FanimeCon - Day Four - Mari Iijima

In her Saturday afternoon concert at FanimeCon, Mari Iijima wore a backless blouse under a jacket. In her Sunday concert, Iijima said she nearly went frontless as well. Iijima noted between songs that, just before the convention, she had auditioned for a role in an American movie with a Japanese director that would have required some nudity. When she asked her son Andy, he replied "Go got it," but she figured she never got the role because she never heard back from the casting director. "I didn't want to get naked anyway," Iijima said on stage.

After the concert, Iijima sold more of her self-produced No Limit album. She said that she's looking at making another album in the next year, possibly with the guitarist from the band King's X. "I like any band that has many interesting key changes. That's my thing," said Iijima.

The California convention came two months after Iijima made her U.S. television debut on the Pacific Blue series on the USA Network. "I got a lot of air time," Iijima said about her role as a tour guide who was really an accomplice to a theft ring. "They said `Do you know you're playing the biggest liar part? Can you act that, naturally?' I said yes."

After Mari's sons sang, a woman in the audience told Iijima that she wants to be a singer in Japan because she likes J-pop. Iijima told her that's possible, but she had better be fluent in Japanese. "No one wants to hear a song in Japanese where we can't understand what the singer is saying," Iijima noted. "If you sing perfect Japanese, you can go for it."

Day One

Day Two

Day Three

Day Four