I had the misfortune to have been in attendance at Anime Expo this past weekend in Long Beach, California. The weather was beautiful, but I was unfortunately sequestered in a dimly lit dealer’s room peddling nerd wares to nerds, instead of enjoying the cool ocean breeze and ogling southern Californian honeys.

The convention organizers managed to snag some big name rockers to perform this year, among them punky diva Anna Tsuchiya and androgynous heartthrob Gackt’s new band S.K.I.N. The other guy working in the booth with me decided to go see Anna Tsuchiya, so I agreed to cover the booth while he took a short break to catch some of her noon time concert. Not only is scheduling a concert at noon a moronic idea, but Ms. Tsuchiya didn’t even start promptly, forcing my coworker to come back from break before he could even catch a single song. Apparently he missed out on a great show though, as I read in Anime Expo’s newsletter: “Dressed in a punk style of ripped tank top and cut-off shorts, she strutted across the stage like a teenager in a mall, not a care about what people thought—I am Anna Tsuchiya; love me for who I am.”

I heard that S.K.I.N. pulled some even more egregious rock star moves by forcing their fans to wait for almost 3 hours from the announced concert time to take the stage. Regardless of this prima donna maneuver, the official Anime Expo newsletter proclaimed, “He is called the God of J-rock, a title that Gackt showed he deserved Friday at the Long Beach Arena.”

I caught a last minute free ticket to the Oreskaband show on Sunday afternoon, yet another show unfortunately scheduled for the middle of the workday. I took a short break and managed to catch 4 of the band’s songs before getting sucked back into the dealer’s room blackhole. This being my second time seeing the band in concert, I’m embarassed to say that they’re getting more charming each time I see them. Unlike the posturing and posing of the other performers this weekend, Oreskaband’s humility and genuine happiness to be performing shone through with their smiles and energy. During their 4th song, the theme song to Bleach (remember: anime convention), the lights dimmed and a single spotlight lit up the singer. When the lights came back on for the rest of the band, the trombonist was illuminated and caught in mid-fall, having tripped over a monitor, and lost her trombone to a six foot dip from stage to pit. Instead of wallowing in her own misfortune or storming off in shame or anger, she just hopped up with a slightly embarassed smile, scratched her head, got her trombone back from a stage hand, and jumped back into playing.

While they’re hardly the second-coming of the Specials, I felt like a band like Oreskaband could show a bunch of nerd lemmings that there was real better music out there than melodramatic glam and third rate pop from vapid idols, like the Pillows once did with their appearance in FLCL. But, wait, maybe that wouldn’t be so good after all…

Gackt is the devil of J-Rock. Mukai is the God of J-Rock!

Oh, touche on that last part. I’m hoping the best for those girls. They show so much promise but you never how they may stand up to time. From the few AX opinions I’ve heard I think Ore Ska Band was a hit and may have not been so overshadowed by the other performers as I once thought. I’m really jealous that so many people got to see them, myself not included.
~hideki~

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