Koharu Kusumi’s Papancake

Broomhead has spurned
the papancakes
that were in
the video

and which
Koharu was probably
having
for breakfast

Forgive him
they were plastic
so stale
and so cold

Papancake PV (★Strawberrie★)
Tsukishima Kirari starring Kusumi Koharu ‘Papancake’ streaming video (Hello!Online)
Papancake PV (I WISH;;)
Tsukishima Kirari starring Kusumi Koharu : ‘Papancake’ (hello!musume)
Super Cute Koahru strikes again! (Wotaku Now!)
http://letslaughhp.wordpress.com/2008/06/30/papancake-pv/ (Let’s Laugh! Hello Project)
Chch-PANCAKE?!?! (Cutie Party)

The Tsukishima Kirari starring Kusumi Koharu (Morning Musume.) PV for “Papancake” appeared yesterday and is an explosive piece of awesome. Strawberrie and Kuno (of Hello!Online) share the PV, and we also have a number of early reactions.

xxrainydayxx loves it.

Nakane (of hello!musume) is surprised by Kusumi’s singing skills and is reminded of an Alice Nine song but is disappointed by the over-yellow background.

Shirow (of Wotaku! Now) likes various aspects of the PV but is disappointed in Kusumi’s non-eating of the papancakes:

The one thing (and one thing only) that annoys me about the video is that she dosent even eat the bloody pancake, throughout the video she flirts with it, pouring over the maple syrup … looking at it wantingly … she even cuts into it with her fork … and then the PV ends! what an anti-climax!!!!

Beth (of Let’s Laugh! Hello Project) feels cheerful after experiencing the PV but also notes Kusumi’s non-eating of the papancakes:

She does stare at it, point at it, even cut it at one point. Does she eat it? No. She doesn’t! xDD.

And Misa (of Cutie Party) is confused.

Yuke Yuke Monkey Dance PV (★Strawberrie★)
行け　行け　モンキーダンス (Dohhh UP!)

Strawberrie shares the new Berryz Koubou PV, which has just been released on the Dohhh UP! web site (direct link also provided above). Interestingly, every single frame has at least one banana in it, including the title screen. This is some insane, seizure-inducing stuff (it’s bananas?) with Berryz in monkey suits half the time, likely to please and enrage in equal proportions.

Papancake Radio Preview

Strawberrie shares a full-length radio rip of the upcoming Tsukishima Kirari starring Kusumi Koharu (Morning Musume.) single … And it’s AMAZING!!! This one definitely gives “Chance!” a run for its money, and I thought that was the best single Koharu’s done since “Happy☆彡”. Koha just gets better and better. Wheeeee….. I’ll be listening to this all day, won’t I?

Memorable Snippets: Part 7 - Okai Chisato “Look Out Chisa!!”

Our own maiZe returns with yet another installment in the delightful Memorable Snippets series. This week’s episode features Okai Chisato and Hagiwara Mai on the set of “Tokaikko Junjou” playing catch with a baseball, probably the same one that Yajima Maimi wisely launches into the distance before it could have exploded and hurt someone. Alas, the ball has already found its first victim, as we see in this clip. Poor Chisato, distracted by her own dancing, fails to notice that the stationary point of the ball’s action functional is a trajectory that includes her head (see Hamilton’s principle). Alas, physics hurts. Blast those Euler-Lagrange equations!

Perfume Loves the World and Portal

Our own broomhead shares the PV for Perfume’s upcoming single, “love the world”, and promises a more in-depth review later. The PV itself is full of playful and mind-warping displays of recursion and iteration, as well as Rubik’s cube awesomeness, so it is no surprise that broomhead (and I) are absolutely in love with it. There is, however, no cake.

“Engrish” T-Shirts 3

Recommended. DJ_MaiMai offers another round of Hello! Project photos featuring questionable text on clothing. The text, however, might not be the most striking feature of these photos. LinLin’s, uh, accessory of choice is not to be missed. I wonder what she’s planning to do with it. Maybe Misa can enlighten us…

Buono! 4th Single - Gachinko de Ikou! (2008-08-20) (Totally Hello! Project)
Buono! 4th Single: Gachinko de Ikou! (★Strawberrie★)
Gachinko de Ikou! (Hello!°C-ute)

Reports bring word of Buono!’s upcoming 4th single, “Gachinko de Ikou!”, which will be Shugo Chara’s new ending theme, to be released in August. It’s great to see Buono! continuing to dominate the landscape, Natsuyaki’s non-scandal notwithstanding.

Let’s Play Another Game

Celestia unleashes a new contest, this one involving identifying Hello! Project PVs. The winner gets $20 to spend at YesAsia.com, or $30 if they answer everything correctly. Looks like a Challenge!

Memorable Snippets: Part 5 - Goto Maki “Sexy Gomaki Penguin”

Our own maiZe returns with Part 5 of the Memorable Snippets series. This installment takes us to Hello! Project Antarctica, where Gomaki penguin and Hitomi penguin challenge physics … and LOSE! (well, who really wins against physics?) … but at least they’ve learned that the force F necessary to overcome friction is mg (µ cos θ - sin θ) [where m is Gomaki penguin's mass, g is gravitational acceleration, µ is the coefficient of friction, and θ is the slope angle], which means that it’s hardest to move Gomaki penguin when she’s lying on a level surface (F being maximal for θ = 0), and easier the more inclined the surface is. Furthermore, since µ_k, the coefficient of kinetic friction, is smaller than µ_s, the coefficient of static friction, it’s even easier to move Gomaki penguin once she’s already moving. In fact, in this case, F turns out to be negative for moving Gomaki penguin, so gravity is doing all the work (not exactly a good thing, since gravity is pulling in the wrong direction).

Physics aside, I must say this is one of the most surreal, amusing, and kawaii clips ever to come out of H!P and should definitely not be missed. ☃

Shocking news: Linlin’s departure. (See warning below.)

Misa reports on some unexpected developments in Hello! Project land. It seems that Linlin’s unorthodox culinary interests have met with rather disastrous consequences. “Shocking” indeed.

Warning: It appears that some people have suffered cardiac arrests upon viewing this post. I apologize for the damage I have unwittingly inflicted. So if you have a weak stomach or a low tolerance for satire, you may wish to avoid clicking the above.

Airi Suzuki - The Evolution of a Voice

kyttyee whips out some heavy-duty speech-processing tools and subjects a sampling of five years of Airi Suzuki’s vocal output to rigorous quantitative analysis, with interesting results. The spectrogram screenshots are a nice touch, and I definitely look forward to seeing more Hello! Project-related scientific analysis (from anyone). ^.^

MilkyWay’s 2nd Single

Strawberrie has news of an upcoming second single for the Kirarin☆Revolution tour-de-force trio MilkyWay, to be released in October. Apparently there is also a contest where fans can design costumes for the single. Not content with exploring just the Mixolydian mode in their last single (and audaciously so!), perhaps this group intends to cover all seven modes in the scale (well, they had a rainbow on the cover of “Anataboshi”, and everything with seven parts is related to everything else … or something … ). Or maybe I’m just overthinking. Anyway…

Wait a minute. That’s not a rainbow … it’s two rainbows connected to a star … or a shooting star with two tails … or a stylized depiction of an electron and a positron annihilating each other as they collide in a burst of gamma radiation. Yeah.