It’s finally here.

A few months ago, I spent 13 hours in an oversized aluminium alloy tube to get to Japan and back so that I could attend Maaya Sakamoto’s 15th anniversary concert at Budokan. A few days ago, the DVD and Blu-ray recordings arrived at my door step. A few hours ago, I finished encoding them into H264 MKV files and went out for ramen.

Packaging

The first press releases of the DVD and Blu-ray come with a special matt cardboard packaging and a ribbon. Future releases will only come with the plastic DVD case found inside the box. The Blu-ray box is white while the DVD box is black, but I suspect the actual plastic cases have the same cover design. (I don’t have a Blu-ray player, so I only opened the DVD version.)

DVD edition with red ribbon

The ribbon comes in either red, blue or gold colour at random. The gold version is supposedly a “rare” item, but I suspect it’s only there because they ran out of red and blue…

The special box has a cover fold that doubles up as a small photo booklet. It’s pretty decent considering that it’s a freebie for first press buyers.

The DVD casing is a regular plastic case. The front cover art is a photo of Maaya playing the guitar intro for “Get No Satisfaction!!” and the back is a song list.

There’s another smaller booklet of credits and a few photos in the DVD case itself.

The DVD edition comes in two discs. The first disc contains the main concert itself (2hr+) and the second disc contains the encore (40min) and two short specials (behind the scenes footages and Maaya practising the guitar).

Concert

The recording is pretty decent, although the Blu-ray version should be even better. I sat pretty far away from the stage during the concert, so it’s nice to finally get to see the performance close-up. But it does kind of miss out on the stage effects.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the most memorable moment for me was this part where all the lights were switched off, leaving a few spotlights trained on Maaya as she was slowly elevated by a mechanical platform in the centre of the stage. When she reached the chorus of Hikari Are (“Let there be light”), the lights came on. This effect is quite unnoticeable in the video because the camera auto compensates for the change in ambient brightness. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.

Her first costume was a “gift”

Guitarist Masato Ishinari

Vocalists Kazco and Mari Asai

Her second costume. She’s wearing the third one underneath

Yoko Kanno

Maaya performing with a guitar for the first time

Her third costume is…colourful

Hikari Are

If you squirm hard enough, you can see me. Or at least my seat section…

Composer Shoko Suzuki at the drums

Maaya’s fourth costume

I have that T-shirt :D

Maaya plays the piano for Everywhere

Maaya leads a sing-along POCKET wo Kara ni Shite

Refer to my post on the concert for more thoughts.

Watching through the DVDs, I’m actually quite surprised by how much I managed to cover in my last post by memory. I’m usually not very good at remembering details. The only thing that I didn’t catch was when Maaya missed a line of PLATINA.

I also love the MC sessions where Maaya talks about her personal take on life and how she expresses it through her songs. Not all singers can do it the way she does, full of sincerity and meaningful pauses.

Specials

The two omake footage on Disc 2 show the lead-up to the big day.

There’s a scene in the encore, where Shoko Suzuki presented Maaya with a surprise birthday cake and Maaya blew the candles while the audience sang Happy Birthday, that was cut from the main recording for some reason. The first omake footage contains a short portion of it starting at around 13:30.

Don’t know why they cut it from the main footage. Maybe they forgot to keep the cameras running… Oh well.

Oh noz, no one showed up

Yoko sending off Maaya

Group cheer before the show

The brithday cake’s hiding place under stage

Air guitar

Conclusion

It’s damn awesome, so please buy the DVD or Blu-ray if you can (or if not…). In the meantime, I am working on translating and subbing the entire thing. Will post it up somewhere When It’s Done™.

Here is some Christmas Day good news for you! IT Media has announced some details on the Blu-Ray region coding and it holds a nice surprise. Japan, North America, and East Asia will all be sharing one region code. This potentially means that American gamers will be able to import Japanese PS3 Blu-Ray games, and will definately be able to import Japanese Blu-Ray Anime/Movie titles without any hassle. Europe unfortunately will be sharing a region code with Africa so likely not much cross-gaming there. Sorry Europe, looks like you will be getting the gaming bone again. Oh and Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all from all of us here at GR!

Depending on their definition of “East Asia”, this could be a good thing for Singapore. ^^ No need for modchips for play any import PS3 games that matter. Europe, which has the same DVD region code as Japan, has been shafted this time round.

I can’t seem to find the original source article on IT Media, but if this is true, it could seal the deal for PS3. (Well, except in Europe…)