October 24th, 2004
Takadanobaba AREA Piass Event

Bands in order: Living Dead, Hagakure, Zero-one, Palette, Brain Hacker, Kinarura, Phylia, Alice Nine, Bang-Doll, Piass

This was a Piass event, and possibly one of the most random selections of bands. I could understand that the ex-Gio centered guys were together, but then all these other various bands of different natures, and... Alice Nine?! They had been selling out practically all of their shows lately, but apparently not this one. I had a reservation through Bang-Doll, got a surprisingly low ticket number, and went in earlier than expected. There was still a ton of people there, and a grabbed a second row, second level spot to wait for Tracy. All the enquette were thrown in a completely random order, Bang-Doll had said the order was secret, and I only knew Hagakure was playing second. So, once Tracy came in, we mushed our way up front just in case someone good was up first.

It was Living Dead first; whom Tracy had come to see and I had mild interest in. They were a bunch of Takuya Angel (bright Japanese-style cyber clothes) clad cuties who bounced around stage. They were still quite amateur, the vocalist really couldn't sing at all but I forgave him because he was adorable and looked really nervous. Their first two songs were pretty boring, but they got active and there was hand dancing and fun stuff. The vocalist MCed about the recent terrible earthquake in Niigata, but kept saying "typhoon" instead of "earthquake" (completely different words, he was just nervous) and laughing at himself and the fangirl's replies.

I went back to the second level because I knew Hagakure was playing, and I know nothing about them. I had been to their website, which was the worst website EVER, and had no idea why only the vocalist had a profile, and a giant picture of himself scrolling across the page. Well, I found out, it's because Hagakure is a joke. Literally. The reason only the vocalist's profile is on the page is because he's the only member. He's like this decade's Arisugawa Arisu... came on stage in a pink Chinese dress with a nurses' cap on... over his regular clothes (so you saw jeans and two tshirts hanging bulkily out of the dress). With a big medical mask on, and ribbons and crap hanging off his blonde ponytail.

The rest of the band were borrowed members from other bands, they were really good. It was shocking to see how a bunch of session guys could play better than some other bands! They were all super cute and SUPER happy. But the vocalist didn't sing... I think he could sing maybe, the sound of his voice was really nice... but he stayed in the same short range the whole time, not even putting effort to go any higher or lower. It was truly bizarre. Like he was just trying to be bad, and he just babbled like a dumbass during the MC for longer than he should have. "Hey I have a stuffed toy... It's the band's toy... look! ...it... headbangs! *giggles*...". It was so weird; I thought he was hilarious actually... It was obviously just his fulfilling of his fantasy of getting lots of attention by doing nothing but singing glorified karaoke and being a big dork. For their last song, with a stereotypically repeating riff, he had the fans do a different hand motion or dance each time around. He stood in the back of Area the rest of the show.

I went back to the front again, and we played "guess the band" and "who the hell is playing tonight anyway?". I somehow psychically knew that the band was Zero-one when they came on stage, although I had never even heard of them before. They had ugly hair, bad street clothes, and guitar problems. But regardless seemed pretty cool, and had a nice solid rock sound. But they are/were breaking up. They made one of their front line fangirls cry so hard I felt really bad. The fans were really into it, maybe because of the announcement, but there was a lot of jumping. One of their songs was memorably awesome (pretty ballad-like awesome), like I wanted to get the CD just because of that, and that's rare to pick out from a live.

I was feeling a little weird and headachy, and went back up to the middle area, while Tracy stayed in the front. I had a feeling Pallet was next, and they were (rockin the intuition tonight). They were also not was what I was expecting from a group of old Gio guys! They were very cutesy with cool asymmetrical costumes, lots of energy, and funness. They each had on a white costume, all different but all followed the same themes. The vocalist, Kokoro's, was truly stunning in an off-the shoulder, cut and laced up white creation trimmed in kimono silk. He was also super hot and really awesome because he's the first person I've ever seen to climb a speaker tower on stage. He just climbed up the wall on the right side of Area, clinging like Spiderman, and stayed there for quite a long part of the song. Akira (ex-Cerberos) is still a metal guitar god. They had one song where everyone spun in unison. I'd definitely like to see them again.

Saiya had told me before that the vocalist of Brain Hacker had the best body ever. I doubted it until I saw it in person. Not only was the band amazingly good, the vocalist does have the best body EVER. Even with the corny "Brain Hacker" tattoo it's like whoaaaa. He's also very petite and slim which he doesn't seem from photos. Their stage was set up unusually; they have a synth keyboard player instead of a drummer, so there was basically a big DJ table with two TVs just playing a loop of some wiggly effects with their logo over it. The keyboardist/programmer had actually done support for Malice Mizer in his time. He had the sides of his head shaved, with a big bolt sticking out of it ala Frankenstein's monster. He was beating the crap out of something in the back with a huge pipe during a song with strobe lights, which was exceptionally creepy. Their costumes were very gothy and revealing, with PVC and feathers. Music was very hard, with an industrial feel at times. Very unique for the genre, and was quite the pleasant surprise.

I had actually been looking forward to seeing Kinarura. For years I had heard of what a crazy live performance they put on, shoving food into each other's mouths and stabbing mannequin heads. But there were actually boring as hell. They didn't do anything memorable... well besides the fact that the vocalist is completely 500% mentally troubled and was throwing tantrums on the stage and smacking himself and his fans and just being weird. I was expecting chicken wings and stuff... nope... They just played like 3 songs and were done. The vocalist also has the most absurdly small head ever, and wore makeup that just accentuated all the bad parts. They were all dressed in simple black and white outfits. The drummer looked good though... like a demented lolita or something. They got the crowd going batshit insane, throwing themselves around and James even stage dived several times, hitting girls in the head and vice-versa. Still... I was not impressed.

At this point we had forgotten how many bands were playing and even who was playing, due to the forgetting that Phylia was even on the list, we ended up at the front for them, confused as all hell as to which band of the ones left wears Yankee uniforms. However that was quickly understood when one of them turned around, and the band name was embroidered on the back conveniently. So apparently they've been around forever, and used to be really super visual, but I'd never come across them until now. They weren't super goth visual, but visual enough with weird hair, and I guess the Yankee thing has become a visual staple now anyway. Either way, they were the first band of the night to get a good moshing going. Lots of hand movements and energy from the band. They also played a pretty ballad.

And then yaaaay I had a great spot for Alice Nine!! I love Shou, and I can claim to be one of the first un-biased Shou fans from seeing him and loving Lost Age all those years ago. I was so happy to see him on stage again. They are so good!! Their fans are rabid hyenas though, holy crap! They all attacked the stage with clawing hands and screaming "SHOU-SAMAAAAAAAAA" and everything else... They all somehow grew five inches when they sakued like mad as the members came out. It was SCARY!! Every time a member came within a foot of the stage front, everyone in the whole damn building tried to touch them at once!! Okay, yes they're hot, but THAT hot?!? I've never seen girls so hormonally driven before!! I honestly wonder how many girls really like them for their music?

But anyway. Although I was relatively close, I couldn't really see their costumes well, as it was suddenly so crowded at the front there were just heads and clawing hands everywhere. Tracy describes them as "the OTHER Trendkillers", being remarkably tacky. It didn't look so bad to me though. Some girl's head was in my way and I thought Shou wasn't wearing any pants, because he had these odd pants that were booty-short length on one side and then cut and re-attached to normal length on the other... but I didn't see that, I just saw the booty short side and then the top of his boxer-briefs when he moved in one direction, and I honestly thought he was just not wearing pants.

From the songs they played, I could recognize most of them from the clips on their site. They had a lot of energy, although I think they could have just stood there scratching their balls and gotten the fans to scream and grapple at them. They're really solid, and I think they're ridiculously good regardless of the fangirlish hype that surrounds them. I love Shou's voice, I don't care what anyone says!

And then... everyone left. The front of the stage cleared out to about ten people. Shocking, actually. There was some silly front-line rearrangement. I just stood in the middle like I usually do for Bang-Doll, but there was another woman standing there so I just stood behind her. However, in that arrangement there weren't enough people to fill out the front line. When one girl announced "Ikumi's gonna be lonely over here!", I decided to move over. It was probably the first time I've ever not been in the center for Bang-Doll, and was definitely the first time I've ever stood front line at Area. Bang-Doll had just come back from a show in Niigata, got stuck in the mess from the earthquake, and had gotten back to Tokyo so late that they didn't get to rehearse before. They still managed to put on a pretty awesome show being tired and unrehearsed and all. They never cease to amaze me with the energy they put out, even in bad conditions.

I think Ryousuke was pretending to be mad (I got a half-amused smirk) as I was not standing in his fan section! I got guitar and crotch in my face, which I guess is just one of the perks(?) of standing really close. Ikumi was really genki and making strange faces the whole set. Hiroki was also quite energetic. Ryou was doing cartwheels and attempted a front handspring... fell on his ass and rolled around on stage barechested trying to breakdance or something... quite amusing. One thing about standing front row in Area though... you can't hear anything! Your head is practically on stage, and all the sounds echo in a weird way, especially standing in front of a guitarist. I totally forget the songs they played, but it was a fairly typical rockin' setlist.

And then we left before Piass came on, because I don't like them and 9 bands was quite enough to satisfy me for the night!