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During a live web broadcast from Nico Farre in Roppongi, Tokyo on March 16th, Dempagumi.inc faced off against celebrity manga artist/illustrator/talent/actor/director Yoshikazu Ebisu to see who would be the stars of the next commercial for mobile RPG game Phantom of the Kill (Fuji&gumi games).
Dempagumi has been the image characters for the series since Tokyo Game Show 2014 which was held in September and even sang the theme song for the game, “Phantom of the truth” which was released as a coupling song for their single “Dempari Night” in November. However, it was announced on their show Dempa Jack that if the game did not reach 1 million downloads, the commercial would not be aired and they would be replaced! Dressed in cosplay of the 6 main characters of the game, Dempagumi appeared on stage first.
Yoshikazu Ebisu aka “Ronebisu”, a name derived by a combination of Longinus (the 2nd most popular character in the game) and his own name, then made his appearance!
Both sides expressed their desire to win, citing the hard work they had put into filming the commercial (Dempagumi) as well as the awkwardness of the cosplay (Ebisu).
An online vote was conducted during the broadcast and Dempagumi (71.3%) easily beat Ebisu (28.7%), which he mistook for meaning that the showdown was already over.
As the final download numbers were about to be revealed, representatives from both factions were asked to give their thoughts on the outcome. Ebisu boldly proclaimed “I have no confidence that I will win!” Risa Aizawa added that Dempagumi fans are so kind-hearted that they may have wanted to see Ebisu in a commercial to give him a chance to shine.
With a very dramatic countdown of numbers scrolling in reverse order, it was revealed that Phantom of the Kill had reached 1,089,448 downloads and so the Dempagumi commercial would be broadcast! However, all was not lost for Lonebisu; his version of the commercial would be available to view online and the members of Dempagumi pleaded with the representative of Fuji&gumi games to have it shown on television at least a few times, even if it meant less broadcasts of their version.
The Twitter voting results were also revealed; Dempagumi (59%) defeated Ebisu (41%) by a slim margin. Aizawa commented that because there are 6 members of Dempagumi, it was impressive that Ebisu got 41% of the votes all by himself in comparison and that maybe if his version was broadcast, it would get older people to start playing. Ebisu was humble to the point of embarrassment as he said things like “If you added all their ages together, they would still be younger than me!” and “what if I make the number of players go down?”
Having secured their victory, Dempagumi performed “Phantom of the truth” to close out the event. As there were so many photographers packed together in front of the stage, for safety reasons, the photos of the performance were provided to us by the official photographer.
Check out the Dempagumi.inc and Yoshikazu Ebisu versions of the commercial below!
Phantom of Kill Official site: https://pk.fg-games.co.jp/
Dempagumi.inc Official site: http://dempagumi.dearstage.com/
Yoshikazu Ebisu Official site: http://ebiy.net/
Photo by Tsubasa Ishiguchi
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Dempagumi.inc
Writer, researcher, photographer, foodie, KSDD
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