Arashi: Japonism, 11/29/15 at Kyocera Dome
Ahhhh tonight was the best!!!! Was surprised at no double encore, the call was REALLY strong and the arena was refusing to leave their seats as directed, but oh well =w= The crowd was wildly intense again but maybe even more than Friday night. Even the solos, people were singing along at top volume. Nihon Yoitoko Maka Fushigi, Bolero, Believe, Love so sweet, and A.RA.SHI were all wild in their intensity~ Everyone was so loud and so intense, and it was so much fun watching the penlight show going wild across that sea of moving lights...
The penlights were SOOOO good during Aokimi tonight! I felt like the timing hadn't been quite right previously, but the lights were changing EXACTLY on the timing of the "oh oh oh oh oh" part with each "oh" changing the design on the rhythm. Kokoro no Sora also had a REALLY awesome blue-and-white gradient effect that I hadn't noticed before.
Jun fiiiinally looked okay tonight after his solo - don't get me wrong, not super peppy, but definitely not looking like he was dying throughout, and he didn't dash off the stage for the MC tonight either. I saw him sneaking water bottles throughout the second half when the cameras were off him, so hopefully he just needs to stay better hydrated.
At opening aisatsu, Sho changed his up a bit and it went on longer with more variations. He directed the guys in the audience to scream during that part, and it was LOUD...
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MC: They excitedly talked about how great the audience was that night. Sho said that they were all changing costumes during Nino's solo, so they could hear the reactions but none of them ever actually got to watch Nino from backstage. Sho was curious about exactly what Nino was doing at the beginning to elict such wild screams from the crowd.
Nino got smug and said that he was just being especially cool, so the audience couldn't help but scream. "Whoa, check it out, he can tap dance, who knew? SO COOL!"
They began talking about their pre-concert routines. Ohno said he had been sleeping for the hours before the concert. Sho exclaimed, "On the Digitalian DVD, how many of you watched the making?" There was a surprisingly halfhearted response, and Sho was like "...ok, so like...half of you saw it. Anyway. Watch it and you'll notice, this one [Ohno] is SLEEPING IN THE BACKGROUND ABSOLUTELY ALL THE TIME. IT'S ALL HE DOES!"
Jun gave a rundown of his current fitness regime he's undergoing to be able to handle his solo. During the time before the concert, he's been using a special cream to help his muscles and putting it on all over himself. After the cream, he spends 45 minutes in an oxygen capsule (which he talked up as awesome and he said everyone else should give it a try before concerts). Then he goes back to the dressing room, eats 200g worth of meat to get his energy up, rides an exercise bike at full speed for ten minutes, takes a shower, and then finally goes to have his hair and makeup done. Ohno was sleeping the entire time Jun was doing all this......
Sho said he had a story he wanted to share and said in a tattletale voice, "Listen up, all 45,000 of you! Listen to what happened last night!" The previous night, two of Sho's costars from a project had come to see the concert and so he had invited Arashi to drink with the two costars after the concert. Sho and Jun were hanging out in Jun's room drinking with the guests but none of the other three showed up. The others were expected to explain themselves. Ohno had gone to sleep, and Nino begged off saying he'd been on the phone with his manager sorting out his schedule. Sho explained that since Nino's movie is coming out next month, he had been booked for a ton of Kansai-local promo work over the tour stop and had been working really hard all weekend.
They walked back up as a group to the front of the stage and Jun peaced out as usual, then they went to janken to decide who would stay. Ohno lost, and the other three all started giggling and quickly dashed off the stage to leave him there alone. He was like, "Wait, don't leave me alone...! [turns to the audience] ...hi. I'm Ohno Satoshi. Nice to meet you. Um. So. [pause] ...how about a riddle?"
The audience cheered, and Ohno began to slowly tell his riddle. He was cutely struggling with the setup and kept pausing and saying "okay, wait a sec..." and was clearly reciting it over in his head to make sure he'd hit all the clues. It was something like, "Tarou and Momoko-chan are both students, and they go to music class, gym class, and math class all at the same time. Both Tarou and Momoko-chan have the exact same lunch every day. What is it?" Someone in the arena close to him yelled at the answer, and he said, "Correct! Sandwiches! [i.e. san-do-ichi...]" The whole dome exclaimed in delight at the answer and applauded, and he looked adorably shocked and touched at the hugely enthusiastic response. "Wow, I can't believe you guys liked it that much! I had no idea a riddle could ever garner such a favorable response! I can't believe it!"
Just around then, the other three came walking out and Ohno kept talking about how happy he was that the audience liked it, and threw Aiba's previous attempt under the bus. Aiba protested, but Ohno was like "DID YOU HEAR HOW MUCH THEY LIKED MY RIDDLE THO????" and Aiba was like ".....yeahhhhh" and acting pressed about it.
Aiba then tried to redeem himself: "I've got a new riddle for everyone! What do you call a vomiting butterfly?" The rest of the members were amused amongst themselves at this one, and Ohno was requested to demonstrate. He adorably fluttered around the stage waving his arms, beautiful and graceful as always with all of his dancing talent, and then paused and mimed vomiting. On that note, he left to change, and Aiba asked the audience for the answer. Someone figured it out and yelled out, "A swan! (hakuchou)" There was a reasonably favorable response to the answer for this but not anywhere near the same ballpark as for Ohno's, it was more like "whoa that riddle wasn't as bad as the previous night!"
Nino quickly rattled off all his promo again. Jun came back out but didn't really contribute much, he sat down on the steps and started doing stretches.
Sho talked about Nino guesting on Abunai Yakai and how he's the second one from Arashi to appear. Aiba asked if Kazama would appear as well, and Nino was like "it's not mandatory for Kazama to come on whenever Arashi is a guest." Sho said Aiba had set a tough standard by establishing the bathhouse setting for his appearance and now it was going to be standard practice that any JE guest star who comes on the show is required to get naked.
NINO: [dawning realization] Wait, THAT'S why they were filming Kame in the shower?!
AIBA: Oops. I'll apologize to him later.
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Aisatsu:
Sho said how much fun tonight had been and kept repeating it for emphasis. The rest was the same as usual.
Aiba thanked the audience for being so loud today and said thanks to the power of the audience's chanting, Mr. Funk had been able to get up even higher than ever before!
Ohno's aisatsu was a little different in how he talked about the theme of "going back to the beginning" and how his solo was based off his old days in Kyoto and building on what he had been doing back before the debut. He talked again about his birthday, and said it was Chinen's birthday (today? tomorrow?) and he was going to be emailing him.
Nino has been in fine form every night, but tonight's aisatsu made me cry. There was one small laugh to break the tension near the end, but he was unusually serious.
He referred to the opening animation's question of "How will you live your life?" and said that during this performance, that question had been weighing on him more heavily this time. The concert was fun and it was important that we all have fun, but the question of "how will you live your life?" is something that you can only answer if you're truly working your hardest towards a single goal. Life is a journey where you're given countless options to pursue - he was grateful that the audience chose the option to spend time with them at such a busy time at the end of the year. He urged everyone to think about how we were living our lives and what options we could pursue, and for all of us to work our hardest as we lived our lives. "Moms, keep doing your best. Dads, keep doing your best..." He kept on like that but ahh, I can't remember his wording exactly at all, but it was really moving, though...
Jun said similar things as the previous but piggybacked a bit on what Nino had said and looped the "how will you live your life?" thread back into his earlier comments about the concert being a ripple effect to the other people in our lives.
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Random cute stuff: everyone has been doing the same cute things over and over in a rehearsed fashion, but tonight they were turned up to eleven and exaggerated everything!
Early on, Sho and Aiba were being really cute when they realized the cameras were watching them on the main stage and leaning against each other, but I don't remember what song it was.
During the endish part of Ai wo Sakebe, the camera stays on each member's face in turn. The last few started messing around and making faces at the camera, ending on Sho, who made kissy faces at the end.
Jun and Ohno have been doing the batting choreography together in GUTS! with Jun pretending that they're both hitting the same bat together. They hit the "ball" out over the stands and then make a big show of pretending to watch the ball sail out far into the distance over the audience.
When Ohmiya are on the raised platforms, they've been doing little bits each night waving to each other, but tonight was really cute - Nino kept trying to get Ohno's attention, but tonight Ohno seemed to forget they usually had a bit there and was concentrating on the fans instead. Nino kept waving and trying to get Ohno to notice him, playing the part of a frustrated fan a la the Disco Star making section. Finally Ohno noticed, but I couldn't really what Ohno did - I thought maybe Ohno fished Nino and Nino reacted in delight, but C thought Ohno pointed at Nino and did a kind of finger gun effect and Nino had freaked out over being noticed. Anyway, it was something like that and really cute.
Jun and Ohno + Nino/Sho (I think? maybe it's Aiba and Sho) also have been messing around with the cart-cams during Love so sweet consistently. Sho and Nino have been doing their silly airplane motions around the cart. Dekoboko have been getting right up into the camera and singing straight into it, but tonight Jun refused to sing into the camera and insisted on singing to Ohno and staring at him unblinking and adoringly as Ohno sang into the camera alone.
During A.RA.SHI at the end, Nino went to go mess around with Sho as per usual during the later rap section. They were way giddier than usual tonight, and Sho just COMPLETELY lost it at Nino's antics and just started cracking up in the middle of the rap. He couldn't recover and just kept on laughing instead of rapping! I don't think I've ever seen Sho lose it like that in the middle of a rap, it was so, so cute!
At the very end, they picked the sakura petals up and were raining them down on Ohno again. They were waving to the very last moment as the stage lowered them out of view. <3
I was a little disappointed at no double encore when the call was that good (wondering if the encore weirdness this tour is due to Jun's exhaustion or if this is just going to be the new normal now), but I feel really lucky that two years in a row I got to fly home with A.RA.SHI being the last song I heard, when nowadays it's never a guarantee that you get to hear it at concerts at all. And not just any A.RA.SHI but a performance where Sho was laughing so hard he couldn't even rap... Ah, I love this group so much, and I love how much pride they take in their concerts, and how aware they are of what the concerts mean to fans, and how it's a two-way-street. The talk about energizing each other has always been a constant theme in aisatsu through the years, but I loved Nino and Jun taking it a step further and basically directing us to not let the concert end after one night but to keep letting it ripple into our real lives and go on forever that way. It would seem so silly if most other artists talked that way about their concerts, but Arashi concerts really are a treasure and things that ought to sound so pretentious end up making me cry and thinking anew that I wanna keep doing my best until the next time I see them again...