Beat Laments The World

A metal-infused take on Asian music & other stuff

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.

Read more »

This post is dedicated to the Brazilian god among men, longtime legendary ass kicker and overall good guy SagSousuke.

Sag told me that he hasn’t really gotten the chance to get to know the new members of Momusu yet. Thus, I thought I’d get him started with some words of introduction. This is also a good opportunity to briefly share my thoughts on the Momusu of today with all of you. If you know nothing about the new members, this post is also for you. This sort of stuff is something I hardly ever talk about on this blog anymore, so I thought hey, why not.

To put it in a nutshell: I really dig the current lineup of Morning Musume.

Read more »

So, Gaki has crawled into a retirement home, Aika has wheeled herself off to something which I’m not even sure how to sum up, and Sayu is Momusu’s leader. With the average age of the group now about 15 and Sayu’s randomness in charge, I was hoping for some improvement.

Now, I’ll admit. I like the 9th and 10th gens. They all seem pretty fun, some are talented, and some are just insane. I was content to wait for Gaki to be dead and buried before I passed judgement on the new era.

So she’s now in a coffin, and I’m passing judgement.

The new single is shit.

I go on forums, I find everyone saying how wonderful it is. I despair. It sounds like Tsunku’s just found more buttons to press and given up all thought of melody or timbre, or dynamics. Let’s look at the vocal melody line. It barely fucking moves. Stays on the same note for ages, and then moves maybe a semitone in accordance with the chord progression. Not that the chord progression is good, you understand.

The song is a mess. The vocoders are useless, having a voice cut to shreds and buzzing incessantly pisses me off.

This isn’t so much a song as much as it is an aural nightmare. It’s like partenza, just not quite as bad.

The dance seems to be the thing people are interested by, which brings me to the conclusion that it’s not so much that idol music is bad, per se, it’s just that the majority of people listening to it are deaf.

So, enter 9th gen.

I started halfway through the blogpost, sorry. But all will become clear. Or I’ll just ramble for 1000 words again like usual. But anyway.

Morning Musume have new members. And with it, their average age has dropped considerably. From an average of 21 on their last single to 17.4444 now. When Aichan leaves it’ll drop again to about 16.625 or something (not paying any attention whatsoever to birthdays that happen between now and then). This means that a direction change is pretty much guaranteed. After all, little kids singing about the futility of love and other general emo shit probably wouldn’t work. Unless it’s Airi in Aa! But that was just amusing.

So, firstly I’m going to outline my issues with the Momusu of the past few years. If you’re a fan of that era, you may want to turn back now…

Read more »

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.

Read more »