Updated: 2024.12.31 – 20:03
Today, December 29, 2024, was the NieR Dinner Show Somethin’ or Other 12024, held in a gigantic ballroom in the Prince Park Tower Tokyo, adjacent to the iconic Tokyo Tower. There were two shows, one at 1:00pm and the other at 6:00pm.
I have a lot to say about this event, but I hope to at least share some photos from the venue right away, so stay tuned for additional updates. The majority of this will be told in a sort of anecdote style for now.
This was an extremely busy day for me, especially since I’m still getting over pneumonia. I made it to one show of Bakuken 4, then had to cancel all my other plans, including both days at the Granblue Fantasy Fes 2024 and the final performance of Bakuken 4. I had applied for a booth at the Winter Comic Market (comiket), so there was no way I could miss out on that. I wasn’t able to release the complete fanfic for Penny Blood that I wanted to write, but I still managed to write a little teaser preview and offered some prints of the main key visual that I commissioned from a good friend. For my first time at Comiket, I think it was a great success even considering all the unfortunate occurrences.
So, right after Comiket, I hopped into a cab and had them drive me directly to the hotel where the NieR Dinner Show was to be held– although I was still about an hour early. I first wanted to check some of my luggage into the Cloak and that was RIGHT when the afternoon show was getting out, so I had to wait in line for quite a while just to get rid of my extra baggage. After that, I went to look around the hotel to find a place to waste an hour. It was an extremely ritzy hotel, but I figured why not splurge a little extra at the lounge while I waited? Before I got there though, I had to find it again after visiting the Cloak… and I got into the elevator with a couple other foreigners, but I guess they were going to the really fancy restaurant on the top floor… so the elevator went up and up to about the 35th floor, with a really creepy view out the window the whole way. I’m not afraid of heights, but I’ve had many nightmares related to elevators for whatever reason.
I have to be honest… if there weren’t other people in the elevator with me going all the way up, I may have literally freaked the F out as it was very eerily similar to several of my nightmares… haha dear god, not what I was anticipating… And my apparent phobia is about GOING UP through the ceiling rather than down… Maybe I was traumatized more than I knew from the Willy Wonka movie… haha
Here are a couple photos from around this area:
Heading back down the elevator, I eventually found the lounge and sat down for a rather expensive snack… I got a glass of champaign and a plate of mixed cheeses. It was really good but not $50 good. lol
By the time I finished this yummy snack, I headed back down to the ballroom area to wait in line.
The staff were directing those with VIP tickets to line up first, as they were the first to enter the ballroom, and then came those with S tickets and then A tickets. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a VIP ticket (it’s all decided via lottery), but a fellow chorus member from our Tsuki Oke group managed to snag one, so she was super excited. I was very happy for her. Also ran into Dominik, who stopped by my booth at Comiket, at the venue as well. It was nice meeting and talking with you for a bit!
After entering the main ticket area, those who had tickets that came with merch were able to pick up the bag of goodies (our ticket lists that it comes with merch, but you also have to use the Square Enix Members smartphone app to process the transaction… I’ll post a couple images of this merch a little bit later in this post.
Once we picked up our merch bag, we continued further down the hallway and came across Yosuke Saito and Takahisa Taura standing there, posing for people as they walked by. Taura was holding an Emil head that was super cute. Thank you, Taura, for looking directly at me for this photo. haha He’s a good sport!
Also, a really fun thing is that many other Tsuki Oke members also attended this event. I ran into multiple chorus members while I was waiting in line. I wasn’t able to interact with many people this past time due to my broken leg, but I absolutely remember faces. It was great to see so many people I knew at the show!
Plus, a couple people actually visited my booth at Comiket and let me know that they’d be going to the NieR event later, so it was super nice to see them at the venue later in the evening!
Then finally, we were able to enter the fancy ballroom. It was absolutely massive!!
Here on the table included some of the extra goodies that came with our S tickets: a rubber Emil coaster, a little menu of our set meal, and a small booklet marked CONFIDENTIAL! I entirely overlooked that and started flipping through it before the dude sitting to my right suggested that I not look at it yet. It was apparently meant to remain secret until a particular time during the event. Woops! haha
Kicking off the event, Keiichi Okabe came out on stage then proceeded to sing the Japanese version of “My Way” by Frank Sinatra as he walked all around the room. Eventually making it back to the stage, he was joined by Yoko Taro with his Emil mask on, followed by Yosuke Saito and Takahisa Taura. They gave a very brief introduction before mingling around the whole ballroom, talking into microphones as they engaged in a fun conversation with each other. Yoko, still wearing the Emil mask, went to a special table in the back of the room where he sat for the majority of the evening and could remove the mask. There was also live video that was projected on two large screens on either side of the stage, so his face absolutely wasn’t a secret.
Next up was meal time, which was served in rounds all the while the four guys kept walking around the room and talking to the whole ballroom about various fun topics. They didn’t really talk about anything vitally important–just fun little anecdotes and stories here and there. I honestly don’t recall much about what they discussed here, actually. haha
At some point during the discussion, it was stated that Taura had actually left Platinum Games recently. I haven’t actually found any other word on this, but it seemed as though other fans had heard of this news even though it was brand new to me. He’s supposedly freelands right now.
We were also served a bowl of clam chowder, which I’m allergic to, so… I guess I naturally forgot to even take a photo of it… rip
The staff rarely came by to check on your beverages, so I felt like you had to wave them down to get a refill of anything. As for drinks, they offered both non and alcoholic drinks. I was in a wine mood, so I stuck to white wine for the entirety of the evening.
After dinner, was the start of the concert portion of the evening, which was absolutely amazing. Various songs across the entire repertoire of the NieR franchise were remixed in a jazz style very reminiscent of the Billboard LIVE back in 2019.
▶︎ Vocalists
▶︎ Band Members
- Takuro Iga – Keyboard (Band Leader)
- Masashi Kimura – Bass (Main Arranger)
- Yu Kuga – Sax
- Nobuhide Handa – Trombone
- Ken Higeshiro – Drums
- Youchi Masago – Trumpet
▶︎ Set List – Evening
- Yonah – Ashes of Dreams
- Voice of No Return
- Hills of Radiant Winds
- City Ruins
- Inori
- A Beautiful Song
- Song of the Ancients
- The Tower
- Emil
- Kaine
- ENC1 – Fleeting Words
- ENC2 – Weight of the World (English)
Regarding this setlist, I was quite shocked that Emi sang “Inori” from Re[in]carnation — it’s one of my favorite themes from the game, so it was an absolute treat to hear her version of it. Of course, I love KOCHO’s vocals as well, but Emi’s version brought a whole new feel to the piece that was really great to hear. My other favorite of the solo pieces was J’Nique Nicole singing “The Tower”. It’s so apparent she loves performing and glamming it up on stage for the crowd– it’s so fun, not only to enjoy her amazing voice, but also to see her own personality come out while in the spotlight.
I got an absolute kick out of locking eyes with various members of the cast throughout the show. First up was with Keiichi Okabe when he was walking around the room, talking and shaking hands with people as he went. We were actually able to speak for a good, long time at a previous engagement, so he came up and shook my hand firmly. It was very nice.
Then, throughout the concert, there were a couple songs in which both Emi and J’Nique came down from the stage and stood on the far left/right apron, which was directly in front of me. It was so funny, to see them notice me– I was deathly afraid I might have distracted them simply by sitting there… xD
At the end of the music concert, the entire cast stood on the stage for a nice photo op. Unfortunately, my table was still quite far from the stage, so my phone wasn’t able to take very good photos.
One really amazing happening occurred tonight… I got talking with the girl sitting on my left about various NieR related events, and I mentioned the NieR:Automata PlayStation Presents at LOFT in early February 2017… and I showed her a photo… and she was like, that’s me! She was literally sitting one person over from me then. This was 7 years ago! Such a small world!
I really do believe that there are all kinds of small miracles like this happening all the time, but we often don’t notice them or we don’t engage with people around us enough to discover these cool connections. It really makes me want to get over my social anxiety and engage more with other fans.
Lastly, I’ll post a couple more photos from the very end of the event as I was leaving…
Since I had to man my booth at Comiket earlier in the day, I brought an extra set of clothes to switch into for the NieR event… but I had already switched back to my normal clothes by the time I took the photos below. Sorry about that! I had asked a couple nice dinner show attendees to take my silly photo in front of one of the the main event posters. Thank you!
And lastly, let’s take a look at some of the merch that came with my S ticket (I wanted to get some of the other merch, but I sort of ran out of money, so… lol)
Here in these images you can see the special goodies that came with some tickets. The main item is the ceramic Emil jar. I’m not really sure exactly what it’s meant to be used for, but I’m using it to stick the Emil balloon that I got from some event, I think it was a promotional item from Animate (I’ll have to take another look at it to remember). We also received a nice handkerchief with an embroidered illustration of a Lunar Tear on it. It’s quite nice quality and I can’t imagine actually using it… We were also given a rubber Emil coaster. Some people actually used it during the dinner, but I kept mine in the little protective baggie. As for the other two booklets, one included the menu, setlist, and messages from the main cast, while the booklet must remain CONFIDENTIAL. There was a huge section during the dinner in which they discussed the contents, but I’ll leave that to your imagination. It was quite interesting nonetheless.
(Also, please note that they specifically asked us not to disclose the content from this booklet– so if you spot anyone talking about it or disclosing the content, just know that they’re blatantly betraying the trust of the crew for personal clout.)
In the very last segment here on this page, I’ll mention one interesting thing that Yoko mentioned… He said that he had been working on several different things but they were all cancelled… He’s still currently working on something, but they’re not ready to announce anything yet. You can take that as you like. I want to say that the cancelled stuff may have been part of the recent SQEX cancellations several months ago during this really horrible lull in the gaming industry. It’s really unfortunate and I’d really like to know exactly what ideas of his were cancelled… but he’s still clearly working on something, so that’s at least a little bit of good news among the dismal situation of the gaming industry these days.
▶︎ Article by Famitsu
Sugihara from Famitsu was also at the dinner show on Sunday night. You can view his article here.
▶︎ Final Thoughts
I’m still pretty skeptical anything will come of this, but the audio/visual setup was well-established enough for a BD/DVD release sometime later. Unlike the Billboard LIVE even, there was no video/audio setup, so at least this time they could have captured the event well enough for a potential commercial release for all fans to enjoy. Here’s to positive thinking!
All-in-all, I think Japan has finally reached the level of content for the recent world tour across the world in terms of VIP meet-ups and such. That sort of thing simply wasn’t done here before, so even having the chance to obtain VIP tickets was a huge step for us here in Japan.
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NOTE: Please note that the photos on this page, if not otherwise stated, were taken by me.
