So on the website of the Kirby Music Festival, they’ve been posting backstory posts about basically behind the scenes stuff about the event. I’ve decided to finally go translate them all. Here is a translation of the first one.
Unveiling of the “penlight” mechanism that colored the Kirby Fest!
At this year’s Kirby Fest, special penlights were used that changed color and brightness in accordance with Kirby’s cues and the melody and rhythm of the music.
They are called “Kirby’s Penlight (Ultra Rainbow Deluxe)”!
(Translator’s note: The “Ultra Rainbow Deluxe” is very likely a reference to Kirby Super Star Ultra’s Japanese name, “Kirby of the Stars Ultra Super Deluxe”.)
The penlights can switch between a total of 12 colors, and each color is named after a character or stage, such as “KIRBY PINK”, which is reminiscent of the pink color of Kirby’s body, and “GREEN GREENS”, which evokes the green color of the grassland stages in the games.
What is everyone’s favorite color? Also, were there any colors that you speculated about?
In this post, we will provide some background of the production and on how the festival was staged using these penlights.
The penlights that shone during the performance actually used colors and lights other than the 12 colors introduced above. They switched to rainbow, had gradations, and the lights flickered slowly…… A multitude of colors and lights were expressed in a variety of ways to match the various songs.
Also, at the festival, even if the penlights were the same color, they were finely tuned for the right shade of color for the scene. For example, the color blue. The “fresh blue sky blue” of Kirby’s world and the “bewitching blue of Magolor”, dominated by the power of the Master Crown, are completely different in impression and shade. It appears that the color balance was meticulously adjusted during repeated rehearsals.
Now, here are a few more details about the staging of the penlights.
The penlights in the venue were grouped, and what percentage of the total number of penlights would be of what color and how they would shine was closely controlled for each scene.
During the performance of the ninth song, “Vagrant Counting Song of Retrospection”, the penlights flickered fiercely to match the background colors within the game, which changed in a circular pattern during Star Dream’s attack. The entire venue was involved in Kirby’s climactic battle.
Some other examples include the “Amazing Mirror” scene in the second song, where the penlights were the colors of the four playable Kirbys, and the seventh song, where the colors were based on the motif of King Dedede.
The entirety of these penlight performances is also included in the video on the Blu-ray. Check out not only the powerful performance and the energetic moving Kirby, but also the colors and lights of the penlights! We hope you will enjoy this special experience of the festival, which can only be seen on the video on the Blu-ray.
Gigi's Blog 