2022 Recap

 Christmas has passed, and now it's time to remember the moments that happened this year. For Masayuki Yamamoto, this year was kinda rough, but Masayukists were delighted to see another simultaneous album release.

To start the third year of COVID, nothing special happened during the first half. And when I say nothing special happened, I mean nothing really happened. The end of 2021 was rough for me and Masayuki: I started using my Xainelle-chan moniker in uploading his songs to YouTube for the purpose of entertainment and preservation just in case. Then suddenly, Bella Beaux Entertainment decided to take down the videos and strike my channel for a reason: it would ruin his career financially. Learning the lesson on copyright and Bella Beaux and Yamamoto's policy to not share his music on video sharing sites, I eventually moved on.

The redress message on sharing his songs to not just YouTube, but other video sharing platforms like Niconico; this message is still there as of this writing

...and this is the email Masayuki himself sent to me BEFORE I even read it!

Not knowing what else to do now that I can't be on YouTube anymore, I decided to build a new fan site dedicated to him. Now there are tons of them online and some are still active, but many of them have become outdated or suspended and all of them are in Japanese, so I thought of creating one in another language. One that will also bring in retro anime fans around the world and have their minds blown when getting to know more about this guy.

So by March of that year, I created and founded The Masayukist's Zone, where I break down his discography and stay updated on his latest and upcoming works. The site is probably around 40% complete, since there's still lots of sections to be added up, including a complete chronological rundown of his concerts and an anime-related discography section.

Other than that, as I have mentioned, there hadn't had any announcements on upcoming works and planned concerts for the first half of the year.

That all changed in August, when Chunichi Dragons announced a new version of Moeyo Dragons! and was going to be recorded on a CD. It would be performed by not just Yamamoto, but a duet with Ichiro "Aniki" Mizuki! For those who don't know or forgot who he is, he sang dozens of anime and tokusatsu songs in his entire career. He famously performed the themes to Mazinger Z, Ganbare!! Robocon, Babel II, Combattler V, Game Center Arashi, Space Pirate Captain Harlock, among others. Mizuki being a Dragons fan himself is no surprise. The CD was finally released on August 26th.

What many didn't know is that this would be one of Mizuki's final works before passing away to lung cancer on December 6th. Dragons fans are wondering who would be singing next year's version (Yamamoto is probably a good choice though).

A month later, Yamamoto finally announced not one, not two, but THREE new albums, on what would later become concept albums by its release in October. One being a tribute album to his mother, who passed away 20 years ago, another being a SOLO Hiki no Yoru album, where all the tracks are performed with a piano, and the third has that album compiling all the songs under a stories-in-song-form category complete with some Engrish lyrics. All of those albums are really well-recommended by fans that it quickly got sold out within a month, as is usual with his albums nowadays.

Betcha haven't gotten this CD yet

Recently, I started this website when I decided to expand the content on not just The Masayukist's Zone. So, while that site is for mainly information on his discography, THE Masayuki Paradise is all on interesting info on Yamamoto himself.

I named this site after one of Yamamoto's albums entitled Masayuki Tengoku; tengoku (天国) meaning paradise or heaven. THE is borrowed from some of his recent works with that word in all caps (THE Time Bokan Matsuri, THE Jitaku Rokuon: Hana BABAR). In fact, the site name origin, or the album name, is the URL name for this site. This name suits the fan site really well, hoping to bring in audiences to get interested.

And that's all the Yamamoto-related activities done for this year (mine included)! Here's to another wonderful musical journey in 2023. Don't forget to see him live for the first time in three years for the  Tatsunoko 60th anniversary concert at Zepp DiverCity Tokyo.