Guilty Gear x Blazblue MUSIC LIVE! 2011

This blog post is a bit late cuz I was busy all week but I managed to squeeze it in before the next one started. This post refers to the previous weekend of Feb 22nd.

After work on Friday I headed to Tokyo with Matt and Emmet. Laura (another ALT) also rode with us as far as Takasaki. We enjoyed drinking some good micro brew US beers that Matt brought to share with us from Oregan.

Today we would celebrate Matt's birthday (his actual birthday was on Tuesday). We went to the same izakaya that we went to, to celebrate his birthday last year. That place has awsome American and Mexican food so I never mind going. We met up with 2 of Matt's old friends from back in the day; Eriko and Mari. Emmet's girlfriend Natsu also joined us. We got nomihodai for like 2 hours and ate lots of good food.

After that we headed to Current for a bit, followed by PSY. Emmet was having a little fight with his girlfriend so he left early. At PSY, everyone kept buying tons of rounds of Jager shots. We all got trashed as hell. Then after PSY closed, Matt rounded up a group of people to all do karaoke and it was already like 6:30 am. We were gonna do it earlier but it kept getting put off.

We got in the karaoke place and Matt sang like one song and then said he wasnt feeling well and split like right away. I also only sang one song and then just passed out. Someone decided to order nomihodai for everyone at that time in the morning which was a pretty bad idea. At like 8:30 am I wake up and everyones leaving. We go to pay and it was like over 4000 yen a person. I only had like half of one drink and sang one song, so I wasnt too happy about that. Also since Matt left I had to pay his share too. Luckily I still had enough money to afford the manga kissa.

I woke up the next morning after only getting about 5 hours of sleep and with one of the worst hangovers I have had in recent memory. I would have just kept sleeping, but today I had tickets for what would possibly be a once in a lifetime event. Today we would go see the official Guilty Gear and Blazblue live music concert at Club Citta. I had to get up to meet up with Kyle (Stunedge) in Akihabara cuz he currently had my ticket. Matt and Andy were also going, too.

Matt and I headed to Akiba, found Kyle at club Sega, and then met up with Andy at the station. After that we headed out on the train to where the concert would be. My head was still pretty much throbbing with pain at this point and I hadnt eaten anything yet.

We arrived in front of Club Citta and there was a sea of people waiting outside to get in. We had a little time and I was still hungry so I went to a nearby Family Mart. Unfortunately, much to my surprise, whey I walked in, I saw nothing but a bunch of mostly bare shelves. I guess this particular Family Mart was about to go out of business. I just bought a bottle of water for the time being. I then returned to the front of the venue.

They were letting people in by the order of their ticket number instead of having people form a line. Kyle and I had tickets with a low number so we got in sorta quickly but Andy and Matt had higher number tickets so they had to wait a bit longer.

Kyle and I stood in line for a bit cuz Kyle wanted to buy some merchendise. They were selling stuff like t-shirts, cds, posters, pins, and more. I wasnt particularly interested in buying anything but I waited in line with him. Eventually Andy and Matt came in and the merch line was still pretty long ahead of us so I just went ahead with Matt and Andy to go find lockers to put our stuff in. We got lockers and then headed to the main room where the show would be.

It was an all standing show. They had a mandatory drink ticket they made us buy at the door so I just got a redbull with it cuz I didnt feel like a beer yet since. I also got a nan hot dog at the food stand. After eating and drinking, I started to feel a bit better.

Eventually Kyle came in. we ended up standing sorta near the back and to the left near where the food stand was cuz people were already flooded into the main room.

The show was divided into 3 parts. Part 1 was a long set of songs. Part 2 was a discussion and Q/A session from the hosts. Part 3 was more songs.

The band had 6 members. A bassist (who was their leader), a drummer, 2 guitar players, a keyboardist, and a violin player. Some of these guys had other bands that they were plugging such as the keyboard player who is in a progressive metal band. I wanna check them out but I forgot the name. Ill search for it later.

I dont remember the exact set list. For the first half they mostly played BB songs. In fact they only played 2 GG songs for the first half (Moontide - Sol vs Ky, and Suck a Sage - Chipp theme). Suck a Sage was particularly awsome, espessially that killer bass solo. They also added a little extra soloing from some of the other instraments. They had about 4 vocal songs from BB. 2 were sang by Noel's voice actress. The other 2 sang by Bang's (one of them being the Bang install super music). The Noel chick was wearing a pretty nice outfit she said she made to look similar to Noel's. The Bang guy had a cool scarf and a pimp hat.

Then for the 2nd part they had a bunch of talks by all the hosts. Daisuke Ishiwatare was there, as well as the main producer of BB, and the voice actress for Makoto (in addition to the 2 singers that performed earlier). They answered some fan submitted questions about various things about the BB and GG series. No ground breaking new information was revealed. It was mostly stuff like "What is Mr. Ishiwatare's favorite GG theme (its Millia's)" and "What game had the hardest music for Mr. Ishiwatare to compose (GGII Overture was)" They also showed some trailer for BBCS for the PSP and 3DS but everyone already knew that was coming out so it wasnt a very big surprise.

After the talking they finally got down to the next set. This one had more GG songs which made me happy and was overall much better than the 1st set IMO. They played Still in the Dark (Millia vs Eddie GGX) which is probably my all time favorite GG song so that made me quite happy. They played Ky's theme, Holy Orders, which was cool but it was the overture version so it had a different violin intro. It was still pretty cool. They also played one of the "ending credits" songs from GG Izuka. Honestly GG Izuka is a pretty crappy game but it has one of the best game soundtracks ever IMO. I was totally happy they played that song cuz GG Izuka music is the fuckin shit! They also played Order-Sol's them, Get Down To Business, which was awsome. During the "chorus" (or whatever you wanna call it) everyone was raising their fists in the air yelling "Get down get down!" which was pretty sweet. I was also really enjoyed Lust Sin from BB and they even played the Nu-13 / Lambda-11 theme from BB with a real opera singer, and that was pretty fucking epic. She even looked like your steriotypical sorta chubby opera singer chick but she was Japanese. She had a great voice and it was a good performance.

Overall I think they played something like around 18 songs or so but im not exactly sure. Either way it was totally worth my 5000 yen and I really enjoyed the show. This is the only show they had planned any time soon so I was really lucky to have had the chance to go (you couldnt even buy tickets unless you won a raffle for the right to even purchase them in the first place and luckily Kyle won 2 and Matt won 2 so Andy and I were able to go).

For more information about the concert, check this page out.

After the show as we were walking back to Kawasaki station we passed a store with like some of the craziest manoquins I have ever seen so I got a picture of Matt posing with them. When we arrived at the station we split up with Kyle cuz he had other stuff he had to do. Andy and I got in a dispute over what the fastest way back to Takadanobaba from Kawasaki would be. Andy figured just taking the Yamanote from Shinagawa would be faster. I figured taking the Chuo line express from Tokyo to Shinjuku would be faster and then transfering to Yamanote for 2 stops. I didnt even look at the map at the time but was going by memory. So, we made a wager that whoever gets there last buys the other guy a kebab, though Andy decided not to do the wager right before we left. So we rode the train to gether until it was time to transfer to the Yamanote line at Shinagawa. Andy got off the train and Matt and I rode to Tokyo and took my route. By the time Matt and I got to Shinjuku, I received a mail from Andy saying he arrived in Takadanobaba so I lost. I only lost by like 5 minutes. I should have taken into account transfer times even though my route has less stops.

We then went to the usual kebab place. I bought the woman that works there a keychain from Chicago cuz she gave me 1000 yen to get her one since she collects them. She seemed pleased with it. We ate our food and headed out. I paid for Andy's kebab even though he called the bet off. He said he was gonna pay me back later but I think he forgot to. I dont care either way.

After that we went to Mikado and I played a little GG for a bit. It was already really getting late so after a while, Andy decided to go home. Matt and I made plans to go to Gotonda where Emmet's girlfriend lives and do Karaoke with the 2 of them.

We go to Gatonda and met up with them and got a karaoke booth. This time we didnt get nomihodai and just snuck our own booze in. I was pretty much completely sober when we got there and I never do karaoke sober. Thankfully Emmet let me have some swigs off his vodka bottle and I brought a few beers so I got buzzed pretty quick. We did a lot of the usual good songs, in particular my karaoke staple, Holy Thunderforce, which never gets old. One of the best things about this karaoke session was when for whatever reason, Matt had a bottle of lube with him. I dont remember exactly how it happened but for whatever reason, Emmet mistook the bottle of lube for hair gel and rubbed a big wad of lube all in his hair, lubing up his entire head. we had a good laugh at his expense as he spent the remainer of our time at karaoke singing with a lubed up skull. We sang for about 2 hours and then decided to go to bed a bit earlier cuz we were all pretty tired. Emmet went with Natsu and Matt and I stayed at a nearby manga kissa.

The next day was a Johnny-o cup singles qualifier ranbat. There was one yesterday at Mikado as well but I skipped it for the concert. Today's was at Magmax in Kawagoe where I went right before leaving for the US. Matt went with me.

I think only about 14 people entered the tournament. Some known players there were Melon, Woody, and the young Eddie player who really likes Latiff whom I havnt seen in forever. I was doing really well in casuals before the tournament. My first match was against a Chipp player. Unfortunately he beat me. I hadnt gotten any Chipp practice since before I even left Japan to go visit home so I was a bit rusty on the matchup and he played very well. Oh well.

After losing I just played some SSFIVAE for a bit. In the end, Woody won the tournament with Testmanet against Melon's ED in the finals. I missed it cuz I was playing AE but Matt said Woody was on fire and was just blocking EVERYTHING Eddie threw at him and pulled off a crazy comeback in the first round as well.

After that, Maruken randomly showed up and he was playing some AE against Woody. Woody came over to me earlier while I was playing and talked to me a bit about AE saying he uses Adon. I played him in a match later and won. He told me that he doesnt have any Rose matchup experience afterwords.

Eventually Matt and I got some BK and then after that Emmet showed up. We spent the rest of the day just playing GG and AE casuals. I did overall very well in both games in casuals. For AE the only one who was giving me major trouble was a Gief player who I kept trying to beat but kept losing to. I got a nice like 12 win streak though vs other people.

After that, we rode the train home, and thats about it. This coming weekend (which at the time of me writing this blog starts as soon as I get off work in a few hours) I am just gonna stay around Gunma so I dont know if there will be worth anything blogging about but I will type something up whenever I feel something interesting enough happens.

Lolis and Diahrrea

I dunno what it is, but I always seem to get sick around this time of year....

I had a great time back in the US. Did a lot of the things everyone who knows me would expect me to do and saw mostly all the people I wanted to hang out with. Frosty Faustings III was a big success with a huge turnout and I won the GG singles tournament again and made a little money which helped to pay for my plane ticket. Thanks to everyone who made it out. Full results can be seen here.

I got back to Japan and Matt was already at my house cuz I left my key with Ryoko so that he could stay there for a bit while I was away. He will be staying with me for the next couple weeks.
I picked up Arcana Heart 3 last week when it came out. I dont know how seriously I will end up playing the game and this is the first Arcana game that I really will have tried to even play at all so its quite new to me. Originally I was going to main Nazuna, but then I discovered Yoriko and really like her long range pokes and she has some interesting specials so I think I will give her a try. Also, I was reading up on the character descriptions and I didnt even know her demon god staff is actually named Mike, so I would say it fits me well enough. And... if you flip the first to sylabils around in her name Yoriko pretty much becomes Ryoko. So Ryoko and Mike seems like a good combination to me, heh. I still have only played the game like one day basically but so far its interesting and very different than other fighters than I am used to. I suck right now but hopefully I can at least get decent at it once I get more used to it and play more. Ill still main GG for life though (as long as theres still comp for it).

My first time back to Tokyo was good for the most part. Friday I went there with Matt and Emmet. Matt and Emmet wanted to just go drinking so we had a few beers on the train and then we went to an izakaya along with Emmet's new girlfriend Natsu.

We stayed there for a few hours and then after that we went to Current. Emmet and Natsu ducked out early. It was pretty average and died down quick so Matt and I went to GODZ and PSY as well. After that, we went out to get some Udon at like 6:00 with Jackie and the girl Yui, of whom he is the manager. I knew she was the singer in a band but I didnt know she also did voice acting. Infact, she is the voice actress for the very character I decided to main in AH3, Yoriko. She always seems like the type who doesnt want to attract attention and was sporting her sunglasses at 6:00 am so people wouldnt recognize her so I didnt ask about a bunch of details and stuff about her acting career but I thought it was kinda cool that I know the voice actress for the character I am going to main, lol.

After eating with them, Matt and I went to Tokyo Loose and some old, not-hot Spanish chick was like trying to kiss me and grab Matt's junk but neither of us wanted any part of that and left after one beer lol.

Saturday we woke up and got some quick BK. I also got a haircut at those 1000 yen 10 minute quick cut places. Today the plan was to go to the next Final Roundbats in Shinagawa. Emmet and Natsu were originally going to go watch a Sumo tournament but it was sold out so they opted to join us. We met up with them at Shinagawa station and then took the bus over to the Sky lounge building.

This was my 4th Final Roundbats. The turnout was pretty average. Some old regulars were there as well as some guys I never met before. Everyone seemed pretty chill. Everyone brought some booze and we all sorta shared. Tokido came again as well.

The tournament ended up getting 10 entrants. I won my first match against Scott Popular who picked Rose so we played a mirror match. I won all 3 rounds and in the 3rd round we got into a little Rose ball match which was pretty funny. Matt had to fight Tokido first round and got peaced out. My 2nd match was vs Jude's Claw. He usually beats me in casuals but I took him out in the tournament this time which was surprising cuz I dont usually do very well in that matchup. I think Emmet won his first match and then lost his 2nd match but I forgot who he lost to. My 3rd match was vs Tokido in the Semi Finals and this time he just tore into me pretty good and i didnt win any rounds (and he was rocking his new Murder Face T-shirt with the off center 天 on the back). Then I had to fight the battle for 3rd place against a guy I just met today but his name escapes me. For some reason my mind is drawing a blank but I think he used Guile or T Hawk or something. In any case, I won, so I got 3rd place. The finals were Tokido vs umm..... once again I forgot but Tokido won, and with this victory, he now had too many points to be contested and will oficially be going to Final Round 2011 for free. Im sure everyone is extremely shocked (lol...)

After the tournament was over, lots of casuals were played, lots of alcohol was consumed, and lots of pizza was eaten. It was fun. Also, someone showed up who I hadnt seen in a long time. There used to be this white dude named Ryan who used to play Bridget at Las Vegas game center all the time back in the day when that arcade still existed. I hadnt seen him since it closed down but he just randomly showed up to this thing. After Matt and I realized who he was, we convinced them to let us play a little GG and take a break from SSFIV for a while. I rocked it out with Faust and went undefeated for the time we played. It was fun but the TV was just a little laggy.

At 10 pm we packed the party up and everyone headed out. A couple of the guys went with us to Current after that. It was packed at first and then died down after a couple hours so we went to PSY. PSY got pretty packed actually and it was fun times. Right before PSY closed Andy showed up with this one other ALT guy who I dont really know and they said they just got back from drinking in Roppongi all night. Andy just showed up cuz he had pre ordered Arcana Heart 3 special collectors edition in Akihabara and he wanted us to pick it up for him tomorrow cuz he was about to go home. So he gave us the pre order ticket and headed out.

Then Matt and I went to Tokyo Loose after PSY closed with Mandy and Indian dude. Matt was getting sleepy but I wanted to keep drinking cuz I wasnt tired at all for some reason. Some random Candian dudes were there and were being cool and bought Matt a Redbull which woke him up and then we chilled there for a bit longer. Some fat Korean chick who didnt speak English OR Japanese was trying to hit on me and trying to get me to type stuff into her iphone so it would translate into Korean lol. Some other girl tried to get me to buy her a drink and i just kept messing with her asking her why I would want to and she was bad at convincing me. Also, some chick like stuck her whole entire head inside antother girls shirt for like a good whole minute so it looked like the other chick had one giant boob and one normal boob and it was pretty funny.

In the end, we stayed at Tokyo loose until like 10 am which is rediculous. Matt was hungry so he convinced us to get some Indian food across the street with Mandy and Indian dude. At this point I started falling asleep while eating but I finished it and then we split and headed to the manga kissa.

This might also be a drinking record. The Final Roundbats started at like 4:30 pm and we started drinking when we got there. We finished drinking the next day at 10 am... so thats like around 17 and a half hours of drinking. Probably not very healthy but somehow I didnt pass out the whole time until eating the curry at the end and somehow the next day I didnt wake up with a hangover.

After waking up, Matt and I headed to Akihabara. We didnt eat yet so we wanted kebabs. We could have gotten the good ones we always get but they are at and out door stand and it was cold, so we tried finding an indoor kebab place cuz I could have sworn I saw one there before. We walked around a bit and eventually the only other kebab place we saw was another stand. At this point we just wanted to eat so we just said fuck it and ordered there. This place had all kinds of weird stuff like tortilla kebabs and kebab burgers and kebab subs and stuff. Matt ordered a mashed potato kebab which I had never seen before. I just got a classic one. One thing that bothered me was the meet towards the bottom of the bit kebab chunk of meat thingy where they shave it off (whatever the hell you call it) looked a little under cooked. I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and just got it anyway. We ate our food on some steps nearby and then we went shopping for a bit.

Matt was looking for a PSP cuz he wanted to buy one but after going to like 5 stores they were all sold out. I guess Monster Hunter raped everyones PSP supplies. I also picked up Andy's AH3 for him.

After that, we headed to old Club Sega to play some SSFIV AE. Emmet joined us there eventually as well. I did good for the most part and the only guy that was really giving me a lot of trouble there was this annoying Seth player. I lost to him like 7 times or something and just couldnt beat him but kept getting really close. I was beating most other people up that I played though. Also, Isa was just randomly there playing BB and said hi to me briefly.

Eventually it was about time to go home so the 3 of us headed out and rode the train back together. We ate some combini food on the train.

Late that night at like 3 am or something, I woke up with a bad stomach ache. I went diarhea a bunch of times and threw up and so I knew something was wrong. I woke up the next morning to go to work with a fever so I called in sick. Ryoko took me to the doctor later that day and he said I had a norovirus. I felt like shit for the next couple days. I ended up taking the whole week off of work mostly just bumming around the house and sleeping for the most of it. Today is Friday as I type this and I am finally back to 100% health and am back at work again.

I dunno why but I just always seem to get sick around this time of year. I dunno where I got sick from but it was probably the Indian place or the kebab place in Akiba. Either way I wont be going to either of those places again. Hopefully I wont get sick again for a while.

Today after work I will be heading back to Tokyo again with Matt and Emmet for another weekend of fun.