Drunken Mayhem with Otoya #2 on NicoNico Live

It was only a matter of time before Hideki Sakamoto and Takenobu Mitsuyoshi teamed up to wreck havoc across the Internet landscape again. On the heels of the success of the first Otoya event on NicoNico Live as reported previously, the duo were back with even more guests for the second Otoya event, Otoya Dai-ikkai ~Kimi no Tame Nara Namaiki da.~ (Music House Second Round ~I would be sassy for you.~) As was the first live event, the title of the event is a play on the Sega DS title, Kimi no Tame Nara Shineru or Feel the Magic: XY/XX as it was known in the West.

Along with Sakamoto and Mitsuyoshi, Nobuyoshi “Sanodg” Sano, Yasunori Mitsuda, and Michiko Naruke return as commentators. A new addition to the lineup is composer Yoko Shimomura*, famous for her work on titles such as Street Fighter II, Legend of Mana, and Kingdom Hearts. A host of new guests in the industry also come on throughout the live event to talk about anything and everything about game music.

Though the event has come and gone, all is not lost for viewers outside of Japan who might not have been able to get up in the wee hours of the morning to catch the event. Recently, the first round of Otoya has been made available in its entirety on NicoNico Douga (Registration required). Chances are the second round will be available soon after. Until that happens though, you can hit the jump to get the run down on some of the topics and off-topic antics that happened this time around.

Before things really got started, Mitsuyoshi was on hand to introduce a recurrent theme for this round of Otoya. He announced the start of a collaboration between Otoya and… a restaurant through the creation of game-inspired dishes crafted by the head chef of the Italian restaurant, La Cantina Sakuma located in Nishi-Koujiya. The head chef proceeded to bring out the first dish, cooked sausage arranged to form the name of the event, Otoya.

This does not seem like much until the next segment to introduce the first guest of the event, Hitoshi Sakimoto. Sakimoto was on hand to discuss his work on the music for the Sony PSP title, Valkyria Chronicles 2. Before he was brought on to the set the camera panned to the next dish, which is a recreation of a battle scene featuring bread sticks for sand bags and a delectable tank built from roast beef, grilled asparagus for a turret, and treads made from squid ink udon. Action figures of characters from the first game put the final touches on the dish.

Sakimoto talked a bit about the differences between the first game and the second and how it has a different focus given the school setting in the game. He felt that the setting and interaction of the characters at the academy was something that players of school-age and even older players who’ve long left school can enjoy. Certainly RPGs that had a simulation aspect to it, such as the venerable Sakura Taisen series, have long been a part of the gaming landscape in Japan. Adding some humor in the discussion, Sakimoto admits that his squad is entirely female with Licorice Nelson as the favorite. This leads to hilarious comments by NicoNico Douga users calling his squad the harem squad which Mitsuyoshi notes as well.

The next segment brings former S.S.T. band member Hiro Shisho and the girl band Team Dekaris. With Mitsuyoshi emceeing this segment, they were there to talk about work on Tetris Dekaris, which is an arcade version of Tetris featuring giant-sized controls on an equally giant-sized screen. For the next dish, the head chef prepared a set of pizzas which represented the turntables from the Sega arcade title Crackin DJ. This was a nod towards Hiro Shisho who composed most of the music for the game. Following a video of Team Dekaris battling each other in a game of Tetris Dekaris, the girls performed a number of tracks from their album, Koi no Dekaris. The songs themselves were poppy and bubbly as one may expect from a band mostly consisting of high school girls, but if you are not into this kind of music then there is nothing missed here. These thoughts were expressed in some of the comments by NicoNico Douga users that suggested that Sega is going down a dark, dark path. With the success of the Project Diva series, it looks like this is only the beginning.

Next up, Nobuyoshi Sano led the festivities with Hiroto Sasaki, Shinji Hosoe, Takayuki Aihara to talk about their activities as the group, Oriental Magnetic Yellow (OMY). For readers who are unaware, OMY is a technopop band formed by the four composers which is a play on the name of the band Yellow Magic Orchestra. The group hinted that there is stil more to expect from OMY, and Sano joked that it would be nice if the timing was right to have a collaboration with the girls of Team Dekaris. Ayako Sasou was also on hand to magnify the Namco power of this group as each composer is a current or former composer for Namco.

Sakamoto Hideki headed the next segment with Masami Yamamoto (SCE), Ohashi Haruyuki (Acquire), and Yomei Kobayashi (Playstation C.A.M.P.) who all had a collective hand in the making of the Sony PSP series, Yuusha no Kuse Ni Namaikida or What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord? as it is now known in the West. As a nod to the game series, the head chef of La Cantina Sakuma returned with another fine dish. This time, the dish was presented in a large pan that represented the layout of the game with slimes being represented by pieces of gnocchi. While the group discussed the latest game in the series, Yuusha no Kuse ni Namaikida:3D, Kobayashi drew a profile picture of the demon lord, even giving the leader of the underworld a rather goofy expression akin to Peko-chan, the mascot for the Fujiya bakery chain.

This transitioned into the second live performance for the night which featured members of the Court Musicians of the Army of the Demon Lord playing spirited tracks from the game with Sakamoto leading the way on the piano. Though I have not played any of the games in the series, personally, I was impressed by the music which had feelings of pomp yet lightheartedness which seemed to fit well into the stylings of a game as it is a sort of parody of RPGs of the past. I was most impressed by the variety of instruments used in the various tracks in the game, including the use of a melodica, which is a combination of a keyboard and a woodwind-type instrument.

Otoya then took a bit of a detour with an outdoor excursion with the group, but the live event was capped off by a 2-song set by Takenobu Mitsuyoshi. This time around, he sang “Ryu Stage” from the Street Fighter Tribute Album, busting out some impressive English to the sounds of this classic stage theme. The last song had everyone including the guests come on stage to clap along to “Tengoku to Jigoku” (“Heaven and Hell”), an insert song from Akachan wa Dokokara Kuruno? or The Rub Rabbits! as it was known in the West. This song, along with the theme to the previous game, Feel the Magic: XY/XX, are immensely popular on NicoNico Douga which often make use of these two tracks for making a variety of parody videos. It goes without saying then that there was a rather large flood of positive comments as this song was performed.

And thus concluded the second round of Otoya. There were, of course, many additional hijinks that ensued throughout the entirety of the event. For starters, as noted with an (*) earlier in this summary, though Yoko Shimomura was listed as a guest f0r the event, she was represented only by the giant stuffed bear that was in many of the segments. Amused NicoNico Douga users remarked that when she talked it was like the voice of a God was present.

Another amusing note is Nobuyoshi Sano’s rather animated presence. As he himself has said before at the Noisycroak Roundtable, he is rather talkative and this was certainly the case here. At one point in time, while Sakimoto was discussing his thoughts on Valkyria Chronicles 2, he became sidetracked by Sano’s rather drunken state much to the amusement of everyone present. This has also led to an equally hilarious consequence as his boisterousness made it difficult for Yasunori Mitsuda to say much. It is perhaps a touch of bad luck that he was seated next to Sano at the Noisycroak Roundtable and both Otoya events. We can only wonder what hilarity the next live event may bring.

Now that you have gotten through all of that, there is more yet! The fine folks at OnionSoft, formally a doujin software circle and now a technology news site, ran a segment on their OBS Live channel on Ustream.tv that covered a behind the scenes look at the making of the first Otoya event. This video can be seen here. Please note that the video is completely in Japanese.

What do you think of events such as Otoya? Would you be interested in similar live events streamed over the Internet for Western composers?

[via NicoNico Douga and Noisycroak]