I thought it might be more appropriate as a separate thread since this was huge news.
Those of you might know Tetsuya had started a L’arc copyband/tribute band.
They had a tour final at Spotify O-East on Oct.3 - during the encore MC, Tetsuya called out for Sakura!
From what I understand, he played twin drums with the band’s drummer, Hibiki (from Manterou Opera), specifically for the song “I’m So Happy.”
All photos via Vif, Article in Japanese here:
That is pretty awesome considering sakura’s firing / abandonment / departure from L’arc due to his arrest was what basically started the wedge between tetsuya and hyde / ken.
In one of tetsuya’s biographies, he mentioned that the other members (without stating names despite it just being hyde and ken at the time) in the band were not happy with how sakura’s situation played out.
Since ken recruited sakura for SOAP in 2002, you can tell he still was friendly with sakura after all those years of being apart. And it’s really obvious to watch in L’arc concerts, ken and tetsuya haven’t had any on-stage interactions in the last 10-15 years…they literally don’t even go near each other. Maybe this mini reunion will mean something for L’arc in the future.
Also, Sakura did play alongside tetsuya and kiyoharu a year or two ago in some session gig so this wasn’t their first big reunion.
I went to the afternoon session of this live! (Couldn’t get tickets to the night final.)
We also had Sakura come out for the afternoon session, and they all played Blame together.
Sakura and Tetsuya were grinning at each other the whole time, it was amazing. I’ve never seen Sakura so happy before. (During the Dezert Summer Party where he played with ken, he just looked normal.) Some people in the audience were sobbing.
Sakura only played one song during the afternoon session. After he left, Tetsuya turned to the crowd and said, “Awww, are you guys crying? Aww!” in a kind of mocking/joking way. Then we were all asked to keep the special guest thing a secret to avoid spoiling it for the people who’d be going to the night session.
(I wish I’d bought resale tickets to the night final. I’m So Happy is one of my absolute favorites.)
