ONE OK ROCK -Ambitions- JAPAN TOUR 2017 Concert Report

ONE OK ROCK AMBITIONS JAPAN TOUR at MAKUHARI MESSE APRIL 10 2017

@cazrowaoki

A post shared by Taka (@10969taka) on Apr 9, 2017 at 7:08am PDT

Arriving at Kaihin Makuhari station, you would think a new gang has taken over, or perhaps a Hufflepuff convention of only the coolest Hufflepuffs (which of course means all of them. Hufflepuff rules!) was taking place. Either way, you'd be mistaken. It was the ONE OK ROCK fandom invasion. Since the release of their album Ambitions, it seems the band (Taka on vocal, Toru on guitar, Tomoya on drums and Ryota on bass) have adopted the colour yellow as their signature colour. But, being a rock band, one can't escape the colour black. Thus, Hufflepuffs.

The fans walked the 5 minute walk from the station to the famous Makuhari Messe in the rain. The concert won't start until 5pm, but the tour goods go on sale at 12pm and sell out fast. They stood in line patiently in the cold rain and wind until they reached the indoor area where the goods were sold. It still took another half hour or so to actually get the goods, but at least they were dry.

After an average 2 hour wait, the goods were acquired.

The Makuhari Messe International Exhibition Halls 9-11 resemble a massive hangar. Inside the venue was very dark and foggy and unless you stood in the first block, there was no way to see the stage yet, people seemed excited and ready to rock even in the very back.

Amazingly, the concert started on time. Fitting 25,000 people in an all standing venue in time for the show to start is no small feat.

The first notes of Ambitions -introduction- started playing as the lights went off and the crowd rushed forward in excitement.

The band appeared and immediately started playing Bombs Away. A perfect start to the concert. The crowd was going wild jumping and dancing and singing along.

One OK Rock fans seem to enjoy clapping to songs. No song is as fitting for such a thing as DEEPER DEEPER which the band happily played.

To the delight of the fangirls, a little bit of fan service was had during 20/20 when Taka decided to sing the entirety of the first verse right in Toru’s face.

After a loud and in charge first half, the band settled for a short m.c segment. Taka mentioned that all other concerts in the tour had special guests but for the Makuhari concert they wanted it to be a one man show. That is, until he discovered a 13 year old girl on YouTube. Her name is Ruan Ohyama and she performed on the day before as well. The audience welcomed her warmly and she performed an acoustic version on Wherever You Are as the members all sat in front of her, looking like proud older brothers. After her beautiful rendition of the OOR song, she said she will sing an original song, at which point Taka ran backstage to grab his phone to film her. It was an incredibly sweet moment. She sang her song titled The Beautiful Girl is About You and received great applause. Taka asked her if she had an Instagram account and for some reason seemed personally offended when she said she did. He was very upset he didn't know it. He then let her add herself on his phone which resulted in awes from the audience. Ladies and gentlemen, she had touched Taka’s phone!

Ruan left the stage and the band mentioned that since there's no big guest today, they will extend the acoustic session from the usual one song to three.

The acoustic session brought the crazy energy down and the crowd was mostly silent and immobile during it. They played a regular acoustic version of Always Coming Back and then Tomoya moved from his drum box to the piano, Ryota changed to an electric cello and they performed their version of Wherever You Are. Finally, Tomoya and Ryota left the stage and Taka & Toru played one more song. Once it was over, they played Listen, the duet version with a video of Avril Lavigne in black and white. The projection of Taka was also in black and white to match Lavigne’s video.

After Listen, Taka left the stage and the remaining 3 members played an instrumental song.

Taka came back and talked about this year being their 10th anniversary since their major debut. He talked about their successes and failures and about how much they want to be true to themselves. They then went on to perform Bon Voyage. The song choices in this section were a bit confusing as the crowd was waiting to go crazy but the songs kept going back and forth between hard and soft.

Finally, for the last part of the concert, they played The Beginning and Mighty Long Fall back to back which got the crowd to insane levels of excitement. The running mosh pits grew bigger and bigger and even fans who avoided those through most of the concert joined at this point.

They closed the concert with We Are and the crowd sang loudly together.

After a few minutes of cheers, the band came back for 2 more songs, ending the evening with Kanzen Kankaku Dreamer, an old favourite.

The spacing between Ambitions songs and older songs was good. If you only heard their latest album, you didn`t feel too lost, but if you were an old fan, hearing songs like Clock Strikes and Deeper Deeper gave a nice break.

OOR seem determined to keep working hard and reaching even greater global popularity. They certainly deserve it!

Set List:

Ambitions – Introduction –
Bombs away
ONION!
Deeper Deeper
Taking Off
20/20
Cry out
Clock Strikes
Bedroom Warfare
69
Always coming back
Wherever you are
Listen
Bon Voyage
Start Again
I was King
Take what you want
The Beginning
Mighty Long Fall
We are

EN01 One Way Ticket
EN02 完全感覚dreamer