On January 31st, 2021 the weekly Japanese radio show “Tokyo Boogie Night” hosted by Megumi Hayashibara had a special video live stream for it’s 1500th episode. Megumi Hayashibara is the Japanese voice actress for Anna in both the 2001 and 2021 Shaman King anime as well as creator for the opening and ending themes. In preparation for this special episode, she requested that fans send in mail to show their support. In addition to the YouTube live stream, the episode will air on it’s normal timeslots on various radio stations and at least the audio recording will be streamed on the Tokyo Boogie Night website for one week.
While the stream was suppose to start at 14:00 it was delayed until 14:20 due to some technical difficulties with the stream. Once the stream started there was no further issue and eventually reached upwards of 15,000 viewers.
The live stream was broken up into two part. The first part was the standard “Tokyo Boogie Night” radio show, including with ad breaks. At the conclusion of the standard show Megumi then had a post-show interactive part which ran for an additional 40 minutes.
The standard show started with her famous tongue-twister reading and then moved into reading and responding to her fanmail. On the video stream, her table was also surrounded by fanmail and gifts sent in.
During the later portion of the show she announced the title for her 30th Anniversary Album to be “Vintage Denim.” She mentioned that she had to wear denim for this special episode as well. An upcoming song she is writing is called “DENIM” and she is requesting that fans submit their photos of denim to be included in the upcoming music video for the song. Photos can be submitted between February 5th through the 14th. These photos can be of pants, jackets, or other accessories and it can just be photos of the items or of you wearing them. The application form for submitting the photos has not opened yet. The song “DENIM” is one of two new songs that will be included on this 30th Anniversary album as noted on her website.
There was also a copy of her upcoming book Megumi Hayashibara’s The Character Taught Me Everything – Living Life One Episode at a Time on hand. This book will be published in Japan on February 20th and an English digital version will be released on the same day by Yen Press. The official Japanese listing for the book notes that Hiroyuki Takei, along with other artists and creators have contributed content for the book as well.
The two songs played during the radio show were “Tokyo Boogie Night” and “Two Thumbs Up!”
After the broadcast, as an exclusive for the live stream that was not recorded, she took a look at some more of the fanmail that was on the table and the staff had brought over. Two pieces of the mail featured drawings of Anna from Shaman King on them.
The remaining portion of the live stream was dedicated to making slime! She started getting into slime making when trying to come up with the lyrics for the new Shaman King anime’s opening and ending theme songs. She was afraid that people would like the new songs as much as the old ones, which was giving her a lot of stress. So playing with the slime helped her relax and became a form of stress relief. By making the slime it helped her to realize that the new songs weren’t just work that she is being forced to do but something that she wanted to do for the series she cares so much about. For the live stream she brought some samples she had worked on previously and asked the YouTube live stream chat for some suggestions on which ones to make live on stream. She ended the stream thanking everyone for their support and that she enjoyed doing the video portion and hopes to do it again in the future.
Thank you to Dit for providing some translation assistance in this article.
The previous day, Megumi also posted on her personal blog that she had recently completed the photoshoot for the album cover for the upcoming Shaman King TV theme song album. She noted that there was a lot of work put into this shoot but then it was over in a blink of an eye. The album is scheduled for release in Japan on April 14th and the names of the songs and album have not been announced yet.
