elysium aru

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Event Report: Aoyama Yoshino Solo Event 2018

estimated reading time: 20 minutes

PSA: This event report is incomplete. I never ended up finishing it so there are parts of it that just abruptly end. I’m posting this because WUGner bros kept asking me to just put it up as is, so here it is.

I just want to apologist over how extremely long it took me to finally post this. I had actually written this up over the weekend of the soloevent itself but I wasn’t happy with how it turned out.

I just got back home from Yoppi’s WUGLOVE solo event.

I am so speechless I am in a trance.

I’m going to write as much as I can, in as much detail as I can, in order to forever remember how amazing of an event this was, and to be able come back and read this whenever I want in order to relive the 3rd of March 2018 as the day I went to heaven and back.

Also, please apologise as I did not take much photos of the venue.

Other fun points:

Everytime Yoppi drank water some of us screamed 水美味しい？ only to be met by other WUGners screaming back 美味しいよ！ and over time the number of people doing that grew so much it was so funny even Yoppi was like wtf lmfao.

Afternoon Stage

My number for afternoon was ~220 which was honestly the worst luck. When I was able to enter the venue, it was already so full we were stuck at the entrance for a good minute until they forced everyone to push themselves forward, which opened up a lot of space, but this is definitely not a 350 capacity space. I’d say 250 max. We were packed like sardines.

Regardless of my previous complaint, everything else about afternoon stage was fine so I’ll pretend like that never happened.

At entrance, we got a can badge of a giant apple with a face that says 「青山吉能　ソロイベ2018」 in Yoppi’s famous artstyle and calligraphy. I’ll treasure this forever.

The live started off with a voice play called Fuji-chan’s Princess Story (Fujichan no Princess Monogatari), which was written by Yoppi “with the help of Mayushii”. What actually happened was Yoppi asked Mayushii for help and a couple hours later Mayushii just sent Yoppi and entire script without saying a word lmfao. Anyway, the story used apples and Aomori itself as a basis and had characters named after various places of Aomori, which also happen to be various types of apples, and the main character is what would be a side character in a regular story. A new student joins their class and turns out he (?) remembers the main characters best friend from childhood. The best friend and the new student end up spending a lot of time together and the main character gets really jealous, and follows them, and ends up falling into a hole. The story ends here for the time being, but it cut extremely well into the first song of the live…

Egoist - Fallen

The build up to this was extremely well done. Fun fact: just before the live, I had a conversation with the dude next to me about how she will definitely sing an Egoist song because she loves them and she sang them at every other soloevent, and here it was. As an Egoist fan myself, hearing Yoppi sing this was amazing. Not much else I can say about it.

Kaihouku

THAT WAS QUICK. What we expected to be the closing song of the live ended up being the second song. I REALLY LOVE THIS SONG. I actually didn’t have the time to listen to the full version before the live itself (we were pretty behind during buppan) so hearing it in full was really an experience. The lyrics are extremely powerful and spoke to my heart, and Yoppi sang with all her heart as well which just added to the experience. I love her so much, thank you so much for this song.

After this was the first MC. She opened up by being surprised over how we were able to come all the way despite the circumstances, and that there was really nothing to do about it. She then told us about the story behind the live voice acting that MAYUSHII wrote, which was followed by people screaming Mayushii lmao, and told us to stay patient until the second half of the live for the continuation of the story.

After the opening words, we started what she called the Aoyama Quiz, and the last three standing will get a gift. This got everyone excited. She even told us the first four questions are super easy, and we started right ahead. The answers were colour-coded so we could answer using our penlights. Anyway, here are the questions and possible answers. I’ve marked the correct ones. I also marked where I fucked up and died.

1. Where is Aoyama Yoshino from?
   1. Kumamoto
   2. Nagasaki
   3. Saga
   4. Oita
2. Where is Nanase Yoshino from?
   1. Miyagi
   2. Kumamoto
   3. Aomori
   4. Akita
3. What was Yoppi’s nickname during kindergarten?
   1. Aobou
   2. Yocchan
   3. Princess
   4. Yoppi Cheese
      

Yoppi mentioned that she hated the person that named her this so much, and she has no idea why she was called this, and she hates that person from the bottom of her heart.

1. What was Yoppi’s favourite school lunch during elementary school?
   1. (I don’t remember sob sob)
   2. Fried toast
   3. A certain branded cashewnut
   4. Curry rice
2. What was Yoppi’s best impersonation during middle school?
   1. A certain Hayami Saori character
   2. A certain Hayami Saori character
   3. A certain Hayami Saori character
   4. Senjougahara Hitagi

She mentioned how there’s no way she could ever do an impersonation of Hayami Saori, and then talked about how she’s working hard at Osaka right now (soloevent was the same day as Animax Musix Osaka) so she should give her all at Aomori, and she even talked about how she saw people post about how they’re skipping Yoppi soloevent for Animax lmao.

1. What is Yoppi’s King of Prism oshi?
   1. Shin-kun
   2. Yuki-sama
   3. Taiga
   4. Kakeru

This is where I died! I thought it was Shin! THONK

EasyPop ft. Megurine Luka, GUMI - Happy Synthesiser

Tetrodoxinsiser

Night Stage

I was honestly expecting we get the same thing for night stage as the entrance gift but turns out that was not true. This time, we got a T-shirt shaped keychain with art I presume Yoppi drew, of a girl in a dress sitting next to an apple tree. It’s really cute and the art itself is very calming so I shall cherish this forever. The guy at the door actually tore my ticket in half though so that was sad. Broken memories.

The fun began before the live even began. Before any live, there is always an announcemntthat reminds everyone to be aware of the live rules, and this one strangely sounded very similar to Yoppi. I say strangely, because it was spoken perfectly like those announcement robot lady voices, until she slipped her tongue. That’s when we knew it was Yoppi and everyone laughed and she started speaking in a very no energy manner. She then exclaimed that she was asked to put more effort into this and started speaking like a robot again, but failed miserably as she for some reason had trouble reading the word 「近」 multiple times and also let out multiple sighs, which was hilarious.

On to the live itself.

Although it was time for the live to start, the curtains weren’t opening at all. I thought it was rather strange, until a sillhouette showed up on the curtains, and it started sining Ghost of a smile. We were so surprised, I was so surprised, but we went with the flow. I really liked how she tried to match the EGOIST style right down to the curtain use. It was beautiful.

The next song was an acoustic version of Non stop diamond hope. It was amazing! This song was also sang as a sillhouette until the first chorus when the curtains all of a sudden opened, followed by a round of cheers by the audience, Yoppi being in the same outfit as the opening of the Afternoon show, except this time I had a really good number so I could see her entire outfit. She is so cute, and she dresses so well. God bless. The live band added so much to it, I loved this so much I want this to be official orz.

At this point we reach the first MC. She talked about how all of the previous solo events so far have only been one showing so after the afternoon showing she was like “yay I’m done- oh shit there’s still night showing”. She then asked us about whether we did any tourism, and then asked if we were going to tomorrow, which was met with a sudden realisation that Minyami solo event was the next day and she said “Ah, you’re going to Akita tomorrow. You only need to look at me you know?”. She then realised she forgot to do her self-introduction, and proceeded to do so, and then without any further ado immediately said what the next section was.

And that section was the long awaited WUGner no Shuchou! If you guys don’t know what that is a reference to, there used to be a show on Japanese TV called Gakkou e Ikou, which has a section called Miseinen no Shuchou, which is basically a section where young school students go to the roof to scream something they’ve always wanted to get out of their shoulders. Everyone here knows about this show, and Yoppi decided to parody it, except as a WUG version, and had people send in what they want to scream, or have Yoppi scream it in their stead. She took a little bit of time to explain how it will work for the tiny number of people that for some reason doesn’t know about this, and we got right to it. She then started pulling responses in random out of a box.

• The first request was one that asked Yoppi to scream it, and it said “The one wish of Kyushu WUGners: please do a live at Yoppi’s home town of Kumamoto!”. After she screamed it, she explained how after the charity live at Iwate, she realised that she’s the only one so far within WUG that has not performed in their own hometown. As a KYUSHU PRIDE myself, I really do want her to do a live in Kumamoto. I would definitely go, and of course everyone screamed they would definitely go as well.
• The second one was also a request for Yoppi to scream. She read it in her head and added that this is one that everyone can do together, and proceeded to scream it. “During Koi de Ai de Boukun desu, at the daisuki dai part where everyone screams ORE MO!, I scream YOSHINO instead”, it said, and added that it also said “I want to try this with everyone”, and Yoppi starts singing that bit of the song, and at the part of the call, everyone screams YOSHINO! and it was great. This will definitely become staple amongst Yoppi oshis at WUG lives is what I thought lmfao. Yoppi then said to please think about the other girls too.
• The third one was also a request for Yoppi to scream, to which she was worried as well. The request was sent in by someone that called themself “the yoppi-oshi girlfriend”, who apparently was not at the event, but the name itself is very relevant to the request. The request went along the lines of how the boyfriend (who wrote this) has been taken around to so many WUG events by his girlfriend who happens to be a Yoppi oshi, and he requests Yoppi to say all of this to make his girlfriend happy. Sadly as I mentioned, she wasn’t there orz.
• The fourth one was very interesting. It was a request for a WUGner to scream to another WUGner, but the submitter didn’t remember what he had sent so Yoppi passed it to the crowd to pass it to him. He then screamed about how he came to this day event with his friend who is this other WUGner, and then started talking about how he thought they would be friends immediately when they first met, but was told by that other WUGner about how because he has an attachment to 3D, he must really like both anime and real girls, and thanks to that he really started thinking that from the bottom of his heart. He then asked said WUGner to become a WUG tan-oshi with him. Supposedly said friend sometimes ends up not going to WUG events because there’s another event on the same day, which was followed by a huge boo. After this, Yoppi added that said friend also sent in a request, which said “I go to way too many events I have no time to watch anime!” to which Yoppi responded with if he were to only go to WUG events there would be so much time to watch anime, so he should just stop going to other events. She then screamed WUGchan tan-oshi (which sounds exactly like tanoshii) which was hilarious.
• The next one was a very wholesome one. This was the second self-shout request. It was by a rather old man, probably in his 60s, and it was to his wife and kid. It went along the lines of how he told his family that he was heading out in the weekend for work (お仕事) but it wasn’t work, it was for his oshi (推し事) (I can’t translate this pun very well, basically oshigoto can be written in both ways and one of them means work and one of them means “oshi-related things”). He added that his family should not worry, because he loves them the most of anything in this world. What made it hilarious was the final line: “Yoppi is only second to that.”
• Next was another request to shout by themselves. It was supposedly his birthday the day before and he wanted to be wished by Yoppi and everyone. We of course sang happy birthday to him and that was that. The funny thing is, on Twitter, this person was being super loud about how Yoppi will remember his birthday at the live and turns out it was true LOL.
• This one was a request for Yoppi to shout. Yoppi did ask the sender to should it himself, but she screamed it anyway. “I don’t wanna stay back a year, please give me credits!”. SO REAL. At this point me and the guy next to me became super yakkai about how we don’t wanna study and Yoppi responded with “I get that it’s hard to study, but I’m moving up a year… but then again I do have some credits that are held back for review…”
• The last one was also a request to scream by themselves, and Yoppi kept saying she pulled a really good one for the final one. “I’ve been going to WUG lives for years now alone, I want WUGner friends already!” it said. Yoppi added how it’s hard to make friends, probably speaking out of exerience.

After all of this was done, Yoppi asked if she can sream something of her own, and of course we were ok with it. We wanted to hear what she has to say. With the loudest voice she could let out of her system, she screamed with all her heart “IF YOU SEE ME IN THE STREETS, PLEASE PRETEND LIKE YOU DON’T KNOW ME!”, and there was a backstory to this, and it ties so well to what happened pre-live it’s so funny. Before the live, I was meeting up with a lot of WUGners from Twitter and one of them during his shinkansen ride to Aomori kept talking about how Yoppi was in his same train and he realised this because she was wearing a strangely huge mask, and was wearing the exact same clothes as the WUGLOVE video uploaded earlier that day. Of couse, if she is your oshi, you should be able to tell just by her eyes as well, which he added when we met up afterwards. He was still not very sure about it, and thought it was just his imagination, until at a random station during a long break she left to maybe buy some things, and came back without a mask, and that’s when he was absolutely sure it was her. When they arrived at Aomori he went up to her and asked 「本物？」 to which she apparently replied 「本物で～す！」. I didn’t believe the story at first, but he was adamant about it being true, and Yoppi confirmed it herself, as she retold the end of the story as is. Turns out she laughed her ass off over this afterwards. She also talked about how she got a request that mentioned how at one of the WUGners part time jobs she works with someone that studied with Yoppi during elementary and middle school, and Yoppi asked the sender of the request who it was. I couldn’t hear it very well because she was super soft, but Yoppi squealed and told her to tell her she said hi. The WUGner later talked about it in a little bit more detail on Twitter, which I have lost the link to and I’m lazy to search for it orz. Yoppi added that that friend of hers was super smart and had a great personality but she’s not sure if she’s still the same now.

In the middle of this section, she also added that this is a very good way to find the darkness within a lot of WUGners, which is actually very true, as the application could be anonymous if you decided you did not want to use any name tied to you.

And that was the end of this section.

She took this time to introduce the two “ojisans” that were behind her playing the intruments, as I had previously mentioned, the live had a live band. I don’t remember the details of this section, but it was funny how everyone was parodying idol introductions and kept screaming 「かわいいよ！」 to these two ojisans, probably in their fifties, and even giving them idol nicknames. Bless idol otakus.

After introducing them, Yoppi teased us by saying that as continued from the afternoon live, she is a princess for the day, and princesses wear princess-like clothes, and went backstage to change.

In the meanwhile, the two ojisans played an instrumental version of Watashi no Ki, which was absolutely beautiful. It was one of my favourite songs from the 2017 Soloevent album and it’s filled with lots of emotions that speak to my heart and while I was disappointed I didn’t get to hear Yoppi sing it this year, I was very satisfied over the fact that I could hear this beautiful instrumental. I was on the verge of tears, and I would be lying if I said that I didn’t imagine Yoppi’s voice in my head singing along to it.

Yoppi then comes back saying Princess Aoyama is back, and let’s it’s time to go to the Yume no Kuni and starts singing the Japanese version of the song from Rapunzel, “When will my life change?”, Jiyuu e no Tobira. Let me take this moment to talk about her outfit. Oh my god she was (is) so gorgeous. She was in a Disney-princess like dress with a tiara and her long frilly skirt had a rainbow coloured accent to it. So beautiful aaaaaaa. She also sang the Japanese version of How Far I’ll Go from Moana, Dokomademo. I’m not fond of Disney and Disney songs, but Yoppi’s voice made it for me. I’m not a Disney hater anymore. Those are not the only Disney songs she sang though, she also sang the song I despise the most out of all Disney songs, the Japanese version of Let It Go from Frozen, Ari no mama de, but I found it extremely difficult to be tilted. Yoppi’s voice is way too beautiful. Her singing healed me. Her singing literally fixed Disney’s horrible music. God bless her. She talked about how it’s very difficult to sing Disney songs at events (probably because of copyright?) and asked the staff to do something about it because she wants to be a princess for a day, and they did!

She then talked about how she asked people for requests for songs they could all sing together on the hashtag, and she didn’t want to do WUG songs for this, and since 3rd March just happened to be Hinamatsuri, she made us all sing Hinamatsuri ffs. She even pretended that we’re all like nursery kids while she’s the teacher. After the singalong, everyone screamed SENSEI, and some people even screamed MAMA to which Yoppi responded with I’m not your mom! lmfao.

Back to the live section.

Hello How are you - Hatsune Miku

I’m not a fan of Miku, but I thought this song fits Yoppi’s voice extremely well. I’ve only ever heard the original before once though so I can’t really comment on it… Enjoyed every second of it nonetheless.

Kaede - Spitz

This came as a surprise. I love this song a lot and to think that my oshi seiyuu would sing this live acoustically is absolutely unthinkable. Towards the middle of the song, she was holding back tears. Her eyes were glittering and it was super obvious, and I don’t blame her, the lyrics are extremely powerful and she was using all her heart to sing. I was on the verge of tears while she sang this song, aaaah just thinking about it now brings back the feels.

She commented after singing Kaede how there aren’t many opportunities to sing J-pop at all so she gave it a go here. Everyone loved it. I loved it.

She then said she will sing two WUG songs which will make us go ooooooh for sure. This got me curious and extremely excited.

Suki no Skill

I am getting goosebumps just thinking about it. Yoppi solo of Suki no Skill with live guitar and keyboard. I don’t know how to explain how amazing this was in words. When she started singing the lyrics the audience let out a synchronised ooooooh, at which point I realised this was what she was talking about. Noone did calls obviously, but she signaled us to do the taisetsu na mono wo and the itazura wo miseru bits together and let me tell you everyone saying it together fit so well with the theme of the live and the acoustic version of the song it was amazing. I want this to get an actual release. I want to experience this again. It was absolutely beautiful. This song should’ve been acoustic from the start.

Sugao de Kiss Me

This caught everyone off guard. Sugao de Kiss Me is supposed to be a very fast paced electronic song, and the calls are relatively participative. When she said CHECK IT me and the guys let out a WHOOOOA just because of how amazing it was. This song fits the whole acoustic vibe surprisingly well. And then it happened. Turns out it wasn’t Sugao de Kiss Me. Do you guys remember the April Fools video of Yoppi singing a parody version of this song at Sugamo, titled Sugamo de Kiss Me? Well, now I can tell people I watched Yoppi perform that acoustically. I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about it right now. It was equally amazing and hilarious and I don’t think I’ve ever felt bamboozled and rewarded at the same time. Oh, I think I misspelt the song title on this section header. It’s Sugamo, not Sugao. Woops.

Turns out many people suggested her to sing Sugamo de Kiss Me on her hashtag and she actually did it. Bless her.

We then took a photograph together (which I will attach here once it’s up, two weeks and it still isn’t orz). When she asked what pose we should do some of us screamed Yoppeace and we did it! It was great.

Comments about the live by Yoppi

Yoppi then took the time to tell us about how she is thankful how everyone was able to come today despite the horrible weather conditions (trust me, 6 hour delay because of a blizzard and 3 accidents on the same road was not fun), and how solo events gives her the opportunity to do things her way and that she has so many things she wants to do, and being able to come all the way to Aomori, 2D Yoppi’s hometown, and not to mention how it sounds like her name, Aoyama, Aomori (which I giggled at) there must be some special connection.

Suki wo Oshiete Kudasai (Guri version)

I love this song SO MUCH. I love the Guri version SOOOOO MUCH. Never thought I’d get to see Yoppi perform this live considering its been a while since the anime aired, but clearly Yoppi has a special place in her heart for the characters she performs, and I think that’s wonderful. I wish she did the dialogue parts of the song live as well, sadly those were prerecorded.

Final comments by Yoppi

And with that came the final song, Kaihouku. I think I’ve spoken enough about how much I love this song, but every time she performed this song I fell in love with it more and more. This final performance of this song, with a live band, only improved it and made the lyrics feel even more powerful than they already are. I actually cried.

And that was the end. She said her thanks, we screamed our thanks, and she left the stage, and the automated announcer telling everyone the event was over played. But we did not want it to end this abruptly. We shouted Yoppis name in unison for at least a minute and she actually came back on stage. Without a mic, we had this exchange:

よ「みんな！今日は、青森まで本当に来てくれて、もう、超楽しかったです！」

よ「みんな本当にありがとう！」

よ「言いたいことがあります！」

ワ「なーに？」

よ「ワグナー最高！」

Thank you, Aoyama Yoshino, for the greatest day of my life. Hope next soloevent is even better than this, if that’s even possible.

TLDR: Afternoon show was great and all but night show is what I imagine would show up on the dictionary if there was an entry for “god event”. While afternoon was just a more than regular seiyuu live with live voice acting and a lot of cover songs, with the exception of a section where she literally allowed people to record the performance, night show was entirely acoustic, even with a live band, and the amount of love and effort put into it was insane. There were multiple parts where I was in tears and frankly writing this right now is bringing those memories back and I want to break into tears. I fell in love with Yoppi even more than I already do. Please just go solo already!