Event report: Animate Girls Festival 2014

This weekend, the Animate Girls Festival 2014 (AGF) event was held in Ikebukuro's Sunshine City entertainment complex. AGF is a gaming convention solely targeted towards female fans - in other words, it's a feast of otome games and bishounen-filled anime which don't have to share billing with the big-budget mainstream games aimed at a male audience.

There are a few big brands in the otome gaming world which tend to dominate (e.g. Uta No Prince-sama, Hakuouki, Diabolik Lovers and Starry Sky) but one of the best things about female-orientated gaming is that it tends to be full of obscure titles which don't need huge budgets to generate a loyal fan base. To an outsider, the booths were probably full of similar-looking male hosts sporting colourful hair, ridiculous costumes and sexy poses, but to a fan this was as diverse a concentration of female-orientated content as you could possibly get.

The festival was split into two separate events on the 8th and 9th November 2014, each of which had a staggering amount of special merchandise, stage events and light hearted attractions on offer. With this being the event's fifth year everything was run in a professional way without too much queueing once the early morning crowd began to clear.

DVD review: Butai Sengoku Basara Bushou Matsuri 2013

This review has been a long time coming, but with Butai Sengoku Basara 4 starting its run in Japan I felt it was about time I finished watching the last event DVD in my collection!

Butai Sengoku Basara Bushou Matsuri 2013 (hereafter referred to by its official romanised title of Busho Matsuri) was a major fan event held on Saturday 13th July 2013 (with two performances at 12:30 and 18:00 respectively) and Sunday 14th July 2013 (with just one performance at 12:30).

The venue was the enormous Ariake Coliseum in Tokyo, and the purpose of the event was to celebrate the Butai Sengoku Basara stage play series. By 2013, the regular Basara Matsuri events had become so crowded with fans of both the games and the stage plays that it was becoming tremendously difficult to cater for everyone properly, so the decision was made to split the next two events into a huge party for the stage play fans and a smaller, low-key Basara Matsuri for the original games six months later.

What nobody released at the time Busho Matsuri was first announced was that this would also be a farewell party, of sorts, for the stage play series' two iconic leads. Kubota Yuuki and Hosogai Kei had become enormously popular over the years and there was a great deal of shock when it was announced that they would be graduating from the series after Butai Sengoku Basara 3 Utage finished its run.

With this being a large-scale event, the guest list was amazing.

DVD review: Sengoku Basara 4 Basara Matsuri 2014 ~Shinshun No Utage~

This review will be relatively short since most of the content of the DVD was already covered back in January in this event report.

Sengoku Basara 4 Basara Matsuri 2014 ~Shinshun No Utage~ (hereafter Basara Matsuri) was a major event held back on Sunday 19th January 2014 at the Nippon Seinenkan Great Hall in Shinjuku, Tokyo. There were two different performances held on the same day: an afternoon show at 13:30 and an evening show at 18:30. Both were very similar aside from one change in the guest list.

With a much smaller venue than other recent Basara Matsuri shows, tickets were extremely difficult to obtain this time around. Fans had to participate in a number of lottery drawings to stand a chance of earning the right to buy them, and even being in the official fan club was no guarantee of success. This DVD release was consequently the first chance to see the event for those unable to attend in person. I hope that future Basara Matsuri events will be able to accommodate more fans again as they did in previous years.

The DVD was given a limited release on 9th July 2014 at select retailers, namely e-Capcom, Otomart and the Basara Club. The standard retail release followed on 20th August 2014 and the set is now available from online stores such as Amazon Japan. It's priced at ¥5,000 before tax and includes a single DVD disc in a clear case along with a colour booklet. The booklet is quite nice, containing photographs of all of the guests (including a few studio pictures of KobaP).

The guest list was as follows:

DVD review: Basara Matsuri 2013 ~Haru No Jin~

This will be an unusually short review since I already covered most of the event in my full report back when it was all relatively fresh in my mind!

It's also an unusually prompt review, by my standards. The DVD is due for general release on 4th September 2013 priced at ¥5,800, but customers who purchased through e-Capcom, the official fan club shop or Otomart were treated to a special early release starting on the 10th July 2013 instead. Less impatient fans can easily obtain their copies at shops which regularly trade overseas such as Amiami.

Basara Matsuri 2013 ~Haru No Jin~ was a two-day event held on the weekend of the 30th and 31st March 2013, with one performance each day. The venue was the Ryougoku Kokugikan sumo hall within easy reach of the centre of Tokyo. There were 6,000 fans in attendance for each performance according to comments made in the DVD extras.

The most significant thing to come out of this Basara Matsuri was the news that the team was making Sengoku Basara 4. In retrospect, it was rather impressive that the staff managed to sell 12,000 full price tickets to an event with no scheduled announcements at a time when interest in the apparently-abandoned series was slowly evaporating. The power of the actors who appeared on stage as guests cannot be underestimated.

The DVD edition contains footage shot live at Basara Matsuri spread over two discs along with a luxurious 16-page colour booklet full of photographs. The booklet even includes unique studio pictures of the guests shot prior to the event to give it extra value. The cover art was used in the original promotional material too - part of the trend of using pictures of Hanbee to advertise things in which Hanbee doesn't actually appear.

The first of the two DVDs is wholly devoted to the Saturday performance with the other containing Sunday's show as well as some bonus material. The full guest list was colossal. I'll list everyone again for this review, starting with the seiyuu:

DVD review: Sengoku Basara FES. 2010 (Ao No Jin/Aka No Jin)

Today is a very special day, making the eighth anniversary of the very first Sengoku Basara game's release back on 21st July 2005. It seems like a good excuse to post a new review!

Sengoku Basara FES. 2010 was held on 21st February 2010 at the Yokohama Pacifico convention centre. According to the official website, the venue has a maximum seating capacity of 5,002 and tickets for the event sold out in advance. Sengoku Basara FES was unusual in that it was based on the anime series rather than the original games; as a result, it was covered by a much wider variety of news outlets than the usual Basara Matsuri gatherings. I recommend the reports from Zakzak, AnimeAnime, Famitsu, Game Watch and Animate if you're looking for photographs.

A ¥6,800 double-disc DVD set was given a limited release on 28th May 2010 for the benefit of all of the fans who couldn't make it to the event in person. It's still available directly from Pony Canyon, though foreign buyers might find it easier to look for used copies at specialist retailers or through Amazon Japan marketplace sellers. The event was split across two separate performances: an afternoon show themed around Sanada Yukimura titled Aka No Jin "Tenha Zessou!" and an evening show for Date Masamune called Ao No Jin "'Let's Party!". The official trailer for the DVD can be watched at this link.

The DVD package is barebones for a Japanese release. There's no printed chapter guide, just some small pictures from the event on the back cover of the case and a tiny list of the guests. To make up for the lack of a proper insert the first press edition came with a pair of photographs showing all of the seiyuu who appeared at each performance. Although the packaging feels cheap, the amount of content on the discs makes this DVD set a bargain for its price.

The event itself had strange timing; Sengoku Basara 3 and the second season of the anime had both been announced the year before but neither was due for release until the summer, so fans were patiently waiting for these two huge projects to come to fruition. Basara Matsuri 2010 ~Haru No Jin~ would take place a few months later, so Sengoku Basara FES. 2010 mostly ignored the game series and side projects in favour of being a party for the fans of the anime adaptation. The result was a unique event which gave more attention to the seiyuu guests.

The full list of seiyuu at the event was as follows:

DVD review: Sengoku Basara 5-Shuunen ~Budoukan No Utage~

The fifth anniversary of Sengoku Basara was cause for considerable celebration; the landmark received a great deal of coverage even in the mainstream entertainment press. According to Capcom's press release at the time, Sengoku Basara 3 had sold more than 500,000 copies in Japan. Together with the warm reception to the anime and stage play spin-offs the series was showing no sign of losing its impetus.

Sengoku Basara Goshuunen ~Budoukan No Utage~ (Sengoku Basara Fifth Anniversary ~Budoukan Celebration~) was an event held at the famous Nippon Budoukan on Monday 3rd January 2011. Even with such a large venue there were two performances on that day, one in the afternoon and the other later in the evening. A rare post on the Capcom Europe blog mentioned that there were 16,000 attendees in total as well as reporters and officials. It's not surprising, then, that this has the most coverage online of all of the Sengoku Basara events. There's an excellent Livejournal post by user drkparadise which gives a summary of the event from the perspective of a member of the audience, and animercenary made a blog post with English translations for some of the content. Maybe this will mean my review will be more concise than usual.

The DVD version of the event was released on 5th August 2011 as a two-disc set costing ¥5,800. The first disc is filled with footage from the afternoon show and the second covers the evening; each disc has its own short compilation of backstage footage as well for a combined runtime of 246 minutes. As well as the two discs, the DVD case contains a 24-page colour booklet which is almost completely filled with photographs of the guests.

The list of seiyuu present for the celebration was generous:

DVD review: Sengoku Basara Fan Kanshasai ~BSR48 Kaihyou No Utage~

The Sengoku Basara Fan Kanshasai ~BSR48 Kaihyou No Utage~ DVD was finally released for fan club members on 20th December 2012 at ¥3,900. It's still on sale at the Basara-ya now so the next wave of members should be able to pick it up when they join.

Sengoku Basara Fan Kanshasai ~BSR48 Kaihyou No Utage~ was a special 'fan appreciation' event held at Tokyo Mielparque Hall on Saturday 26th January 2012. There were two separate ceremonies held on the same day to accommodate the crowds; one in the afternoon and the other in the evening.

The purpose of the event was to reveal the results of the BSR48 election, a comedic campaign that Capcom ran alongside the release of Sengoku Basara 3 Utage. Buyers of the game were allowed to vote for their favourite warlord, with the winning character receiving three rewards: a starring role in a new drama CD, an internet commercial, and a special 'image video'. The drama CD would also include the characters ranked in second through to seventh place, and there'd be one wildcard participant drawn at random from the characters who ranked either 10th, 20th, 30th or 40th. 45,541 votes were tallied in total and in the end few were surprised to find that Date Masamune won by a comfortable margin. He was joined on the drama CD by Mitsunari, Yukimura, Kojuurou, Sasuke, Motonari, Motochika and Nobunaga. I've listed the full results right at the end of this post for posterity.

DVD review: Basara Matsuri 2010 ~Haru No Jin~

Basara Matsuri 2010 ~Haru No Jin~ was held on Sunday 2nd May 2010 at the Shinjuku Bunka Center Great Hall. There was both an afternoon and an evening performance, each of which was attended by approximately 2,000 eager fans.

The event was recorded and released on DVD on 22nd October the same year priced at ¥5,040. It's still available for purchase and contains 131 minutes of footage with 62 minutes of extras. A colour booklet with event photographs, seiyuu profiles and a message from KobaP is included in the package.

Back in May 2010, the relaunched stage play had just finished its run and an internet radio show was being broadcast weekly to promote the upcoming game. The second season of the anime had been announced for summer too, riding on the enormous success of the first series.

The main feature of Basara Matsuri 2010 ~Haru No Jin~ was of course the long-awaited Sengoku Basara 3, which was finally coming close to its release date of 29th July 2010. It had been close to a year since the game had been announced. The characters who were about to debut in the upcoming game took pride of place on stage while many series regulars were absent, so the list of guests contained a lot of new faces:

DVD review: Basara Matsuri 2009 ~Haru No Jin~

After being spoiled by two Basara Matsuri events in 2007, the next major Sengoku Basara gathering didn't take place until the spring of 2009. Basara Matsuri 2009 ~Haru No Jin~ was held on Saturday 2nd May 2009 at Hibiya Koukaidou (Tokyo Metropolitan Hibiya Public Hall). There was a gathering in the afternoon and another in the evening; each attracted an audience of around 2,000 fans.

There hadn't been a new game for a while until PSP spin-off Sengoku Basara Battle Heroes had been released a month before the event. April 2009 was also when the first season of the Sengoku Basara television anime had made its debut. There were two radio shows running too, so although it was a dry period for fans of the main games it was a good time for the series as a whole. As Basara Matsuri 2009 came before the teasing for Sengoku Basara 3 began, the event was a relatively relaxed affair to promote the recent release of Battle Heroes and allow fans a chance to get together and enjoy watching the seiyuu fooling around.

The list of guests at Basara Matsuri 2009 was as follows:

DVD review: Basara Matsuri 2006 ~Natsu No Jin~

This will be the least detailed of all of my Basara Matsuri posts, as it covers the very first event. Unlike the later Matsuri celebrations, 2006's never had a proper standalone DVD release. Instead, the highlights were included on a compilation disc which came with the November 2006 issue of B's Log magazine, a publication which generally specialises in topics of interest to female gamers such as otome games and BL.

Basara Matsuri 2006 ~Natsu No Jin~ was held back on Saturday 22nd July 2006 in front of an audience of 1,200 people at Odaiba's Zepp Tokyo. I've been to Zepp Tokyo a few times myself and there's not much space so I was impressed to see that they'd somehow crammed a number of dedicated PS2 demo stations into the hallway for the attendees to play on, in addition to the usual merchandise stalls.

The original Sengoku Basara game had been released almost exactly one year earlier, and its sequel would becoming out five days after Basara Matsuri 2006. Back then, the series had earned some devoted popularity but it was still a long way from having taken off as the multimedia juggernaut it would eventually become. The purpose of the event was quite simple: to show the fans what they could expect from the long-awaited Sengoku Basara 2.

The guest list included Nakai Kazuya (Date Masamune), Hoshi Souichirou (Sanada Yukimura), Ishino Ryuuzou (Chousokabe Motochika), Paku Romi (Uesugi Kenshin) and Morita Masakazu (Maeda Keiji). The seiyuu were accompanied by series producer KobaP (Kobayashi Hiroyuki). The event also featured a music performance of Dive into Yourself by HIGH AND MIGHTY COLOR which wasn't included on the DVD. A shame since I am one of the people who thought their song for Sengoku Basara 2 was great, even if it was a departure from T.M.Revolution.

Sadly, the event footage which made it to the DVD only runs for a total of twenty minutes. After a short introduction by KobaP, clips from the event prologue are shown. It took the form of a costumed samurai-style combat display which reminded me a little of the recent stage official plays.

The DVD then went straight into clips from the seiyuu 'talk show' where the cast spoke about their characters and working on the game. The audience was really boisterous; there was far more yelling than I'm used to! Due to the fragmented footage which cut the talk show down to the bare minimum, there was nothing worthy of translating for this blog entry.

Some live voice performances followed reading dramatic scenes from the new game. The weirdest one to watch was Paku Romi as Kenshin; she's a beautiful woman and to hear Kenshin's silky words spoken by her live is a little unsettling - in a good way. Her voice carries a distinct feeling of masculinity even when you can see her standing there on stage in a long skirt. Ishino was immersing himself completely in his performance, mustering just as much enthusiasm for his role as he does now, more than half a decade later. As a treat, there was also a special Matsuri-exclusive dialogue between Masamune, Keiji and Yukimura.

And that was that! All that remains of Basara Matsuri 2006 ~Natsu No Jin~ was all over far too quickly. KobaP finished with an exclusive message of hope and gratitude for the readers of B's Log, and I was left wondering how much of the footage ended up being removed when this compilation was put together.

Although it was disappointing that so little of the event was shown, I can see why this was never sold as a standalone disc. The video quality is blurry (it's hard to make out the seiyuu at all when they're not being shown close up) and the sound isn't great, either. The difference between the Basara Matsuri 2006 footage and that from later events is very noticeable. It's a shame though; all of the clips are cut so abruptly to move straight into the next that so any lighthearted fooling around between the guests has been purged from the recording entirely.

Since my comments on the event itself are so short, I'll mention something else. One extra incentive to attend the original event was that visitors were able to pick up a unique audio disc, the Sengoku Basara 2 Kansei Happyoukai ~Basara Matsuri 2006 Natsu No Jin~ Character Voice CD. This is quite rare these days as it was never made available elsewhere, and attendees who have moved away from the series can neatly cover their original ticket costs by selling it on the used market.

The CD contains twenty tracks, half of which are very short musical interludes to separate the others. The remaining ten tracks collect dialogue from the game. Each contains a few minutes of standalone quotes from the characters on the front of the CD (pictured). Since there are no background sound effects (or music) played alongside the voice track, if nothing else it's probably a good way to make some exciting personalised ring tones.

For the sake of being thorough - in case some gaming magazine fan stumbles across this post one day and wants to know - the November 2006 B's Log DVD also includes some material which is completely unrelated to Sengoku Basara. There's a promotional video for the anime adaptation of Kin Iro No Corda (La Corda d'Oro), long video interviews for seiyuu Ishikawa Hideo and Takahashi Hiroki, an interview with Suzuki Masaru, Miyake Junichi and Nemoto Kouta of seiyuu unit Boy's Beat, and a Boy's Beat clip to promote Summer Beat ~Love & Smile~. Alongside the event footage I've reviewed above, other games are advertised with videos clips including Lamento -Beyond The Void-, Laughter Land, Ayakashibito -Genyouibunroku-, Mermaid Prism, Yo-Jin-Bo ~Unmei No Freude~, Under the Moon, Palais de Reine, and Arabians Lost ~The engagement on desert~. There's no other Sengoku Basara content besides the stingy Matsuri compilation.

In the absence of a proper event DVD, I've drawn heavily on event reports from gaming websites such as Famitsu and Gpara in order to pull all of the details together. I'm glad that the Sengoku Basara series has become so big since the summer of 2006; it makes enjoying things properly from afar much easier!

DVD review: Basara Matsuri 2012 ~Natsu No Jin~

Last year's big Sengoku Basara event was Basara Matsuri 2012 ~Natsu No Jin~, held the same weekend as Comiket on the 11th and 12th August 2012. The venue was the Makuhari Event Hall, part of the famous Makuhari Messe complex in Chiba, near Tokyo.

The last stage play run had been several months earlier and even Sengoku Basara 3 Utage's release was rapidly becoming a distant memory. It was the HD Collection, due for release a few weeks later at the end of August, which was the focus of the event. There was a strong Toyotomi bias to the guest list; Basara Matsuri 2012 presented a rare opportunity to see the seiyuu for Keiji, Mitsunari, Hideyoshi and Hanbee together side by side for the first time. The team weren't going to let this chance for some faction-related fan service pass them by.

There were three separate events over the course of the weekend. An evening show kicked things off on Saturday and then Sunday had two shows back-to-back in the afternoon and evening. I was fortunate enough to be part of the 6,000-strong audience for all three sittings. That's 6,000 people per show: even if a large number of people attended multiple times, it's still an impressive number of attendees for such a specialised gathering.

The DVD version of Basara Matsuri 2012 finally came out on 26th December 2012 as a two-disc set with a thin colour booklet full of photographs. Though it's a limited release costing ¥5,800 it's unlikely that it will become overly rare any time soon. As I was physically present for the original event, I'm going to do this DVD review a little differently and fit my comments about the DVD content into a long, long description of the entire weekend from the perspective of an audience member.

The list of guests for Basara Matsuri 2012 ~Natsu No Jin~ was colossal. Here's the full list of seiyuu who came on stage, starting with those who were present for all three performances:

DVD review: Basara Matsuri 2011 ~Natsu No Jin~

Some time ago I purchased and watched the DVD compilation of footage from Basara Matsuri 2011 ~Natsu No Jin~. Since I wasn't running this blog at the time, I've gone back to create a belated review to summarise what happened at the event so that I can reference it easily in future. The other reason for this sudden bout of Basara-related archaeology is that I'm trying to judge when we can expect an announcement of the next game, if one is coming at all!

Basara Matsuri 2011 ~Natsu No Jin~ was held on 17th July 2011 at Tokyo Mielparque Hall in Hamamatsuchou. There were two performances that day, one in the afternoon and the other in the evening. There was also a separate event held the night before called Basara Matsuri 2011 ~Natsu No Jin~ Zenyasai ('Festival Eve').

The DVD version of Basara Matsuri 2011 was released on 23rd December the same year on a single dual-layer disc, retailing at ¥5,040. It included a colour booklet with some pictures from the event and brief profiles of the guests. There's also a slip of paper inside apologising for a misspelling of Nakamura's name (corrections like this are a surprisingly common occurrence).

It was an exciting time to be following the series: Sengoku Basara 3 had just been rereleased on Wii and PS3 on their respective priced down classics labels, and the movie Sengoku Basara -The Last Party- was receiving good reviews from its cinema run. Two radio shows were on the air on a regular basis. 2011 also marked the revival of the Butai Sengoku Basara stage play project with Butai Sengoku Basara 3 bursting onto the scene. It had been announced back in June and was going to debut in October; fans were naturally curious about which actors would be playing the new leads.

In addition to all of this, the second PSP spin-off game called Sengoku Basara Chronicle Heroes was to be released the week after the event.

The fans had purchased their tickets expecting Chronicle Heroes to be the main focus of this Basara Matsuri. However, on the 5th July - two days before the scheduled publication date - a scan from Famitsu revealed that a brand new game was on the horizon: Sengoku Basara 3 Utage. This news was far more exciting than the announcement of Chronicle Heroes had been; Utage was to be a proper PS3/Wii game rather than a handheld spin-off title.

Consequently, the scheduled Basara Matsuri event would be the perfect opportunity for Capcom to tease more details ahead of Utage's distant November release date. Without further ado, here's a description of how things went.

Blu-ray review: Tiger & Bunny The Live

Tiger & Bunny The Live was a stage play which had a limited run between 24th August and 1st September this year. The venue was Zepp DiverCity in Odaiba, Tokyo; a small live house with a maximum capacity of 2,500 people. As this was a seated event, the audience was smaller than it would have been for a packed standing music gig.

Although the show only ran for nine days there were seventeen performances in total. In spite of this, the demand for tickets was at fever pitch and there were many yelps of disappointment on Twitter when the ticket lottery results were announced. Tiger & Bunny was at the height of its popularity. A 'live viewing' was arranged which allowed fans without tickets to instead watch the performance in real time, either via the online Bandai Channel or in theatres. 99 cinemas across Japan offered live viewings of the very last evening performance, with 15 of the venues also showing the afternoon performance the same day in order to serve as many customers as possible.

I was lucky enough to be able to attend the second of the live performances in Odaiba on opening day, though my seat in the fifth row on the second floor wasn't the best. One thing which surprised me was that the audience wasn't entirely female-dominated; women definitely made up the overwhelming majority of attendees yet I was seated close to some very enthusiastic male fans who provided a sense of balance. They were every bit as excited as the screaming girls and cheered loudly whenever Blue Rose came on stage.

There were quite a few things which made Tiger & Bunny The Live special, from the detailed costumes to the blend of music and high energy combat. For me, one of the most exciting elements was that they'd arranged for the two lead seiyuu from the original anime series to reprise their roles for the stage play. Whenever Wild Tiger and Barnaby Brooks Jr. appeared in their civilian attire they'd be played by the seiyuu. For combat scenes, the duo would be played by performers in their hero suits. Since the hero suits cover their faces there was no problem with continuity as the seiyuu could still provide their voices from off-stage. I've seen a few complaints from western fans that Hirata is too old and stout to play the lanky Kotetsu. I disagree with them; his voice makes the character perfect and even if he can't match Wild Tiger's unrealistic physique, his acting skills are pretty good. Morita received loud cheering whenever he did anything cool - which was often - and it was obvious that he loved being on stage. He sang along adorably to his character song when it was playing and showed off some feisty fighting moves in a scene where the heroes battle in their everyday clothes.

The full cast list was as follows:

DVD review: Basara Matsuri 2007 ~Haru No Jin~

Unlike the later Basara Matsuri events, the footage from 2007's Haru No Jin festival didn't receive a standalone DVD release. Instead, it was included on a bonus disc with the Playstation 2 Sengoku Basara Double Pack which came out on July 19th the same year. This set contained both Sengoku Basara and Sengoku Basara 2 on Playstation 2 together with the DVD. All three discs were packed inside a chipboard box illustrated by Tsuchibayashi Makoto.

As could have been predicted this release format didn't go down too well; fans of the series had already purchased the games separately when they came out. It was a frustrating strategy given that these existing fans were also the ones who would most want to buy a DVD recording of a special event.

Even today, with the games themselves having lost all value following the release of the PS3 Sengoku Basara HD Collection, sealed copies of the Double Pack are changing hands for large amounts of money. I picked up a used set from Book Off for a much more reasonable price. I'll be covering the games themselves as part of my thoughts on the HD Collection, so here I'm going to focus only on the special DVD.

DVD review: Basara Matsuri 2007 ~Fuyu No Jin~ Official DVD Book

Today's blog entry covers the 2008 release of the Sengoku Basara event report: Basara Matsuri 2007 ~Fuyu No Jin~ Official DVD Book. As the title implies, rather than being a simple video with highlights from the live event it was packaged in a special cardboard case and bundled with a full colour 24-page booklet of extra material. Objectively, the booklet presentation is not as impressive as it sounds; it includes summaries of the event and the DVD contents padded out with some short seiyuu interviews. It's a nice package however and it does make the single DVD feel a little meatier. The set is out of print now but it's easy enough to find used, often at prices significantly lower than the original ¥3,800.

2007 was a big year for Sengoku Basara with the spin-off to the second game, Sengoku Basara 2 Eiyuu Gaiden (Heroes) having been announced in March. Its release was scheduled for November 29th, and consequently this event, which was held on October 28th at Tokyo Big Sight, was putting the finishing touches on months of hype. The Sengoku Basara X (Cross) fighting game had also been announced in July. Although this particular Basara Matsuri was only a one-day event there had been another earlier the same year; the popularity of the Sengoku Basara series had been going from strength to strength.