Nana’s voice in the background: “ARE YOU READY?”

“Let’s BEGIN LLIIIIVVVVVEEEE”

!!!!XDDDDD!!!

…was how I expected Mizuki Nana’s LIVE DIAMOND 2009 to start, but it didn’t (Maria & Joker came out much later than expected – but it’s NEVER too late to watch Nana kick stage butt in a sexy red number *whistles*). Nonetheless, to state the obvious – LIVE DIAMOND turned out to be WAY FREAKIN AWESOME, or in less coherent terms:

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*is revived by the divine power of Krauser-Nana-sama*

*Ahem* Having said that, I can point you over to danie’s full coverage of the event and end this post.

Pictures courtesy of my crappy handphone camera =P

What? Honestly, everything I need to say about it expressed in a gazillion times more fervour over there at the Nana shrine. I’m just a humble (and presumably somewhere much much lower on the insane fan scale ) little noob fan who sat in a cramped bus seat overnight to get to Saitama whilst the hardcorers were camping out in the rain outside Seibu Dome (which actually sounds much more fun -_-”).

Now if I had gotten there in a Nana truck insead…

Though it was nothing compared to the devotees who flew in from overseas to watch Nana (and presumably do tonnes of other stuff on vacation whilst I had classes to rush back to the following day *sulks*), ironically it takes as much time to get to Tokyo from Osaka by bus as it does by plane back to Malaysia – minus all the inflight perks -_-

Thankfully, met up with a friend in Tokyo who graciously lent me a place to shower (bloody icky soon to be summer weather), but by the time I got to Seibu Dome I was physically exhausted but mentally giddy as hell – pinching myself over and over again to make sure I was ACTUALLY THERE as opposed to dreaming it like I did throughout the past week (exaggeration) that danie even offered to smack me with her humongous bag of goods (again exaggeration – she got her humongous stash the day before, so her -Live Diamond- bag was presumably much smaller).

Obligatory crowd shot

*waves at danie, omo, and anyone else who was unfortunate enough to be exposed to my social equivalence of dishwater before the live. Felt nice to actually listen to fan-blabber in anything other than moonspeak *

Oh, fine. Now that I’ve started blabbing (it took me skipping just about every one of my Monday classes save for that last one where I had to give a bloody group presentation to recharge my sleep batteries, otherwise I’d REALLY be typing this post from the other side of Nana heaven), I guess I can’t just randomly stop. Random bullet points time!

Highlights

• NO COSTUME FAILURES !!! (Unless you hate humongous dresses – the heaviest fabric giant Nana has had to put on during a live apparently o.o okay, on close up it does seem like it’s mostly bubble-wrap) Seriously, though I was fully prepared to have at least one get up poke me in the eye that’s sensitive to florescent – but was really glad that it didn’t happen this time around (Is it sad that the first thing I mention about a Nana concert is celebrate her escape from tacky-ville?)

• Instead we get a whole bunch of cheesy in between sequence vids (LOL Nana pitching ball and Sentai Squad Cherry Bo-Seven XDD)

• Instead of M&J starting the show, Nana went down the cutesy route (okay, I admit I’m not too into Nana’s cutesy routines normally, but I wasn’t freakin caring anymore – Nana-chan frenzy high switch ONNNNNNN. Even Anone ~mamimume mogacho~ that’s never on my playlist for being too saccharine somehow turned enjoyable!)

• Made me realize how Nana performing on stage turns songs can make me go crazy over songs that usually I’m not personally too fond of (Usually, Zankou no Gaia = meh: but, Zankou no Gaia + Nana on stage + a 20 gallon stage fountain = win ) , and takes those that I DO to that next level.

• Played the ‘spin for Nana to get Nana to spin‘ game again XDD

• Acoustic Corner:

• Innocent Starter – Used to like this one a lot before Nana anthem Eternal Blaze practically blew it out of the water as a Nanoha OP (somehow Secret Ambition is still my personal fave, but we didn’t get it this time ), but the acoustic version was REALLY REALLY GOOD

• 2nd song – … Okay, I admit, the lack of sleep finally caught up to me and I kinda dozed off around here *hides head in shame* (the only reason I mention this is cos I wasn’t the only one doing it according to my eavesdropping on the train back – but still OTL)

• 3rd song with special guest Agematsu Mika – the one responsible for the beautiful harp in duh, Shin Ai . Brilliant without a doubt (though methinks they could’ve done with just the harp and piano, but what do I know. Oh FINE, I’m just being slightly bitchy cos they didn’t throw in Heart-shaped Chant as well)

• The futuristic segment (Gimmick Game, Still in the groove, Take a Shot) was awesome (would’ve been aweome++++ if Nana also did Astrogation)!!! Nana recommends the Gimmick Game dance diet to burn off all that excess curry-induced otaku fat  XD (I simply recommend going to a Nana live – I think I got rid of all the calories I had stacked from sitting around my lazy butt since Live Fever )

• Fierccesst performance : Maria & Joker (again, Nana makes kicking -fake- ass -complete with cheesy kapow sounds effects XD- in a smexy red dress WIN)

• Hawtest performance : Taking the literal meaning out of it (:P), though Take a Shot (where they started introducing F~I~AAHHH!!! into the stage?) and Brave Phoenix after it were pretty darned blazing performances, this one just has to go to THE one and only ETERNAL BLAZE. Just my second time (what duet with ALI PROJECT?) being wow-ed by it live, but to get to scream E-TAA-NA-RU BU-REEEZU!!! in unison with a huge hall of people in that moment so far seperated from the usual sanity of the world – one of the highest highs in Nana fandom orwut???

• Overkill (in the oh so good way): What’s better than watching the Etsuraku Camellia PV? Even better than Etsuraku Camellia LIVE??? Try Etsuraku Camellia LIVE PLUS the FIEEERRRCCEEE PV playing in the background (Nana in the killer kimono double-hit-combo!!) – the n-th time Nana successfully slayed me that day, just MIND-BLOWINGLY WOW

• Also Trickster, Justice to Believe, Bring it on!, almost everything from Ultimate Diamond (sadly no Mr Bunny or Astrogation, but Nana is only human =/)  and boatloads more. If there was a low performance (again Nana is only human), I suppose it’d have to be Shounen – which I actually didn’t enjoy performed live as much as the recorded version(?!?! I know, I’m whacked. Guess it sounded a tad oversax-ed)

• ‘Final’ performance: Yume no Tsuzuki – The usual “HEEEEEEEHHH????”s abound when Nana announced her ‘last’ song for the night, and a few “what, this song?” ’s from my area, which were promptly shut up when Nana talked about how she wrote the song to thank everyone who’s supported her so far – including her father who recently passed away (T_T). An emotional moment for Nana. *falls into solemn silence* Then, screams of “ganbate!!!” and more tears later, Nana brings the live to a fittingly beautiful end…

until of course…

• Encore: POWER GATE (!!!), Brand New Tops (towel song),

and last but not SO not least…

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Also,

Overpriced Goodies! (wasn’t prepared cashwise so I only got the penlight and the adorable birdie strap )

News

• Live Diamond is going to Blu-Ray and DVD TOGETHER with Live Fever – which I’m really glad and would horoughly recommend assuming all songs make it since between almost all my favourite Nana songs get performed at least once between the two Lives (it pains me to say except Heart-shaped Chant T_T)

• Nana’s new single will contain the OP to White Album season 2 and the Tales of Symphonia movie. Ohandbtw about WA 2 (for anyone who still cares), apparently the director told Nana-chan that the first season was more of the “emotional”, the coming season will be more of the… “physical” (dot dot dot. Okay, moving on. Nana-chan herself wasn’t too sure what to make of it, or she wasn’t going to tell a dome full of already high fans ;P)

Miscellaneous:

• For Nana’s first ever dome concert, they surely pulled out the stops for this one – brass band, kiddy cheerleaders, taiko band leading up to Etsuraku Camellia, crazy amounts of stage effects, the random in between (lol)vids, etc..

• The usual props going to the Cherry boys and the dancers  (also the Seibu Dome staff who had to keep their backs to the stage and stare at us with stoned faces to make sure noone was secretly filiming anything etc. God knows what they thought of us XD)

• And of course, Nana-chan herself! Nana remained unsurprisingly strong throughout her performances, but always her charming self in the between breaks. She gets props for being cute, funny, and always excited when blabbing about random things (in Fever in Nagoya, she talked a lot about food XD This time, mostly about the random details that went into the live like shooting her ‘helicopter entrance’ in Maria&Joker etc.) while still remining mostly coherent throughout (a feat a lot of mainstream Japanese celebrities kinda fail at)

• Whether or not Nana decides to go mainstream, Live Diamond felt very much a show for the Nana loyalists (and once you’re in the midst of said loyalists – you’re either part of the crowd or swearing them off forever ;P), but it was once again interesting to see that Nana fans do come in all sorts of shapes and sizes that sometimes does stray from the supposedly ‘regular ota-crowd’. While I remember random groups of oyajis in Fever, this time I actually spotted a mother with 3young kids (remember seeing her in the crowd, but only noticed the kids on the train after so have no idea if she brought them into the dome or not).

• On the bus back to Osaka, half the passengers were either the guys from Live Diamond, or the gals from that Toho Shinki concert that was also going on Tokyo that same day -_-” (Somehow wasn’t in a position to think anything snarky about the latter group)

I can’t believe I entered this country as more of a ‘casual’ n00b Mizuki Nana fan and only started going to her lives with a “might-as-well-since-I’m-here” attitude. Then again, the reason I even started liking Nana in the first place was when I realized how much her live performances surpassed her recorded songs (usually the opposite holding true for so many other seiyuus), so if there was anyone my usuallyconservative and tight wad self (and mostly ignorant of the ‘mainstream’ music world) would pay to go see, it’s Nana alright =D

Now, if you were ever unfortunate enough to see me in the midst of a Nana Live once that fanatic switch is turned on, “casual fan” would probably the last words that’ll pop in your mind (n00b fan, yes, casual, I don’t think so =P). And if you happen to be beside/in front of/behind me then, I’ll apologize beforehand cos I just found out that clumsy deranged panda + penlight in hand = eyes lost *runs in embarassment*

Still running on the carried over buzz from yesterday now like some zombie rising from grounds of Seibu Dome (WTF am I saying?) God, it’s gonna take a while before I start functioning properly again XD (Finals? what finals?) All that’s on my mind right now is: CAN’T WAIT TILL THE NEXT ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!