As reports about 6th Stage are released in magazines and over social media, I’ve decided to detail my personal experience attending the concert, rather than the concert itself.
Since Lisa (my travel buddy) and I weren’t planning to get in line for goods on Saturday, we decided to do some window shopping in Lashinbang on Otome Road. Ikebukuro Station was a stop on the way to where we needed to go for the concert, and since the concert didn’t start until the afternoon, we had a few hours to spend. There wasn’t any trading for me to do, since Kyukyu (our UtaPri senpai) still had my items and was trading at the concert venue.
Around noon or so, we headed for the Seibu-Ikebukuro line to board the train. I had heard about the advertisement on display for the new Quartet Night singles so I made sure to take pictures of those!
There were so many people waiting to board that the train platforms were crowded and special express trains were running just for people heading to the concert. Kudos to Seibu Railways for doing that, I was impressed! Even though my friend and I had to stand for the whole ride, it was still a pleasant trip, especially being surrounded by other UtaPri fans.
Arriving at the stadium train station was an incredible sight. To see so many people there all for one concert was just a dream.
So getting into the concert venue was an experience I’ve never had at other concerts. Rather than just entering by showing a ticket, we had to enter a separate area where we had to show tickets (and a picture ID!!) in order to get wristbands, which were used to buy goods and enter the concert venue.
Why was showing an ID necessary? Likely it’s to relieve scalping. If there were no names on the tickets, people could freely resell them for a higher price. But since everyone is aware that the tickets must be presented with an ID, they know that even if they bought some random tickets online, they’d be useless. Since Lisa’s name was on both tickets, she had to present the tickets with her ID (passport in this case) and tell them that I was her +1 for the other ticket.
What happens if someone has an extra ticket but has no one to go with them? Or what if they have a single ticket but can’t go to the concert? For the first situation, I know that people would plan to meet the ticket buyer at the venue, and then they could enter the wristband line as normal, the same way Lisa and I did. For people who couldn’t go, I think I’ve heard of cases where ticket owners would plan to present ticket and then pass their wristband to the other person. I never actually witnessed that happening, but the UtaPri Twitterverse has managed to think of pretty much everything, and tickets for the concert were in such high demand that I’m sure everyone (if not, most people) managed to find buyers for their tickets.
Buying goods at the concert venue was not something we even attempted to do. After the hours of waiting we had to do on Thursday and Friday, and seeing how long the line was at the venue that day, we didn’t bother. Instead we spent our time looking at the floral/balloon arrangements sent by fans! That was certainly something I had NEVER seen before and I was so impressed with the amount of dedication that some of these fans have—way more dedication than I have ever put into this series!
After we finished looking at the arrangements, it was time to enter the venue and find our seats. We went to the gate, showed our wristbands, and looked for where we were sitting. Kyukyu and her friend had seats that were somewhat closer and more towards the center of the stage, and she was able to spot us. We had an amusing time waving to each other from so far away.
We didn’t have the greatest view, and we were pretty close to the back. I was kind of disappointed but I reminded myself that I was here to write a report, and that maybe the lackluster seat would keep me from spazzing out and forgetting to take memos. But the venue was already much smaller than I had expected, and they really did work hard to make sure that the concert was an unforgettable experience from any seat! I think it was helpful to consider that even having the least appealing seat at the concert was still better than having NO seat at the concert.
I won’t outline everything that happened at the concert since that’s been covered so many times, but I’ll list some of my favorite moments:
- When they performed DAY DREAM and it took until the first chorus for me to realize what the song was, and my first response was to freak out because I knew that NIGHT DREAM would be next XD I really didn’t think they’d perform Shining Dream, and NIGHT DREAM is one of my favorite songs. I love it so much that I made an itabag for it!!
- When it was time for Be the Light! and “Tokiya" said that he’d be performing as HAYATO this time. I was screaming and nearly in tears when he said that. Before I had heard commentary on that song, I had guessed that it was Tokiya’s returning to his roots as HAYATO, seeing that he’s in a much more comfortable spot in his career renewal now. I think HAYATO’s departure left a void in a lot of fans’ hearts (my friend Kyukyu being one of them) so I was so happy for what may have been a once-in-a-lifetime moment.
- The “unplugged” version of Tears in Love. I had been looking forward to hearing the original, but instead Kisho sang with only a keyboard and a viola backing him, and it was incredibly powerful. I was definitely shedding tears until...
- ...the moment was ruined by a saxophone, Suwabe, and an orange hoverboard. I bust out laughing during the first few seconds of Give Me True Love (my new favorite Ren solo by the way) and couldn’t stop thinking about how the hoverboard seemed to be his answer to not moving around enough at 5th Stage last year.
- While Lovely Eyes is not a favorite of mine, I happened to have been sitting in a row that was VERY close to where Suwabe had entered when the song began, so as he made his way in, I was murmuring “Oh my god Suwabe-san…Suwabe-san…” until he was less than 10 feet away and then I was screaming “REN-SAMAAAAAA” like my life depended on it.
The concert was scheduled to start at 4pm. By 4pm, there were still people coming in. I’m used to seeing concerts start a little late so I didn’t really mind the extra wait. But even when the concert started at 4:30, there were STILL people filing into the venue.
There was a written apology on the website in regards to the late start time and the shortening of breaks. They had decided that they couldn’t delay the concert any further because of the risk of noise complaints later at night, and apologized those who had missed the first few minutes of the concert because they couldn’t enter in time.
My guess is that, other than people who waited too long to finally go through the gates, there were probably a LOT of concert-goers who had still been in line buying goods until the very end. So towards 4pm there may have been a flood of people trying to get in, and the crowd just wasn’t moving fast enough.
After the concert ended, we didn’t bother looking for Kyukyu because everyone began to leave at once, and we were going to see them on Monday anyway (I had a 4-person reservation for the UtaPri Animate cafe). On the way out, we could hear the idols saying their goodnight messages, which caused some of us to stop and listen. I managed to record part of it (you can hear it on my Twitter), and then we headed to the train station.
So that was my experience at the first day of 6th Stage! I wish I could have gone both days but I have absolutely no regrets, even if we did miss a lot of emotional crying from the seiyuu at the end of the second day. I’m excited for the DVD to come out so everyone can see Suwabe on his hoverboard! XD
My next report will be about the UtaPri Maji Love Legend Star Animate Cafe! Hopefully I’ll have the time to complete it soon!
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