The Grand Finals of the J-Pop Anime Singing Competition were held on the 25th of July 2009 at the Market! Market! Activity Center. The event was organized by the Japan Information and Culture Center of the Embassy of Japan in cooperation with The Japan Foundation, and with the support of HERO TV, Toei Animation Philippines, 103.5 MAX FX, Ayala Malls, and the Nihongo Center Foundation.
Besides the competition going on at the main stage, a number of booths dotted the event space showcasing Japan’s “soft culture” influence.
One of our favorites was the Toei Philippines booth — where they showcased animation cells and merchandise from their extensive line-up of titles, as well as a demo of the basic steps of the animation process. The other was the Japan Foundation Manila Manga Library, which showcased their collection of Japanese shounen and shoujo manga translated in English.
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Ten finalists made it to the last round of competition: these groups are B-612, BAGE, HIKARI, MORNING STAR, MUCHOS PUERCOS, NEWTONE, RYUUSEI, SAKURA BEAT, SOS BRIGADE, and WHAT IS?!
The talent pool showcased a diverse selection of musical genres — from pop-rock anthems to anime theme songs, acoustic tracks to Hello! Project-influenced hits. Our favorites include a solid festival-level performance by BAGE, MORNINGSTAR’s soaring SHIINA RINGO-like vocals, and a WHAT IS?! rendition that pulled the crowd in and had them cheering.
All finalists received special citations, plus the winners walked away with gift packages and tuition-free Japanese Language lessons from The Nihongo Centre Foundation. Bronze went to SAKURA BEAT for their cover of L’ ARC EN CIEL’s DRIVER’S HIGH. HERO’s choice and second place went to girl-fronted BAGE — which is amazing as this band almost never made it to the final due to scheduling conflicts.
The top prize and bragging rights ultimately went to WHAT IS?! who — besides winning the event’s main prizes, also scored an exclusive interview with Philippine cable tv anime authority HERO TV. Congratulations again to all the winners!
I had a chat with Mr. Ben Suzuki of The Japan Foundation Manila after the event and he was so pleased with the results of the competition — with over eighty applications narrowed down to ten finalists. He hopes that next year they receive more applications and that they are able to extend the number of finalists to fifteen or even twenty groups.
The J-pop Anime Singing Competition Grand Finals is part of the 2009 celebrations of Philippines-Japan Friendship Month. There are more events lined up for the rest of the month, including UP Tomo-Kai’s Anniversary Celebration.
Thank you very much to the JICC and the Japan Foundation for the invitation.
JPOP Manila 
My bets for placers were Bage, Morning Star and WHAT IS?! (in no particular order) but I also liked the performances of Ryuusei and Sakura Beat. Thanks for covering the event; I wasn’t able to visit the booths. 🙂
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lol all the groups were great of course but we have our favorites 😀
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Hello po. 🙂
This is Bage. Haha, thanks for the support. ^^
I also liked Ryuusei’s and Morning Star’s performances. Ryuusei’s blending was so amazing!
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Ang gwapo ng gitarista ng Muchos Puercos.. hihi.. ^-^
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can i ask if there will be another competition like this?
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we’ll have to wait and see next year if they hold another competition for the 2010 Philippines-Japan Friendship month.
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I missed this event, obviously I’m busy with work, clients and stuff. Oh that’s interesting MORNINGSTAR having Ringo vocals, as in same nasal quality and rolling of r’s I presume.
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“same nasal quality and rolling of r’s I presume”
precisely 😀
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Morning Star member here.^^
Thank you for favoring our performance!
If all goes well, We hope to do this again next time.^^
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congratulations again ladies — and we hope to see you perform again soon 😀
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Yoh…Ryuusei member here 🙂 I really liked BAGE, the guitar of the guitarist of Bage and the voice of the short-haired girl of B-162. Thanks to those who liked our voices! 🙂 We’ll be waiting for next year’s comp…if there would be any…waaah
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BTW, forgot to greet! Congratulations to the winners!!! 🙂
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w00t!! congrats sa What is?!,
mga classmates ko sila!
^__^
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HI!~ ^___^ i have to say… amazing ang performance ng ibang group! grabeh to the next level! hope we could formally meet each other again someday… kakahiya kasi lumapit.. parang may sariling mundo… no time for taking pictures with the other groupz… sayang T_T
i’m not going to mention any particular band coz overall ang galing ng nag perform… iba2x kasi ang voices ng tao, iba2x din ang music na na-produce! yun nga lang iba2x ang hilig ng tao ^___^, kaya iba2x din ang results… in short, just keep making music in your own way, the way you want it to be ^___^ (^O^)/ -btw… this is also a member of morningstar ^___^ hope to be friends with y’all and talk about j-songs/k-songs or even anime! ^___^
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oh my! i wasn’t able to watch.. T_T did anyone watch this event from the beginning to end?.. how was the performers?.. were they any good?…
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BANG!!!
Woooooo~ congratz sa what is!?
shakehandssss………
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Hi! am a member of Ryuusei…1st if all congratulations to all the groups who performed and of course to the winners! sugoi BAGE! really loved their performance! GOD BLESS minna-san!
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KR! Classmate m sla?? Hahah they look young ah hahaha thought they were highschoolers…naks looking young!
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m/, BAGE member here!! First of all, i would like to congratulate all the bands that performed/participated in the event. Ang gagaling lahat! We weren’t expecting anything at all. :D, Pero para sakin lahat naman panalo kasi lahat naman nag-enjoy sa pagtugtog sa harapan ng maraming tao at nakapagpasaya ng mga tao. I hope that there will be another event like this soon. XD
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hi guys and welcome to the site! congratulations again to all finalists, and “good job!” to the winners! we hope that you guys give it another go next year 😀 cheers~!
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hi guys, I watched the event you guys were great! And congratulations to the winners!
I was just wondering if its possible to get a complete list of what songs you guys performed and who sang them?
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Hey guys Sakura Beat dude here. I was wondering if the other 9 groups could upload, if they have, the video of their performance? So far I found Bage’s and “Entry no.5’s” (I think that’s Morning Star) on Youtube.. We were all at the backstage so we weren’t able to watch each other’s performance.
Congratulations to everybody by the way. 😀 m/
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The Pig Prince from Muchos Puercos here. Our performance vid can be found on facebook. Add Alan David Munoz as a friend. It’s in the videos section of my profile
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hallo~ uuh.. member of WHAT IS?! here.. errr… unfortunately.. we haven’t got the chance to video tape our performance… *shrugs* oh well..
I fairly enjoyed watching everyone elses though ^^.. everyone really knows their forte and i admire that truly.. ^^
that was indeed a competition of the best of the best out of 85.. ^^
so it was really a surprise we got a place when all the while we thought that our performance was too loud and was just all over the place.. xP
(be we did our best til our hearts’ content ^^ regardless of winning or not)
hopefully we get to jam not only as contestants but as fellow band loving anime jpop/rock friends ^^ eheheh~
@Kr ~ woi~ *poke* mabuhay PWU ahhahah ^^
@Sora ~ =3
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@janelle ng bage: wOw ang cute mo hihi i tot tlga kau manalo… catchy ung kanta nyo pramiz! hope mging frend kita sa fs at fb… parang gusto n nmin sumali nxt yr hihi
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congrats din sa what is?! for winning!!! rOckers live on!!!!=)
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ano pla fs nyo?! =) tnx
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shaaakkkke handdddsss!!!! =)
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haha~ shake hands po ^^ add nlng ung group na what is?! sa fb kung gusto nyo po.. gusto lang nman.. la naman mxadong nkalagay bago lang nman kc.. ^^ hahah ^^
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congratz to all.. shakehands to all your faces haha!!
indeed…. childs play!
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yoh…Ryuusei’s perf is in youtube already… 🙂 just look for the username chuuu2. Add us also in fb… Ryuusei Singers 🙂
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Sig here of the JICC.
Two words for all the performing groups: Magnificent performance.
We would like to thank you all for your cooperation and your enthusiasm. Our officers are already planning to do a repeat of the competition next year. Should you have suggestions to make the event better, please feel free to contact me.
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imho, the group’s performances are better than the original renditions
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correction on a grammatical booboo
^groups’
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hey there sig 🙂 congratulations again to everyone at the JICC and the JFM for an enormously successful event 😀 we hope to see a repeat of this next year, and maybe every years after that 🙂 cheers!
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thanks, Ms. Rochelle. We didn’t expect the event would be well-received. It was our first time doing this kind of thing and we were groping in the dark. We couldn’t have pulled it off without your help. So, many thanks to ongaku society. I hope for next year’s J-Pop event, we could still count on you to help us in promoting the event and recruiting participants. I hope you would continue to help the JICC in its endeavors. Kudos to you and to all the groups who participated!
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i suggest the finalists should be more than 10…15 perhaps!!! 🙂
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^suggestion taken into consideration. salamat
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Guys,
we’re brewing up the next j-pop anime singing contest and this time around, there will be other exciting prizes from our Japanese and Filipino partner companies like Sony aside from Nihongo lessons. Watch out for the event announcement. With the prizes and goodies this time around, I would love to participate in this year’s contest but sadly, I couldn’t.
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hahaha hi sig 🙂 please keep me posted about the contest. i’d love to help you guys at the JICC again this year. keep up the great work and i hope to hear from you again soon!
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Thanks, Ms. Rochelle for your support! Please expect the news to be released within this week or early next week. To give you guys a teaser, winners can take home prizes from sony, panasonic, canon, toshiba, toei among others (afaik, may meryenda pa courtesy of a popular gyudon house hehehe). What’s more: groups which made it to last year’s top ten except the 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize winners can still join.
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