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3RD ONE MAN TOUR FINAL Date : 16 June 2002 Venue : Shibuya On Air East Before we head off to the Live report here is something I'd like to share with all of you. During one of the MC breaks, Isshi said this to the fans. " The five of us will continue to make music together as Kagrra. Knowing that the five of us together can make all of you smile and feel happy during this time in our Live concerts makes us grow stronger...and because of that we wish for you to continue to support us. Forever," After he said that, they started to play [Sakura Maichiru Ano Oka de]* and during the chorus sakura flowers started to fall down onto the fans. Isshi was so touched by the scene that he cried. And so did many of the fans upon seeing Isshi's reaction towards the scene in the hall that was raining sakura flowers... (*the Live version of this song is slower in tempo and very repetitive in the chorus part, fans will sing a long and it always seems like it will never end. Definitely my favorite Kagrra Live song, not for it's music but just for the atmosphere it creates.)---`kane LIVE REPORT Well, this is one of the last shows Kagrra's going to have at the On Air East. It's closing for renovations for an indefinite period of time in a few weeks. I'm not sure why, though. The building's in good enough shape, and all the important stuff works properly. There's nothing that should require remodeling, really. Oh well, c'est la vie. On with the show! (Side note: The music playing over the sound system before the show started was Enigma's MCMXC A.D. Kind of interesting to go from Gregorian influenced techno to Japanese traditional influenced rock.) While some people may not like Kagrra's new sound, it has really done wonders for their stage show. This time around, in addition to On Air East's huge in-house lighting rig, there were also faux paper lanterns on stage, one behind each band member. OAE has a huge stage, and Izumi and his drum kit were actually offset to the right (from audience perspective). Kagrra's got a new look, but it's not too different from their old one. The kimonos are all black, have wider studded collars, and Izumi and a few of the others are also wearing what I assume is supposed to look like old samurai armor as a sort of girdle/chestpiece under the obi. Isshi is blond (ish, certainly not the same color as before), and was wearing a black horned tiara sort of thing. It looks like some of the others have taken out their hair extensions, or flat out cut their hair a bit, because the rest of the band seems to be doing a sort of new wave long hair/punk gel spike sort of look. It's very hard to describe. In any case, the show started off with some of their newer stuff, and it does come out noisier than their old stuff (some of that also being due to the livehouse itself), leading me to believe that maybe they're going to try to partially fill that hole left by DLQ to increase their fan base. Isshi looks much less choreographed on the newer material, which I think is a real plus, but it's not really the same caliber as their old stuff, and it sounds better on the CD. After about 40 minutes, the band took a break, and Nao and Izumi (bass and drum, respectively) did a duet that was very reminiscent of J and Shinya's (Luna Sea) live concert solos. It started with Izumi playing a simple beat, with an audience chant (Izumi!) on the cymbal crash. The Nao came on with his bass and a drumstick in his mouth, and it went from there to a double snare drum routine (although Nao is not that good a drummer, it seems). From there, the show picked up with their faster songs, and Isshi pulled an Izam. He led the audience in a fan dance like he usually does, and the music started out like it was supposed to, but then it turned into a dance version of some sort, with pulsating lights and everything. As a side note, Kagrra is starting to use a lot of techno filler during set breaks. In any case, Isshi really messed the crowd up, because the hand motions got more complex as they went along (single rotation each hand in turn, rotation both together, tap right fan on left, repeat). The show ended with Yume izuru chi, and the encore/real end was the same song they always end with as an audience sing-a-long, and 2 stage hands hiding in the speaker racks throwing confetti into the fans to blow it out over the audience. I have to credit Kagrra on ingenious merchandising yet again. They gave out CD jackets (really just single sheet inlay cards) to everyone who came to the show. Here's the kicker: the jackets were for the tour only singles that you had to then buy for 1000 yen a piece. They were also supposedly 1000 limited, but as they were sold at other tour venues, and considering OAE was comfortably packed, they seemed to have an awful lot left considering it was a tour final. By the way, one of the singles is called "Iro ha ni ho he to" (since this is Kagrra we're talking about, I'm reverting to classical romanization. In modern it's "giro ha ni ho he (or e) do"), which is actually an old song/poem that is used by Japanese schoolchildren to practice how to write hiragana, as the piece uses all 47 characters (barring voicemarks) exactly once. So I'm sure everyone is wondering what Kagrra's big announcement was. Now, I could make something up, but someone might mistakenly report it as fact, so I won't. There was no big announcement. No breakup, no major, no one leaving, no nothing. There was a lot of possible buildup, though. Isshi twice was going on and on about dreams, and how he'd always been with the same four people making music, and he thanked the fans for being fans, and then he goes on to talk about sad things and cruel things in life, so I think anyone that thought there was something going on would have expected something to be said along the lines of a breakup or some such, but that was not the case. So much for rumors and speculation, and thus ends another show. Report by, Halley 02/06/16 |