The very event I’ve been waiting for after Otomate Party 2022: the Birushana Senki live reading!
When they announced Birushana Senki as the second series to have a Live Reading, I was ecstatic. As much as I wanted to attend the in-person Olympia Soiree Live Reading, I skipped out because the venue was so far out in the boonies. In fact, some ladies at the Birushana Senki Live Reading were talking about how awful the experience was, as it was in Fussa, a city in far west Tokyo, that it took two hours to get there, and that there was no nearby restaurant nor fastfood place to eat at.
Most likely Otomate listened to the feedback that they opted to have the event at Ichikawa, a city in Chiba that borders Edogawa-ku, one of Tokyo’s 23 Wards. While it took a while for me to get there, at least it only took me a hour from my place to the venue itself.
Thankfully, there was also a nearby resto that I could eat at, so that helped a lot after I did my merch buying.
As with last month’s Otomate Party 2022, the event had opted for onsite selling and did the exact procedure as the previous event: ask ticket holders to queue between certain times, hand out numbered tickets, with ‘ハズレ’ (hazure; translated as ‘Lose’) mixed in it, and called out people to queue in order for the merch buying proper.
I braced myself for the worst because I got the following number:
While this may look like a decent number to get, I’ve had an awful time with Otomate Party 2022 because even after getting number ’49’, I was unable to secure the Piofiore no Banshou acrylics. Based on that experience alone, I was dreading the worst and braced myself for disappointment in case any of the items I was eyeing to purchase would get sold out midway through my queuing.
While queuing, my phone’s signal started acting up, mostly because 8 of the payment counters had its own e-payment terminal, which may have caused the disruption.
At 11:07 AM, I was in this area:
On my way to the merch buying, I ended up seeing samples of the items to be sold:
At 11:49, the staff member took my order sheet and I queued for payment.
At 11:56, I was done buying and headed for the nearby resto since I knew I had to secure a seat before the lunch time rush.
All in all, it took me 2 hours to complete the shopping process, from waiting for the numbered ticket to be given to me to leaving the venue… all of which could have been done online if they actually bothered to plan this ahead.
<RANT AHEAD>
I have not yet even factored in the hour and a half of preparations that I needed to do in order to be able to leave and arrive right on the dot… not to mention me being chill meant that I didn’t force myself to go inside the building in the hopes of getting a random numbered ticket. I stayed outside because it was so warm that morning and I was in the middle of fixing my heels when an event staff appeared behind me and called all of us to form a queue where he stood. I was the 10th person in line and still managed to randomly get a decent number.
While I am thankful for being lucky, again, this could have all been done online, either through pre-selling or we could have done the numbered ticket distribution through an online system and not waste an extra hour to both queue and wait for the numbered ticket at the venue.
<End rant about this hopelessly flawed system that they don’t bother fixing>
After ordering my lunch at the nearby resto, I began to earnestly open the merch I just bought.
To my shock and surprise, my pulls were the ones that I hoped for, namely:
Acrylic stands:
- 1 x Shigehira
- 2 x Tomomori (!!!!!)
- 1 x Noritsune
- 1 x Tadanobu
Whoever picked my acrylics had very lucky hands because I always get the ones that I do not care for, making it difficult for me to trade because everyone wants Tomomori.
After storing the merch, I then ate my lunch and waited for time to pass because the doors open at 2:15PM, and there weren’t enough seats for all of us. I ended up queuing to go in as I wanted to sit down and settle in before the performance started.
Just my luck, I had front row seats for the daytime performance.
Front row’s good but the issue I had with my seat is that I had to look up at the performers because they were on an elevated stage.
For the evening performance, I was on the 4th row. Thankfully, I didn’t have to strain my neck looking up at the stage.
Live Reading Performance (Day & Night) + Talk Corner:
Warning: game spoilers incoming for both the main story and the fandisc.
The scenario writer for the Dramatic Theater had announced that the performance for Day and Night would be different, which would mean that if one wants closure, attending both performances are a must.
This is especially true if you attended the day performance because was a bad end where it followed the events of the Battle of Dan-no-Ura, although with minor differences, like Shigehira still alive to join the battle, only to be defeated by the Minamoto. Noritsune did follow the footsteps of his historical counterpart’s demise, though he plunged into the sea with Shigehira. Tomomori, too, jumped into the sea to follow his clansmen.
After witnessing the demise of the Taira, Yoritomo wondered out loud if the choices he made had been “correct”.
The bad ending theme then plays out, and the day performance comes to a close.
The voice actors were then given a chance to chat and talk amongst themselves about the work, their feelings, and what they think of their characters.
Highlights:
- Ume-chan mentioned about the difficulty of the words used in-game, so it was a bit of a struggle for him to recite the words out loud.
- The four seiyuu who attended Otomate Party 2022 (Furukawa Makoto, Fukuyama Jun, Kawanishi Kengo, Kondo Takashi) mentioned that it was good that all of them finally got together to have this event, although they were missing Saito Soma and Amatsuki.
- It was a bit sad that Kawanishi Kengo didn’t get to discuss the nickname for his character (Noririn is my favorite) while the rest did (Yoritomo as the unlucky one, Tomomori being the reason for the CERO rating to go up, and Tsugunobu being a black-hearted character).
- Osaka Ryota calling Shigehira a ‘psychopath’ (true)
- Konitan (Satou Tadanobu), being the most senior among all of them, mentioning that he’s used to the wordings used in-game because he did voice work for historical games, otome or otherwise, which lead to Furukawa Makoto to ask him how many characters he has voiced so far. Konitan replied that he can’t really discuss about it in length since they’re at an Otomate event.
(I suspect he was referring to his voice work as Amidamaru from Shaman King, and Maeda Toshiie from Koei Tecmo’s Sengoku Musou) - The Taira clan finding the water plunging part of the skit hilarious because of the sound effect, which was a loud water splash. They were all, “The jump we did wouldn’t make such a huge noise? It’s like we’re diving! Just a small splash!”
My complaint about the talk corner was that it ended so quickly, they barely scratched the surface of the game as a whole. There needs to be a standalone, full day Birushana Senki event with the whole cast present, just talking about the series.
Not bad for an hour and 45 minute event, but I wish the talk corner went longer.
I attempted to try my luck again to buy merch for the afternoon session, but I was unlucky this time around.
For the night performance, the intro was the same as the day performance, but the events got changed midway as Shanao had a dream of the possible future of each love interest (complete with a spoilerrific CG collage for each ending) and insisted on being present at Ichi no Tani with her retainers to have a talk with Shigehira, in order to convince him to put down his weapon and reconcile with the Minamoto.
This then led to all of them (Shanao, the Satou brothers, Benkei, Shigehira) to go to Ichi no Tani’s Ikuta Forest, where Yoritomo, Tomomori, and Noritsune were. Shanao then tries to convince the remaining Taira to stop the fighting, which takes awhile for Noritsune to warm up to; Tomomori, unsurprisingly, was quick to be convinced.
One part of the peace talks that made me laugh was that Tomomori was not onboard with the reconciliation if he (and the Taira) didn’t get Shanao.
“We don’t care how you will divide this country between the west and the east; Shanao goes with us.” ( ´∀`)ﾊﾊﾊ Oh Tomomori.
The ending for the night performance seemed like fanfiction but it did make sense to end on that note, given that Tomomori’s basically a Shanao simp, along with the rest of the Taira (and the whole cast for that matter.).
Another short talk corner ensured, and this time around, everyone discussed a ‘what-if?’ scenario, which went like,
“If you were a samurai lord, would you be:
- A tactician?
- A brawny fighter? Or a fighter who goes by their gut feeling/intuition?”
When the voice actors were asked how they would categorize themselves:
- Ume-chan admitted that he thought of himself as a tactician.
- Kondo-san and Furukawa Makoto said they were the brawny types
- FukuJun, Kawanishi Kengo, and Osaka Ryota thought of themselves as intuitive types.
- When asked, Konitan said he was definitely a tactician… then made a pun that he was definitely an ‘Ume-groupie’ (Ume-ha), which made Ume-chan laugh.
By audience vote:
- Osaka Ryota (Shigehira) was definitely an intuitive type.
- Audience was split with Kawanishi Kengo (Noritsune), with some clapping when asked if he was an intuitive type or if he was a brawny type. Personally went with brawny because he posts workout videos on his Twitter account. 😂 (video linked at the end of this post)
- FukuJun (Tomomori) got voted as the tactician type but the man admits that he’s really not that type. He said he’s a split between a brawny and an intuitive type.
- When it was Furukawa Makoto’s turn, he asked if he’s the tactician type. When no one clapped, he said, “Fine, I’m a fighter then!” in an exasperated tone. 🤭
- Ume-chan (Benkei) was definitely voted as a tactician. Can’t have that beauty go to waste by sending him to the battle field…
- Kondo-san (Tsugunobu) was voted as the tactician type and few clapped when asked if he was the brawny type, but he’s thankful that some people thought of him that way.
- When it was Konitan (Tadanobu)’s turn, everyone agreed that he was the tactician type.
Mid-discussion got interrupted by the bell again, so everyone was forced to wrap up and do their final greetings.
What struck me the most with the final greetings was how FukuJun appealed to the attendees to play the main game (apparently some attendees went for the sake of the voice actors) because depending on the route you are in, you get to see the different sides of Tomomori: the deviant, the stalker, the seducer, the seducer, the seducer, the seducer, and of course, the seducer. Guess that’s why the Cero rating went up? 🤔😂 we all laughed along because it’s so true.
It’s amazing that despite the release of the main story and the fandisc, the cast are hopeful for more spin-offs and media releases of the series. I myself am hopeful for a stage play adaptation, if that is even humanly possible, especially since the costumes are so intricate.s
Hopefully, when they do decide on further adaptations, I am able to attend.
Till the next event!
Sharing some of the posts made by the voice actors/their agency’s staff account, and the official account for the event.
Unfortunately, Ume-chan (Musashibo Benkei)’s Twitter account is not updated, nor does his agency have any Twitter accounts.
he had been wanting to go to the toilet but because of the banter with the cast, he forgot about having to go 🤣
Bonus:
Wanderlust 