I got this at Sakura Con 2004. I was pleasantly surprised by the low price, and that it was anamorphic, progressive and supposedly had a longer running time than the R2. If only all R2 discs could be this way too. This set consists of footage shot during the 2002 tour.
For anyone who doesn't know, T.M. Revolution is Takanori Nishikawa's group, the initials are for "Takanori Makes Revolution". Anime fans know them for "Heart of Sword", one of the endings to Rurouni Kenshin. The truth is I knew what kind of music T.M. Revolution was and had seen them on a few music shows, most notably Takanori Nishikawa on "Domoto Tsuyoshi no Shoujiki Shindoi", and that's about it. Even though I wasn't a hardcore fan going in, I enjoyed this set.
Takanori Nishikawa is surrounded by his fans as they flail about en masse, a true "sea of humanity". A mostly female sea of humanity. I want to be a singer.
For whatever reason, Takanori Nishikawa came out in an big American car, and he was wearing an American flag type robe and sat with white women and his car was escorted by black men. When they start playing, the audience is as into it as I have ever seen anyone's audience. Similar to Sharam Q, T.M. Revolution's audience is mostly women. The video showed a lot more of the audience than I was used to, but as the audience was mostly women dressed for the hot Tokyo and Osaka summer, I had no problem with that. The concert video was interspersed with some making-of footage, which focused on the band playing around before the show and how fanatical the audience is. As for the music, there was a lot more emphasis on musicianship here than your typical Jpop concert, especially when compared to the CD-backed Hello Project I'm used to. The wailing guitar solos accompanied by basses and drums created a nice range of sounds. Takanori never says anything terribly important during his MC sections; if you have seen other Jpop concerts, you know what to expect. There were some interesting pyrotechnics and a couple flashy costumes too.
All things considered, I was pleased with this release, and it was easily worth the money. I hope Tofu Records continues to release more titles like this in the future. My only suggestion for improvement is that this being an American release, romaji subtitles would have been nice. Yes, they were on a lyric sheet included with the discs, but to have them as an option to turn on and off on the video itself would have been nice in my opinion. Though I would rather have no subtitles than burned-in, forced subtitles, and I compliment Tofu Records on that.
