Beat Laments The World

A metal-infused take on Asian music & other stuff

Well, it’s been a while. wu has gone more than a week without posting, quite a drastic change from about fifty in under a month. Henkka’s busy translating for benefit of pageviews and glorious profit for nation of monotones, and I haven’t seen skald or Delrey around in a while.

So we come to this, the latest of my insanely long, occasionally pointless and soon obsolete lists. This time I’ve chosen to step away from music momentarily and focus on the other side of my formal training. Sort of. I’m a stills photographer, not a cinematographer, but I have a deep-seated affection for the art-form that is the promotional video. That said, I do have a slightly different view than some as to what makes a music video good. To me, a promotional video should be a silent film with the music in the background, a short film no more than a minute or two longer than the length of the song. I also look highly upon abstractions, concepts and PVs that tell a story without the need to resort to dialogue. This sort of disqualifies a lot of later-day AKB48 videos that may otherwise have stood a chance, because they’re no longer really PVs at all, but full-fledged drama episodes. Another thing I disapprove of is ridiculous amounts of post-processing work unless it’s in some way required to gain the needed effect. For example, the ridiculous sparkles in recent Momusu PVs = instant fail.

For a change, there are no draws in the top 50. This happened by accident, which is confusing, considering how many PVs there are in incredibly close proximity to each other in score. In fact, in the 84 PVs I gave scores to, there’s only one draw: between AKB’s Hitsujikai no Tabi and Momusu Sakuragumi’s Sakura Mankai at 66.

I drew in some help for listing the PVs this time. As I had no inclination to watch nearly 1000 PVs to determine the best, I helpfully found a way around it: get other people to do it for me. Sort of. I asked a bunch of people for recommendations and as a general rule got about zero. A few people gave me one or two. Henkka gave me about 30, some of which I deleted. So in the end I had to go through and watch a bunch of stuff. Of course, AKB were the most annoying. Any group that puts out 32 PVs in one year, not counting sister groups, subgroups, soloists or other stuff is really going some to annoy me. Even so, through sheer spam power, AKB have more PVs in this list than any other group. I suppose if you release enough of something you’re bound to get a good one eventually. For most groups I accepted that the vast majority of their output was shit, and then carried on thinking so until convinced otherwise, unless I could specifically remember something. Thus, SKE PVs were done entirely from memory, Momusu almost entirely by memory, yet on the other side of the coin I watched some PVs I’d never even heard of before, let alone seen, including a bunch by older groups like Hinoi Team and SweetS. However, none made it to the list so I could have better spent my time elsewhere.

This post will contain possibly a huge amount of “alternative” video sites, because for some reason some idol groups seem to not want to release their music videos online. Also one label which blocks us filthy gaijin from watching entirely. I may devote an entire hate post to them at a later date. So, if you have problems with Yinyuetai, Tudou, Youku or other Chinese video sites, you may not be able to see all of them. But I’m sure there are “resources” at your disposal anyway. Read more »

First of all, thanks to everyone who read and commented on my Ohatsuu posts, featuring translations of Japanese fans’ always pleasant discussions from the H!P threads of 2ch.

What I thought would be of interest only to a tiny, niche audience got readers and comments way beyond my expectations. Because of this, I’ve decided to take the feature a step further and build a whole new site for all that stuff. On this new site the posts will no longer be monthly monster-sized posts, but will be in the same format as Ohatsuu itself: one thread per one post.

More importantly: while I keep providing you with the Hello! Project threads, I’m teaming up with the Brazilian kicker of asses himself, Sag, who is going to start covering all your AKS family needs.

With that, I’m all done with my shitty sales pitch. I hope to see you over at wotaintranslation.com!

So, Morning Musume have come out with a “Loose Shot” version PV for their next single, Brainstorming, the release of which is about 7 weeks away still. The early reactions I’ve seen seem to have reached a consensus that the song is good, the dance is amazing, and that Ayumi looks delicious in twintails.

So, let’s take a look at the video, shall we?

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At the time of writing this post, Erina Mano has just begun her graduation concert in Japan.

At this point, saying I’m sad to see her go would mostly be a lie. Longtime readers may still remember that I was a huge fan of her back in the day. Indeed, my thoughts about her from those days haven’t changed, and as I write this post I’m actually watching her debut concert DVD, “Prologue ~Otome no Inori~” to reminisce. The Mano of today, though? Not so much.

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This post is a part of the Ohatsuu feature that has moved to a new site:
Wota in Translation
Please head on over there to comment on this post and to read more posts like this!

Hi and welcome to the first Ohatsuu summary of 2013.

What is Ohatsuu?

First of all: for those of you who do not know, 2ch is a huge, anonymous Japanese discussion board that also has its own section for Hello! Project. Following the H!P board of 2ch can be a tedious task: it’s massive, and it’s notorious for its “anything goes” atmosphere that comes along with the anonymity. It can be a tiring read.

However, because of that anonymity, you can sometimes get really interesting, candid sneak peeks at how the Japanese fans think about things in this fandom we share with them. I think it’d be quite a shame to miss out on that, and luckily there’s a site that can help. Ohayou! Project Tsuushinkyoku (or just Ohatsuu) is a blog that compiles some of the highlights of the 2ch H!P board.

So what I’m doing with this feature is translating select threads presented on Ohatsuu. Only partially, though — don’t expect me to kill myself by translating several hundred comments per each post. Basically, it’ll be just the threads I care about and just the comments I care about (or have enough motivation to translate).

Featured topics

1. Iikubo-san spots a UFO and gets treated like a child by Kudo after telling her about it!!
2. Maa-chan’s declaration: “I’m going to overtake Sayashi-san this year!!“
3. We’re barely into the New Year and there’s already a scandalous picture of Mano-chan
4. High-King revival!!! ﾍ√ﾚｖｖ～(ﾟ∀ﾟ)─ﾍ√ﾚｖｖ～─!!
5. Daaishi Ishida’s birthday cake is…
6. Obvious♪ Obvious♪ Hello! Project♪
7. Someone brings Kudo’s photobook to school — Kudo wants to die
8. Ishida super excited — full of wild ideas during a sleepover with Kudo!!!
9. The 10th and 11th generation members have dinner together!!! Sato Maa-chan reproduces their conversation!
10. The results of the favorite member ranking by the foreign wota of Hello!Online are here!
11. ☆　★☆ Morning Musume major debut 15th anniversary festival ☆★　☆
12. A super first-class manga artist draws Momusu illustrations to celebrate their Oricon no. 1!

Enjoy!

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