Lunatic Fest Day 1 11.08 @ Makuhari Messe
What? Were you expecting anything else?
I decide to aim to get here a little before 11 am. On the way here. The Keiyo line passes by a Disney Resort and most of the white tourists get off/on there. Nope, I’ve got a different type of amusement park I’m heading to.
I follow the crowd, only to find that I need to turn back around to the exhibition hall behind me to go exchange the wristband. About 20 minutes later, I’m good to go back to the main exhibit halls.
There is both a food festival, and a Kat-Tun concert in the area, including a huge lineup for merch tents for “Little Glee Monster”, whatever that is.
Just the lobby
I’m not even sure the exact count of people here, but it’s probably the biggest crowd I’ve ever been in here, by far.
I’m actually surprised it went by so quickly.
It’s still a good 10 minute walk back to where I was, so I finally get to the downstairs area right outside of Halls 9-11, passing by some food trucks and the sit down eating area to catch the last Novelbright song.
I head up to the right side of the crowd, as far up as I can for lynch.
I settle into a space, when one wild eyed guy in the crowd tries to pick a fight with another one. The other guy’s buddy puts distance between them, saying “eh, eh, gomen nasai, gomen”, trying to get him to leave. He menacingly points again, then slinks off further into the crowd.
Starting out with Obvious, a song off of XIII, I thought the sound sounded a bit muddled, so I put my earbuds in to see if it would improve. Marginally.
They then surprise the crowd with a Luna Sea cover, Precious (this, combined with the next song, probably got the most audience attention of the whole set)
Hazuki then calls out Luna Sea’s J for a bass feature on Adore. They point to the little drone they have on stage , which has flown in between J and Hazuki to take footage from different angles.
I can’t help but notice that the camera sliding along the bottom of the stage keeps capturing angles of the members, but particularly Hazuki and Reo from a diagonal angle, creating an illusion of multiple Hazuki/Reos.
Changing it up a bit from the recent tour, they go into Gallows. Hazuki calls “Last song” with Bringer, but then asks the crowd if they want one more and ends with Invader.
Godland is up next, and I’ll admit that I don’t know anything about the project other than Morrie of Dead End/Creature Creature being involved, and Sugizo playing support guitar.
But if I stuck around for every band that I “should” stay for, I’d have no time to go get merch.
It’s quite the selection. I get a Lunatic Fest shirt, Dir en Grey Gauze shirt, three acrylic stands, a Lunatic Fest towel and wristband.
Time to run back, but I still end up missing SID’s first song. SID are SID. Inoffensive, not super interesting.
What’s more interesting to me is the fact that I’ve discovered the sitting section. The audience is meant to be in Halls 9 and 10. The “close” section being Hall 9, and stragglers being in Hall 10. The back half of Hall 10 has essentially turned into the “I want to sit down” area, and we just watch the monitors. Perfect, 10/10. Would sit again.
Next up is Siam Sophia, which are, as you could tell, an amalgamation between Siam Shade and Sophia. The drummer Junji will be filling in for Shinya during Luna Sea’s sets.
Siam Shade’s Hideki has the first half of the set, performing the more upbeat stuff. Mitsuru takes over for a Sophia ballad, 青空の破片 then the energy starts building with the next one until we get to a newer favourite of theirs, あなたが毎日直面している世界の憂鬱 before they head back to 1997’s Machi (街).
I take this opportunity to go hit up a food truck, but they do have a couple of collaboration songs between the two bands.
It’s a total zoo. Lineups are crazy everywhere, unlike Dream Fest where I could find one or two trucks with barely any wait. The truck with the shortest lineup is the “American burgers and fries” truck. So I opt for a bacon cheeseburger, cheese fries, a melon soda and a sugar donut.
About a 30 minute wait in total. There seems to have been a short intermission, where an MC came on to talk for a bit before introducing My First Story.
I was sitting down to eat for the first couple of their songs, but I came back to the sitting section to catch most of the set. Pretty standard electronic tinged metalcore-lite.
So people start crowding around and standing up in the sitting section, so I realize it’s futile to resist for TM Revolution
Our Lord, such a dude
Now, I can’t say I’ve been following the guy. But hot damn, does he look good for his age. He even takes off his shirt a couple of songs in to show everyone how buff he is.
“Buff TM Revolution isn’t real. He can’t hurt you.”
Anyways, enough abs.
So, he comes in with a whole ass marching band in the back row of the stage. After the first couple of songs, he dismisses the band, but not before getting everyone to send out best wishes to Shinya, who is still fighting his brain tumour.
A couple more, and he pauses to address the crowd. He gets Sugizo and Inoran to come out for a double guitar feature for two songs, and finished with probably his most well known hit, Heart of Sword. During the Sugizo/Inoran segment, he starts laughing uncontrollably. According to his Twitter, it’s because he made a mistake when announcing either the song or Inoran’s name. They forgive him.
So now it comes time for this nifty Disney ride. It’s called “the push”. If you’ve heard people say that Japanese people never push their way to the front, you’ve heard incorrect. It’s just that instead of pushing just themselves through, it’s pushing everyone in front of them into the desired direction. So guess it’s time to ride The Push. It gets me to a spot where I can’t even really see the stage because of a wall of 5’9 guys directly in front of me, so the monitor on the side of the stage will suffice.
Dir en Grey head out gradually, audience members of all ages and genders calling for their favourite member. A familiar PV starts up in the background, and we get the usual set openers of Ningen o Kaburu and The Devil in Me.
They do change it up just a little, when they bring Sugizo out for a violin feature for 空音の跫音 from Arche. Sugizo seems a bit irritated with something. Keeps gesturing at the techs. A slight feedback is heard during Kyo’s vocal parts around this time.
We do get Vinushka, Saku and The Final, which is helpful for me as I didn’t make it out to the Withering to Death/Uroboros tours for obvious reasons.
After they close out with Utafumi, an English message flashes on screen “We believe that the future of Luna Sea will shine even brighter”
Time to ride the push back to the sitting area for Brahman. I pick a spot right underneath a monitor, so that no one can block my view.
They get Sugizo to guitar feature on their first song, Shoki Shodo. After a few more, J is next to make an appearance for Ace of Spades and a cover of Iconoclasm by Buck-Tick. They play a few more.
One song had a slideshow of people, their ages, and a blurb beneath their photo. I can’t tell from the photos in between if this is about people who died in a nuclear disaster, people who helped them with their albums, or people who died in the making of their albums.
Just a small joke, they’re actually really good. There’s a reason why they have their own festival being held in two weekends from now.
Toshi-low stops to say a message to all of the Luna Sea fans in the crowd. At first, it’s a bit of banter. Then, he says “everyone here is probably a bangya” (in spirit, I think he means). He then shifts to talking about Cancer, presumably referring to Shinya’s situation. While I don’t have a translation handy, the crowd is visibly moved by his speech.
He speaks about recovery after disaster, which is a cause that he shares with…
He calls for the final song of the night, and brings Sugizo out one more time for a violin feature for Mangetsu no yuube.
By now, I’ve stood back up during Toshi-low’s speech and final song, and it doesn’t take long afterwards for the MC to come out with a special guest, Shouji Noriko!
She’s a long time VK journalist, and is personal friends with Luna Sea. She gives a pep talk to the crowd.
Soon enough, the lights are down and it’s time for Luna Sea.
After they play Tonight and Dejavu, Ryuichi addresses the crowd. That he’d happy to be here with so many “seniors and juniors”, and that “here we stand, four bandmen” before thanking everyone for all their messages of support.
The set continues, Junji giving it his all. Several times, the camera angle changes to the stage drone and the members all look at it knowingly. A cannon ribbon goes off for Wish, as is standard. I’m nowhere near close enough to catch anything.
Encore clapping lasts about 10 minutes before they head back on, carrying a red Lunatic Fest towel. Ryuichi calls out members of just about every band there before he calls out the final guest. On drums…Shinya! He comes out, feet shuffling, his face looking happy but struggling a bit to speak. They help him sit at the drumkit, next to Junji, who is still playing.
Ryuichi announces the last song…Storm. Getting guest vocals from several of the vocalists there, it’s then that I decide to take my leave to beat the worst of the rush.
In all honesty have fun!!
