Hi Everyone! Here is my long awaited Fan report from the NEWS LIVE TOUR 2013. I was able to do to Kobe on August 9th and all 3 Osaka shows on the 23rd and 24th of August. I will be doing a combined report and explaining some of the differences I saw between Kobe and Osaka, which is big venue vs. small venue. This is in no particular order, just my thought about what I remember about the concert.
August 9th, 2013; Hotomoto Field, Kobe
This show I ended up being 2nd row from the main stage in the arena. Unfortunately, though they were good seats, NEWS didn’t do a lot of the show on the front stage, but mostly on the center stage that was behind me. I am too short so I had to look on the screen a lot unless they did stuff on the main stage. Luckily, all of them did come around my area a good number of times, so I was able to see them all up close! Since they were on the stage I didn’t get to touch their hands or anything, but it was an amazing experience! All of them are still the same looking in person as on screen or pictures.
Things I noticed:
-There was only 1 encore but it lasted for a REALLY long time and they ended up doing 3 or 4 songs + the fireworks. I think I remember they did Koi Matsuri, Happy Birthday, 4+Fan, and Quntastic.
-There were 2 sets of fireworks during the encore! 1 time during Koi Matsuri encore and then a little while afterwards they did some special fireworks that spelled out NEWS that they shot off on the side of the stadium.
MC was hilarious —>
-The MC started with a letter from “J” again and it asked them to act out something for the aucience. The audience was the “Onee-sama” and the boys have been waiting for 30 minutes for their “Onee-sama”, what would they say? They each did like 2 versions of it, a silly one and a “real” one. They had the audience vote on the best one by clapping and Shige won with him saying “your late, lets go” in a S way.
-Tegoshi was so hyper that Shige asked he had drank before the show.
-There was a Tegomssu moment when Tegoshi was asked what he would do if he saw his girlfriend with another guy. KoyaMassu acted it out with Massu being the girl and Tegoshi stealing him away again. It was at an inline skating rink and Koyama just skated away at the end. LOL!
-Shige Tego Massu were on the stage after Koyama left to get ready for his solo and they had the venue do a penlight wave before returning to the concert!
-At the end, all of them copied Tegoshi and did the “koneko chan” thing, but then massu said “baka neko chan” instead! Koyama and Massu also copied Shige’s ending of his ending speech when he said “Now, I will do the highlight of the MC” and said his line from earlier during the MC
-During the last Koi Matsuri during the Encore, Tegoshi was right in from of me and almost for caught up in the fireworks. His face was priceless! Apparently Koyama did the same thing on the other end of the stage!
-There were 3 VTR’s: One before Koyama’s Solo featuring him, the one for Compass beginning that each venue changed where they went, and then before the dance segment. The one before LIAR and the other dancing songs was a really sexy.
-They had a live marching band again this year and think I remember they performed Kobou Yell, Taiyou no Namida, and NEWS Nippon with them.
-There was a Jazzy version of Summer Time and 2人/130000000の奇跡. I particularly enjoyed this because it gave the feel of the unplugged live songs they had done back during the LIVE LIVE LIVE era.
-Massu solo = INCREDIBLE. The choreography was amazing and I liked how after the solo the other members had their own dance segment before going into Shock Me.
-During Shige’s Solo, Shige had himself on the screen too during his solo, split screen with him on the stage and then a video version on the other half of the screen for about half of the song. Screen Shige and Stage Shige sang different parts of the song.
-Tegoshi played guitar on main stage for his solo, but the rest did their solos on the center stage.
-Shige did revenge for last year’s fail at holding the the chankapana note in last years’ s Kobe MC and kept holding a long note for a while during the encore with saying Arigatou.
August 23rd and 24th; Osaka Jou Hall, Osaka.
This time, Osaka Jou Hall was a pretty small venue compared to Kobe. I didn’t have the best seats for all the shows, but I could still see really well!
– Most of the show was performed on the center stage again, but they moved around to the side stages quite a lot.
– They cut out all the band songs and they put in another VTR instead. Each venue had their own VTR and Osaka’s was about Osaka food and them bullying Koyama to reenact place around Osaka such as the tower, USJ, and the Gilco Man with the members having a poker face after he did it. That was super funny! Then Koyama gets frustrated and tells them to listen to him and then says that Pokopon was to cute and then they talk about changing it to a more “Wild” version because the movements were too cute. Then they vow to not do it cute anymore and proceeded to do an intro to a “Wild” version of Pokopon, but then they popped out doing the regular version of the song! it was pretty funny because of the contrast from what they just said.
During some of the ending speeches:
-NEWS said that Osaka was the most fired up venue out of all of them so far.
-Massu mentioned how at the beginning he didn’t want to do Shock Me right after his solo because it was really hard on him to do all that dancing all together, but now he is glad they decided to do it because everyone was really fired up during both of the songs here in Osaka. He also cutely mentioned how in a part of the concert he was near the sitting kids section and he saw 2 kids asleep and he wondered what part of the concert they fell asleep in because NEWS seriously thinks about the audience reaction to the whole setlist, like “oh this part they will be silent and just listen. This part they will be really excited and fired up” and such.
-Koyama talked about how he wanted each of the fans to come to a NEWS concert and forget all their worries about school, work, etc. and then be rejuvenated for tomorrow to work hard. He said doing live shows is hard, but they actually feel really refreshed after meeting the fans as well as they do their work for us fans.
– During 1 of the MC’s they talked about how Tegoshi was almost late for the first show on the 24th and arrived just 30 min or less before the concert started and they were about to just go on and do the first song without him and they proceeded to set up and do a version of World Quest (the first song) with him apologizing kneeling on the floor while the rest did the song. They also told the story about how Tegoshi was woken up by his manager by him banging on the apartment door and trying to basically break in because they worried and Shige was on the phone with the manager at the time. They even called Tegoshi’s mother, apparently. Tegoshi didn’t pick up the phone because his phone was on sleep mode (I think its the do not disturb mode) and it didn’t ring.
– They also talked about in one of the MC’s about how Shige doesn’t greet happily/ energetically anymore in the morning when they first meet and that its almost like no one is in the dressing room when Shige and Massu are there first in the mornings. They then proceeded to reenact their real morning greetings and Koyama and Tegoshi end up doing the the “po po po” thing. Shige then exclaimed “That’s REALLY what they do! No lie!” kinda thing.
-Massu ran off to the restroom during the beginning one of the MC’s and then the rest of the members talked about how he did it during the Tegomassu cons a lot apparently. When he came back on the stage, he kinda lurked in the shadows awkwardly until the spotlight came back on him and it was quite funny.
-Massu had a routine right before his solo song. Towards the end of Greedier all of them would go to the center stage and Massu would be the last and be handed a towel to wipe his face, then he would chug some water, and then switch his mike to a headset where he would do the last part of greedier with that mike on. Massu drinks a LOT during the concert. I even noticed it a while back at the Tegomassu concert I went to. Massu has always been bad on stamina and he had mentioned it before.
– There was a lot of dancing in this tour. More so than the other tours.
– On the 23rd show, Shige accidentally got on the wrong cart at one point and realized his mistake and quickly went back to his own!
– On the 23rd Concert, during the 2nd encore Koyama announced that there was heavy rain outside and to be careful going home. After that the staff told us all to wait for about 30 min to leave until the storm let up and we were able to get NEWS to come back out again for a special 3rd encore because we were all stuck there and we all did Koi Matsuri again.
– At one point Tegoshi was bullying Shige and then Shige proceeded to strike back by biting Tegoshi and tackling him to the ground at the same time during the Happy Birthday encore.
– At the end of the concert Shige held the long Arigatou note again and the other members proceeded to harmonize along with him.
– During Be Funky one of the Jr’s liked to bully Koyama and poke him and push him to the ground and such. Massu at the end pretended to be one of the Jr’s and Shige introduced him as one of them eventually! NEWS seems to be close to the Jr’s that they worked with on this tour.
– On the 23rd MC they were all doing gags and Massu started it out by doing many of them and Shige just stood there saying “…. scary….” the whole time he was doing it. Finally we got Tegoshi to do one and he did one about the types of Shinkansens and at the end he just sits down. he did it again at the end of the show and all of them went and sat on top of him and it ended up in a dog pile mess with Shige somehow being on the bottom and shouting ” OUCH OUCH”.
I hope you all enjoyed this post! I am sorry its kinda all over the place, but I wanted to get all of my thoughts out there and couldn’t think of a good way of organizing them other than this. Thanks for reading! If I remember anything else, I will add more later!
nihonchique 