I’m (finally) almost done with translating the TJPW portion of CyberFight Fest, but there are some other things I wanted to talk about, so I’ll save that for its own post.
First of all, my friend translated a Saki Akai interview that was really good! It’s another one of Mugiko Ozaki’s interviews. Part of why Ozaki’s interviews are so good, besides the fact that she asks good questions, is that it’s really fun to see her getting more and more into joshi wrestling.
I also finished watching 夢プロレス－dream on the ring－ #4, which spotlights 真中ひまり (I’m linking instead of embedding this one because, once again, there are some images/footage from 真中ひまり’s gravure work).
Also, I did in fact end up watching Forbidden Door.
(Cut for spoilers and also for a brief note on Kota Ibushi)
For a show that seemed so unbelievably cursed going into it, with lots of major absences on both sides, it actually ended up being really good? I was a little surprised that I was able to enjoy it, but I guess I managed to turn off my brain and just watch it without thinking about all of the shoot stuff. I suppose this is how WWE fans often feel 
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I think part of why the show worked as well as it did is because all of the workers as well as the crowd seemed determined to have as good of a time as they possibly could, considering the circumstances. The matches all got great reactions, the surprises were fantastically received, and everything flowed really well.
It especially stood out to me that Shibata’s entrance got a huge pop even just from the first few notes of his theme. That alone pretty much killed any argument about this show requiring video packages and such to introduce the wrestlers to an American audience. It was clear that the crowd at this show really cared about and was familiar with the NJPW wrestlers. Often they got louder cheers than AEW’s top stars. Regardless of my feelings on the company, I was really glad to see that for the wrestlers.
I also enjoyed the English and Japanese ring introductions, and the overall bilingual spirit of the show. I would have liked to see more of the Japanese wrestlers get to speak, though, especially at the very end of the show. Would have been a nice moment for a more puro-style ending, where the wrestler who wins the main event gets to close out the show by speaking to the crowd. It felt like Tana and Mox’s moment got needlessly cut short because they had to throw in a random unnecessary beatdown to build to a match on the next show that was already pretty much built 
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Overall, I guess it was a pretty good argument for the strength of an AEW/NJPW partnership (at least purely from an in-ring/show quality standpoint). I wish I could enjoy that part of it more. Maybe if NJPW gets new leadership. But the wrestlers from both companies were all clearly ecstatic to finally work together on this scale, and it’s hard not to be happy for them getting that opportunity.
There was one pretty major moment that took me out of it, though. That was when Tana did the Kamigoye… I had a really hard time focusing on the rest of the match after that. It seemed unlikely that this gesture would be appreciated by Kota, considering that he and Tana don’t seem to be on great terms right now. Kota’s tweet about it later seemed to confirm that.
So, well, I guess my verdict is: the show was very good if viewed in a vacuum. It’s a show that I had been anticipating for quite literally three years, up until about a month ago. If I was still in that mindset, I’d probably be over the moon with how things turned out. But as it stands, I’m happy for the workers, and I’m happy for it demonstrating that partnerships between major companies can be majorly profitable and beneficial to both, and that Japanese wrestlers can get extremely over in America, but I think that’s about where my enthusiasm ends.