The Importance of Knowing English?

My sister and I watch a bunch of Johnny’s dramas. (Rather, I watch, and she tags along.) By Johnny’s dramas, I refer to ones specifically intended to market the pretty boys, where the story’s got little drive (each episode is only linked by a common theme and the characters) and the selling point is undeniably the actors’ day jobs, their musical careers. Stuff I’ve watched that I would shuffle into this category: Yukan Club, Sushi Oji!, Yamada Taro Monogatari, Kuitan, Remote. Sure, you can argue that some of them had a decent story and better acting, but at the end of the day, what was supposed to sell the drama was the lead actors’ faces.

Lately I’ve come to the conclusion that a Johnny’s drama just wouldn’t be complete without the butchering of another language in some way. Luckily for the two of us and our American upbringing, that language is usually English. (We get bonus points if the language being mutilated is Chinese, though. Oh, Kuitan. I will never be able to thank you enough )

So we were watching Yukan Club’s episode 7 and I was being amused at Mike He’s accent when speaking Japanese… and then the antagonists of the episode spoke. It was clear that for all their foreign looks, English was not the first language for all but one of them, or even one that they were used to. And then Akanishi Jin’s character slid in and had three lines of English roll off his tongue with more vocal fluency than the ones who were supposed to speak English, and my sister and I died.

Clearly that time in America wasn’t completely wasted partying his drunk ass off.

Not to sideline Kashii Yu, either, who had the perfect tone of a newscaster and only stumbled a bit during her “translation” part. I wanted to get in some giggles at Taguchi Junnosuke, who said “Friends” with too much of a Japanese accent in contrast to his son-of-the-Swedish-ambassador character, but just seeing him blond and blue-eyed makes me want to snort in ridicule so I think we’re even.

(And then hereon, we’ll be ignoring the fact that Yukan Club’s ratings were pretty low because quite frankly – even Kaga Takeshi couldn’t save it from the ridiculous suckage that it became. Also it never comes up in this post again.)

English and other languages are sneaking in more and more into Japanese pop culture. At the same time, that whole expansion through East Asia thing is going on in the music industry as well – and the US has always been a fairly popular destination. There are a lot more artists who are fluent in English, or have a decent grasp of the language, and a lot more traveling overseas is occurring.

When Crystal Kay first broke the market, despite some powerful vocals and obviously good English, along with one of Japan’s better composers (Kanno Yoko) backing her, she didn’t get anywhere. Now there’s a lot more vocalists in the Japanese music industry like her (melody., Arashiro Beni, Ito Yuna, Rie fu, EMYLI, MONKEY MAJIK, etc.) – and actually, they’re scattered around the market. H!P’s Coconuts Musume got pretty much nowhere – but Ayaka and Mika managed to brighten their respective careers in the fold by exploiting their English capabilities because it was a novelty gimmick. BoA’s English versions of her single tracks died out after Every Heart – back in 2001. Sure, Utada Hikaru’s EXODUS album hit highs in Japan, but she had to start out attracting with her Japanese lyrics as well. Her speaking English only made her more accessible in the States, really. English hasn’t had a very good run in Japan in the past – and now it’s become the boom.

So are the leaders of Japan’s entertainment world attempting to ease out? (Which leads to – is the entire industry a giant conspiracy where they buy high-end champagne with overseas fans’ rapid ridiculous spending in our attempts to get notice?) Is this the influence of groups like m-flo, who’ve worked artists who do have more of a Western sound, and the general American music craze in Japan?

Should Kimi stop typing up posts at 1:52 AM after a fairly disappointing day? (I bought a duplicate issue of Myojo at full price WHY? D: Dammit, there must be someone up there working against the idea of my buying two Japanese pretty boy magazines in a week.) Tune in tomorrow to find out. (You all know that’s a lie.)

Also – I really ought to come up with better year-end (for me) posts. See you guys in 2008.

avex, this isn’t the oasis I was searching for.

Even AAA isn’t above laughing at themselves, at least. Except Chiaki. She’s under contract to be adorable for the camera 24/7.

It wasn’t until I visited the official AAA site and watched the loading screen that it hit me. MIRAGE will be the 17th single. Already?

Granted, the 17th single won’t be released until 2008, but it really hits home the fact that AAA has been releasing ridiculously. Most people, at just over two years into their careers, have 7~10 singles. If we take into account Izayuke Wakataka Gundan 2007, Climax Jump (still their highest selling single despite not making it to their AROUND album), the digital boys-only release, and maybe consider alohAAA! a ridiculously expensive single with a shitload of extra stuff (because all it had was one new song that I can’t even remember the melody too, for avex’s sake); AAA’s rocketed past that. Hell, they’ve rocketed past it even without the stuff avex doesn’t include in their official discography.

I only recovered from my burnout and got around to checking out the video last week. (But I’m still fawning over my 2008 calendar, so I can safely say it’s not because of mental Arashi-dominance.) I don’t have much to say about it – Raid can attest to that – but if there’s one thing I do like, it’s seeing costumes. Unless they don’t work so well with the members. So let’s go over that, shall we? [WARNING. This post becomes ridiculously long, and the screencaps despite the lack of actual PV reviewing don't help. If reading gives you seizures, stop now and go lock yourself away with the TV, pathetic fool.]

A Quick Apology.

Sorry I’ve been sporadic with my posts, my mind’s been a bit preoccupied lately. (No, not with Arashi. I mean it.)

My next post is probably going to be a killer, as in a wall of meaningless text killer, but in the meanwhile, I’ve been playing with color-coding lyrics and a bit of horrible translation – as you can probably see in the sidebar.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from that – I hate harmonies. They are ridiculous to identify, hard to memorize (I learned the harmony to SAKURA Sake while color-coding its lyrics, but every time I try to sing it to the music, I end up going along with the main vocal melody), and kill my vocal range worse than the song already does.

But a song sounds a lot less complete without them. Fie on necessary evils.

Also – I hate identifying female Asian singing voices in idol groups. With the exception of a few pitches and tones, they all sound the same; as I discovered while trying to distinguish voices in a BeForU song. It’s a wonder I even managed to distinguish between Chiaki and Misako’s harmonies in Saigo no KOTOBA – actually, I’m not completely sure I did that, either.

So any non-solo discographies of H!P are heading far away from my to-listen list at the moment. Sorry to that particular one of you who was looking forward to sucking me into Morning Musume. Bonkyu isn’t popping up in my iTunes anytime soon, you consumerist arse.

Tomorrow I shall be off for a day of not-so-Christmas caroling. I look forward to using any change thrown at me (this is NYC, after all) to buy more things at Book-off and Kinokuniya (with its 50%-off sale!). Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good ni- ah, bah humbug.

BRE∀K DOWN! becomes a Breakup?

Slightly old news – actually, because it’s news, why is it on here?

BeForU has pretty much broken up.

According to this post on Riyu’s blog:

-Arisawa Miharu, as of 2007/12/12, is retiring from BeForU due to bad health.
-Komatsu Yoma, also as of 2007/12/12, is retiring from BeForU, for personal reasons
-Noria will be graduating from BeForU at the concert at Yokohama Arena (2007/12/30) to further her solo career.
-Sotohana Lisa will also be graduating from BeForU at the Yokohama Arena concert (2007/12/30) to begin a solo career.

Miharu and Yoma will not be appearing at the Yokohama Arena live; the Riyu-Noria concert on 2007/12/29 will still be going on. There is no announcement as to what will happen with Kosaka Riyu and Minami Sayaka, but since both have their own careers (Riyu solo and Sayaka as a duo with her sister in 秋桜 [Cosmos]), they may continue with those projects.

This is rather interesting for me. As a passing fan of BeForU (I like their music, think the girls themselves are rather talented, but haven’t actually gotten to know them individually), I’m interested to see where their solo paths takes them. Riyu has always been the one the spotlight shines on, even back in their 4-nin days, though to be fair she’s written a lot of the group’s lyrics and has built up the idol atmosphere around her quite well. Noria, while also singing solo, hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention as Riyu, and frankly, I didn’t even know Sayaka had a side project until I looked her up on Wikipedia.

I’m especially curious as to why the four girls apparently remaining in the business couldn’t have produced their solo careers using their own label, Be+Wings, but with the exception of Lisa, all the girls are in their 20s. Yoma’s in her 30s, even. It’s understandable why they’d like to shed the idol image that BeForU clearly has, because it isn’t doing wonders for them.

Here’s to the best for all 6 girls, whatever they do with their lives from now on.

Giant Kuu Kissy Face.

We’ll subtitle this post “Kimi’s going back to her roots!”, “A much-needed break from the boybands!”, or “I should stop using the horrible injokes already.” Your choice. Either way, I was burnt out last week and the multitudes of boyband-related posts I have drafted but yet to complete are getting overwhelming, so have a giant kiss(y face) to make up for it. And ignore the black eyes. I’ll make sure my hitman does a better job of the bruising next time.

Before I switched over to WordPress, I kept (or at least tried to keep) a regular
feature on my Last.fm-based journal where I’d go over weekly releases I’d had an interest in. That was a while ago. Almost two years ago. (It’s fun to see how I’ve evolved as a writer. I could go even further back and check LiveJournal, but then that’d just be cruel and unusual punishment for all parties involved.)

During then, my disinterest in Koda Kumi was only beginning, and her single-of-the-week (man, that feels so long ago) still made those posts. Looking around my room, I’ve had the limited CD+2DVD version of Kodaku’s BEST ~second session~ album sitting around for almost a month, not so much waiting to be sent to Raid as Raid is waiting for it to be sent to him. With some (okay, a lot of) stress to release (and an easy post source), I decided to open it for this review.

ARAS[H]ICK.

I was referred to as “Arasick” as I complained about Arashi working their way into my life to the extent that they have. While I can’t really deny it, somewhat appropriately, the next Arashi album for me to work through is ARASHIC.