Bikkuri Project

The Japanese are known for having a deep appreciation for their four unique seasons. They express this appreciation through two time honored methods: haiku and ugly h!p costumes. You may find one of those to be an unusual method to commemorate the seasons, but you’ll just have to trust me and my extensive knowledge of Japanese culture on this one. Haiku really are supposed to have a seasonal theme.

When Autumn (aki) rolls around, things start to get a bit chilly, but that won’t stop C-ute! They don’t even let the fact that mustard yellow looks good on absolutely no one slow them down. While Maimi’s plaid short-shorts may be fashionable, they do nothing to protect her rear from the brisk breezes of fall, so she has attached a fuzzy green butt-warmer. It is practical as well as fashionable; doubling as protective padding should she slip on some fallen leaves and land on her ass. From what I hear, it was quite cheap too. She said she found it in a garbage can in a nice little neighborhood called Sesame Street. Say Maimi, next time you’re there can you ask about my friend Oscar? I haven’t heard from him for a while, and I’m starting to get worried.

Next up, Rika Ishikawa is looking festive for the holiday season, Winter (fuyu). According to a recent interview, her motto is, “if less is more, then more is even more than that, and that’s better, right?” She explained that she started with a nice beaded evening gown, but it just wasn’t enough. It needed something. It needed to be festooned with gigantic poofy bows, taffeta flounces of alternating colors, and a couple of leftover tartan kilts from her latest photobook “Alo Hello Rika Ishikawa in Scotland.” To finish off, she looked for a necklace, but they were all tangled together in a clumpy mess. “More is more” she thought, humming to herself and fastening the whole thing around her neck.

Ah Spring (haru). Here Ayaya demonstrates that nothing says ‘Spring’ quite like a gigantic butterfly perched on your head (for best results butterfly should be larger than head). How nice to see that she’s been taking fashion tips from Rika and has chosen to festoon one of the legs of her pants in floppy multicolored bows which doesn’t look ridiculous at all. It looks so not ridiculous that I almost didn’t notice that her shiny silver leather pants (there’s four words that should never appear together in a sentence) seem to have been violently sprayed with blood recently. You know, between the gore and the butterfly, the ruffly almost-vest isn’t even worth commenting on.

On a hot Summer (natsu) day, there’s nothing better than a nice dip in the pool. How very clever of Maki to wear what is clearly a bikini directly over her old T-shirt. Throw on a few belts and some red streamers and the whole audience is fooled into thinking that she’s wearing a concert costume. The protruding fringe of her bloomers making it look like she’s one of those little kids who wears a diaper under her swimsuit is a small price to pay to be able to hit the pool immediately after the concert. Sure, most people in this situation would wear the swimsuit under their clothes, but Maki is being a non-conformist, and you’ve got to respect her for that.

I’ll end with my own haiku.

Is Rika crazy?

I think she wants to eat me

I’m afraid. Send help!

Usually I try to space out posts in the same ‘series’ but I’m too excited about having finished this to wait. I realize that anyone reading this is probably significantly less excited about the completion of my top 20 list of h!p songs than I am, but I get some kind of weird satisfaction from composing well thought-out lists, so I’m pretty proud of myself. It’s the science major thing again. Yay for organizing data!!

First, links to the past posts in this series. If you are looking for explanation as to why I’ve chosen a particular song, check the appropriate link.

Berryz- http://celestia-414.livejournal.com/18497.html#cutid1

Morning Musume- http://celestia-414.livejournal.com/15062.html#cutid1

C-ute- http://celestia-414.livejournal.com/11446.html#cutid1

Matsuura Aya- http://celestia-414.livejournal.com/10287.html#cutid1

Shuffles- http://celestia-414.livejournal.com/20907.html#cutid1

Minimoni- http://celestia-414.livejournal.com/16188.html#cutid1

Melons/CountryMusume/W http://celestia-414.livejournal.com/12462.html#cutid1

And the entry before this one is Maki, VUDen, and the Gumis

THE LIST

20. Iroppoi Jirettai, Morning Musume

19. Jump, C-ute

18. Say Yeah! Motto Miracle Night, Morning Musume

17. Ai no Sono Touch my Heart, Otomegumi

16. Crazy About You, Minimoni

15. Zutto Suki de ii desuka, Matsuura Aya

14. Goodbye Natsuo, Matsuura Aya

13. Masaara Blue Jeans, C-ute

12. Aruiteru, Morning Musume

11. The Peace, Morning Musume

10. Koshi Teru Toki wa Itsumo, Berryz Kobou

9. Shabondama, Morning Musume

8. First Kiss, Aa!

7. Souda We’re Alive, Morning Musume

6. How do you like Japan, Morning Musume

5. Munasawagi Scarlet, Berryz Kobou

4. Tokkaiko Junjou, C-ute

3. Ai Araba It’s All Right, Morning musume

2. Koko ni Iruzee, Morning Musume

1. I Wish, Morning Musume

Whew. Yeah, there’s a lot of Morning Musume in there, but there’s a reason they’re my favorite. If I was any good at image-making I would make myself some kind of image of congratulations, but I might just be the most tec
hnologically incompetent blogger out there, hence the live journal rather than self-created blog. Instead, a totally unedited but still nice image of a couple of my favorite girls to cap off the entry.

Today’s costume hall of shame can be summed up in one word, a word which I personally feel should never be associated with Hello Project in any way. “Yeeeehaw!!!”

To start us off, Berryz, dressed as proper cowboys. At first glance, it’s not so bad. I’m not a fan of cowboy costumes being worn by anyone other than actual cowboys or 4-year-olds on Halloween, but I guess these are sort of cute. What really bugs meare the tiny hats. They’re supposed to be cute, but they remind me of clown hats. You know how clowns always have accessories that are the wrong size, right? Oversized shoes and bowties, cars and hats that are too small, etc. Worse, the clown with the tiny cowboy hatis notthe happy fun clown. He’s the sad kind of clown. He’s the clown that’s always getting pied in the face, or,at therodeo, chased by the raging bull. While I worry that the Ghengis Khan song is some kind of cruel joke on the Berryz, let’s not demote them to “sad clown” just yet.

Excuse me. Miss Running Deer? I hate to break this to you, but you’re not actually an indian priestess. You’re really a Japanese girl named Maki Goto. You see, there is no real tribe of Native Americans who make their traditional clothing out of sparkly brown camouflage fabric. Try to take it easy on the peyote next time, okay?

Ayaya is hereby crowned Queen of the Rodeo! She’s not just wearing a costume inspired by rodeo queens: I’m worried that she might have assaulted an actual rodeo queen and stolen her dress before this photo was taken. Or maybe she only stole half of a dress and made the other half herself, because I’m pretty sure this is actually the right and left half of two similar, but slightly different dresses sewn together. The hem is way shorter on one side, and there’s a seam down the middle. Good thing this outfit couldn’t get any worse.

Hoo! This little black number would be hot, if she hadn’t retained the heavily fringed arm warmers. At least all of the fringe sort of blended in with the equally fringe-happy rodeo queen dress. With all of the fringing concentrated on her arms, at best it looks like she’s wearing a silly minicape, and at worst it looks like she has a very serious arm-hair problem.

Well, that there’s perti’near it for the costume hall of shame rodeo. I’m gonna go ride off into one’a them sunsets now. Yeeeeehaw!

Since more and more bad costumes seem to keep piling up (and I swear, I’m trying to be lenient), The Costume Hall of Shame has left me with many questions. Mostly, they are along the lines of “Why??” and “Are they blind??” (the answers to which are “see the answer to question 2″ and “yes”), but I often find myself left with questions that are more difficult to answer than these two. Perhaps you will have more luck with them than I have.

What the hell is on Maki’s face?

What the hell is on Rika’s head? Is the costume a homage to the famous Princess Leia/gold bikini scene from Star Wars? Is Rika a fan of Star Wars or is she just hoping to appeal to Star Wars geeks in the audience?

Is Ayaya trying to appeal to Renaissance fair geeks in the audience, or is she actually on her way to slay a dragon?

If you have to take a second look to make sure a girl is wearing an actual costume underneath her boas, is she wearing too many boas? Is there such a thing as too many boas in the h!p world?

How about too many plaids? Is that why Yossie is so angry here?

Did Sayu just realize she forgot to pull her napkin out of her shirt-front after her lunch break? Does she think it’s okay to leave it that way because her napkin happened to match her bloomers? Why is she even wearing bloomers? Is that why Yossie is so angry?

Where will Maki’s crazy crochet-happy grandmother strike next!?!? (just try to tell me that this costume didn’t start out life as an afghan or table cloth made by an insane octogenarian)

I am attempting to institute a poll feature in this blog. I know it’s a dangerous endeavor because a poll that no one votes in is a failed poll. I’m quite scared of failure, but I’m going to push through that to put up this poll. If you don’t vote in it I might be afraid to ever try anything again, so I’ll probably spend the rest of my life hiding under my bed. If you don’t want that on your conscience, you should vote.

We all know that there are some strange h!p promotional videos out there, and with this poll I’m trying to determine which one is the very weirdest. I’ve taken the liberty of selecting 8 PVs that score highly on the bizarrity scale (measured in wtf’s? per minute). I’ve included links to the videos in case you aren’t familiar as well as short commentary about why I picked them. These aren’t PVs that I hate, just some that I find…unusual. I’m excluding Minimoni PVs because they’re aimed specifically at kids, and stuff aimed at kids is always kind of special. In no particular order…

Miki Fujimoto- Romantic Ukare Mode http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GscUXNsVMg&feature=related
Miki emerges from some kind of cryogenic chamber and proceeds to play with magical rhythmic gymnastic equipment, sparkly grass, and a golf flag. Includes lots of creepy shots of her in the pod thing staring at you.

Morning Musume- The Peace http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8zX21IDtm0
You’re probably familiar with this PV, but have you ever really thought about it? It’s a bunch of girls dancing around and cleaning a men’s restroom (presumably on a ship), emerging from toilet stalls, and, in the grade finale, the toilets start emitting light and the entire restroom turns into a disco paradise.

(Sort of)Melon Kinenbi- Onegai Miwaku no Target Mango Pudding Mix http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJYSivO9pEs&feature=related
I don’t know if this actually counts as a Melon Kinenbi PV because they’re not in it, but I guess their voices are. Four black men lip sync to a Melon Kinenbi song. It seemed like a terrible joke…but it wasn’t.

KiraPika- Hana wo Puun http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DpHJ5VQDSg
Koharu and Mai come out of a giant nose at the beginning of the PV, and then it goes to hang behind them, dripping snot. I think that whoever made the PV had some kind of nose fetish, because they’re everywhere.

Abe Natsumi- Koi no telephone goal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5Ircnsw1qY
Mild mannered Nacchi by day, evil purple creature fighting master of disguise by night. At one point she uses her magical ring to turn into a stereotypical Mexican, complete with giant sombrero, maracas, and a mustache.

Aya Matsuura- Doki Doki love mail http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrZ1Pf_ktNA
There are too many weird and seemingly unrelated scenes here for me to talk about, so just a few of the stranger ones: giant Ayaya frolicking through a city like Godzilla, Ayaya’s magical remote control that causes Tokyo Tower to blast off into space like a rocket, and robot Ayaya who has a shiny red bulb for a nose and does homework.

W- Aa ii na http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBldNjaopEE
The weird/creepiest part of this PV is the monstrous koi thing that keeps popping up. I also like the part where they calmly march through an apartment where some family is having dinner.

Maki Goto- Uwasa no sexy guy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS_F7oF_I9o
The video seems pretty standard/futuristic at first. It’s not a goofy song, so why should I expect a goofy video? Sure, the scene with her flying around in the devil costume is weird, but…. Wait! Is Maki holding a baby pig? Why yes, yes she is, and it’s doing the background vocals.

What are you waiting for?? Get voting!

The first part of this entry came out just a smidge crazier-sounding than I intended it to, but just in case you were wondering what really goes on in my head…

If you’ve been reading this blog you probably know that I’ve been having a dilemma about picking my top 10 h!p songs. It’s just too hard to choose! Well, today I’ve made a breakthrough(jibun wo buchiyabure)! Sorry, couldn’t resist. Anyway, “So Celestia”, I thought to myself (actually, I used my real name) “What should you do when you’re faced with a big task and you’re feeling overwhelmed?” “Break it into pieces!” I replied to myself excitedly. After treating myself to a bowl of ice cream as a reward for my good answer, I sat down to write this entry.

What I’m going to do is pick my top songs by artist and then attempt to compile those lists into a definitive top 10 later. For these features I’m going to go with the top 10 for Morning Musume, which I anticipate will be the hardest, top 5 for Berryz, Matsuura Aya, Cute, Minimoni, and the shuffle groups, and the top 1 or 2 songs for artists that either don’t have much material out or that I don’t like many of their songs: Aa!, W, Gomattou, VUDen, Melon Kinenbi, Goto Maki, Athena and Robikerrotsu, and Country Musume. All other artists/groups: I just don’t like any of their songs enough to profile them on these lists.

Now that the explanation is out of the way, my first top 5 list is Matsuura Aya, because I’ve been listening her songs a lot lately.

5.Doki Doki Love Mail- Ayaya’s first single is a good showcase of her considerable vocal talent at a young age. It isn’t overly complex or especially daring, but I find the melody to be quite pleasant on the ears. She looks very young and fresh-faced on the cover and in the PV(which is cutely bizarre in true Ayaya style). In general, I just find this song to be a refreshing break if I’m becoming overwhelmed by super hyper or angry or cutesy songs.

4.Momoiro Kataomoi- Proves that Aya knows how to heap on the cute in spades. The main reason this song made the list isn’t the actual song itself, but the PV. It’s one of my favorite PV’s out of all of Hello Project, and if you haven’t seen it, you need to watch it right now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye0_7ogWawI Love the strange little peach puppets, love the Pippi Longstockings pigtails, love the fact that the PV has a real story to it, love her singing into a peach can instead of a microphone, I even love the overwhelming pinkness of everything. I have to laugh at the part where she yells “Peach” and the towel falls off and then she continues singing anyway. The song? Yeah, it’s fine, but I suspect that it could be a really bad song and I would still love it if it had this PV.

3.LOVE Namida Iro- An Ayaya song that has come to my attention mostly because of someone else singing it. Namely Yossie. Take a look! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTrnAYEAO3E

The part I’m talking about it around 3:05-4:30, though the whole New Years Special is worth watching, in my opinion. Ahaha Yossie. So funny. In all seriousness though, it’s another very nice and well-sung song by Aya, with an especially catchy melody. I like the part at the end of the last chorus where she sings the last “Nai!” really high and clear. I also enjoyed watching the 5^th gen auditionees struggle with that note. =P

2.Zutto suki de ii desuka?- I named this as one of the top 10 songs that get stuck in my head, and that’s a big part of why it’s so high on this list. There are so many dreary h!p ballads out there that a ballad really has to be something special to contend for spots among my favorite songs, and I think that this one is. I like how the melody kind of flows up and down. It’s poignant and powerful, yet gentle enough to avoid seeming overdone, and the key change toward the end is great. We need more key-changes in h!p songs. I might not have taken such notice of the song if I hadn’t watched a live performance of it. That was the first time that Ayaya really blew me away with her singing and expressiveness, especially from the key change to the end.

1.GOOD BYE natsuo- This song is simply kick-ass! That’s not a term I usually use for h!p songs, but I can think of no better term for Good Bye Natsuo. Just look at the “angry” cover picture. Sweet little Ayaya looks seriously pissed, and I like it. It’s kind of unusual to see an angry song from Ayaya, so I really enjoy hearing what her voice can do with a song like this. She’s rolling her R’s (yay Shabondama-like) and hitting all those long held notes perfectly. It’s just great. This song couldn’t be sung, and still sound good, by anyone with lesser vocal ability than Ayaya either. The song is relentless, and it must be incredibly tiring to sing it. As a final bit of praise, I also really love the little bullet ricochet sound effects. Hopefully you know what I’m talking about there. In summary, not typical Matsuura, but too cool not to be my favorite!