Nerf no Okite: Longshot "used" in live performance

Normally you see Nerf blasters used as props in movies and television (coughcoughTerraNova). However, here's something I noticed a year ago or so.

If you've never heard of the Japanese pop/electronic band Perfume, let me shed some light on them. While they make mainly bubbly and very catchy J-Pop music, they have a few songs that are harder and more intense. Say what you want about their music, but they have some of the best live performances I've ever seen. While it's more of a visual performance than a musical one, it's hard not to enjoy it. Some very good examples of this would be this from their JPN tour, as well as their live rendition of Edge (⊿ Mix) from their ⊿ tour.

But let's look at one performance in specific: the Perfume no Okite section of their "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11" live performance. The performance itself is supposed to be a celebration of sorts in honor of the albums they've put out over the years. The set-pieces are huge, the screens are bright, the coordinated dancing is spot-on, everything is just freaking awesome, but wait... what's this rising from under the stage at 3:31?

"A-Chan" rising up with a... Longshot?

Yep, it's a Longshot CS-6: scope, clip, front blaster and all... strangely enough it seems the bipod wasn't attached. Yeah, okay, that's great (not really, completely black paintjobs are boring as hell to me), but what's it doing? Firing a green laser, popping large white balloons in the process.

Yeah okay it doesn't sound that cool when typed out. But watching it, it's pretty damn cool. It's scripted, yeah, but come on. Lasers being fired out of a Longshot. Normally I'd get sad and say it's a waste of a blaster with fantastic potential (generally what I do when I see Longshots being used for cosplays), but I don't care because LASERS.

Clearly this is a pretty self-indulgent post. I've been wanting to share this for a long time though, and now that I have a good venue to do so, I thought I might as well. If you're willing to give the full video a try, as well as the other ones linked above, make sure to do so in HD/720p!