Yoko Ishida Live in Concert

Yoko Ishida Live in Concert

Hawkeye

Yoko Ishida: Live in Concert, as you probably guessed, is a DVD of a live concert. Yoko Ishida is an J-pop star well known for her contributions to the arcade dancing game Para Para. This concert takes place on the Hollywood City Walk stage during Ishida’s first major overseas tour.

The music was the real saving grace of this concert. Yoko Ishida definitely knows how to use her voice and the background instrumentals were not over powering the singer, as can often happen at a live concert. The concert also featured a play list that will make fans of Ishida’s very happy, containing many of her more popular hits like A Cruel Angel’s Thesis and Fly Me to the Moon.

The camera work was shaky and felt unprofessional, in fact, watching it for the full concert gave me a raging headache. The stage was not set up for a live concert, at least not for one that was being recorded. All of the close-up shots were from the waist up of the dancers, and the camera was tilted up like they were peering up from the crowd. The long shots weren’t much better, almost all of them being from a side angle, and the ones from the front were half blocked by the silhouettes of the crowd.

I expected more from the dancing, especially considering that all of the music was from Para Para, a popular video game that you play by dancing and triggering sensors with movement. The dancing was all a bit amateurish, the routines were actually taken right from the game, but the problem is, when the dancers on stage, you’re not playing a game and it’s boring to watch, though they might have been limited on what they could do by the very tiny stage they were performing on. However, even a small stage couldn’t justify why the dancers were out of sync at times. At least they did teach the audience some Para Para dance moves at one point and even incorporated them into a contest so the fans could win some prizes. This was one of one of my favorite parts, because watching about a hundred people try to do Para Para dance moves and not clobber the people around them in their excitement was hilarious.

There were also some good extras on the DVD, including a behind the scenes interview as well a Q and A interview with Yoko Ishida. The good extras weren’t enough to make up for the overall disappointment in this DVD. I wanted a crisp performance and everyone except Ishida didn’t deliver. Also, the shaky cameras and bad angling seemed like they pulled a kid of the street and paid him 5 dollars to record it. Just because we’re anime fans, doesn’t mean we don’t deserve quality entertainment. If I wanted to watch something that felt bootlegged, I would have looked on the Internet.

Entertainment: 5
It would have been much better had the shaking cameras not made me want to throw up, and if the team of dancers hadn’t been so lame.

Technical: 9
There were some really excellent extras for the fans such as interviews, highlights and more.

Overall: 6

DVD Features: Complete Live concert preformed by Yoko Ishida

DVD Extras: Behidn The Scenes Interviews, Complete Tour Highlight Reel, Q & A Session with Yoko, Promotional Trailers