bancho boys

A look back at 2017

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2017 comes to an end tomorrow, and as usual I looked back on everything I did this year to write a review of the year. In 2017, I saw lots of stages, had some amazing experiences with my oshi, and fell head over heels in love with a new group. When I looked back on everything I did, I realised that I did so many things and spent so much money, but I have absolutely no regrets. I really hope in 2018 that I can do just as many things and have just as many amazing experiences as I did this year.

If there was one thing I regret from this year is that there were some things I didn’t take many photos from, and many things I didn’t report back on. I hope in 2018 I can do more of this so I have more reports to link to when I make this kind of post at the end of the year.

I chose the above picture as the header image because of how much these boys influenced my year (even though they’re not all there in that picture), but that was definitely not all I did. Here is my 2017…

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Crows Zero

From November 30th to December 3rd 2017, I stayed in Tokyo to watch all five shows of Bancho Boys 10th stage, Crows Zero. This was the second Bancho Boys stage I’ve watched all the shows of, and although this was a completely different experience to the randomness of Amaku wa nai ze 2, I can still say that I enjoyed each and every show, even though the content was a lot more rigid than their other stages I’ve seen.

Please note that this review does contain spoilers. If you have seen the movie then the plot is the same and so reading won’t spoil anything, but if you haven’t then I suggest you don’t read on unless you don’t mind about being spoiled about the plot.

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A month of Gingadan Release Events

Back in June this year, I spent most of the month travelling back and forth to Tokyo for the release events for Gingadan’s first single Galaxy Cluster. Despite being tiring at times, and very expensive, it was one of the happiest months of the year for me. I got to meet the members I love many times, hear songs I really liked, and met so many great fans. So when I found out that I’d be able to do it all over again for their second single Galaxy Cluster 2 I couldn’t help but have a lot of positive expectations, if not a lot of time and money worries.

I wished I had documented the June release events properly away from Twitter, so I decided to make the effort this time and report on each event individually and compile them into one post. It took me a while to compile everything and be happy with it, but I’ve finally managed to put together what I think is a good reflection of my experience.

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Top 5 Bancho Boys members

It’s taken me a while to get to this stage because as I got to know more members, the list kept changing. But now I know every single member of Bancho Boys, I feel like I’m ready to rank my top five members. I made the decision to only include official Bancho Boys members in this ranking, but scroll to the bottom for a little extra. I’m afraid I talked quite a lot about each one but I really wanted to consider my feelings and reasons for liking them properly, and it was nice to put them into words.

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Bancho Boys Live vol. 1 (17/2/25)

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On Saturday February 25th I took a quick visit to Tokyo to go and watch the Bancho Boys 1st Live. I bought the tickets spontaneously after I fell head-over-heels in love with Yasui Kazuma. I didn’t even hesitate on buying the tickets and the ride to Tokyo, because I knew I wouldn’t regret it. I was particularly drawn to his group Dress_No. being special guests, because I knew it would mean more focus on him. If not only for him, there was also Akira (my second favourite from the Ensemble Stars stage), Nozaki Yutaka (also from Ensemble Stars), and my current favourites from Tenimyu, Futaba Kaname and Yashiro Takuya. With all of that, how could I resist? I apologise that this report is a little Kazuma-biased but obviously I was watching him most of the time.

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