Author Archive

stylejapan Doesn’t Want The GIRL NEXT DOOR

girlnextdoor-seedsofdreamThe Girl Next Door Screeching Badly Sung Notes Into Your Ears While You Try to Concentrate (stylejapan)

I always enjoy Noah’s rants. His opinions are never ones that I fully agree with. I remember when he speculated whether Hamasuki Ayumi’s NEXT LEVEL should be considered progression in her career or just an attempt to be relevant. He constantly compares the latest release from a musical act to the rest of their discography. I don’t think it is an agreeable position, but he is consistent with his logic of why something sucks or not.

As for GIRL NEXT DOOR, he doesn’t obfuscate his opinion, claiming that they are detestable. He accuses the music and their lyrics of being redundant. Their lyrics are also labeled as cheesy. Their image is criticized for being overly manufactured and overstated. While he admits that lead singer CHISA can hit high notes, he charges that she can’t put the appropriate emotions behind them.

At the end of the rant, he questions why this band is so popular. He concludes that the connection to avex, and thus status as the “in” band, is the only reason. It is difficult to agree or concede to that argument, but at least it makes sense considering everything else he says about GIRL NEXT DOOR.

I personally think that Noah is correct with his criticisms about the music, image and feel of GIRL NEXT DOOR. However, I can’t write off their popularity simply to being an avex group. I think there it takes at least some level of talent to being as bland, inoffensive and familiar as possible, while still being interesting and relevant. Considering the name and the implications behind “girl next door,” it shouldn’t be surprising that this band is this way. It’s not for me, but I can understand their appeal.

New Staff Members, New Theme, New Changes

iw-logoWe would like to thank everyone that applied to join the staff. This was the first time that we had any sort of open application system and none of us were really sure how it’d turn out. However, we got a nice response from the community and this is very encouraging, especially considering the applications we got from readers of the site without blogs.

We have seven new staff members from the application process. We are hoping that this will expand both the amount and the content of the blogs we cover here.

For now, we won’t be accepting any new applications.

Also, we have a new theme! We will be adding more features over the next few weeks, so please be patient if the site randomly goes down (but that shouldn’t happen).

For the past two themes, we’ve relied on Wordpress Extend to find a theme that we’d like. But this time, we made our own theme! Yes, that “designed by the IW Staff” in the footer is not a lie. We’ve had contributions from nearly every member of the staff to make this theme, so it was a true team effort.

We also got several header submissions, and we love them a lot! So special thanks to johpan, liam and nefuritamika for these submissions. We are still willing to accept any new header submissions, so follow the directions in this post if you’d like to add any. Hopefully it’ll be easier now that it’s obvious how the headers will be implemented.

One thing we were concerned about was the Blogroll. You may have noticed how gigantic it was and how much of the sidebar it used to take up. We are moving the Blogroll to its own page. Right now, the list is particularly out of date. If your blog/site is listed incorrectly, please email us at admins@intlwota.com and inform us. If you’d like to be removed from this list, let us know. If you have a new blog or a blog that is not on this list, please email us or use this Wotatalk thread. We are considering the idea of expanding this list by adding fan sites, message boards, wikis, etc., so if you feel that your website is relevant, email us with a link.

As you can see under the new Categories Sidebar (which you can use to see the latest posts of these categories), we are linking to Tokyograph. If you’d like to suggest some sort of affiliation or link, we will consider it. Same email as always.

We are changing our comments policy for the interim. Previously, you had to be a registered user to comment. The main reason for this was to prevent the comments from being spammed to hell. We are now pretty confident that A) that won’t happen and B) we have enough active staff members to moderate undesirable comments. So now you don’t have to be registered to comment; and if this works out it’ll become a permanent change.

We would encourage any sort of suggestion or idea for International Wota. In our discussions with the applicants, we realized that we could be doing a better job of communicating with both bloggers and non-bloggers. Either email admins@intlwota.com or use Wotatalk, which we plan on revitalizing in the near future.

A Massive Amount of Perfume Concert Photos

What is disco? (What is disco?)
DISco Disco Disco! YoYogi caps

The What is disco MIX opening (watch it in HD!!) is really something else. Although by the end of it, it had me wondering what Minority Report would be like if Perfume were the three precog girls. Anyways, this video has got hanahorizon so enthralled that they changed the name of their blog because of it. This post is loaded with GIFs and screencaps from this video. There is a LOT to load here, but once it loads it is an oh so great collection.

And then there is more. The next post is an even bigger collection, this time of the entire Disco Disco Disco! concert. hanahorizon also talks about the concert itself here.

STEREO NiGHT; And noelle’s Electro Covers

STEREO NiGHT
can you hear my radio? (noelle – LOVE ELECTRO)

STEREO NiGHT is a LJ community that is similar to the contemode and D-Topia LJ communities that we’ve previously talked about here. The contemode community is dedicated to Nakata Yasutaka-related acts (capsule, Perfume) and D-Topia are those under the D-Topia label (Aira Mitsuki, Saori@Destiny). Well STEREO NiGHT is for the Japanese electronic music that doesn’t fit under those labels. Recent entries from this community talk about cosmeticROBOT, KU-TYU-BUNKAI, and SAWA.

But there is one entry that I’m singling out. Someone, who is totally not Selryam, talks about noelle in a recent entry. Sel describes noelle as sounding like Perfume; although a comment left by limejam says her voice is reminiscent of Aira Mitsuki, which I think is more accurate. She has released two albums, LOVE ELECTRO and LOVE ELECTRO2, which are both cover albums. There are covers of MEG and even Chara, but what stands out to me are “Yumegiwa Last Boy” from LOVE ELECTRO and STROBOLIGHTS from LOVE ELECTRO2, both of which are some personal favorites from SUPERCAR.

appears: Videos That Don’t Even Pretend To Dance

From weak to WTF: a triumvirate of bad choreography (appears)

appears takes a look at few music videos that have had some purposely bad choreography. With Aika Mitsuki’s “BARBiE BARBiE,” acting like a doll suits the song and concept of the video, but that doesn’t equate great dancing and viewing. MEG’s “SKIN” is not as complicated as MEG makes it look. And finally, Onitsuka Chihiro’s “X” is just out of control. I don’t know what the lyrics for “X” translate to, but it shouldn’t be difficult to figure out based on the interpretive dancing of Chihiro. To that point, Anna points out the dangers of “unprotected dance.”

KAT-TUN Concert Reports

KAT-TUN Domucon Concert Report- 5/16 (Saturday) (KAT-TUN 2 Me)
KAT-TUN Tokyo Dome Report: May 16th, 2009 (Never Ending Music Power)

Our own Celestia has been doing more concert reports as of late and this entry talks about KAT-TUN’s May 16 concert at the Tokyo Dome. If you remember, KAT-TUN has been doing eight (originally seven) concerts in eight consecutive days at the Tokyo Dome, with the last day being tomorrow (the 22nd). Celestia’s recounting of the story is a fun (and long) read. She has a lengthy description of Kamenashi Kazuya’s solo performance of “1582,” which has Kame taking bumps, levitating and flying around, fireworks, Kame getting a “shower” from the Juniors and god knows what else. And to think he has to do that every night! With so much going on in this concert, I’m surprised Celestia had such a good memory of it all.

And wouldn’t you know it, another blogger connection. Seca from Never Ending Music Power also attended this concert. Seca doesn’t go over the concert performance by performance but is still very detailed on the ones she did select to write about. Of course, another description of Kamenashi’s “1582″ is in this and it sounds just as ridiculous, naughty and epic as Celestia described it.

[Blogs] Noah Disappointed With Latest tommy heavenly6 Album

Tommy heavenly6: I KILL MY HEART (stylejapan)

Noah reviews tommy heavenly6’s I KILL MY HEART and condemns it for being a dull and lackluster attempt. He says that each individual track essentially follows the exact same formula. Noah contends that there is nothing dynamic about this album and, considering that is it by tommy heavenly6, that is very disappointing. I’ve always considered Kawase Tomoko to be dynamic, perhaps above being particularly talented.

LJ Community Dedicated to D-TOPIA

D-TOPIA
D-topia Summary #2: May 14 2009

D-TOPIA is a Livejournal community, similar to the contemode LJ community, that follows the D-topia label and the artists underneath that label. The three main acts under D-Topia are Aira Mitsuki, SAORI@DESTINY and Chinatsu Miyabi. 80_pan was also there but they’ve since disbanded. With the “D-topia Summary #2: May 14 2009″ entry, kimivalkyrie has a farewell to 80_pan, future appearances for Aira Mitsuki to promote BARBiE BARBiE and what SAORI@DESTINY has been up to.

[Blogs] Shuffle And Repeat Takes a Deeper Look at Kuroki Meisa

Kuroki Meisa – Like This (Shuffle and Repeat)
hellcat

josh012595 has recently done two reviews for Kuroki Meisa; the first is of her digital single Like This and the second for her first album hellcat.

He was reluctant to try out her song “Like This” because of preconceived notions based on other actresses trying to break into the music business. Upon hearing it though, he was surprised that it was a cool track and that Meisa had a smooth singing voice.

With that, josh went and tried out hellcat. The album starts out with an exciting opening track in “Hear The Alarm?” that establishes the mood for Meisa being fun and pretty sexy. The album doesn’t end up being a bunch of repetitive dance tracks, as “Criminal” throws has a rock feel to it. josh likes this song so much that he says “not even a single milli-second was a waste of time.” Granted, if we actually broke down the song into milliseconds, I’m positive that listening to the same millisecond over and over and over would be a waste of time… What? Anyways, another stand-out track is “SEX,” which lives up to its name as josh calls it “probably the dirtiest jpop track since Namie Amuro’s ‘WANT ME, WANT ME’.”

[Blogs] Gold Hikari Has Review of OLIVIA – Sailing free

Sailing free (GoldHikari)

Die reviews OLIVIA’s Sailing free, which was released last month and was OLIVIA’s first single since October 2006’s Wish/Starless Night. “Sailing free” has a rock feel to it and Olivia’s vocals impress Die. Die says that OLIVIA is channeling a little bit of Anna Tsuchiya in this song, and I’m hoping that does not mean the fear-inducing Anna. The b-sides “Love Love Love” and “Undress” don’t have the same effect on Die, although he does note that piano ballad “Love Love Love” is completely different from the “Sailing free.”