Today I am going to see the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Orchestra Concert, Toronto; Friday show, September 20, 2024. I went to the office for the first time in like 3-4 months because of this concert so yea, let’s see how today’s show went down.

Today’s first picture is my lunch, German Donner Kabob on Queen Street West. I’ve had this several times ever since I started going downtown to the office, shit’s pretty good; mix of chicken and lamb meat. Good shit but kind of expensive.

I walked down into the Path near the Bay/TD building and this was the food court during prime lunch hours. Sad. Looks like they don’t even open for Friday as most people work at home I guess or low traffic. Only one food place was open and that was some teriyaki grill place. Sad. Other Path food courses were better and lively but this one is basically doomed as it’s on the older side. I walked by a store and the owner was like, I like your shirt, I was wearing my Emil Nier concert shirt and he asked if I was going to tonight’s concert. I said I was and he was like oh shit nice, he said he couldn’t get tickets because he found out to late; also because he didn’t beat the game yet, said he was on chapter 9 or so, at the Mako Reactor with weapon I think he said. I said nice, maybe next time and he wished me a good show. Wow.

After leaving work at like 4:45pm I got to Roy Thomson Hall pretty quickly, I mean it’s like a 5 minute walk from my office so it very close. There wasn’t a whole lot of people around but I saw this cosplayer on the right and I knew I was in the right place to line up. Most wouldn’t know but the girl is a new character in FF7 Remake, pretty good cosplay too. As you can expect there was a lot of Tifa and Aerith cosplayers around, both in OG and newer outfits seen int he remake games, good shit. Noice.

And here I remained for the next 2 hours or so sitting in line to get in and get merch. The guy in blue standing is the first in line. I was literally one of the first 20 or so people in line.

Proof of existence, waiting for concert line edition.

At around 6pm the crew started setting up a security checkpoint and stuff to get in. Ok, cool. The concert is at like 7:30pm and they start letting people inside at 6:30pm for merch and etc.

As 6:30pm came I was let in after a brief look at my bag and I went to one of two lines that were selling merch. I forgot to take a photo myself of the merch tho. Dan didn’t arrive yet so I went in on my own.

After I brought my merch from the normal line, my cousin who works at the Roy Thomson Hall came and gave me these two bad boys for me and Dan. Oh yea boi, merch corruption privileges. My sister told her to hold some back for us and this is the result, noice. My sister already paid in advance for them to her so yea, just a matter of paying her back. Shortly after this Dan got inside and I heard them announce that all buster swords had sold out, yea boi.

For the sake of records, I’ll share the photos that my cousin sent to my sister for the Thursday show for scoping out merch. Noice stuff on the wire wall.

Selection of music and other goods. When it was my time on Friday, there was no vinyl album on the table, which I assume means it sold out on Thursday. People really like that shit too, I might have brought if it was available as-well.

After minor lingering and washroom stops, we went inside the main hall. Hmm interesting, Roy Thomson Hall is a lot smaller than I thought. I can’t remember but I might have gone here before when I was a kid for some school trip but can’t remember.

The nice big screen to show the action from the game and cut scenes. Orchestra peeps warming up.

Proof of existence standing inside edition.

Because this place is so small, there really isn’t any seat that is bad. You technically could have gotten the cheapest seats and still have a great view and experience.

Proof of existence angle peace sitting edition. Not exactly the most flattering but what can you do. Unfortunately Mark couldn’t make it to tonight so we just left our merch/bags in the empty seat.

There was actually quite alot of empty seats around which I find odd since this was supposedly a sold out show. I guess lots of other people couldn’t make it last minute too. This was a few minutes before the concert began and you can see lots of empty spots still. They didn’t start exactly at 7:30pm but more like 7:45pm which is fine.

And here I am after the concert where the orchestra and conductor left and the audience making their way out. There was a half hour intermission after the first hour of play and then the concert resumed for another hour or so. Overall pretty good shit, nice concert. Best songs were the new boss battle music, card game Queens Blood song, Jenova song and of course Sephiroth’s One Winged Angel. One thing however is that because of the nature of the concert, the ideal experience is that you should have played and beaten both FF7 Remake and FF7 Rebirth, because the big screen played lots of in game cut scenes and game-play that semi-spoil the game for those unaware lol. I wonder what percentage of the audience actually managed to do that? I can imagine a good chunk were not able to so do, such as Dan and my sister who is like 80% through the game lol. FF7 Rebirth was released only this year in March so I can’t help but feel that they should have waited at least until next year before starting of a concert and giving people enough time to even get and finish the game. Despite the inherent spoiler nature of the concert, I thought it was pretty good.

By the time we got outside it was like 10:15pm or so. Most food places in post pandemic times close at like 9am or 10:00pm, yes, even on Fridays and weekdays so it was a race against time to find something to eat before everything closes. Luckily this chicken ramen place on Queen Street that I walk by all the time was still open, Hakata Ikkousha Chicken edition; they close at 10:30pm and we got here at 10:20pm just in time before closing.

Hakata Ikkousha has another location one unit down on the same street that has the more traditional pork tonkatsu broth and chasiu, this place however is all chicken stuff, both meat and broth, which I guess was something they came up with to attract muslims/jews and others who don’t eat pork. Nice. I went with the Tori Black ramen, more chicken and fried chicken, gotta love chicken right?

Here is my chicken Tori Paitan Black garlic with extra chicken chasiu which is like sliced chicken breasts, it’s actually pretty tender and soft, I think they do like sous vide the chicken to make it so tender and not dry.

Dan’s order of the standard Tori Paitan, apparently Tori Paitan is supposed to be similar to tonkatsu except with chicken and creamy broth. It’s not like shio ramen or so, it’s it’s own thing. I can roughly describe it as a much lighter flavor tonsatsu broth which is not bad, different if you don’t want to feel as greesy or heavy and normal pork broth. Overall pretty good, I would say this is a pretty good alternative if you want to have Japanese ramen and can’t /don’t eat pork. The owners are Japanese is seems to me, just like the normal pork location a unit away.

Since this place is all about chicken, gotta get the fried chicken too. Pretty good shit. They also had options for free condiments like raw garlic and takana, picked Japanese mustard greens not pictured here, not bad interesting stuff; haven’t had that before. We ate pretty fast, finished eating in like 10-15 minutes, so fast that the couple of other tables of brown parties pictured above were still there.

After that, we just took the subway back to Kennedy and took our own buses back home. Apparently Dan’s bus wasn’t running in night so he ended up taking a Uber back home doh. But yea, that about ends today’s concert, let’s take a look at the merch I ended up with.

So I ended up with 2 buster sword pen lights lol. One from my cousin that was brought in advanced and another that I got normally in line. Apparently they only held back like 20 or so buster pen lights from yesterday to sell today which basically sold out instantly lol according to what my sister overheard. Oh shit, I was among the first 20 in then after all lol jokes. The buster sword itself is quite expensive, $85 but compared to US prices/conversion and buying online/shipping/fees, it’s still cheaper in person. I also got a key-chain and concert shirt, noice.

I also ended up getting the music box that plays some music from the game, I think the first open world section and two cds, FF7 Original soundtrack, OG and the FF7 Rebirth orchestral arrangement CD, which has some, not all of the songs that were performed today, gud shit. In terms of cost, I think all of the merch including both buster swords is roughly over $300-ish cad; ha, small price to pay considering the majority of that cost is the buster swords lol.

Overall the concert was pretty good shit, nicely performed and not missing a beat but I wish the choir was in a better place, they were like hidden behind the big screen so that kind of sucks, also for sound too I guess. The venue was smaller than expected but what can you do, and I wish that Mark could have made it but you know, shit happens I guess. While a good experience overall, compared to the Nier concert earlier this year, Nier was on a different level. The Nier concert was considerably grander with a much larger venue, fancier theater, much larger orchestra, audience size and the original story made it a must see for any fans of the Nier games. While this FF7 Rebirth concert was good , because of the inherit per-requisite for maximum enjoyment/appreciation is to finish both games, I don’t think everyone did that so it’s inherently spoiler heavy since it shows in video so much of the game already. Would I go again to a FF7 Part 3 concert in the future? Hell yea I would, but only if I finished the game first and on the first day, none of this corruption buster swords, gotta get them the legit way you know. Overall, good times.