Yesterday I went with a good friend of mine to Takarazuka Grand Theater to see the Phoenix Wright musical. The Takarazuka Revue is an all-female theatrical group that does original plays as well as plays based on popular works, like... Phoenix Wright!

This was my first time to see a Takarazuka musical and I was really impressed. The singing abilities of each performer was very good, and I was happy because a lot of the music during the conversational phases used the real music from the Phoenix Wright games. Even when they were "examining the crime scene", they used the music and the sound effects from the games!

Luckily, each performer did their homework on their character, and they really put in a good performance, especially Edgeworth, who got the finger-tapping, swagger and demeanor down to a freaking art. Gumshoe and Larry also did a very good job. I was less impressed with Phoenix because she didn't seem to come across as serious when the situation called for it, but during the humor scenes with Maya, she did a good job. My favorite part was when Maya picked up a bloody knife at the crime scene, and said "Wow, look! A real knife! Stabbity stab stab stab!" and Phoenix was kind of like "...would you mind putting that down please?" It came across really good in the play.

Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures during the play, so I only got to take pictures outside the hall, so here they are.

This is in front of Takarazuka Bow Hall, where the play took place. You can see the times listed, as well as the fact that it was a sold out audience!

Here is an advertisement for Gyakuten Kenji (the Edgeworth game) in front of the theater doors.

Oh, and just for kicks, here's my copy of Street Fighter 4 that I got in the mail today! The disc on the right is the special anime DVD that comes with preordering the game. I can't wait to go home and play!

Just got announced today that with SF4, there's gonna be a sports drink called Street Fighter 20th Anniversary Sports Drink on sale in Japan. Can art looks pretty nice IMO although I wonder about the taste...

Those who aren't in Japan can visit Kotobukiya and order some drinks off of there. Apparently they ship internationally so you shouldn't have a problem although shipping costs might be a bit on the expensive side.

This is really cool... I saw this on the official Street Fighter 4 blog (Japanese only, of course) and they have two scans of the first print ads for SF4 console posted. They said that the ads will be featured in this week's Weekly Famitsu magazine on Friday but they decided to post it early. Pretty cool if you ask me!

The theme of the advertisement is お習字, which means penmanship in Japanese. Written in Japanese are the move names for several characters like Ryu, Dhalsim and E.Honda. The tag line at the bottom of the advertisement says "Improve yourself through practice", which I guess is a good catch line that would emcompass the spirit of all fighting games, right?

There was another image on the blog, which is apparently the uncut version of the above ad. You can see that some of it has been left off due to space so they were nice enough to post the full version! The blog states that this full version is going to be on display at the finals of the SF4 National Tournament, which is on January 18. The tournament is in Tokyo and I really want to go and see it but seeing as that I'm not in the Kantou area, I have no idea if I'll have the time to go. :( Anyway, I took the time to translate the move names so that you guys can understand it!

Top row, left to right, the move names are:

Tatsumaki Senpukyaku - Hurricane Kick

Spinning Bird Kick

Somersault Kick - Flash Kick

Shoryuken - Dragon Punch

Electric Thunder - Blanka's electricity

Super Zutsuki - Flying Headbutt

Hadouken

Yoga Fire

Bottom row, left to right:

Hyaku Retsu Harite - Hundred Hand Slap

Sonic Boom

Wild Fang

Yoga Teleport

Flying Power Bomb

Kikoken

Headbutt! (I honestly have no idea whose move this is though lol)

The really cool thing about the advertisement is how they have some of the words written, but they have corrections all over the place for kanji stroke placement, misproper use of kanji, and such. It's a pretty creative ad, in my opinion. Can't wait to see the real thing on Friday!

I posted this on the SRK forums about a week or so ago, but I suppose it would be good to post it here too. So this month's issue of Arcadia (released in Dec, marked Jan, has DVD included for those who want it) includes a special for SFIV where they held a kumite between Daigo and six of the top players in the country from different games. The people that they chose are:

Nemo: Guilty Gear, KOF player (65K BP with Chun)
JOE: VF player and SBO '08 winner, uses C. Viper (56K) and is ranked in the top 10.
Inoue: Cvs2, etc, etc. (32K BP)
Fuudo: VF player, first VF5 national champ and SBO '08 winner with JOE (43K BP)
Itabashi Zangief: Well known VF player (35K BP)
Mago: CvS, CFJ, etc. Top 3 in SF4 ranking. (73K BP)

Here are the results of the Kumite.

Umehara vs Inoue: 2 - 1
Umehara vs. Itabashi Zangief: 3 - 0
Umehara vs. Fuudo: 3 - 0
Umehara vs. Joe: 2 - 1
Umehara vs. Nemo: 3 - 0
Umehara vs. Mago: 1 - 3

Umehara: 14 wins, 4 losses

The DVD shows some of the matches plus commentary from Umehara and his opponents, but unfortunately putting this up on YouTube would be mean copyright infringement, so if you're interested in watching some high-quality vids of Daigo playing, I'd suggest you guys go out and get the magazine if you can!

Went to meet up with some of my friends for dinner and a drink, and the place we go to is called Tengu. For those who don't know what Tengu is, it's a chain franchise of Japanese-style restaurants called an Izakaya, and they're all over Japan. The one that we always go to is located in Namba, in downtown Osaka, and conveniently located above Sega Avion, one of the most popular arcades in the city.

So while waiting for my friends to show up, I got in about 10 matches of Virtua Fighter 5R, 15 of Street Fighter 4, and then 3 matches of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, which was out this week.

I picked a team of Ryu/Karas, and did pretty well, getting two wins off before getting owned by someone using a Ryu/Chun-Li team. The game looked good although it wasn't on one of the newer cabinets like Street Fighter 4 is. Still, it's really fast and enjoyable to play... I just wish I knew wtf to do sometimes. XD Sometimes it goes a little TOO fast for my old, old brain...