Mayhem-Online

Archive for the ‘J-Pop’ Category

Its the end of another month so I figured its time for another post!

There were a few hiccups with the server this past week, but thankfully everything seems to be running okay again. WordPress has been upgraded again to the latest release, and I’ve also upgraded a couple of other programs running on my other websites.

Last week I had the week off, though I did very little. I had some intentions though I wasn’t committed to anything. It was merely a week to relax and unwind. Of course now its back to the real world again…

Over the past month I’ve grabbed a number of Gundam model kits and started building them. The panel lining is the one part that makes it take longer to put together, but granted these are not the kits where you paint and glue, they’re just the ones you stick together. I do have some Gundam markers which could make them look more detailed, but I’ve only used them on a couple of my Gundam models so far. Below are links to the images of the Gundams I’ve put together so far:

Goufy – HGUC MS07 Gouf (blue) and Gouf Ignited Yzak Custom (white)
Throne Eins (Gundam 00)
Blaze Zaku Phantom (Dearka Custom) (Gundam Seed Destiny) (view 1) (view 2)
Graham’s Custom Flag vs Gundam Exia (Gundam 00)
Graham’s Custom Flag (converted flight mode)
Strike Noir vs Stargazer (Gundam Seed Stargazer) (view 1) (view 2)
Strike Freedom (Gundam Seed Destiny) this is the 1/100 HG version
Civilian Astray DSSD Custom (Gundam Seed Destiny) (view 1) (view 2)

I’m still working on the Overflag - which looks pretty much the same as Graham’s Custom Flag only its got an extra weapon I think; and the Throne Zwei. I was intending to finish those two kits off over the week I had off but just didn’t get around to it. I would like to get a couple of MG kits (Master Grade) though the cost is the only thing getting in the way lol.

New anime series began this month in Japan. The two popular ones that started this month were Code Geass Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 and Vampire Knight. I still haven’t watched all of the first season of Code Geass yet so I need to catch up on that first probably! I’ve got the five volumes of the Vampire Knight manga – currently its up to volume 8 though only 5 have been converted to English. Hopefully the rest will be coming out soon. Other new series that are actually quite good that I’m also watching are Special A – about some kids who are in a special class since their knowledge and skills put them above even the A+ students. The focus, however, is on the rivalry between the number 1 and 2 students. Its a pretty cute comedy series. Soul Eater – another comedy which strangely has two time slots, one during prime time and the other that’s labelled “The Late Show”. According to most subbers there is little difference between the two versions. A few others that are good so far are Amatsuki, Toshokan Sensou, Druaga no To: The Aegis of Uruk and the yaoi-manga based anime series Junjou Romantica. Kyou Kara Maou also started its Season 3 run though only a few subbers have picked it up. And as usual Naruto Shippuuden and Bleach continue their eternal run (along with D.Gray-man which seems to be catching up in terms of length).

Not played any games in a while. I was intending to get Final Fantasy Crisis Core for the PSP but I had other committments and couldn’t afford it at the time. I probably still won’t be able to get it just yet, maybe next payday… Since I haven’t played any games lately I kind of thought it silly to spend a lot of money when I’ve not been in the mood to play any games. I did pick up the PSP to play one of the games I had but I got bored almost instantly :\ Silly I know – I mean I have a DS, PSP, 360 and PS2 but I haven’t touched any of them for almost the entire month of April! I’ve been busy focusing on other things and not really in the mood to play… There’s also the latest expansion pack for Sims 2 (Kitchen and Bathroom) though I haven’t played that game in a while either so I’m not sure about buying that just yet.

I watched a couple of JPop concerts this month too. Namely Koda Kumi’s Black Cherry Tour and m-flo’s Cosmicolour tour. I also had a look at Namie Amuro’s Play tour but hers was a bit boring. She’s a good dancer and singer, but she doesn’t interact with the crowd and doesn’t really look like she’s enjoying herself. Ku-chan is the opposite, she smiles and laughs and gets the audience all excited and encourages them to join in. She definitely enjoys herself when she’s performing. Verbal and Taku (m-flo) are also great performers, and definitely showed a lot of enthusiasm during the concert. They had a huge number of guest artists appear which was great, although not all of the originals were there to sing. Regardless, it was a fantastic concert.

That’s been about it for this month. Though the beginning seems a long way away now lol – its a bit hazy. There’s not a lot happening this coming month. I will probably take a day off somewhere but I usually decide that in the spur of the moment lol.

I’ve just watched a few new PVs released from big named Japanese artists so thought I’d give a little review on each of them.

First up is Gackt‘s new upcoming release “RETURNER ~Yami no Shuuen~”. He hasn’t released a single in quite a while so we’ve all been waiting for this one to come out. First impressions are that its definitely a Gackt video clip and its definitely a Gackt song. There’s a lot of similarities between this song and a couple off of his Crescent album (Mind Forest jumps out at me for this comparison). Gackt is a very dramatic person and so his PVs need to reflect his passion and drama that he evokes in his music. He’s definitely gone back to his rock roots which is where I believe he should stay lol, but that’s just my opinion. The PV clip itself is mostly black in white with some elements of red thrown in to distinguish between the two armies that battle it out in the forest. Gackt is wearing the armour but not the helment (for obvious reasons) of the Japanese warriors and as the song starts its first climax, the war breaks out and Gackt is in the middle of it. Of course he gets to throw his sword around a bit but as is the theme in a lot of his PVs, he’s the one to die (in an overly dramatised fashion lol). We also switch to scenes of Gackt in a flamboyant leather outfit with a ton of tassles, singing in amongst the debris of swords and bodies. The camera seems to do a lot of out-of-focus shots, and its like the cameraman deliberately does this on a regular basis, almost like he’s focused on the image then he suddenly decides to refocus so everything goes blurry for a moment. Its supposed to add to the atmosphere of the video clip I guess, but does get a little annoying. Obviously they used a smoke machine to add further haze and drama to the video as well as spot lighting for his solo part. Overall its a typical Gackt video which is good in one respect as we know and can relate it to Gackt, but on the other hand I think he could do better. The song too is typcially Gackt and as I mentioned earlier it has similar sounds to Mind Forest from his earlier Crescent album, but this may be the style he just prefers when doing something of this ‘epic’ styled sound. Its not a bad video or song, but I think Gackt is starting to fade a little as he’s now starting to repeat himself a bit too often.

L’arc~en~ciel‘s latest song “Seventh Heaven” is definitely a catchy tune. Its something that you can say ‘yeah its definitely a Laruku song’ but unlike Gackt, they use a standard sound rather than a focused one. Hyde is just as flamboyant in his fashion and hairstyle as Gackt is, and the two of them are better at singing than they are at dancing lol. This is definitely a fun song and an enjoyable one, though Hyde needs to work a little more on his Engrish. The PV itself is weird but brings out the fun side of the song. It IS a rock song, don’t worry about that, but its one that you can tap your feet too and dance to even (though preferably not like Hyde does lol). The band performs in the one room with a different colour on every wall. There’s the red wall behind the band, two green strips that run from on either side of the red wall straight down the ground, one yellow wall and one pink wall. The floor itself is white. In amongst this are the dancers which is where the weirdness comes into it. You have people dressed in white that blend into the floor and the band are actually in amongst them to begin with. They do their own coordinated movements. Then it switches to the yellow wall, where we see people dressed in yellow with yellow boxes over their heads. It kind of makes them look like they are stuck to the wall. They too have their own coordinated dance movements. There’s also a couple of girls completely in red that appear behind the band every now and then. The ‘speakers’ in green then come alive and they start doing their own little dance. It then switches to the pink wall where you have the dancers once again in the pink colour with little boxes on their heads. At the end of the clip all of the dancers come out and do their little dance routine all together. Its pretty lively and quite fun, with the great sound the Laruku are famous for. I really have to say I enjoyed the music first, the video second lol. Its a fun clip and the band are known to do weird video clips like this so its not all that unusual to see them do such a colourful PV like this. We just need to do something about Hyde’s sense of fashion and his dancing…

Finally we have a new clip from Pop Princess, Namie Amuro. This is her new song called “Hide & Seek”. The video clip is not too bad, its mostly dancing which is usual for Namie’s dance tunes. In this clip Namie is in an officers uniform (not sure which type of officer though she is carrying a whip!) and she dances with her group of guys in what looks like a warehouse. There’s also shots of her dancing behind yellow tape in sectioned off areas, and we see video screens with images of Namie singing up quite close to the screen. What does throw the clip off a bit is they suddenly go from this in-your-face style to suddenly the softer side of Namie by showing just her with her hair down and smiling while she’s singing. Its nice but it throws off the pace of the whole song. The pace of the song is fairly full on, and I have to admit that I had to listen to it a couple of times before it grew on me. I don’t hate it but it just didn’t strike me as a great song to begin with. The one thing I have to say about Namie is that she is repetitive. Her songs consist of two short verses, a bridge, and the chorus repeated several times over. This is where her songs can get rather tedious and boring after hearing them a few times. All of her songs seem to be quite long, but this is only because the chorus is usually fairly long and repeated often. This doesn’t mean to say that I don’t like her songs, but they just get boring fairly quickly. She’d be better off shortening her songs or throwing in a third verse if she wants it to run so long. The PV is good, but again, I have to say this, Namie just shows very little in the way of effort with her dancing. She’s a good dancer, there’s no doubt about it, but her moves are rather robotic and she doesn’t have much flow in her movements compared to her dancers. Its like she doesn’t really feel the music at all which is how most dancers will work in their choreography by putting their emotions and feeling the energy of the music into their dance routine. Namie just follows whatever is choreographed. She actually dances better when its not choreographed and she just has to move around a bit lol, this is the only time that we see her really getting into the song and the music itself.

On a completely unrelated note, I’m currently off with the flu, though I will probably have to go to work tomorrow anyway considering there’s nobody there that can do a certain part of the job. I think that it will need to be looked at that someone else will have to be trained in that area so that if this happens again where I’m off sick or need to take some time off, then there’s someone who can back us up with the particular job that needs doing.

Yesterday I received the last of the cds I had ordered from overseas. I’ve been ordering a lot in the past few months and unfortunately I’ve put myself into some debt with other things, so there has not been any further orders made and this was the last one to be received.

Tohoshinki, also known as TVXQ and DongBangShinKi, are a korean boy band created by the production giant over there – SM Town. This is their latest release and unfortunately I wasn’t really all that impressed by it. I guess I was hoping for something similar to their release of “Rising Sun”, with a more edgier beat to it than most of their other releases, but because they are a manufactured band, then it was going to be pretty obvious that this was not going to be another edgy tune. Instead we’re given yet another boppy-poppy-happy-go-lucky type tune that sounds like it was aimed at kindy kids. The thing is that this group has potential to move into a higher bracket with their dance moves and great harmonies, yet, they don’t really seem to have any control over what they can do.

I’m kind of hoping that they will be given an opportunity down the track, say when the reach their mid-twenties (which isn’t far away for some band members) that they can move away from SM-Town and create their own style and look. But only time will tell.

This particular CD that I received also contained a DVD which had the PV (promotional video) clip as well as a ‘behind-the-scenes’ clip. While the latter clip showed them messing around and enjoying themselves, the actual PV they seemed rather lacklustre and not terribly enthusiastic. It might have just been the way they did the cilp, but to me they just didn’t seem all that interested in doing the video.

If you’re a big fan, then by all means go ahead and get this CD, otherwise it might be best to wait for them to release another ‘Rising Sun’ type of song (which I’m hoping they will do again one day).