Upon my arrival to Los Angeles’ one and only full time maid café, the Royal T, I was met by a fairly large group of girls in lolita fashion, all clamoring to see their favorite gothic roll-model. And it was not long before we were all herded into smallish back room for the show to begin.

In the room we were met by a tiny half-foot-high stage in the corner, upon which rested an elegant white cello. Rather quickly we were all packed into the rather warm room –the past few days in LA have been quite hot, and this particular day had reached 97 degrees in some areas. Not to mention that I now stood surrounded by the thick puffy fabric of the lolita dresses which was not helping in fighting the heat.

The show began with Wakeshima making her entrance whilst the opening to her song “Still Doll” played. She slowly walked down the hallway taking only two steps at a time, looking like a bride walking down the isle at her wedding. She then took the miniature stage and froze in place. The music to “Still Doll” started again and Wakeshima performed the song while making movements mocking that of a puppet –though at first I thought she was doing “The Robot”, which confused me. After a bit of singing she would transition over to her cello and play a solo bit for the song.

Each of the 5 songs she performed followed along this same pattern. Each time she sang, she always did some kind of weird choreography, be it the sweeping point at the crowd, or spinning, and at one moment even some salsa. I understand that Visual Kei is all about, well, the visual aspect of things, but each time she did these little dance moves paired with her singing it made things feel very forced or convoluted, almost to the point of me chucking when she acted like a broken robo– sorry, “puppet” at the end of her first song. But in my mind she made up for this each time she went to her cello. I found her cello playing absolutely brilliant. Mesmerizing and pleasant to the ear. It is her talent here that I think sets her far apart from any other Japanese pop artist today.

Once her set was done, Wakeshima took a moment to speak to the audience in a voice that can only be described as that of a tiny fluffy extremely moe kitten. She told everyone that she was thankful for them coming to see her, and that she likes pasta(?!). Afterwards she signed autographs and posters, and even sold some of her own loltia style illustrations, which were pretty cool looking and selling for $100 each.

Kanon Wakeshima is not your average J-Pop artist in that she is a classically trained musician foremost, and I think this will bring about an interesting career for her. Hopefully I’ll actually get to photograph her one of these days...