| NEWS Special Program
「Come together!!!! Chankapana」
Event report
To commemorate the release of their latest single, Chankapana, NEWS had a special program "Come together!!!! Chankapana" in Tokyo and Osaka. Here, we bring you a report of what went on in the first round, held in the Tokyo venue.
★vol.1★
Everyone in the venue's waiting for the event to start.
As the "NEWS" call by everyone gets louder and louder, NEWS come out onto the stage with the Chankapana melody as the background music! The venue bursts into excitement as this long awaited moment finally comes.
The members greet everyone already, "Good morning."
The event was held in the morning, so Koyama asks "Who's sleepy~ (lol)?" and the audience replies "Me~!" A reply energetic enough to blow away any sleepiness.
Tegoshi then responds on stage too, "Me too~!" energetically insisting on his sleepiness (lol).
Kato was of course the one to immediately point out, "YOU at least need to be awake (lol)."
Kato says he's usually nocturnal, but for this day, he says "I'm feeling awesome!" and jumps around to prove it, showing how excited he was already despite it being the morning (lol). It looked like he thought there was nothing more fun than spending time with the fans.
The members again greet everyone anew.
"Hello. Koyama Keiichiro here!" "Hello! Tegoshi Yuya here!" They continue on in the same style, but for some reason Masuda says "Same, Tegoshi Yuya here too!" and Kato joins in the fun, "Same here! Tegoshi Yuya here! (lol). At the end, they said together "And all together, we're Tegoshi Yuya~!" Even Koyama joined in (lol).
NEWS makes the entire venue laugh with their super in-time comedy skit-like greetings.
"But you know, everyone woke up early too right? Who thinks they've traveled the farthest?" asks Koyama, and someone in the audience replies that they came from Aomori. "You been eating those apples~?" adds Tegoshi for the local flavor [t/n, aomori is well known for its apples]. "Anyone from Hokkaido?" (Kato), "What about Kyushu? (Koyama) They find out that there're even people from Taiwan and Korea...
The members show smiles to the many chankapana who'd gathered from numerous regions and countries. "It's a happy thing!" (Kato), "We're grateful!!" (Masuda).
This event was planned down to the details, so that the fans who'd waited for NEWS would be able to enjoy a premium kind of time.
Thus the event was held in a venue where everything felt proximal.
This was of course the first time the members did things like this, "I'm not sure how this really works (lol)" (Koyama) they say; when Kato says "It's a bonus for buying the Special Box edition of Chanpakana. So everyone here bought the box for us," all of NEWS says together "Thank you very much!" conveying their feelings to the fans.
The special box edition has the members' solos ... and so Masuda asks, "Which of the four was best?" The audience shouts out their various answers; Kato's solo song "Vampire wa Kaku Katariki" [t/n, This is what the vampire said] gets abbreviated to "Vampire."
"Hey, don't call me a vampire (lol)" Kato says, but when he says his tagline from the song, a scream-like cheer arises from the crowd!
Masuda praises him too, "The way you just said 'vampire' right now was kind of cool!"
Kato, feeling good about this, whispers the phrase in a low voice again, but Masuda says "The second time you did it, you were trying too hard (lol)," a tsundere-like!? pointer (lol).
As if to get back at him, Kato sings and dances a phrase from PeekaBoo ... saying "I love this part from Massu's solo!"
Masuda then starts copying Kato too and does Vampire wa Kaku Katariki (lol). He goes and and sings Tegoshi's solo, Addict, and they start talking about the song's worldview, "So basically that song ..." (Koyama)
Tegoshi describes the song, which he composed and wrote, in one phrase, "It's a song about a guy with regrets."
Koyama immediately pleads "Show us, show us your 'man with regrets," and Tegoshi raises one arm, jokingly saying "I have regrets~~," giving a splendid (?) response to the request.
Everyone cracked up at the random MC talk between the members; Masuda then sings a phrase from Koyama's solo song, Starry.
They're heart-wrenching lyrics that Koyama wrote, so the audience goes "Foooo!" to tease him, and Koyama embarrassedly says, "You know, I've turned 28 already."
At which point Masuda request "Hey, then do the 28 year old's pose for us (lol)," and he responds by raising his right arm straight in the air and energetically saying "28 years old!!" (lol)
"Alright, different version! Ready go!" (Tegoshi), "Do your usual thing!" (Masuda), "I'm Keiichiro~!" he says like an airhead, holding up a peace sign to his forehead, making the venue erupt in laughter!
The members start making each other do silly things, and Kato raises a voice of concern, "Is it okay for us to do our event like this? (lol)" and Koyama says "We don't know what the 'proper' in 'let's do this proper' means (lol)."
Masuda quickly starts singing "Chantoshina" [do it proper] on Chankapana's melody, again making everyone crack up!
It started feeling like any random thing was going to be let through, and Tegoshi says "This is the kind of way we want to go!" "It'll work fine!" smiles Masuda in response. The four of NEWS bring laughter to the venue through their light-hearted exchanges.
Next they talk about the ongoing 『NEWS LIVE TOUR 2012 ～Utsukushii Koi ni Suru yo～』
Kato asks, "Did you come to the concert too?" and the audience cheers loudly, "Of course!"
In the Tokyo Chichibunomiya Rugby Field venue, which was the first day on their tour, the members ended up crying one after another from being so moved, as we reported the other day.
Koyama says "The next day when I checked the newspaper, Shige was like this (lol)" and holds the base of his eyes, imitating Kato trying to hold back his tears.
Which then triggered another run of imitations! Masuda imitate Koyama's tearful greeting at the end of the show, Kato imitates Masuda being unable to sing because of the tears "You too~!"
Masuda goes along with Kato and says, "No, not like that, like this" and imitates himself, he continues on with the song and then imitates Kato crying in the middle of the song (lol).
He exaggerates the husky voice and sings in a super low voice, "Hey, you sound like you're acting out an important scene in some story (lol)" points out Shige, causing the audience to again crack up.
★vol.2★
After the "imitation battle" filled of love between the members, they go onto a quiz corner!
Four chairs get set at the back of the stage, where they start off, and the buzzer gets set in the middle of the stage. "So if you press this buzzer, you get to answer? Kei-chan has an advantage~!" says Tegoshi, who hates to lose. Everyone couldn't help but laugh when he added the reason after this, "Since Kei-chan's got long arms~."
The rules were that if you got to the buzzer first and answered correctly, you could choose one party goods to wear... And so the members go and take a look a the various party goods lined up on a table.
"Just a moment (lol) This is..." Kato picks up a sleeveless denim vest that reminds you of a particular wild comedian. Tegoshi sees this and gets all hyper,, "Shige-chan Shige-chan!!" [like sugi-chan, the comedian]
The audience starts to chant for it too and we thought he'd wear it. but he said "Nope, not wearing it (lol)" and so the game started!
The first question was, of all the NEWS songs released, what song title starts of an N?
Koyama and Masuda think of an answer and get up at the asme time, they jostle each other on purpose and run towards the buzzer button.
In the end they touched the button together a the same time, looked at each others' faces, and said "NANDEx2 DAME" together.
Having answered correctly, Masuda chose a banner saying JAPAN across it and Koyama chose a pair of huge soft white cat hands.
The second question was, "At the end of the Chanpakana PV, how many of the members don't have their legs crossed while on the sofa?"
For this one, Tegoshi ran straight for the buzzer and answered "That was me!" He's right of course and Tegoshi happily chose a hairband with cat ears.
Tegoshi smiles cutely at the camera, while Koyama mumbles"Tegoshi already knows wearing that will make him cuter (lol)" (lol).
The next one was, "When NEWS went on Ichiban Song SHOW, what did Masuda say comes out of him when he goes to the bathroom?" A question to do with Masuda's "idol character" (lol). Kato quickly arrived in front of the buzzer and calmly answered "Marshmallows."
Kato was right, so he started picking his item, when somebody from the audience suggested the denim vest (lol).
Kato takes hold of the vest once with the encouragement, but then suggests "No, let's save this for later! For whoever gets the best score!" and chooses a pair of glasses.
He puts them on and looks all sharp. "You look good, you look good in them!" (Tegoshi), "You should just wear glasses like those all the time" (Masuda).
After questions to do with NEWS, they had a couple of NEWS song intro quizzes, which resulted in fierce battles between the members and numerous points won, followed by some actually difficult!? puzzles that they had to solve. At this point, Kato had won the most points.
The final question was, "Who in NEWS is the strongest when it comes to arm wrestliing?"
It turns out that they're going to do a tournament right on the spot, and the winner of this game will be winning some extra bonus points!
Everyone has a chance here ... Or so we thought, "It's going to be Massu anyway (lol)" (Kato), "It's Massu!" (Koyama), "Of course it's Massu! That's not fair, he's number 1 in Johnny's you know!?" (Tegoshi), to this, Masuda's response was "You guys can use both hands then."
In the end, leaving Koyama, whom they decided was probably the second strongest, Kato and Tegoshi started a match!
It was a close match, but Kato ended up winning, and then he and Koyama started a match next.
It seemed at first that this was going to be a close match too, but Koyama started showing his real strength in the middle! Kato stood, curling his toes with the effort, and his glasses even flew off, but in the end, he lost easily.
And so the final round of armwrestling was Koyama vs Masuda!
"I broke my right arm a long time ago and ever since then, it's not been very strong" (Masuda), and so they decide that they'll both use their right hands. Koyama showed some amazing stamina, but when Tegoshi starts a countdown, "Massu at full power in 3, 2, 1!" Masuda slams down and wins the game!
In the end, having won the game, Masuda was given the denim vest to wear (lol). "Masu-chan!" (Koyama), Masuda responded wildly and enlivened the venue.
★vol.3★
After having fun with the games, everyone was in for a surprise when they started the present corner.
The Chankapana poster, original stickers, and a premium picture of the members, "We took this in the dressing room for Music Station" (Tegoshi), were given away. Happy screams filled up the venue at this superbly premium line up.
Since this was a special event, they closed the day with a special Q&A corner. "Since it's rare that we get to directly answer questions like this" (Koyama), NEWS showed smiles here.
And so they start getting asked questions, and one of them was, "What color's your underwear?" (lol)
They immediately respond "You little pervert~ (lol)" (Kato), "Are we really allowed to answer this (lol)?" (Masuda), but the audience replies "We want to know~," and so they decide to answer.
Koyama takes a look at his, and answers "Mine is~, pink and...wait no, 'take them off' isn't right (lol)," when an slightly extreme (!?) request gets made (lol).
The others each answered too, "Black with a red line!" (Tegoshi), "Mine's polka-dotted and the dots are this cute character" (Masuda), Kato tells us that his are a souvenir from a friend, "Blue~." (lol)
Further, they get the question "I want to try the 'gravelly voice' that Massu does, so please teach me how to do it." Kato immediately points out "So you want to copy Massu copying me (lol)?" (lol).
Masuda's answer was, "Just keep listening to Vampire wa Kaku Katariki and play it by ear!" Kato says "Massu, try doing it," and so he shows us an example.
Masuda does his imitation and does a perfect performance of the intro, lyrics, and rhythm.
Koyama and Tegoshi are impressed by this "Ooh~!" Kato himself says "That was perfect! You love me so much (lol)!!" Masuda smiles at the praise!
Masuda explains the trick anew, "They key is to do it in a low voice, tighten your throat a bit..." and the audience who asked the question says "Thank you very much," imitating Kato's voice already.
The members and the venue cracked up at this!! "You should be proud of your skill!" says Masuda, giving her his approval. Kato seemed to have mixed feelings about this however, "What? Be proud and do it!? What kind of Q&A session is this (lol)?"
So from the very start of the day, the event's been a success, but unfortunately it was time to end.
The members seemed reluctant for it to finish as well when they heard the cheering from the audience, "I don't want to go home yet!!" (Tegoshi).
"Then let's show everyone that feeling!" (Kato), "You're right, shall we sing something" (Koyama), and so they sing Full Swing in powerful voices.
This song, which is the coupling song in their latest single Chanpakana, is a song filled with the determination of the new NEWS.
After singing the song, they comment "Full Swing, it's a nice song, really," (Masuda), "It's a song that nudges us forward. This is another song that we want to treasure. Please keep supporting us from now on too" (Koyama).
When the end of the event was announced, the audience cried out "No~!"
This was when Koyama said, "I don't want for it to end either. I want to ... look at each of you in the eyes ... can I say something crazy right now?" "Why not? Might as well!!" (Tegoshi), encouraged by the members, he suggests, "... Let's shake hands!"
Happy screams echoed throughout the venue at this unexpected development!!
The managing team tried to stop them because of the need to adjust their schedules, but the members themselves talked to them and convinced them to start preparing.
Since it wasn't planned, they busily make space and set up long tables, checking what paths the fans would take, super busy!
As preparations were made at a fast pace, Koyama requests "But we want to be closer to them, don't we?" and so the long tables are taken away, the venue is again filled with happy screams, "Really!?"
Seeing this, Kato says "But we're the ones who're grateful,: "You helped us get our first single as the new NEWS get first place" (Masuda), "Since you came from so far away too," (Koyama), "Thanks so much" (Tegoshi), the members say they want to directly convey their feelings. Feeling their passion, the venue was filled with smile and happy tears.
And so in this way, they spent time interacting with the audience, exchanging smiles, and the venue was filled with warm feelings. The event filled with numerous surprises and the feeling of thanks from the members thus came to a close.
The NEWS LIVE TOUR 2012 ～Utsukushii Koi ni Suru yo～ is on right now, and NEWS will be going around the country till 9/30 (Sun).
Check out the Jweb temporary series, NEWS no LIVE NEWS, where the members talk about what goes on during the tour!
Please look forward to NEWS' upcoming activities!
credits to ninkinikki@lj
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