A Sea of Violets and Cheers: A Tales of Festival Experience Report (Part 1)

    Who knew that a chance purchase of a game for curiosity’s sake would lead me to possibly one of the largest events that I ever experience? Who knew on a simple February day that playing Tales of Vesperia for the very first time, that I would be plunged into an area with over ten thousand fans cheering on? Who could possibly figure out that I would become a huge fan so easily and hastily and purchase a seven thousand yen ticket not knowing what to expect much from an event this big?

    Me, after visiting this year’s coveted Tales of Festival. In retrospect, of course.

    Now before I can talk about my experience of the venue and the concert itself, I figure that a brief introduction to the series and the event would be necessary. That way, one may begin to understand the “hugeness” of the event. To begin with, the Tales of series is a highly popular, highly lucrative and role-playing video game series spanning multiple console generations over twenty years. With the series’ introduction via “Tales of Phantasia” in 1998, the series has grown quite a considerable fan-base not only in Japan but around the world. Yet in the eyes of the West, the Tales of series is still seen as a niche product; easily beaten by other powerhouse RPG franchises such as the Final Fantasy and the Dragon Quest series. The disparity is so much so that apart from the mainline entries (which are oddly called Mothership Titles), the Tales of series has also published countless spin-off titles, anime adaptations, manga adaptations, The popularity is so high in fact, that the series has established an annual stage event since 2008.

    The event itself is what I can describe as a Tales of fan’s wet dream: two whole days of nothing but Tales of experiences; food from the series’s universe; special skits (general conversations with the voice actors of the games) that light the entire stage with joy; characters from the thirteen mainline games plastered all across posters, walls, and official artwork; merchandising, oh the merchandising! The possibilities are endless! No wonder fans from all across Japan come to this one arena in Yokohama, where I am based in. Heck, people even book hotel rooms at a premium price (imagine spending around 400 to 600 dollars) just to experience the festival. Granted, it comes with a two-day ticket, accommodation, a dinner party, and extra goodies. Nonetheless, it just goes to show you the love that the series’ fans show; and coming to the festival on June 16, I was about to become one; and what a wonderful feeling it became.

    On the offset, everything seemed normal. Boarding on the Yokohama Blue Line (the local city subway) to the venue, it looked like an ordinary day; passengers looking at their phones, standing and/or sitting as they wait for their destination; it wasn’t until I left the subway that the aura of excitement that I wished for finally arrived. The fan anticipation was palpable; I could figure that they were waiting for the perfect opportunity to show off their character merchandise; to show their appreciation for the series. I saw a many a fan head for the arena with their eclectic bags full of character merchandising, and goods that were exclusive to the event (many fans bought these items before the event itself; many of them are sold out now). The variety of merchandise sold was immense; t-shirts, handbags, jackets, towels, plushies, metal pins, figures, even food! One of the highlights I saw were called ita-bags; pain bags in Japanese. These were bags full of character goods: pins, dolls, you name it; many of them dedicated to a single character. Think: At the very least, I appreciate their dedication; it was a shame that I forgot to bring out my own character pins for the event.

    Once I arrived at the arena’s vicinity, I knew I was in for a wild ride; the lines were long, and everyone were sick of waiting out in the dead heat (on the contrary, the first day had depressing rain; they were let in early). The venue was about to open in an hour, so I went in the line early, not going to the other stalls. Fortunately, we were let in around twenty minutes after I entered the line. The attendees even received a free goodie just for entering! A sweet concession, indeed.

    The actual concert event hasn’t even started, and yet the atmosphere is already immense. Hundreds of adoring fans moving all across the venue, taking photos of all the sights along the way. Celebratory flower bouquets given to the voice actors and actresses as well as major staff members working for Bandai Namco (the company responsible for the Tales of series) were lined up in a few places; each of them costing hundreds of dollars. Cardboard cutouts of the characters featured for the day were also lined up on the second floor opposite to the doors leading to the actual arena. Outside, the official goods store were selling event exclusive items. All of them contained long lines, with eager fans waiting to take a photo. I put myself in one of these lines. It was a beauty indeed to look at these extravagant flower bouquets; nothing like these were in any other event that I participated in.

It was around 3:30 in the afternoon at that point. Eager to see the show early, not to mention not having much to do aside from purchasing food and taking photos of the characters, I headed to my seat. It was at the highest point of the arena, in the western portion of the arena. Coincidentally, it was the cheapest ticket that I could afford. I am a college student, after all. This proved to be quite a blessing, however; me being at the top of the arena made me realize how enormous the arena was, with all the fans entering for their seats. I’ve never really sat in these huge arenas before, so I was holding in a sense of awe and amazement. And once the pen lights turn on and wave, it truly is a blessed experience.

    This is the part that I like to call the pre-hype section. Forty minutes before the main event. A voice can be heard throughout the arena. Minnasan, kikoeru? Everyone, can you hear me? It was one of the voice actors as a popular character from Tales of Graces, Asbel. The fans erupted with cheers. The voice of Another character echoed throughout the arena. It was Cheria, Asbel’s will they won’t they relationship partner. Again, the fans roared in enthusiasm. It turns out it was just them relaying the arena regulations. Still, it’s quite surprising that they do these kinds of measures; unexpected, yet refreshing. The next thirty minutes is the opening theme song section; the large TV screens would play every opening animation and theme song starting from Phantasia (the first game in the franchise) all the way to Berseria (the newest iteration). Oddly enough, the fans were not singing along to the songs; rather, they would wave their pen lights to the beat, switching the colors (yes, they are capable of doing that) to the main color of the protagonist’s game, and screaming each name of any character that first appears.

    Finally. The main event. The lights dim in anticipation. The fans wait with bated breath. All of a sudden, the main televisions screens light up and show a brief highlight introduction reel to reel everyone’s attention. Finally, our hosts of the show introduce themselves on the stage. Onosaka-san, the voice of Zelos, and Ise-san, the voice of Patty. They exchange a bit of banter with themselves and the stage, greet the live-viewers from all across Japan, talk about the program that is about to commence, comment about the pen lights (the lights that the viewers hold), and such. Many of the details are at a blur to me now, since my Japanese was still not up to par with the natives. Still, I could at least get the main picture of what they were saying, even if I had to use all of my focus on just listening. Twenty minutes of introductions later, the first part of the program began, in what would be four hours of excitement.

    Special Skit!

    In every Tales of Festival, there would be a special hour-long skit: skits being conversations with a number of Tales of characters. The voice actors would appear onstage playing said characters with their scripts on display as they performed comedic or dramatic acts. Since this year’s theme was on art, it would make sense that they the characters would be on their way to a museum (although I thought the inclusion of Yokohama’s own art museum was a bit tongue-in-cheek)!

    As stated before, my fluency in Japanese would be perfectly described as a third-grader’s Japanese. Due to this unfortunate instance, I will not be going too much into story details. What I can gather, however, was that the characters from the games (specifically a few characters from the games Tales of Vesperia, Tales of Graces and Tales of Zestiria) would meet up to Yokohama for the art museum, with a bunch of the characters splitting up and meeting up at the very end. With each character introduction in the arena, the flood of fans lit their pen lights with joy. I swear one of the most popular characters, Yuri, had a crowd that was joyous for at least ten seconds. Not only was the introductions met with applause, either: apparently the skit for the second day (which I participated in) was a lot more comedic than the one for the first day (which was slightly more dramatic). And boy, it showed in the voice actor’s actions. I noticed a lot more slapstick and physical comedy in the skit, such as when three characters were stumbling with a trap door for twenty seconds straight. Or when the two pervy characters (Zelos and Raven) were hitting on one female character (Lailah), only for them to be shoved to the ground by her companion (Sorey). At one point, audience participation was even added in: at the halfway point, one trapdoor required someone to step on it so that the door to open. At that point as well, all the characters were in the art museum, trapped and separated since one of the exhibits were stolen. Then the screen lit up: those who chose red in their penlights chose one character (Lloyd) as a sacrifice; those who chose blue picked the other (Asbel). I didn’t want to spend an extra three thousand yen on a penlight, so during the show, I downloaded a multi-color flashlight app and chose blue, because it was funny.

    The climax soon came, finally. In the three-fourths part of the show, a hidden character was teased talking to one of the characters. The crowd was filled with anticipation and surprise; wondering who that secret character was. In the end, finally, the voice actors and the fans discover it was Duke, Vesperia’s main antagonist. The crowd roared with hype and excitement, once again. The excitement turned to intensity was the antagonist attacked all his opponents (the voice actors playing the characters, anyway); in a blink of an eye, however, the intensity turned into exhilaration, as a character named Patty called for the audience’s power for the final blow. The final blow being all the main protagonist’s final attacks. Each attack enticing a large shout from the audience. In true Japanese Role Playing Game fashion, the antagonist defeated, the protagonists exchange some banter, and bid their farewell. For my first time attending the event, I thought it was pretty entertaining, despite my lack of Japanese skill. I bet the rest of the audience were also satisfied, judging from their waving of the penlights.

Stay tuned for part two, where I discuss more of the latter half of the event.