The Lovely Manoeri
Posted in Eyecandy, Hello!Project, Music show reviews on August 2nd, 2009 0:21 by HenkkaTags: erina mano, music fighter
The lovely Erina Mano was just on Music Fighter yesterday and what a treat it was! I hope this’ll get subbed just so it’d urge more people to watch her in action. I’m telling you, no better time to become a Manoeri fan than right now. Anyway, for some reason there’s only a tiny handpicked audience of 20 enthusiastic Mano fans here. Believe it or not, folks, but I’m fairly certain I even spotted two females in there somewhere! It’s a crazy world, I know.
The show begins by Manoeri proceeding to make this fan pretty much the luckiest guy ever.
It’s Yoshitaka-san’s birthday you see, and how else to reward him than with…
…no, not a blowjob you pervert, but a song! He seems like a nice fan actually, way less creepy than I’d have imagined your Manoeri fan to be… I guess those are the Risako fans. He’s kind of cool actually, all nice and quiet like that. Well, as cool as a Mano fan can be anyway. In any case, Mano sings him Happy Birthday and the dude seems honestly glad about it:
Nishino: “How was it, Yoshitaka-san?”
Fan, with a serious expression like this kind of thing happens to him all the time: “It was the best.”
Manoeri: “I’m glad!! ^______^”
But, of course the guy gets his ass kicked by the cool jock as is customary for idol pop fans. The funny part is Mano running to his rescue though. She’s so sweet! But that makes me realize, I would be a bad boyfriend for Mano really. She’d totally have to defend me from creepy men rather than the other way around. Mano would be the man in our relationship. She kicks ass while I cook.
Then it’s time for the best part about this whole post. You knew it, it’s more MANO FINLAND LOVE! Hell yes! Mano never runs out of love for Finland!
The same thing as usual, she wants to come over, take a picture with Santa Claus (CAUSE HE LIVES HERE AND NOT CANADA OR ANYWHERE ELSE YOU FUCKING INFIDELS, GET THE HELL OUT OF MY GODDAMN BLOG, SANTA IS A FINNISH INVENTION, HE LITERALLY EATS, BREATHES AND SHITS FINLAND) and post it on her blog. Oh Manoeri! Sooner or later I swear I’m going to mail her some plane tickets to Finland and wait for her at the airport in a convincing Santa costume. But setting aside the plans that will lead to my eventual imprisonment, the fun thing about that video was that guy who asked the question… look at his cap:
Oh you clever little bastard! It’s a Kimi Räikkönen cap with the Finnish flag on it even. That question was so rigged, he already knew what her answer would be! *shakes fist angrily like an old man*
Moving right along from that deceitful, evil man, Manoeri continues gracing this audience with her awesomeness. She actually baked freakin’ cookies for everyone in the audience. COOKIES! Handmade! Just kill me now. Why was I not in that audience?
Om nom nom. Finally, they do rock paper scissors and the winner is…
This fun looking fan. She gets a warm handjobshake from Mano.
Nishino: “So what are your thoughts, having gotten a handshake from her?”
Fan: “Oh, I won’t ever wash my hands again! ^______^”
Mano: “*giggle*”
Nishino: “Really?!”
Fan: “Ye– well, no. ;__;”
Mano: “Ehhh?!? (●´∀｀●)”
And with that, it’s time for the song. Enjoy!
So there you have it. Honestly, Manoeri’s currently my favorite idol. I can’t even pinpoint one reason exactly why it is so. She’s just… perfect, that’s all I can say really. First of all, I loved the whole piano thing from the start, as much as it might seem gimmicky to some. (Well okay, it is a gimmick in this live performance, but I mean when she actually plays.) Her looks? That’s the one area where I think everyone can agree she just excels, without any debate. Listen, if you think Manoeri looks ugly or “not really that pretty“… you’re wrong. Your opinion is invalid. It would be a sad, sad life if I got to no longer see any pictures or videos of the lovely Manoeri. It’s probably her vocals that bother people the most, but eh… what can I say? I think her vocals are adorable, and I mean especially when she sounds anemic in songs like Manopiano or Lalala Sososo. Sure, she’s no Ayaya, but I don’t need her to be. Her vocals are adorable, just like her.
On the moment I was taking a picture,
I moved and so I’m mad at myself.
Speaking of her songs, I’m aware they’re not musical masterpieces of excellence really. Let’s face it, Manoeri’s music is hardly the type that will give me chills running through my spine from just how awesome they are. However, they make me feel good, every one of ‘em. They put me in a happy place. Some of them are more unremarkable than the rest… songs like Mizuiro Omoi probably won’t be remembered much twenty years from now. Hell, probably none of her songs so far will, but fuck me, this stuff ain’t so bad! Sekai wa Summer Party especially should draw in a bunch of new fans I would think. How could anyone resist this tune? I know I couldn’t, and ordered a limited edition copy of it, just like I did with her previous two singles and like I will with her fourth one as well as her live DVD. She’s the only H!P artist whose releases I actually buy as new.
As far as her idol persona goes, that does get her a fair share of complaints for being “boring.” True, she’s not really the funny, crazy or weird type… but more than anything, she’s definitely the sweetest type there is. You know, the kind of girl you’d actually feel bad for jacking off to. Mano just exclaims the whole “pure” idol image.[1] She seems honest. And more than anything, she seems incredibly appreciative of her fans. She’s not going to lure you in with false promises or being something she’s not — she’ll just give you something real again in this tired old idol business.
Well, that’s what I like to believe anyway.
Ufufu (*^ー^*)
Yoshou…
Eh?
Whoops……
[1] = When I say “pure”, I don’t mean anything like the aged mentality of “boohoo my idols can’t date!!“, no, fuck that type of thinking. I really can not believe something like the no-dating policy is still enforced to this day. If there’s one big major turn-off for me in the whole Japanese idol thing, it’s that. It’s something I’ll personally never agree with, not even if it’s something that’s written in the contracts they sign. “But Henkka, it’s the way of the wota! It’s how it’s always been!” Fine. If you want to follow that kind of thinking, feel free to. If you want to say “Well, that’s that then, they fucked up!” and abandon someone whose CD’s, DVD’s, pictures, photobooks, posters, T-shirts and other merchandise you’ve diligently spent your money on, and you want to do it just because said idol likes another person that happens to not be you, go right ahead. I, however, will always complain about it. The way I see it is very simple. I, as a fan, don’t have a right to demand anything from any idol. I especially don’t have any say in any of their private matters. Idols owe me, or you, absolutely nothing. But, maybe that’s just my crazy view on it. *shrug*
When I began getting into Hello! Project and tried to understand why the hell I was watching a bunch of girls in pop music TV shows, which wasn’t nowhere near the kind of thing I expected myself to watch… In fact, that was exactly what I expected inferior sheep-minded people to do. Nowadays I learned to ignore myself when my thoughts go this way, but anyway… Back then, I figured if I’d just ignore the whole music and celebrity thing, Hello! Morning turned into a years-long Azumanga. And this nails perfectly my “relationship” with idols, this wota jealousy thing makes as much sense to me as being jealous of the perv teacher in Azumanga. Well, the poor guy never had any luck, but I’m sure there’s an otaku out there jealous of him, so the example works.
If it sounds like I see them being as real as an anime character, kind of. I’m not saying they are necessarily fake, but as far as my experience is concerned, they exist in Geinoukai (= TV Land), like Azumanga exists in Akihabara, and I am on Earth. And in Brazil, none of them cares about Brazil. Oh, but that shows good judgement, once I’m in Japan I won’t care about Brazil too. But my point was, even if your position is maybe different, I can see you’re sane, but every fandom and, in fact, every idea has a few crazy people. In this case, the crazy believes he can cross space-time and get to TV Land where he’ll be forever happy with his favorite idol, who happens to hold a special place for him in her heart, which makes him feel special, or at the very least who loves him and all other crazy beings equally. Hey, it worked with Jesus, I’m sure someone out there would believe their idol loves him. *writes and then deletes bible jokes* Anyway, if you see it from the point of the view of the wota, once he is not even at the same level as everyone else, his paradise with her is gone, and he has no other reason to care about her. Then, he gets mad seeing all the time he’s lost dreaming. Perfectly reasonable from his point of view, but then, I find his point of view ridiculous. I’m quite sure you already thought all of this too, and I think I’ve already wrote something about it, but since you brought up the subject.
In a completely unrelated note, I wrote this whole comment in my beloved Emacs <3 Man, I love this It’s All Text extension I found that opens any text area for editing in any text editor. No danger of losing long comments anymore. Now all I need is a way to know when people post in your comments section, RSS works but it’s so slow. Well, that’s also my fault for using Google Reader.
A quick confession: I don’t know shit about ManoEri. I mean, I’m more familiar with the hosts of Music Fighter than I am with her. But, I’ll tell you something, here’s an informative post that was just enough to push me to do more research. I guess I’m kinda guilty of all the things you mentioned: I don’t find her especially pretty or talented, for some reason I wasn’t impressed by the piano thing (even though I just ranted and raved about the instrument very recently), and her character didn’t seem all that interesting. You have to remember, it was Aibon and the Gooch that got me started with H!P, so I may be kinda spoiled. Those are two of the most extreme characters in the history of H!P so I may have desensitized myself to the sweet and normal type.
But, that said, I am certainly open minded enough to reconsider my initial assumptions which were really nothing more than “Who ManoEri? Meh.” I guess I just haven’t given her a chance yet. I will do so on your recommendation.
Now, about the wota standard you speak of, I will admit that I am by no means up to par in terms of true wota-ness with my contemporaries in this demographic. I mean, as wonderful as even Hell!Party was, I couldn’t help but feel fairly isolated and alienated even in that environment (don’t get me wrong, it was totally epic!). I think I’m just a different kind of fan. In fact, I’ve had to seriously re-contemplate the nature of my fandom recently as a result. But, that’s another story for an upcoming post. The point is, speaking from a semi-outsider’s perspective, I find that my opinions are often against the grain of conventional wota-think. That said, I find that I idolize the girls in the same way I idolized Gwar back in the day. Here’s a world that I can observe, appreciate, and get involved in without any worry of actually being beheaded or having my intestines fed to a giant maggot. … Okay, maybe a bad analogy. I’m just saying that the closer I try to get to the “reality” of these idols, the less fun it is for me. I like the idea of these girls being something I’ll never ever have to worry about really being involved with. I mean, I kinda thought that was the point of idols. They’re “safe”. They’ll always be there. And when they’re not, there are 13 or 14 others I can re-focus on.
Luckily for me, Mikitty’s behavior in life completely conforms to the fantasy world which I have woven for her (again, post forthcoming). I like the idea of rewriting my personal pseudo-storylines to compensate for life choices the girls make. When Aibon got suspended the first time, I had a ball imagining what she may have been going through. Then I heard she attempted suicide and I was like “Score! I am SO good at this!” By the time she made her comeback and co-starred in a Hong Kong kung-fu flick I was starry eyed. You see, THAT’s some real shit. Some real idol-life ups and downs. And for these reasons Aibon remains one of my all time top idols. I don’t really even follow her anymore outside major news coverage. I don’t have to. Her life is playing out in wonderful ways without me having to keep track of her. hehe heheheh mwahahHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA!
Okay, the crack is starting to wear off and I need to crash. Until next time….
Yes, I am an insane person.
So *happy* to see Henkka falling for the most adorable Manoeri♥! o(*´∀｀)o゛♥~♥~♥ I so agree on the no dating policy whether written or not in their contracts is just sadly wrong….unhealthy really. Girls will fall in love and want to date♥…it just can’t be avoided and should never be frowned upon or disciplined upon~.
And to purchase them new!! May be a great idea as you just never know what a wota♥ may have done with prior to you touching them…(^q^)!
Manoeri♥ is the super-hero girl next door ＼(^o^)／☆!! Her new single won’t arrive until later this week….matte! matte! mattemasu!~ (。ーωー。) ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪~….. and Music Fighter next to Utaban are favorites♥ of mine too! (￣▽￣)
@Harima: Hehe, I liked the Azumanga comparison, as well as those bible references! Indeed, the wota nonsense is sort of like religion, except they ACTUALLY get proof once in a while that their dreams were all just a silly fairy tale. Well, the unlucky ones anyway. :) (Kago fans come to mind…)
Anyway, well said. Agreed on all points, especially Brazil’s uselessness. Just kidding. :) And don’t worry, your take on it was a nice read. Oh, and as for knowing when people post comments, I added the recent comments widget in the sidebar there. Hope that helps a little.
@delrey: Indeed, I’m almost tempted to say Manoeri is “nothing special” in every sense of the word… but that’s not exactly true for me anymore. I know that’s how it can seem though. It’s like everything she says or does, her entire idol persona, is made up of this wishy-washy subtleness, but it’s to the point where it becomes her charm point if that makes any sense. I really started warming up to her before long. Sweet and normal as you described her, that sounds about right. It’s like she’s the ultimate girl next door, the one who’d never do anything naughty, you know?
Yeah, I sort of got the feeling you were more like me in that sense… that is, not really feeling like part of the hip fan group. That’s me.
I understand what you mean about it being less fun when you find out about the “reality” of these idols. For me it’s 50/50. I’m always eager to listen when they tell me about their private lives and so (though of course that’s just what they wish to tell the fans), I’m definitely a sucker for candid paparazzi/private pictures of them, and of course I always hunger for fun gossip about them, but I always feel sort of… off when I find out stuff about them I probably shouldn’t know. But at the same time, I’m not foolish enough to honestly believe some of these girls don’t have boyfriends or anything of that sort. Really, I’d much rather just have them drop the act and say they have a boyfriend if they have a boyfriend, instead of hiding it for the crazy fans’ sake. I don’t expect them to be “pure idols” in the usual sense of the word. I don’t entertain any weird thoughts I might one day be anything other than a fan to any of these girls.
@MB: Hey, I’ve been a Manoeri fan since the start! Manopiano is still my top favorite. :) Good to hear you agree on the dating thing. It really is wrong, no way around it. Awful.
Oh, that is a most excellent point you made about the previous owner and what they might’ve done with it! I’ll have to keep getting Manoeri releases in mint condition. I have to be especially careful if I decide to get her photobook…
Music Fighter and Utaban are full of awesome indeed. :)
As usual MB, good work on the crazy smileys. I love them! Also, about one of those new poll options that has appeared… you really made it obvious that it was you, huh? :P
~♥~! that makes us a Manoeri fan *couple*!! (人∀`*)♥ I hope that her last two singles which are soo sooo catchy will *endear* more fans to her…..and I so agree about her voice! Perfectly sweet♥. “Manopiano”♪♪~ remains as a most favorite too with now “Hajimete no keiken” and “Sekai wa natsu party” not far behind….there’s just something about its melody really! I so agree!!!
Un~ hai! (。ーωー。)笑
A Manoeri fan couple?! Since when are we a couple? Did I miss something? :O Hmmm, 怪しい。。。
I agree, the melody is really nice. :) More often than not, I can’t really see why people don’t think of most of her tracks as anything special. Well, I might sort of see it, but I can’t bring myself to agree… possibly because I’ve become a fan of all the composer’s solo works. It’s KAN who writes all her songs.
Hey Henkka, nice kanji drop! Great word too! Hey, are you studying 日本語 regularly again? I just wrote an article on one great way to boost your proficiency level quickly.
http://www.geiguy.com/language/japanese-podcasts-an-exercise-in-inundation/
I’m sure you’re well aware of this idea, but I seek your approval of my posts as a peer, so I’m sending it anyway. lol. Let me know what you think.
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com More than you’ll ever need on learning Japanese. The site is really huge though, but do check at least the parts on how to learn kanji and what the guy has to say about learning by sentences and SRS programs. It’s all somewhat organized in this page:
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/all-japanese-all-the-time-ajatt-how-to-learn-japanese-on-your-own-having-fun-and-to-fluency
sections 2 and 4. I like Anki http://ichi2.net/anki/
@delrey: Haha, thanks. I never use Japanese in my comments, but MB sort of forces me to, it’s weird. Yeah, I’m sort of studying semi-regularly again… with newly-found excitement. :) Oh and about your post, definitely! Dude, these days I’m always listening to H!P radio shows while I’m sleeping/falling asleep/waking up. It’s good stuff really! Though I usually try to avoid Sayu’s show cause damn, she just keeps me awake most of the time… she’s too crazy to let me fall asleep. Admit it though, your post is inspired by http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/, sort of! :P
(´⌒｀。)!
@MB: Cute! :P
Ha! You are right, the post is totally inspired by Katzhumoto san (sort of). I mean, certainly he’s not the first person to wrote on the power of immersion for learning a language, but I really like the way he presents it. So, yeah you’re right. AJATT kind of inspired this post. But, I was thinking of writing it before anyway. Meh.
Please continue to critique my work, oh wise senpai of the blogosphere.
Oh, and LUCKY!!! I wish I had an MB to inspire me. ;)
@MB: かわいい～！
(could have sworn I already submitted this reply)
@Harima: The spam filter was again holding your last comment hostage… delrey’s “could have sworn I already submitted this reply” made me go check if he had any there, but it was only yours! Strangely you talk about AJATT in it, too. Crazy stuff. :O
@Harima&delrey: Yep, I’m familiar with the site. It did make me download Anki some time ago though I still haven’t started using it yet. Yeah, if only I could stop making excuses, get off my lazy ass already and learn…
@delrey: Shut up, I’m not your senpai. I can’t be senpai to you in any way, knowing that you could easily drink me under the table whenever you wanted. :P
I think we can all agree on MB being めっちゃかわいい。 I want an MB plushie toy. But that would be wrong.
That would be right.
and yes, I can probably drink you under the table. We should test that sometime…
Indeed you should be using Anki or something like it already man. I don’t want to say you must follow Khaz or whatever, because I don’t do it myself (I just ignore his sentences stuff and focus on words), but I think you do lose a lot of stuff if you don’t somehow capture the words you find that are interesting… With the right immersion you’ll go a long way without any extra effort on your part, that’s the good thing about when you’re beginning, but then there’s a point when you know all the common words and with immersion alone you just won’t see them frequently enough to memorize. Then, every single time you find it and have to look it up again, you get this feeling that you’re an idiot.
Hey, I don’t know if you’ve ever watched/like Haruhi, but I have the Japanese light novels the anime was based on uploaded here:
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/407573/Suzumiya%20Haruhi%20novels%20%5Bjap%5D.zip (one more to the spam filter!)
They’re on UTF-8 encoded txt, you can open them on Firefox and use Perapera-kun to help you read it. It’s good exercise if you’re interested in them, there’s some very long sentences in this book. You start hating the narrator after a while… And do check
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3343
http://rikaichan.mozdev.org/ <= need to get a dictionary here too
Perapera-kun, it’s a Firefox extension that shows the reading and meaning of a word in any Japanese website, you just have to activate it and point your mouse at the word. Very handy. And it can save any word definition to a txt file, which you can then import directly into Anki.
@Harima: I should, I should. :(
Thanks for the Haruhi link (I have seen the anime yes) but I’m not even nearly at the level where I could attempt to read something like novels or anything. Maybe I should save that for later though.
@HarimaKenji: “And it can save any word definition to a txt file, which you can then import directly into Anki.” – WHOA! I didn’t even realize this as much as I use rikai-chan/perapera-kun. I was starting to think it was a hindrance to always be able to immediately look up words via rikai-chan. But, being able to save defs to text is integral!! Man, thanks for pointing this out!!!
I think it’s okay to always use perapera-kun when I’m reading, because I just want to read without caring too much about learning the words. When I read, I’m just practicing the things I know, increasing speed, getting better at understanding long, complicated sentences (something you usually don’t get with TV). If I don’t know something, I immediately look it up, save and go on. I only memorize new words afterwards in Anki.
I think of it like the way I watch TV/listen to radio shows/etc…. I don’t pause it every time I can’t understand a word, because then it’s be so boring I wouldn’t do anything at all, and that’s the worst possible case. What I do is, I either understand the word through context or ignore it. Usually, if you can’t get it through context, either immediate context or what happens later in the movie/whatever, then it wasn’t important. But hey, since I have the ability to instantaneously look up any word I find in anything I can open in Firefox, I’m going to use it. It’s better than both just guessing and ignoring.