First off the merchandise.
The penlight isn't anything special, but I still think it's a bit cute. Probably because of the pink. It has two settings, a solid light and a flickering light.
The nineteen photo sets ended up all being individual sets. Each member of Yuma w/ B.I.Shadow, minus Kochi Yuugo, had two sets, Morimoto Shintarou also had two sets. Everyone else, Yuugo, Mis Snow Man and A.B.C.-Z all had one set for each member. The photos were a mix of shots from a photo shoot and concert photos from the KAT-TUN Tokyo Dome concerts for YuBIS, minus Yuugo who only had photo shoot shots. The rest, IIRC, are all concert photos.
I think I needed to show up at 7AM, a half hour before they began selling anything, to get all the photos I wanted. The line was long when I got there at 8AM and it took about 45 minutes to get to the merchandise booth. By then though all the Mis Snow Man photo sets were sold out. This made me rather sad as I had been really looking forward to buying Nozawa Yuki's. I think I'll try my luck at yahoo!auctions for the set, since I still want it and am willing to pay more than the sales price for it. I did get all the YuBIS photo sets, as well as the Hashimoto Ryosuke set. I'm glad I did this before the concert as when I was leaving the venue afterwards both Nakajima Kento sets as well as Hasshi's were sold out.
Pictured above is the display behind one of the sales counters. The blimp on top moved back and forth. Nothing great, but still cute, IMHO.
I was on the first floor, row 25 and one seat away from the aisle, though there wasn't much in the way of any of the boys going into the aisles. But since the hall is a rather small venue I could see the stage and those on it with little trouble. I think the biggest problem I had was that the stage was full of Juniors most of the time so it was hard to keep track of all of them. Especially since the stage was extended on the sides of the hall in the 1st section of seating so the boys could run up and down those planks. Though for that there was a section of the stage that lead to those sections that didn't fit two people very well so there were a couple of run-ins/near run-ins in those areas. The two I noticed was Totsu (I think) moving Hasshi, with his hands on Hasshi's shoulders, up against the wall to pass by him. And Sanada making his way past Kawai in the same section by jumping sideways past him.
I did notice quite a few Nakayama Yuma uchiwas in the crowd, so yes, he does seem to have a fan following. There were also quite a few A.B.C.-Z and Mis Snow Man uchiwas, not to mention people with multiple uchiwas, or ones that had a different name on each side of their uchiwas.
I was rather confused about one thing about the YuBIS debut, and that was the song. Yuma had been singing the song from Music Station (the slower paced one) at all the KAT-TUN Tokyo Dome concerts, but it was called Why Did You Go? there. But apparently it's gotten a name change as from just watching the Hi! Hey! Say! live stage with Yuma it's being called Akuma na Koi, which would make sense as this is the song that YuBIS sang after talking about their upcoming single. Kinda bizarre and has been throwing me off until now. I'm a bit disappointed as I don't care much for the song, but there's always B-sides to look forward too. But they were playing this song in loop before the concert began (and it sounded like a recorded version, so it's probably safe to assume that this is ready to be released any day now).
The curtains of the stage went up and Yuma is the first to be introduced, followed by B.I.Shadow. Others that get introductions, that I remember, at this point are, Kyomoto Taiga, Uekusa Yuta, Tanaka Juri, Sanada Yuma, Nozawa Yuki, Mis Snow Man and of course Morimoto Shintarou. Shintarou introduces Yuma w/ B.I.Shadow, though he messes up the name, he forgets to say the Yuma w/ at first but corrects himself. XD After the introductions, YuBIS take center stage and their debut single and Yuma's drama are talked about. Shintarou mentions that July 15th is his birthday and his mom will be getting him the single for his present. Then YuBIS perform Akuma na Koi, with previews of the drama being shown on the screens. Yuugo is the only one that looks lost at times and a bit awkward, he kept glancing over at other members to see what they were doing. Hokuto seems like a natural and while he didn't seem as smooth as Nakaken and Kikuchi at times he looked like he knew what he was doing. And of course Yuma being the veteran of the group has his stage presence down pact.
The preview clips are a mix of actual drama footage and off shoot shots of Yuma on set. The drama looks like it has a rather low budget, things looked rather fake. Yuma's character seemed rather emo, walking around looking sullen with a hoodie over his head. And that's about all I recall as I was too busy watching the boys, especially Nakaken and Matsumura Hokuto, perform the song. But it does look like the kind of series that if it doesn't take itself too seriously, I'll probably like because it is cheap and ridiculous.
YuBIS then sing another song. I don't believe I've heard it before but it's up beat and I'll be calling it Dial Up, until I find the title information, as those two English words are repeated twice in the chorus. I like it, and hope it's a B-side for the single.
The stage clears of everyone but Yuma. Then a cell phone rings and Yuma pretends that he has to think about whose cell phone it is, until he realizes it's his. He answers and Shintarou is on the other end, and is on another part of the stage. They talk and then Yuma leaves the stage. Shintarou calls someone new and gets an alien. Ok, it's Otsuka Yuya, who has a weird looking head, IMHO. Next to Otsuka is Juri and after Otsuka talks to Shintarou a bit he hands the phone over to Juri. Shintarou asks Juri if they want to sing the song and he answers yes, so all the little Juniors come on stage to sing a cutesy song.
It's during this performance that I notice that it's Question? in the background. Probably because the little ones are too short to hide anyone but other chibis behind them. And even though I don't remember him being introduced, he probably was but I didn't catch it as it was probably within one of the list of names that were rattled off, but Goto Hiromi was at the concert too, playing his violin.
After the cutesy song we get the first recycled bit from KAT-TUN's Tokyo Dome concerts. There are traditional drums, a Junior on koto (I think that's what it is) and one that can sing in the traditional chant. There end up being a lot of Juniors on stage for this, as a group comes with umbrellas to twirl, another with large fold out hand fans and then a final group with long pieces of cloth in each hand to use in their dance.
Surprisingly the group gets off the stage rather quickly as the next group comes on with pole cubes. Which means A.B.C.-Z are making their appearence. It's first just the A.B.C. members twirling the cubes for a while then they set them off stage, lights dim and when they come on again in the next second Hasshi's front and center as they do the 'goddess' thing that seems popular for Johnny's groups to do recently. They then start singing (I'm can't really recall which song), and Hasshi does his back flip at the end, he got quite a bit of air when he did it too. They then go into a medley of group songs, I don't follow A.B.C.-Z enough to know what they are called.
And I'll state right here before I go much further that things are getting a bit muddled about when they happened. So I'm just going to try my best in keeping things in order but I can't promise that this is the definite order of the rest of the con, minus the few songs near the end. That I remember well enough.
I'm thinking this is when they break into the MC section. They have the audience all sit down and it's YuBIS, Kawai and Goseki on stage. Kawai and Goseki lead the MC and mainly talk about YuBIS.
They bring up the Music Station appearance and they say how 'high tension' it was when they had to greet the Black Eyed Peas. Yuma repeated what he told them in English and then the boys were asked about their English skills, but none were eager to say much on the subject.
They confirm Yuugo has only been in Johnny's for one month, and then Kawai and Goseki proceed to introduce themselves to him so he knows who they are. XD Yuma, Nakaken and Kikuchi do most of the talking of the group. Hokuto kept holding his mic as if he wanted to say something but usually one of the other members (mostly Nakaken) would say something so he couldn't find a place to come into the conversation.
Eventually Shintarou is called on stage, as the conversation turns to Yuma's upcoming drama. Shintarou is in the airplane directing costume he wore at the beginning of KAT-TUN's Tokyo Dome concerts. He says his character is a sibling (he used the word kyoudai) of Yuma's character. He said something else about his character but I couldn't quite follow, especially when he got stuck with what he was saying. He earned some teasing from Kawai and Goseki for that, but I think they would have teased him anyway, as it was all rather friendly teasing. Nakaken then gets asked about his role and he says he will be playing Yuma's classmate.
Then they wrap up talking about the drama and move on to Shintarou's upcoming movie Snow Prince. They pimp that and it leads into the next performance, as Shintarou is joined by all the little Juniors again. A group of about six of them are introduced by a really long name, which includes the words 'Snow Princes', IIRC, and were all dressed in white. I'm sure we'll eventually being seeing this on Shounen Club, but I do remember Juri and Otsuka are both in this group. Also before the performance as YuBIS, Kawai and Goseki are leaving the stage, Kawai runs over to Shintarou real quick and 'fixes' his hat by canting it to the side. We then get another song from Shintarou and the little Juniors.
I believe after this Masuda Ryo shows up and sings a long solo before being joined by the other Juniors he's usually placed with, like Takada Sho.
Then I believe it's finally Mis Snow Man's turn to perform their song, No More Wait. They got a lot of cheers when they showed up. They actually had really nice looking outfits for this performance. They're black with little bits of red and some silver sparkly designs on them. I hope they wear these more often. The performance had a lot of flips throughout it and of course I loved it.
Then B.I.Shadow got to sing a song without Yuma, Hey! Say!. Though I believe they were joined by other Juniors part way through. I think then Yuma came on stage after most of the boys cleared off and sang a song with Question?.
This I believe was followed up by a medley with a slew of Junior introductions. I could only pick up the names I could recognize beforehand, there were just so many of them. Though Hip Hop Jump was introduced, they covered KAT-TUN's Rescue so Juri could do the rap. And since all the groups were getting introductions and performing something the introductions were done by either Sanada and Nozawa or a member of A.B.C.-Z. Also in this medley Kyomoto, Uekusa, Anderson Casey and Morita Myuto sang A-ha-ha. (I think I might be a little off with the song title here.)
After this it was time to begin wrapping the concert up. IIRC, everyone sung School Kakumei together and then for the final song it was Tegomass' Marui Chikara. The curtain then went down, but not for long as they did an encore, Hey! Say! JUMP's Ultra Music Power followed by Hey! Say! with everyone this time.
That was the end then. When I left the hall I picked up a streamer that was on the ground. One of the performances had a bunch shot out during it and while some came close to where I was none actually made it. But I wanted something that I felt that I could only get at this concert.
As I made my way out of the building I glanced at the time and it was only a few minutes past 11AM, which meant the concert was only for an hour. I was surprised at how short it was. I knew it wasn't going to be long with four concerts being crammed in one day, but I thought it would be a bit longer than that.
I had fun though, and got to see Juniors perform songs live instead of just back dance for another group which was great. From the moment the concert was announced I wanted to go to see Mis Snow Man, and not only did I get to see them I got to be at YuBIS' first concert together as a group, which makes me happy as I know not many foreign fans get that kind of chance.
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