Beat Laments The World

A metal-infused take on Asian music & other stuff

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Tsunku has a knack for writing very nice, moving songs, that are often most effectively put to use in graduation concerts. Indeed, the full impact of most of these songs’ nostalgia and their touching quality reveals itself only after you see them being sung as someone is graduating. There’s just something about watching performances where everyone is busy crying their eyes out to the extent that they can barely even sing the song, let alone breathe. Delicious, sweet girly tears, guys. They will make any song better.

5th: Morning Musume – Never Forget:

This song really is quite touching. It’s sung practically solo by Asuka Fukuda who was leaving Morning Musume at that point, and later also covered by Kemeko. I always thought Fukuda was a great vocalist back then. It’s amazing she was only 13 at the time Ai no Tane was released and she was just as good of a singer as the rest of the 1st generation, probably even better than Kaori and definitely better (at that point) than any of the 2nd generation girls. Just imagine how her vocals might sound today if she had been a member of Momusu all these years!

With that said, something about Asuka always irritated me… namely the fact that she never showed basically any interest to be in Morning Musume. She was always the odd one out. Even at her graduation concert as they were singing this and everyone else was crying their eyes out, Asuka was smiling there all “awww, you guys…”, just happy she was finally getting the hell out of that group. Even if I’m not a huge fan of all girls who were in Morning Musume, I’ve never wished for anyone to leave since they obviously all wanted to be there as they were having fun and giving it their all. The exception is Asuka. She never seemed enthusiastic about anything. That never stood well with me to be honest.

Now, I realize that could be partly due to her age. Like I said, she WAS 13 at the time she joined Momusu. Goto was too and she got along just fine, but kids can be different. It might’ve just been too much for Asuka at the time. However, that still doesn’t explain the fact that she never, not even ONCE to my knowledge, showed even the slightest hint of childish satisfaction or whatever for being in a pop music group.

Still, even with all that said, it is a touching song. Even my distaste for Asuka’s… disinterest can’t change that!

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So when I moved my blog to Ray’s server, I promised one post a week which sounds reasonable enough… and last week I didn’t manage to post anything. I wasn’t feeling very creative. Everything I wrote was just shit, you know? Ah well, hopefully I won’t make it into a habit. To apologize for that, I’m just gonna skip all the review bullshit for now and instead post up a new Top 5 next. Look for it this weekend.

In the mean time though, here are the results to my perverted body part poll of October.

Unfortunately this time my vote didn’t get the win as Sakimilk ended up with a disappointing 3 votes. Junjunwomb is the clear winner here with 20% of the votes. Impressive! Looks like that sweet, sweet womb of Junjun was irresistible to most of you. Cheers also to the 5 who voted for Kagolungs. Hahaha, I’m just glad 4 people were honest enough to vote for Risakofat!

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Before I give you the second batch of H!P gifs as promised, I have a fun story.

Last week I was at this Loviisa peace event thing and among other people, Rieko Seto was there. Rieko is a Japanese artist and also a 2nd generation Hiroshima survivor (her mother was a victim). I had a brief chat with her. Fun thing is, she had this idea for an art piece she was doing and she asked people to draw the outlines of their hands on paper and then write a short message of sorts. Well, I drew my hand, wrote something cheesy like “Peace from Finland! -Henkka.” But then I looked at what other people were writing and I noticed some of it was rather questionable, so I said fuck it, went to Rieko to ask if I could make an addition and wrote “Nihon no onnanoko wa kawaii!” (“Japanese girls are cute!”) When Rieko saw what I had written, she laughed and agreed, but also said that Finnish men aren’t too bad either. And yes, I did remember to apologize for not doing it in kanji, don’t worry.

Now the fun part is that this piece of artwork will actually be put up in a real art exhibition. So hey, if you happen to visit Hiroshima in October, go to Rieko’s exhibition and find my hand! I think that’s a pretty cool thought, my hand and wacky message in Hiroshima. Cool stuff. I wonder if anyone there will read my message.

In any case, now for the main event. Like last time, some of them are good, some not so good, and some are pure awesome if I may say so myself. Hope you like ‘em. Firstly, here’s ones made from the Chokkan PV close-up edition. These took ages to make. I think Reina’s is probably the most interesting to look at.

Chokkan – Miki

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