Otakon 2009 – Day 3 – Concerts! Concerts! Concerts!
Final day of Otakon 2009 was all about the concerts, plain and simple.
Let me say up front I knew and still know jack about Becca and Naomi Tamura but they do put on one heck of a concert if anything else! Once again I started my day getting up with not enough sleep but trucked my tiring self to the two hour wait on Becca’s line for her concert, since right after would also be Naomi’s. Failed attempts at blogging, hearing the practice run by both artists, and trying to stay awake kept me going until they started to let people in around noon.
On Becca’s concert, overall I thought it was good. It was nice actually hearing songs that were completely in english and didn’t have my brain trying to translate with my crappy knowledge of Japanese. It did feel a bit weird not being motivated to cheer on the artist as the previous two concerts, we were all up and in arms doing the wotagei thing.
After Becca’s concert, I was a bit surprised how empty the hall became since it seems a good 1/3 of the audience was only there for her. I guess with the younger generation, it’s easier for them to like artists that actually speak english versus trying to understand the strange language that is moonspeak. Not that I complained since it helped me get better seating (I was already in the second row but got a better view of center stage) although I did feel bad Naomi Tamura wasn’t getting the crowd I thought she should have.
On Naomi’s concert, very good music and she had the audience as pumped as you could expect on a Sunday. Honestly the bigger surprise was seeing Nana Mizuki’s band Cherry Boy’s Kenny there playing guitar for Naomi! Jabel mentioned something to me prior but it didn’t click until I actually saw the man himself on stage. And whoa, seeing his skills live versus on Blu-ray or DVD sure is a world of difference and really helped make the concert 5x better than it already was. Also loved Naomi singing Jackson 5′s “I’ll Be There” (I think) in memory of the King of Pop, which was good once you get passed the englrish.
After her concert, I thought about going for the autographs but once again opted out (and once again was told I should have gone as both Becca and Naomi stayed to sign everyone’s stuff). Ended up meeting with Omo yet again to eat lunch with a few people at California Tortilla, which was alright. And before I forget, while we were waiting for people we saw two “epic-ish” events. One was my top post photo of the word “AWESOME” being taped(?) on the glass ceiling in the convention center with people stopping, pointing upwards to it and shouting “point” or “more” for like 10+ minutes straight. Second was a random group that was cheering and had a guy on bagpipes playing while leading the march; albeit he was good but it was just so totally random.
Convention weirdness leveled up aside, with concerts done and food eaten, it was finally time to say goodbye to all the cool and interesting folks I met at Otakon. Luckily it wasn’t a big fanfare although it’ll be cool to hang out with everyone again at next year’s Otakon (or this year’s NYAF for those in the area). Good times, good times.
Final remarks, thoughts, expenses, etc on my next post! I’m beat from pulling three (crappy) Otakon post in the span of three hours and need to pack for my trip to CT tomorrow as well as tidy up some random loose ends at home! Stayed tuned?
Monster of pop indeed.
And dang, what magic did you use on that vocaloid cosplay pic, I didn’t remember it looking that good!
Photoshop? But wow.. great picture of Naomi Tamura.. how lucky you got to see her like that.. Luckie!! ^_^
That’s a good question. I was pretty sure the Ren on the left was a bit out of focus. Gotta share some photo cleanup secrets =)
Oh, and I got a final batch of photos. On the last day after the Naomi Tamura concert I bumped into a _very good_ Umi Ryuusaki cosplayer in the waterfall area. Ironically, she didn’t know who Naomi Tamura was =(
Oh you know Jabel? He’s buying figures from me lol.
Omo, LOL and all the con photos are Jabel’s so you’ll need to ask him. I guess he just works his magic that makes every shot that good?
animemiz, nope. All I did was resize the photos for the blog and once again, all the photos are from Jabel whom was kind enough to let me use them.
VManOfMana, totally you working your magic man!
tj, LMAO yea and he was asking us about SGD to USD conversion. I assumed (rightly) that he was trying to buy figures from you ^^;;
Oh, and my photos are nowhere as good as Sklathill. He is the one who requested Naomi Tamura some photos in the area. I sneaked mine in right after ^^;;
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sklathill/
I did not have a diffuser with me, so I was unable to have proper lightning in several pictures (Naomi’s photo had all the lightning behind her).
She was a total pro. Almost all the non-main guests (Tamura, MELL, Becca, Yamamoto) did something extra for fans who took the extra time. Otakon still is a fan-oriented show despite its size, and it shows.
[...] she dedicated “I’ll be there” to Jackson 5. Her background guitarist as Moy points out in his blog is a well known Japanese guitarist. More concert shots are available on [...]
Yeah, I tried to get video of a guy with an accordion for Day 0, but it didn’t turn out well.
Very nice pics!