Japan Report 2013: Entry 04: Tokyo Girls' Style 2nd Budoukan Live

So after the Idoling!!! chekki, it is time to go to Budoukan! I was getting really excited for a few reason:

a) I'm now officially an astalight as well, I've been using all the fan-club privilege for a lot of things this year including for the ticket for this live.

b) Last year I had to have other people get me the Fan-club goods, this year I can flash my own card.

c) Meeting up again with other fans from Japan at the same spot we met the year 2012.

d) Bringing my Malaysian friends with me to see TGS at Budoukan.

So after arriving at Budoukan, I met with a_capybara from twitter. He's an awesome guy who sometimes translate news in English for other foreign fans to read. It was so good to finally meet him in person. After chatting for a while, I rushed for the goods store and got myself 2 Weekly Calendar (one for MYTGS and one for me~) 2 towels, wrist band and a t-shirt. Flashing your own fan-club card never felt so good. wahaha.

So here I am again

A lot of people were going around to find missing collectible cards in order to claim the 31st card which is available only in Budoukan. I only had 3 cards and they are all Meitin (like seriously? all are Meitin?) so I wasn't too bothered with the Chiisana Kiseki's booth. After a while, I met again with Cold_di and a_yurioshi_sasa after exactly a year. Chatted with them and they tried helping my friend Boey getting ticket for the MCZ concert but it was just plain impossible to get. Either way, since Cold_di insisted, I ate ice cream during winter for the first time and it was bloody cold. Had a real good laugh about it though. After a while we move into the hall.

Our seat was on the first floor but in row A. So we're pretty near to the stage itself so its not so bad. As the lights dimmed, and the whole hall glowed pink I was pretty hyped. Setlist is as below

Attack Hyper Beat POP(TGS10)
W.M.A.D(TGS12)
Futarikiri(TGS25)
Liar (TGS17)

Don’t Be Cruel(TGS14)
Kitto Wasurenai(TGS07)
Koudou No Himitsu(TGS04)
Tsuki to Sayounara(TGS31)
Regret.(TGS16)
Unmei(=TGS33)
Spika feat.Konishi Ayano (Maltine Girls Wave)
Majiben NOW! feat.Arai Hitomi (Maltine Girls Wave)
Day By Day feat.Nakae Yuri (Maltine Girls Wave)
Umbrella feat.Yamabe Miyu (Maltine Girls Wave)
Kawaii Rave feat.Shouji Mei (Maltine Girls Wave)
Get The Star Ayano Drum ver.
Partition Love ★(TGS32)
Mine (TGS34)
Ganbatte Itsudatte Shinjiteru (TGS03)
Himawari to Hoshikuzu (TGS05)

- encore -

Onnaji Kimochi (=TGS02)
Kirari☆ (=TGS01)

I have quite a few reason to be really happy with this live.

a) The 1st Budoukan live had a pretty bad sound system. Something was definitely wrong with the microphone becaue Aachan sounded seriously awful and it affects the other members' vocal as well. But this year, there is no such problem. Everyone sounded as how they should've sounded.

b) A lot of old songs! I personally love the 1st and 2nd album, but the newer songs doesn't really click to me so much. I think I only listen to Unmei like... 4 times? Before I drop it out of my playlist altogether. Even Get The Star didn't really Get Into Me. However minus the newly debuted songs I would say 70% of the songs are my evergreen TGS favorite songs. To start the show of with AHBP was already a surprise and Don't Be Cruel was a really pleasant surprise. I'm still longing to listen to a live version of Sayonara, Arigatou again but alas you can't have all good stuff together in one go.

c) Ayano's Drum. She was just looking damn cool! Plus Get The Star has some pretty neat beats as well so she looked damn fine!

d) My seat is in the west side of the hall a.k.a the left-most side of the stage a.k.a Ayano zone. Yup, one lucky fanboy I am.

e) The live band this time is really refreshing, a few new arrangement made the songs a bit more energetic rock-ish and less funk-ish. I don't really understand music genre, so I might just use the wrong term, lol. Either way it was really great. And there is a part where they played instrumental Tsuioku and it was beautiful.

However there is something that is really worrying me and I really want to know why, a lot of Ayano's solo lines are taken over by other members. What happened? What did I miss? Is she sick or something? If anyone knows the answer please let me know.

2nd Budoukan live is definitely way better than the 1st live. I hope they could keep this quality up and before long, go for bigger venue.