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 »

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!

Before we begin, I’d like to announce that this post is the first (and hopefully not last) in a new feature on this blog. 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. With the anonymity also comes the notoriety 2ch has earned — it’s very much an “anything goes” atmosphere that you don’t get much on Western H!P forums. If you’re an avid visitor of the site, you know how it can get a pretty tiring read sometimes. Shit, I wouldn’t want to read that many posts of people name calling little girls even if it was in English. In addition, the H!P board of 2ch is f’ing massive.

However, because of this anonymity, you can sometimes get really interesting, candid sneak peeks at how the Japanese fans think about things in this fandom we share. Sometimes the Japanese fans’ opinions are wildly different from ours and other times more similar than you’d perhaps even guess… but at the end of the day, their opinions vary just as much as it does with us Western fans. In any case, I think it’d be quite a shame to miss all that, and this is where another site steps in to help. Ohayou! Project Tsuushinkyoku (or just Ohatsuu) is a blog that compiles some of the highlights of the board. What I’m going to be doing is translating select threads presented on this blog. Only partly, though — don’t expect me to kill myself by translating several hundred comments per each post. It’ll be just the threads I care about and just the comments I deem interesting enough (or have enough motivation to translate), so keep this in mind.

Now with that out of the way, here’s the post I’m covering today. The title translates to what you can read above. As you know with me being the raging worshipper of Tsunku that I am, this thread naturally perked my interest. Without any further ado, let’s get right to it.

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Maybe it’s time I finally whipped this out. Only took me a year and a half to hit “publish“. I’m getting better at this blogging stuff. In case you forgot, reviewing a concert H!P Metalhead style meant, first and foremost, to get drunk. The secondary, optional goal was to maybe write something about it if still possible. I wrote this in early June of ’09 but wasn’t happy with it because it’s a shit post. You can see I reached my drunken high in the first part and here I was basically just getting pissed off. But, in honor of it being the blog’s 3rd birthday today, I’ll go ahead and publish it anyway. Psh!

Another weekend, another bottle of vodka and most of all another look at the H!P Awards ’09 baby.

What will it take to get you to wipe that fucking smile off your face, Makoto?

16. Egao ni Namida ~THANK YOU! MY DEAR FRIENDS~ (Aya Matsuura with Melon Kinenbi, Atsuko Inaba, Yuki Maeda, Biyuuden, Morning Musume’s 8th generation, Berryz Koubou, °C-ute, Hello! Project Eggs)

Oddly random song choice or is it just me? Wouldn’t this have been exactly the concert where you’d just want to see the age-old classics performed one last time before being forgotten about? Right? Instead they went with an album cut from Ayaya’s first. Ah well. I suppose it’s in the spirit of H!P (and Tsunku): expect the unexpected. However, I’m a huge fan of everything-Ayaya so you won’t see me complain.

17. Hare Ame Nochi Suki (Morning Musume Sakura Gumi)

Though I don’t have much to say about this, it’s a performance I approve of. It’s a classic ain’t it? “I love you for what you are” and all that. Very good. Here, have an Ai-chan.

18. Ai no Sono ~Touch My Heart~ (Morning Musume Otome Gumi)

Errr… skip. I hope I’m not the only one who found Otomegumi completely inferior to Sakuragumi. Don’t both of Otomegumi’s songs just bore you to tears? Besides, that euphenism (is that the word?) “touch my heart” is silly. That shouldn’t be proper English at all. (Well, unless it was meant literally. But then this would be a death metal song.) A long time ago there must’ve lived an English version of Henkka, sipping on… brandy? What do Englishmen drink in the first place? Brandy? Scotch? Anything cheap that tastes like piss? My point is, a long time ago there was a Brit Henkka, coming up with new words when drunk. And he was doing a piss-poor job.

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Our Songs
Release date: 2010/02/03
Tracklisting:

1. Our Songs
2. MIRACLE HAPPY LOVE SONG
3. Our Songs (instrumental)
4. MIRACLE HAPPY LOVE SONG (instrumental)

We are Buono!
Release date: 2010/02/10
Tracklisting:

1. One Way = My Way
2. Our Songs
3. Independent Girl ~ Dokuritsu Joshi de Aru Tame ni
4. MY BOY
5. Urahara
6. Take It Easy!
7. Bravo☆Bravo
8. Kataomoi.
9. Blue-Sky-Blue
10. Koucha no Oishii Mise
11. Tabidachi no Uta
12. We are Buono! ~ Buono! no Theme

Hehehe… Miyabi looks like a horse…

If you’ve read my blog before, I’m sure you’ve noticed me going on and on about how I dislike the group, or rather, their songs. To quote myself on one of their earlier singles, “The A-side is, to me, just a recycled piece of shit.” That’s a line I would use to describe most of their discography.

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(For the previous lists, see here for the 2008 one and here for the 2007 one.)

Ho ho ho and Merry Christmas to you all! Or, if you don’t celebrate Christmas (or equivalent) then I must ask, “why the shit not?” Alright, granted, the wonderful and magical time we all felt in our childhood got old probably around the time you realized everyone had been blatantly lying to you and that the Santa Claus you thought you knew wasn’t actually Santa Claus, but your shitfaced uncle in a cheap Santa costume and fake beard.

But that’s not the only way to celebrate Christmas. This year, instead of boring yourself with the same old mindless chitchat while eating disgusting food with family members you secretly hate, just do what I do. Say “fuck you” to friends and family, stay home alone, pour yourself a strong vodka coke and watch some goddamn Berryz Koubou videos. Naked.

Now that’s what I call a fun, Tsunku-approved Christmas!

In any case. It’s the end of the year and with the end of the year comes the ranking goodness. Ladies, gentlemen and wota, I believe it’s time to have a look and see at what old Henkka thought was the best H!P had to offer us in 2009.

If I’m not mistaken, this year H!P had a grand total of 116 songs that are eligible for this ranking. That includes all the singles, b-sides, album tracks and cover songs, but not tunes that were already released as a single in 2008 and later on an album this year. That’s 116 songs to choose from. Some are shit, most are quite decent, some were ones that were awesome at first but I’ve long since grown tired of them, and some are shiny, brand new that seem incredible now but might sound like uninspired crap to my ears in a month’s time. Still, I tried to do my best and be honest with myself and with you. This is what I came up with.

Starting with the honorable mentions.

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