than the most popular city of Japan when it comes to gyoza??
As we were all laughing at the image of the excited Izu-sama, we were honestly a little worried this gyoza guy would be the only guest she invited this year... I mean, he is cool since he always MCs at the Gyoza Festival with her every year, but she had been tweeting for weeks that she invited people who are very close to her, so we wanted to see somebody aside from the person we had seen all day at the festival anyways.
So the next person she invited on to the stage was...her favorite high school teacher! That was an unexpected surprise. The image we always had of Izu-sama was that she had no friends in school and hated going, so seeing a teacher she actually gets along with was something we would never have expected. He apparently brought some of her high school projects to the event, but she (and I assume staff members) asked him not to showcase too much of her personal items to the fans. BUT he told us all that she made such an impact on him enough for him to want to keep some of her class projects at his desk. He still teaches at the same school to this day, and she went to go visit him of her own accord not too long ago; she used to have his phone number in her cellphone, but once she switched phones, his number did not transfer over. The teacher claimed she was a hard worker; not the smartest or brightest child, but she was a hard worker. And even more surprisingly, he said his image of her was energetic and a good child. Izu-sama herself claimed that since he never saw her during her first two years of high school, his image is biased for the image he has of her when she finally got out of depression. As a fan, it was very amusing to see her trying to keep her calm and freaking out when he said something that doesn't match her current image. At the end, she said she had something to confess to him too: she had broken into the school while he was away with a few other students in her class from that year and they all went to vandalize his desk and teacher's lounge. Somebody wrote "I love sensei" on the board, and it wasn't her. His response: "Oh, don't worry. That thought didn't cross my mind." It was heartwarming to see her get along so well with somebody from her past since she rarely references her high school times as being positive.
The last person was the most unexpected of all. Yes, even more unexpected than her high school teacher. The last guest she invited on stage was Sakuma Rei. They both met and worked together on Izu-sama's first professional voice acting role in of Onegai My Melody Kirara Tsu. Sakuma-san plays the main role of My Melody, and Izu-sama played a more minor role. At this time, Izu-sama was so scared and anxious about being considered a seiyuu that Sakuma-san only ever saw Izu-sama alone and refusing to talk to anybody around her. And that's exactly Sakuma-san went to talk to Izu-sama. Her exact words went something like this:
"The Izumi-chan I watched over at that recording studio was one who was always looking downwards and crying in the corner alone. But now when I search your name online, I find your name related to other terms like ドS and Yuri. I laughed when I first saw that, but at the same time, I felt relieved to see that you were able to get out of that hole."
This then brought up an even more shocking fact that us fans never got to witness.
Izu-sama confessed that even after that, she was fairly distant from everybody for years and always put herself and her voice acting skills down. She even thought about leaving Milky Holmes once and told her manager that she will quit her career. She then went to message Sakuma-san about this situation--she actually tried to open up to somebody--and her response was, "Izumi-chan, I know that you are so hard on yourself because you are a perfectionist in some ways; you get stressed because you can't do everything exactly the way you want or as good as everybody else. But you just need to do what only you can do now. Just be yourself." Those words were the words Izu-sama still lives by to this day, and that is why she was finally able to open up about her interests, and become close friends with her seiyuu group members she was so scared to even talk to. Izu-sama invited Sakuma-san to Milky Holmes Budoukan live, and Sakuma-san said that she cried seeing how bright Izu-sama was shining now.
Izu-sama then apologized for not having talked to Sakuma-san in years now, and that is because Izu-sama did not want to give in and meet up with her role model until she felt she was at a time of her life that she can proudly show off that she is doing well.
Us fans were bawling at this point because not only did we hear so much about Izu-sama during her dark times that she did not showcase to the world, but because we were so happy to see that she has somebody there for her at her time of need. The Izu-sama and Milky Holmes we see now is here because of the help of this seiyuu.
Sakuma Rei then said she has a surprise for Izu-sama. Sakuma-san is also known as the seiyuu for Batako-san from the Anpanman series, so she went into song and sang a ballad version of the Anpanman theme song for her. Anpanman is one of the most popular anime of all-time in Japan and has been watched by many generations of children in Japan. Batako-san is the mother figure of the main character, and thus, hearing the lyrics being sung directly at Izu-sama brought tears to everybody's eyes (including Izu-sama herself). Below are part of the English translated lyrics of the song (with the change of name from Anpanman to Izumi-chan) to give you an idea of why it made so many fans and Izu-sama cry:
That's right, Don't be afraid
You can stand up for everyone
Love and courage is always with you
What is your happiness?
What do you do for joy?
I don't want to end my life
without knowing
Don't forget your dream
Don't cry your tears
That's why you fly
wherever you are needed
That's right, Don't be afraid
You can stand up for everyone
Love and courage is always with you
Oh Izumi-chan,
How brave you are
Go! You can protect everyone's dream
And after this sob fest, we had a short break for Izu-sama to change clothing and us to either grab more food/drinks, go bathroom, buy merch, sign the flag presented to Izu-sama at the end, etc. There was also a raffle to win special Izu-sama merch, but sadly, I didn't win anything.
After the break, we finally got to see Izu-sama in her sexy black outfit!!!
Yes, this is when she came out with her whip.
With that outfit.
Seriously, please whip me. (←These are every fan's thoughts, probably )
Second half of the event was mostly concert with a little bit of talking mixed in here and there, but of course, the most anticipated part was 乙女♡危機一髪 (Otome♡Kiki Ippatsu); otherwise known as the Whipping Song.
She sadly did not whip everybody, but the people she DID whip, she whipped reeeeaaaally hard. Like enough that you could hear across the entire dining hall. She normally tries not to whip females, and especially not ones who were holding the "Don't hit me, I want to stay pure" side of the pencil board, but this time, she hit one girl who wanted to stay pure. Seeing the anticipation in the fan's eyes, and the excitement as she sang the lyrics and whipped in the middle was priceless.
She also whipped her high school teacher and a few other guests she invited as well.
She whipped a few people even after the song was over since her enthusiasm got a little too strong this year.
Thank you for the beautiful sight, Izu-sama.
Afterwards, she went back into standard singing fare, but being able to watch her sing as she walks around each aisle really makes this event special. EVERYBODY gets to see her up close.
バイバイエール！ (Bye Bye Yell!) is the song she sings every year at this Dinner Show since it is her favorite Milky Holmes song and suitable for a closing song. As she sings this, she asks fans to sing along with her, and she goes through each aisle to wave at and look everyone in their eyes.
Once she was done with all of her songs, she went back to get changed, and we got to take a 2-shot polaroid photo with her!!! My conversation went as follows:
Izu-sama: (In English) Hello! Thank you for coming!
Me: Hello! 今日はありがとうございます！ [Thank you for today!]
Izu-sama: ほらほら、こっちおいで！ [Hey hey, come over here!] (waves towards the other side of the flag)
(Photo time together)
Me: 今日も楽しかったです！いつもありがとう！！！ [Today was fun as usual! Thank you
Izu-sama: (In English) Thank you! See you soon!
Yeah........It was a very standard conversation...................but I got so nervous. Do you see how close I was???
I was one of the first to get photos taken since we went up for photos in order of table in reverse order (I was literally the first table to go since I was in the back corner). I was waiting for a few eventer friends at the tables at the very front of the venue, so I stayed off to the side and watched Izu-sama take photos with fans. When a fan in a wheelchair came over, she asked staff to bring her a chair so they could both be at the eye level and the photo looked more normal if they were both sitting. She is such a nice person.... Top tier fan service.
After she was done taking photos, my friends and I were the last people left in the room, and as we were heading down, she grabbed the flag, wrapped it around her body like a cape, and started flapping it like a bird as she said bye to us instead of waving normally! It was so cute. I now want a Flappy Bird game with Izu-sama and her flag.
And as we were heading down, she said to me, 「わー！男子に囲まれてる！危ないから気をつけて帰ってね！！！」 ["Oh, you're surruonded by boys!!! It's dangerous so be careful on your way back!"]
I'm so glad my friends were near the front and I got to see this side of Izu-sama.
TL;DR Izu-sama is great and Dinner Show is well worth going to every year.
