http://www.capcom-fc.com/gyakusai_orchestra/
According to this blog, the DVD might include the backstage stuff, and post-concert stuff and rehearsals.
Phoenix Wright Orchestra Concert
I didn’t take notes. My memory even now is getting hazier.
So forgive me in June or October if I’ve made mistakes.
The start of the concert was craziness. There was staff/security everywhere.
The line to buy PW/AJ goods was sooooo long.
I had thought about getting into that line but the concert would have already started without me.
Directly outside the hall there was this display of hand-drawn artwork by the PW creative team. Lots of people were snapping cell phone pics of those.
They used voice actors for the Judge, Miles, Phoenix, Apollo and Klavier parts.
These video introduction with Miles, Phoenix and Judge in court arguing over music and songs or talking about the history of the game, were mostly used to slyly segue into the next piece.
The beginning of the press conference started with a warning video on the screen.
This was sooooo funny……
No talking = Blue Badger holds an X sign in front of Wendy Oldbag yapping away.
No cell phones = The X sign in front of Phoenix with cell on a couch – screen shot is from the first case of PW2.
No food = And X in front of Victor Kudo throwing his pigeon food, AJ1’s Ema eating her snacks.
Everyone was laughing when Kudo was on the screen. I was too.
They could have just shown a standard warning video.
But instead they chose to go the extra mile and make it fun. I find that very cool.
Press conference portion
They show off sketches of the new game. The new director, character designer and producer all come out with a few words. They show a pic of Edgeworth at an aquarium leaning next to a dolphin. The announcer joked, “Is he interviewing/interrogating the dolphin?”
They show the new girl character. They were pretty tight-lipped about her role in the game. According to Nintendo Dream Magazine, she’s 17 years old.
Many people are assuming it’s a love interest or sidekick for Miles. However that is not certain yet. If she’s the sidekick, what does that make Gumshoe?
They showed off the trailer.
There were some cameos in here. I noticed Wendy Oldbag, Lotta Hart, Franziscka.
Some people noticed a young Ema and Cody Hackins.
So this game is sometime before AJ1.
If this game is a short time after GS3, Miles would be 27? So that’d make the girl and him 10 years apart in age difference. Not that that means anything though….
Last shot of the trailer was of Miles running and then huffing and puffing from exhaustion.
Also they had a fashion model/PW fan who dressed up like Mia on the stage.
The Magatama bead necklace was somewhat hard to see though.
Concert portion
Furio Tigre’s theme was similar to what is on the jazz CD but just to hear it live just made it so much better.
The PW1-PW3 court medley began with the entire Toccata and Fugue played on a real church organ. You may recall that this was the ringtone in the first case of PW2.
Although this was cool, it just seemed like an odd addition, especially right before the medley and having the entire piece there instead of a snippet. The toupee toss still got some stifled laughter.
I liked Edgeworth’s theme a lot. Trumpets seemed like the prominent instruments here.
They were sort of blasting regally, and it gave this piece a proud march-like quality.
The Villain medley was a nice and welcome surprise.
Gant’s theme was pretty unmemorable. DeKiller’s theme was pretty cool though. The strings were the prominent parts this time, their use made this more sinister and smooth.
As there was a pause in the music, the orchestra members would snap their fingers. And Mask DeMasque was so cool to hear. I think the woodwinds played the main melody here. The strings here were playing really fast. For some reason, I wasn’t really expecting that as a Villain Theme.
The next song is the AJ1 Vocal song. Before this, there’s an intro with an animated Apollo and Klavier. Klavier slams his fist against the courtroom wall and argues with Apollo. "But we worked so hard on this song!"
The singer dressed up like Lamiroir in this white and blue frock.
Iwadare performs on a music-box like instrument.
These video scenes were the clips of Lamiroir and Klavier from the concert scene were shown. After they finished, the announcer came out to interview the singer and Iwadare.
They joked that the singer couldn’t imitate (Lamiroir) flying in the air or have the burning guitar there. Iwadare mentioned the music box instrument was only one of a kind. He kept wondering if one of the cameras could shoot a closer view of it. But the cameras stayed where they were….so the announcer had to describe it for the audience.
To say the least, he was proud of it.
GS3 Ending was awesome.
This was conducted by Iwadare himself.
Instead of cut scenes from the game this time, many characters were talking to us mostly to say hello and tell us what they’ve been up to.
The first big shock/laugh was a minor character, Frank Sawhit, coming out to say hello.
He said something like “ Hello, remember me?”
Will Powers’s message was about him learning or teaching Italian?
And then Wendy Oldbag’s message was going a mile a minute as expected.
The next funny thing was von Karma; His little message was something like “this concert will over in 3 minutes. I’m so old, I wish the toilet was closer??”
Godot’s message was something like “I drank 16 cups of coffee during this concert; the last two are for the encore.”
The last images were of Maya, Elise and Pearl. But I can’t remember what they said. There was this photo album showing a pic of Phoenix and others, the photo from GS3 ending, in some sort of meadow. And this lone cherry blossom petal floats slowly onto the top of the photo. There was something about that imagery that seemed to evoke some sadness. Some people were getting teary eyed, I heard.
Actually this was kinda of sad to me. It was like a reunion but it felt like a goodbye for some reason.
ENCORE TIME
The judge fell asleep. There was a motion of the screen for us to clap so the Judge would wake up. But after a while, like 3 continuous minutes of clapping, my arms were getting tired and the judge still didn’t wake up. The interaction with the audience was fun though.
After that, there was another Phoenix and Miles court battle intro.
I think they were fighting/suggesting about what to do for an encore.
Miles suggests his/a hero’s theme.
Next is the Steel Samurai song, conducted by Shu Takumi.
The arrangement is the almost the same as on the cd, but I think the Japanese shamisen and koto-like instruments were replaced with another instrument in the orchestra. Just to hear it raw and live was good enough.
After that, the conductor and Takumi shared a high five which got some laughter.
After the concert, the announcer came back out with another surprise.
Remember those hand-drawn artworks outside? They decided to GIVE these artworks to the attendees, who were chosen at random based on their seat numbers. Some had the cheaper A seats and some had the S seats. I think there were about 10 people total. I wasn’t one of them.
After the concert there were staff members all directing concert-goers to exit at certain times in order to prevent a friggin’ stampede for the goods line.
By the way, I was in that goods line post-concert.
Most of the items were sold out by then. The cds were still available, the artbook, and so was the fuckingly overpriced $60 card case. And the minute the Karintou sold out, there was an audible groan from everyone. Pretty funny.
In the end, the music was fine, Some old and some new. There were a couple of nice violin solos mixed into some of the arrangements to make them fresh or creative or so.
Of course, it would have been nice if they had done some newer stuff.
But perhaps they felt they needed to have the core PW songs to tie everything together.
This event seemed to be more of a gathering and big thank you present to everyone who has loved all the games.
There was a LOT of voice acting and lots of text so it might be hard for you to understand what’s on the screen if you don’t understand Japanese.
Hopefully Capcom will be generous enough to include English subtitles on the DVD. If not, then there’s gonna a lot of fansubbing, come October-November. Anybody want to volunteer rignt now?
They put in a lot of effort and went beyond what was expected for the norm of the Japanese concerts I’ve been to, as far as the organization, the helpful staff, animated videos, extra goodies and so on. Capcom made a killing on the goods, etc. I left very satisfied and very impressed with their efforts.
