Rabbit House Tea Party Event Report

Rabbit Tea House Party 2016 is the live event for the anime Gochuumon wa Usagi desuka and was held at Pacifico Yokohama on 7th May with both a afternoon and night session. The event featured 10 of the main casts, including the voice actors for Takahiro, Aoyama Blue Mountain and Mocha.
Being located in Yokohama, it took some time to travel down to the event itself. From where I was staying at Shinagawa, it was about 50 minutes of commuting. At first I was considering the idea to first train down to buppan, however the temptation of getting a nice breakfast at the hotel I was staying at was too much. I slightly regretted this decision when I reached the venue. I was only aiming to get the basic goods of pamphlets (lots of people requested me to get this back for them), towels and the event penlights and I thought I would arrive at 8.30 or so with more than enough time to spare.
The buppan line for the goods was horrendous. I started queuing up at around 9.00 and the afternoon session started at 13.00, so I had around 4 hours to get the goods. The line inched along so slowly, I was not even close to entering the indoors line by 12.00 and I had to give up for this. Thankfully, a friend of mine who first trained was able to secure me the goods that I wanted. Thankfully, when I entered the event venue, they had another buppan line for pamphlets, shirts and penlights only, so I managed to pick up even more pamphlets.
The entire first floor of the Pacifico was decked out with all sorts of decorations for the event. Right as you enter the main entrance, there was a Christmas tree that was decorated with Tippy's. The walls sectioning off the buppan area had the various BD images covering all of them. I really like the art they used for the cover images so it was nice to snap pictures of all of them. They were also displaying a life sized Mahou Shoujo Chino figure alongside the 1/7 figure which is a really well designed figure. Plus, Chino is so adorable so if I didn't give up on figures, I would have already pre-ordered the figure. They even had a counter with real baristas serving drinks which really gave the whole café feel. There was also a board with messages from the seiyuu but I did not managed to get a closer look at. However, one thing I noticed was that they probably were not expecting this many people to be in the event hall as the entire area was packed really badly so moving around was quite difficult.
For the actual event, the seiyuu were hiding behind a giant present box on the screen and when they started playing No-Poi, the box opened and reveal the seiyuu. The format of the event would be split into several corners, where the seiyuu cast will take turns to assist Hayami Sho in presenting each corner.
The first corner of the afternoon session was revealing the results of a poll taken before the event. With the first one being "which character would be the best at cuddling" and the top 3 characters in ascending order are Chino, Cocoa and Mocha. Mocha winning 1st place was more or less expected though. For the corner, each of the seiyuu will take a Tippy plush and alongside their choice of props, cuddle with him and the best cuddle will win. Kayanon, Ayaneru and Inorin will playing around with the props and there was a really curly hair wig that Inorin was calling disgusting and Ayaneru was teasing her by dangling it in front of her and Inorin was screaming a little from it. For each of the skits, Inorin put a wig on Tippy and said that's how Tippy looked like when he was younger and hugged him. Kayanon's premise was seeing Tippy on the floor and picking him up to cuddle. Both of these were really adorable, but Ayaneru's one took the cake. She placed the Tippy plush on a bowl and pretended that he was something edible. (cotton candy if I remembered it properly) She bit the plush on the ear and lifted it up before spitting it onto the ground. Everyone was exclaiming poor Tippy and Ayaneru was doing a doya-gao the entire time. Throughout this entire corner, Sho was working a sound board with Tippy voices to react to the seiyuu and he was spending some time to find the right button.
The 2nd corner is based on another poll of "which 2 characters are the closest". This time the pair of Sharo and Chiya won the first place. This time, the seiyuu have to pair up and have their hands get tied together with a scrunchy and do  simple obstacle course. The obstacle course involved skipping rope together 5 times and pulling a table cloth off a table without knocking the Tippy plush off. The pairs were Mayayan&Shuga, Ayaneru&Inorin, Hayamin&Kayanon, Rieshon&Soramaru. Tane-chan did not take part in this as she was being an assistant to Sho for this corner. Before the challenge started, Ayaneru and Inorin were fooling around quite a bit, whispering to each other and playing around with the scrunchy. Funnily enough the Ayaneru and Inorin pair completely dominated this challenge and when they were done with the course the other pairs were not even done with first part. Ironically, the pair of Mayayan and Shuga were the last. When everyone was done, Ayaneru and Inorin were rubbing their hands off each other's clothes to get rid of the "sweat" and pretending to not like each other. Though no matter how you look at it both of them are as close as sisters.
The 3rd corner is a competition between Team Rabbit House and Team Fleur de Lapin. Team Rabbit House consisted of Ayaneru, Hayamin, Soramaru and Inorin while Team Fleur de Lapin had Mayayan, Rieshon, Kayanon and Tane-chan. Shuga was the assistant for this corner. Shuga then asked the team leaders what their team strong points was. Ayaneru said "We have the secret weapon of IM (referring to Hayamin), HiBiKi's ace (Soramaru), SMA's solo artist (Inorin). Mayayan just replied "We have a Murakawa Rie" and Ayaneru and Inorin pretended to mope sadly.
This corner came with 2 parts. The first part involved giving them a situation at a certain place where they will have to act out a skit with Sho to show off their cuteness. For example, one of the situation was "At a _____, you have to apologise to your boyfriend for making him wait 5 hours", the blank was at a Southern Island or a Jungle.  When both teams appeared, they would strike a pose with their opponents before sitting down. All the seiyuu were mostly doing silly fighting poses but for Kayanon and Hayamin they bowed respectfully to each other and it was funny how they were living up to their characters who were supposed to be mature adults.
One of the highlights was Kayanons, which was the example mentioned earlier, in a jungle. She told Sho that it was fine waiting 5 hours of her as he had 5 hours to think of her all the way. Sho told of how he was attacked by a snake and couldn’t think of her during that attack and she snapped at him. "I don't care if you were attacked by a snake or not, how dare you stop thinking of me! Apologize to me at one" She completely turned the table on him and got him to apologize instead. All the girls took turns at this but I won't go into all the details, but if you are curious you can feel free to message me and I'll gladly share with you as much as I remember. The main highlight of this corner was definitely Hayami Sho as he was doing an amazing job of acting out the various scenarios and adding all sorts of crazy twists to throw the seiyuu off. However at this point, my phone actually slipped out of my pocket and got stuck in the side of my seat. So I was freaking out this point which really affected how much I enjoyed the event. In the end I did managed to find my phone but losing your phone overseas really does freak you out. I thought I dropped it somewhere outside the venue and I panicked really, really badly. The 2nd part of this corner, the girls had to make a guess how many outfits were worn during the run of the entire show. The correct answer was 165 or so which was a lot higher than what everyone expected and Ayaneru's guess of 120 was the closest.
The 3rd corner was a drama about the girls preparing a party at the Rabbit House for "5000 people" which was a reference to the event itself. During the skit, they presented a few more results of the polls which was pretty hilarious as the characters were claiming they just randomly decided to do a poll. During this drama afureko, Aoyama Blue Mountain was making a reference to adding an angelic character "Kayano Ai" and an energetic "Murakawa Rie" into her new novel. The general story of the skit was Cocoa and Chino wanting to get a present for Mocha who was coming to visit and how it turned out in the end the best present for Mocha was seeing everyone happy (and cuddling them).
The 4th corner had the double Hayami and Kayanon answering the worries of the rest. Tane chan was worried about gaining weight to which they said it was fine for her to enjoy the good food since she's a girl after all. Mayayan was worried about her posture and I did not really catch their reply. Ayaneru was wondering how she could make friends and they ended up discussing about how being a seiyuu affected the people they met and if I remembered correctly they told her to be herself and just talk to others. Seeing Ayaneru it is hard to imagine how she finds making friends being hard but I guess seeing her personality, she takes a while before opening up to others.
The final corner was them opening up with No Poi and doing a special Gochiusa medley with them singing songs from the character album.
〜ライブコーナーセトリ〜
1 ノーポイッ！/Petit Rabbit's
SPメドレー
2 出かけましょうと答えましょう/チノ（水瀬いのり）
3 ナマイキTiny Heart/マヤ（徳井青空）
4 ナイショのはなしは夢の中で/メグ（村川梨衣）
5 Rabbit Hole/ココア（佐倉綾音）＆リゼ（種田梨沙）
6 やきもち風味のカモミール/千夜（佐藤聡美）＆シャロ（内田真礼）
7 ぴょん's ぷりんぷるん/チマメ隊
8 ときめきポポロン♪/チマメ隊
9 本日は誠にラリルレイン（全員)

I'm not a very big fan of the character songs but seeing Ayaneru and Inorin sing was already an amazing treat for me. For Tokimeki Popollon, Chimame-tai wore the same jackets in the ending theme and while showing it off, Inorin was shaking her hips to make the tail wag and it was really, really cute.
The special announcements were that there would be a rebroadcast of the anime, Weiss Schartz card for Gochiusa, new character singles to be released, the event special song will be bundled in the next BD set and also a new special episode for Gochiusa that will be broadcasted in the summer.
So that's the main gist of what happened for the afternoon session, next I will be talking about the night session.
The afternoon and night have several similarities but enough differences for you to still enjoy yourself a lot even though you went to both sessions
For the 1st corner, they changed it up slightly and revealed the poll of "which character has the best artistic sense" and as you probably guessed it, Chino got 1st place for this. The others then made reference to Inorin's artistic sense about her line stamps and she defended herself saying that the stamps were cute. Well her reaction was a lot more cuter than her line stamps if you ask me. This challenge involved the seiyuu taking photos of Sho and the best one will be chosen by Sho. For the practice round, Rieshon actually won. For the actual challenge, Sho changed into a super cool white suits and was brought around the cart on the stage and he looked so very dandy. He managed to make something so simple look like a performance and it was hilarious to watch it. For the final results, it turned out Rieshon was so far in front when taking the photos, her heads and hands were in many of the pictures. For this round, if I remember correctly, Kayanon won this round. (I'm not too sure because I did not write this all down). During this whole corner, the seiyuu will fooling around with the cameras quite a bit and taking selfies with each other. Inorin and Ayaneru were taking unglamorous photos of Tane-chan who was the assistant.
The 2nd corner was the drama which did not change much but they added in new jokes. Hayamin adlibbed and completely broke the premise when she asked all the seiyuu present to say "GochiUsa daisuki" but it made the drama more fun with that twist.
The 3rd corner was the competition between Team Rabbit House and Team Fleur de Lapin with some changes to the teams. Team Rabbit House had Ayaneru, Kayanon, Tane-chan and Soramaru while Team Fleur de Lapin had Mayayan, Hayamin, Inorin and Rieshon. When talking about their team's strengths, Mayayan made reference to the previous session and said that they had a Murakwa Rie again. One of my personal highlights for this session will be Ayaneru's scenario where she had to wake up her boyfriend on a snowy mountain. So she went to Sho who was pretending to be asleep and said "Don't sleep, if you sleep you'll die! … … Oh he's dead." Another highlight was Mayayan doing a really good impression of Rieshon which was hilarious to see. IN fact after doing it, she looked to Rieshon for approval who gave her a thumbs up. Again if you want more details, just message me.
The next part, they had to guess how many times Sharo tsukkomis added to the number of times Cocoa screams. It turned out that the actual number was 42 or so and Tane-chan who was 45 got the closest. The video showing Sharo and Cocoa was really entertaining because it just showed both characters shouting and screaming the entire way through. One of the seiyuu remarked that screaming so much must be tiring on Ayaneru's throat but she said that it wasn't much. Everyone then persuaded her to show us an example which she did.
For the 4th corner it was double Hayami with Kayanon again. This time they answered Shuga's Rieshon's and Inorin's troubles. Shuga was asking Sho on how to make miso soup more fancy and he suggested adding some ingredients which I wasn’t too sure what they were but he sounded like he knew his stuff. Rieshon was asking on how to draw a dog better and when reading Rieshon's letter, Hayamin imitated Reishon too. The advice for her was to become an illustrator to improve. For Inorin's it came with 3 parts. 1. She was wondering how to be more energetic and high tension, 2. She was wondering how to better convey her excitement to others and 3. She was worried about her bad eyesight. For 1. They suggested asking Rieshon to teach her how. I didn’t quite catch the 2nd one but for the 3rd they just asked her to wear contacts. I know that Inorin needs to wear glasses but I didn't know her eyesight was bad enough for her to be worried about it.
The live section was basically the same so no changes there.
The change was that during the final MC, they brought out a cake for Shuga, whose birthday was the day after and everyone sang happy birthday to her and she started tearing up. I totally did not remember when Shuga's birthday was so I was a little surprised too.
For the final finale as the seiyuu were saying goodbye. The best moment of the event was when the last two, Inorin and Ayaneru were saying their goodbyes. Just before the exited the stage, Ayaneru petted Inorin on the head and then gave her a forehead kiss before blowing a kiss to everyone. Of course everyone pretty much lost it at that point and started screaming. This was definitely the biggest highlight for me and the image is pretty well burnt into my memory.
Attending this event to me is something I'm really thankful for. I loved the Gochiusa series and really hope that they will make a season 3 for this. Also, the footage from the 2014 Rabbit House Tea Party also made me fall in love with Ayaneru so to be able to see her at the same event that made me like her in the first place was just a gigantic treat for me. Overall this event was definitely amazing and if you are a fan of the show or the seiyuu appearing it is one hundred percent money well spent.