V-ROCK Festival 2011: Best Emcee

All photographs courtesy of V-ROCK FESTIVAL '11.

Best Emcee:  SOPHIA

Of all the Japanese accent variations of the words “thank you,” vocalist Mitsuru Matsuoka’s “shank you” is by far the most adorable. “I love you! Shank you!” Wait, what? Please don’t “shank me!” Anyway, the emcees were one of the highlights of SOPHIA’s set: “Hey, today’s performance is on a time limit–so I have a stopwatch. You see, my emcees tend to get long, so let’s keep an eye on that,” explained Matsuoka. He wasn’t wrong. His chatter went from dirty to cute, to amusing, to heart-felt, touching drama. “How was the air-sex–I mean, live, today?” he joked. Then, as he talked about drummer Miyako’s recovery from cancer, the crowd hushed and blinked away tears… and then life went on.

“I’m sure many of you have heard of us, if only in magazines etc. but I expect this is the first time seeing us for a lot of you. We wanted to keep a solid image, so we always refused events like this but we want to be able to expand and move on, so we decided to play here today for our first appearance in a festival. All of you who have seen us today are now connected.” Checking his stopwatch, Matsuoka announced that the set would be exactly 2 minutes and 16 seconds over time, and thus the music promptly continued.

Runner-Up: SuG

The main goal of a SuG performance is to ensure that the audience has a great time. They did just that with their hilarious emcee that had the entire audience laughing. First, vocalist Takeru mentioned that he was worried when he noticed that their set had been scheduled at the same time as Golden Bomber’s and then he realized his mistake, saying with feigned confidence: “Wait, why should I be worried?” The band then struck up a great routine as they started to play Golden Bomber’s famous “Memeshikute,” while Takeru kept saying “No, no, no, we will not play this song!”

Overall, SuG had great stage presence, all members of the band very entertaining to watch.  The intricate patterns and colors of their outfits also reflect their spontaneity. The audience seemed to thoroughly enjoy their catchy songs and Takeru’s infectious smile caught on, beaming back to him from the happy crowd.