The day before I went to Comike 52. And that day an important event was scheduled to be held.
However I was tired and sleepy. Nevertheless I could not help missing the event.
I remembered the 69th Chapter "This is the true date!" of 12 th volume of Ah! My Goddess (in 1994, page 56). When Goddess Peorth tried to date with the hero Keiichi Morisato, Urd, Skuld and Belldandy attended him. Belldandy had invitation tickets for a certain animation cinema and those five saw the movie. The title was "Kanpanman." Of course it is a parody of Anpanman by Takashi Yanase. (Anpanman is a popular animation in Japan. Ms Keiko Toda, a famous actress and voice actress played the role of the hero Anpanman. In the movie, Kanpanman, who is a pilotbread-shaped man, went to An-doughnuts-ko's rescue against Satan Sauce. Peorth murmured, "Ah...It is anything but romantic..." On the other hand, others saw it seriously and said "It was more interesting than we had expected, isn't it?"
"Slayers Great" was a animation cinema which was shown in August 1997 at movie theaters for western movies distributed by Toei. It was a two-picture program. Another program was "Tenchi Muyou! Midsummer's Eve." Of course these two was intended for children.
It was thought the animation was popular unexpectedly. 30-year-old popular voice character Megumi Hayashibara, who plays the role of Lina Inverse, the heroine of Slayers series and 35-year-old popular voice character Maria Kawamura, who plays the role of Serpent Naga, Lina's rival who is famous for the loud laugh word "Oh! Hohohohoho..." gave an address in the stage at two theaters of Osaka, one theater of Kobe, and two theaters of Nagoya in 08/17/97 Sunday.
After all I went to one of five. Most of visitors were senior high school students. The attendance included many university student and workers. 500 persons gathered there in order to have a look at Megumi Hayashibara who appeared on "Tetsuko No Heya (Tetsuko's Room)." I went there because I would not be able to see her after she became a member of House of Councilors, National Diet. The licensed nurse will be a member of Health and Welfare Family.
I reached Nagoya Toei, a movie theater, at 0:30 p.m. The order tickets were distributed from morning. My order ticket number was round 350. People had already formed a queue in front of the theater.
I regarded Tenchi Muyou! as an opening performance of Slayers. The number of Tenchi Muyou-fans in USA is more than that of Slayers. However, Slayers is much more popular than Tenchi Muyou in Japan. Slayers is a major program. Hajime Kanzaka, a rich novelist in Japan, started novel-style Slayers in 1990. Soon it was popular. Thereafter his works were made into comics and animations.
But I was deeply moved to tears by Tenchi Muyou. Doll Mayuka (Character voice was Junko Iwao) who was sent from the dark world came to have a human mind. Therefore she was killed after all. Then Washu made Mayuka make a fresh start of life as a baby.
Formerly I did not like Tenchi Muyou much because it included several showy characters with primary colors as Sasami, Pretty Sammy was regarded as a remake of Urusei Yatsura. But the movie was good. I thought the average mark of Japanese animation was high.
Then Slayers did not matter.
The story of the Slayers movie was as follows. Lina and Naga went a town of which special products were golems and there were a golem master, Gallia and his son Huey in the town. Lina standing by Gallia got in his giant golem, Pikopiko Lina Chan and Naga standing by Huey also got in Huey's giant golem, Grand Goddess. Lina fought against Naga. Grand Goddess was like Naga but Pikopiko Lina Chan which was the object of the movie had a giant head which was larger than its body and legs. But the model of the golem was Lina herself. And Lina used magic and destroyed the town prearrangedly. Pikopiko Lina Chan became one of special products of the town.
The address event started at 3:40 p.m. (Japanese Standard Time).
By the way those women are ripe. Formerly many young girl singers made their stage debuts in 1985. Those two are older than most of the former female singers. Moreover the popularity of Megumi and Maria is greater than that of the former female singers.
In Nagoya Naga is popular both at the movie and at the stage. Maria Kawamura said "Director of Slayers made the high-tension loud laugh scene by Naga appear on the screen on a five-minute schedule." (Director of Cinema-type Slayers was Hiroshi Watanabe. He was one of Directors of TV-animation type You're Under Arrest.)
Megumi Hayashibara said, "According to Kanzaka, the movie is a parody of "Kyojin No Hoshi (Giants' Star)." She also said, "I wish Pikopiko Lina Chan goes on sale." Ms Kawamura said, "Pikopiko Lina Chan should move by clockwork." Ms Hayashibara referred to 1/1 figures of Rei Ayanami and said, "How about 1/1 figures of Pikopiko Lina Chan?"
The event ended at 4:00 p.m. in 08/17/97.
Recently Ms Hayashibara frequently appears on TV show programs and speaks on the society and politics. Moreover her Japanese is close to a dialect of Kasumigaseki bureaucrats' dialect, say, her Japanese is not standard Japanese. But there she was quiet.
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