KAT-TUN 2 Me

KAT-TUN has been on the cover of just about every magazine in Japan lately (a only a slight exaggeration), with some cover shots being better than others. What was up with the one where they were all holding lemons? For some reason, this one kind of made me laugh. It’s not so terrible on first glance, but if you look at everyone individually…

Kame (is the least funny looking in this)Top of the pyramid! I am the K of KAT-TUN, and therefore better than all of you. I am also too awesome for facial expressions.

Taguchi: Hey guys! I think there’s a camera over there! Guys! Do you see it too???

Jin: Uggg. Kame is touching me. Okay, just breathe and try to smile. It’ll be over soon. Does this look like a real smile? (no Jin, it does not. I love your genuine smiles/smirks, but your fake smile is just goofy. Stop doing that)

Maru: Wha? Oh sorry, nodded off there. Can I go back to bed yet?

Ueda: Grrr. Baring my teeth like this is sexy, right? It must be, because I sure do it a lot.

Koki: Huh?

Oh no. I can’t bear to let this entry end on a bad picture of Jin. We need a recent good picture! clicksies for larger.

Ahhh. I feel better now,

~Celestia~

First, I’d like to congratulate KAT-TUN on their unusually high (even for them) weekend sales bringing the weekly index number for ‘Lips’ up to 185,211! That should easily put ‘Lips’ above ‘Yorokobi no Uta’, and probably slightly below Keep the Faith’s first week. Depending on the modifier used, ‘Lips’ sold about 320,000-340,000 copies in its first week! Go team!!

Now the real reason for this post (and that title). I’m afraid that there is more Arashi talk in the KAT-TUN blog. Why oh why can I never stick to my self-selected topic? It seems that after writing a bit about Ninomiya I was inspired to produce an OPV. Of course, I can’t help but share it with you all. It’s really funny (I promise), entirely due to Nino, not my video making skills, and so it’d probably be worth your while to watch it even if you aren’t an Arashi fan. Oh, and there is a KAT-TUN scene with Nino poking at Kame from behind during the Best Artist awards talk, so there is a (small) connection to the actual topic of this blog.

Ja jan!

If you don’t know Arashi and you are confused, I’ll try to clarify a few things. If you’re familiar with the group, you can probably skip all of this. Some of the scenes (the one with the smoke, the one with Nino on stage by himself (the crowd called him out for a personal encore without the other members), and the one with the surprise “encore” waiting for the group in their dressing room) are from a segment on Arashi’s show at the time called Ni no Arashi where he plays pranks on the other members. In one scene near the beginning, MatsuJun is chasing Nino around the stage because he has been instructed to be his personal backup dancer for part of the song, and Nino, of course, is not making it easy on him. If you don’t know how to recognize Nino, during the jumping on the bed scene, he’s the one in the pink shirt and white headband, he’s wearing the red shirt that’s not a polo in all the scenes from the “Happiness” PV, if you couldn’t tell, he’s the one in the green during the ’surprise encore’, and all other cases, just look for the guy groping, poking, distracting, teasing, or otherwise harassing the other people on the screen.

Oh, and please be nice. I’m unjustifiably proud of this, though I’m sure it is of quite poor quality in the eyes of the experienced OPV fan, or maybe just in the eyes of everyone but me. Ah well, I had fun making it.

…And Scene,

~Celestia~

I really enjoyed this performance. The fans kind of get in the way, but everyone sang really really well, and it looks like the guys are having fun out there. I enjoyed Koki and Maru being all buddy-buddy and Jin’s bouncing around at the very end. You can really tell when they’re singing this live vs only doing the verses live (this one is all live) because Jin holds the notes in the chorus longer than everybody else (which sounds awesome) btw. Yay for this!

~Celestia~

The title sounds like the name of a store that sells male slutty undies (Victoria’s secret for men), but, unfortunately the real meaning isn’t quite that exciting. I played the ‘Johnny’s’ ranking game in the American Wota distractions section, and it was pretty fun. Since my Johnny’s knowledge is limited to Arashi, KAT-TUN (duh), Nakai from SMAP (because he does Utaban) and Yamapi and Ryo from NEWS (because they’re s Jin’s friends) the rest of the list was basically just me deciding who was the hottest. Have you ever played that game where you sit in a crowded place, like a mall, with your friends and you rank the guys who walk by according to how hot they are? Yeah, it was kind of like that.

Here’s the List:

1. Akanishi Jin (KT)

2. Kamenashi Kazuya (KT)

3. Ninomiya Kazunari (Arashi)

4. Matsumoto Jun (Arashi)

5. Tanaka Koki (KT)

6. Ueda Tatsuya (KT)

7. Ohno Satoshi (Arashi)

8. Taguchi Junnosuke (KT)

9. Nakamaru Yuichi (KT)

10. Yamashita Tomohisa (NEWS)

It’s not surprising that all of KAT-TUN is in the top 10, and neither is it surprising that dear JinJin ended up on top of the list. You might be surprised to see some of Arashi ranking over much of KAT-TUN though, this being a KAT-TUN blog, but I can explain! I absolutely adore the way Nino is constantly messing with the other members during performances while somehow managing to wear the facial expression of a blameless little angel, so he had to be high on the list. Matsujun has been steadily moving up the rankings due to my growing appreciation for his prettiness, and Ohno is so very sweet and so very weird at the same time, not to mention talented. The thing about Arashi is that while I love THEM I don’t really care for much of their music. With KAT-TUN, I love both them and their music. My folders are full of Arashi talking and goofing off, but they’re full of actual performances of KAT-TUN. The other reason for my preference is that Arashi makes me smile and giggle, but only KAT-TUN makes me swoon. I want to go out for a couple of beers with Arashi, but I want to do KAT-TUN.

Thinking about KAT-TUN in comparison to Arashi has recently made me very thankful for the entire Johnny’s system. If you’re familiar with Johnny’s you probably know that KAT-TUN is not quite the love-fest that is Arashi (watch their “happiness” pv if you don’t know what I’m talking about there). If it weren’t for the Johnny’s system, I suspect that the group would have broken up 10 times over by now. I’m not saying that they all hate each other, but there have definitely been times when some members were not on speaking terms, and it’s no secret that fights were not uncommon when they first started out. Kame mentioned in a recent interview that all 6 of them really hate to lose, himself and Akanishi in particular. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that that is not a formula for good group dynamics. They are still a group though, because to quit KAT-TUN would likely mean to quit Johnny’s, and to be a male idol who has quit Johnny’s likely means being unemployable, no matter how handsome or talented you are. And so, KAT-TUN continues to produce amazing music as a group today, not because they all like each other so much that they spend their free time between concerts cuddling and skip around holding hands *cougharashicough*, but because they need each other. The Johnny’s system forces them to get over whatever squabbles they’re having and work together, and as a fan, I’m just fine with that.

Sincerely,

~Celestia~

Woo hoo! On its first day charting ‘Lips’ has come in 1st (of course) with an index number of 86,096 which puts them at first day sales of 150,000-160,000 copies depending on what kind of modifier you use. The index number is above “Yorokobi no Uta”, but slightly below that of ‘Keep the Faith’, though only slightly, and I think that ‘Keep the Faith’ was a better song, or at least one that was marketable to a wider range of people. I’m going to go ahead and say that KAT-TUN’s popularity is continuing to grow, and this single is shaping up to be another huge success for them.

I’m also a big fan of the female side of the music-focused idol industry (hello project), and I will support them to the bitter end, but I’ve got to say, it feels good to be able to cheer for the winning team once in a while.

You know, it’s been said many a time before, but it’s amazing that Johnny’s, a franchise that was started so long ago, has such popularity today. I mean, take the old example of a group like SMAP, still topping the charts after how many years has it been now? In America, a group or singer is lucky if they can maintain top popularity for a year or two, but these groups release chart topping singles over and over again. It’s kind of astounding, and the Johnny’s franchise has only been increasing in popularity recently.

Number of Johnny’s Singles in the Yearly Top 20 for….
2002- 0
2003- 3
2004- 3
2005- 4
2006- 9 (including 3 of KT and 1 w/Kame)
2007- 9 (including 5 of the top 10)

I see no reason to believe that 2008 can’t be even better.

All the best,
~Celestia~

Yaaaay for getting to watch the making of ‘Lips’! It wasn’t quite as entertaining as ‘Keep the Faith’, but there were a lot of great moments. More importantly, the guys were all looking much happier and healthier than they did in the KTF making video. Everyone was kind of tired and cranky in that one, especially by the end. Kame hardly cracked a smile when they were making ‘Keep the Faith’, and he’s one of the most entertaining members this time around. Well, maybe Junno was a bit tired in this one,and I’m kind of concerned about how everyone seemed to be choking on whatever was spraying out of the mics at the end, but still. I’ve embedded the 2^nd part for you because it’s my favorite. You can easily find the rest on Veoh.

Here’s my highlights!

-Kame/Koki singing other Johnny’s songs was my very favorite part. They both sounded really good singing acapella. Usually Koki sings in kind of a rough, aggressive way, so I was surprised to hear him singing Arashi so sweetly. Just another reminder that, yes, they all really can sing, even the ones who aren’t the ’singers’. It starts at 2:44 of part 2 (the part on this page), and you really must watch it.

-Jin can exude more sex appeal by just opening his eyes at the camera than most of the others can by gesturing and posing their little hearts out.

-Taguchi when examining the microphones: “I’m glad that one’s not mine” *points at Nakamaru’s*

-I never realized there was so much pink in the costumes/set. There’s pink everywhere!

-Interesting set-up they have with Kame and Jin always in the front and the rest of the group rotating behind them. I had assumed they were all rotating. Gee, I wonder who the two most popular group members are?

-2^nd favorite sequence is when Koki, Jin, and Kame try their hand at lypsyncing Maru’s beatboxing part. Kame is soooooo bad at it, and it’s hilarious. Maru was horrified. It starts at 6:57 of part 2, but you can see how bad it really was better at 9:40 of part 3.

-Speaking of Kame, when he’s not making scary faces at the camera, the eye-makeup just makes him look pretty.

-Jin likes his megaphone. Lol.

-Mysterious hands are always reaching out from off screen to fix Maru’s hair.It happens from 2:15-2:22 and again from 4:44-4:47. He doesn’t even seem to notice. Wooo! Spooky!

-Koki is really hyper during this making of. Attempts to spin a chair are met with much more success than the wheelbarrow from KTF.

-Does Jin say, “Oh my God, Akanishi deshita” when he walks out at the end? Probably not, but that’s what I heard. If that is what he said, it’s hilarious, and if not, I’m going to go ahead and pretend that he did because it amuses me.

-Maru and Ueda are super cute together. <3

Naturally, having an essay due in two hours prompts me to update BOTH of my blogs today. Oh man. Will anyone pay me to write stuff if I flunk out of college because of my blogging addiction? No? Better write that essay then. Continuing with the new tradition of signing off on my blog entries:

Oh my God, Celestia deshita!

Hello and welcome to my brand spanking new KAT-TUN blog. This is essentially an outlet for my fangirly tendancies, and as such I can promise neither deep and insightful posts nor frequent updates. What I can promise is eye candy, giddy ranting, and a fair amount of humor. I should start off by mentioning that I did not make any of my icons. Unfortunately, I collected them before I made this journal, without any real intent of using them, so I didn’t keep track of where they came from. My apologies to their creators. Aren’t they cute though? Now, on to the actual post!

KAT-TUN is arguably the coolest group in Johnny’s. I don’t mean that they’re the best (even though they are). I mean that they have the coolest image. Their music is almost always infused with beatboxing, rap, and rock sounds which pushes it a bit away from the traditional pop sound. Their post-debut costumes lean more towards ‘casual punk’ than ‘brightly colored/sparkly leisure suit thing’, the standard uniform of Johnny’s groups. Someone unfamiliar with KAT-TUN who had perhaps only seen post-debut pictures and performances would probably assume that they really are those ‘cooler than though’ guys you see on the screen. Kakkoi to the core. What I mean by cool here is the complete absence of dorkiness. However, that illusion is easily shattered, especially if you watch any sort of footage from their days as Johnny’s Jrs.

Nakamaru is too much like a regular guy to be cool. He lacks that unapproachable super-star air that the others have. Pretty Princess Ueda is far too feminine to ever really be cool. Koki is more than willing to make a fool of himself for a joke. The very idea of Junno as cool is almost too hilarious to contemplate. Jin screams like a little girl and giggles like a complete dork. Kame is scared of roller coasters and gets really in to singing anime theme songs on the most recent cartoon KAT-TUN. I have folders and folders of clips of hilarious moments of KAT-TUN un-coolness that they probably would prefer to forget about. I’m not talking about skits from shows where they are acting uncool on purpose either. Here are youtube links to some of my favorite funny, unscripted moments. KAT-TUN fans are probably already familiar with these, but I get the sense that lots of new fans are being added every day recently, so this is more aimed at them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiMRo-Z6GUk
Jin’s voice can go very high which is a good thing when he sings, but maybe not the manliest trait when he screams…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tArvgtW-azA
The other way to make Jin shriek (besides having him light a candle, lol) is by touching his collar bones which are very tickilish. He doesn’t really scream here, but it’s still super-funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT93V6-muec
Somehow this short clip of Koki trying to spin a wheel barrow makes me laugh every time. It’s randomly inserted into the “Keep the Faith” making of footage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l31iHbYKxE4
Poor chibi spikey-haired Kame does not like roller coasters one bit. I almost feel bad for him. Almost.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh5bk1FvvNo
Jin Jin Jin. So very pretty. So very dumb.

This is the BEST. Maru gives Jin a real run for his money at shrieking like a little girl. I don’t know why they have white stuff smeared all over their faces, but it only serves to make the clip funnier.

Hope you enjoyed. KAT-TUN really is cool… just not all the time. =p