Happy birthday Koharu! I hope your Oha-Star/farming/book writing/modeling/singing career is working well for you ^_^ I wish you good luck in the future!

(ps: sorry I haven’t been updating very much lately (or at all…), I’ve been packing for all sorts of things I’m going to be doing starting soon and haven’t had a lot of internet time because of it)

You may notice that some of the headers are split down the middle, because the header up top is actually split down the middle. They look better up in the header.

I should make some male group headers. I’ll do it later.

You may recognize this header as the first one I had… I really love it, so I’m putting it back up. I’ll probably take it down again sometime in the future though.

This was made with screencaps from her Love & Peace = Paradise PV.

This was the previous header, and the only other old one I’m putting up. I couldn’t make a replacement AKB48 themed header that I liked :/

This was a screencap from their Iiwake Maybe PV.

This was my attempt at a replacement… I’m not entirely happy with it, but I figured I might as well put it up anyway.

I took the covers of some of my favorite singles for AKB48, and I took the covers of the only five singles SKE48 has out at the moment.

Airi header. I really liked this picture, so I cropped/resized it.

I think the picture is from her Tokou-bi photobook.

Berryz Koubou.

From a “Tomodachi wa Tomodachi Nanda!” photoset.

A ºC-ute header.

From a “Campus Life ~Umarete Kite Yokatta~” photoset.

An Ono Erena header… I’m kind of meh about this one, but I really liked the picture so I made this header.

The picture is from a magazine, but I don’t know which one :/

Another Ono Erena header. Witness my Photoshop fail right down the middle! It’s mostly hidden when its up in the header, but here you can see it.

This was a two-page spread from a magazine. Once again, I’m not sure which one :/

Manoeri filmstrip! I cropped it out of a magazine scan, moved one of the pictures, and edited the colour balance a little.

I think it’s from UTB, but I’m not sure :/

Manoeri and Kikkawa Yuu header! I also made this version, but you can’t really see the people in the header. I might stick it into the rotation, but it’s too similar to this one haha -_-;

I’m not sure where the Erina picture comes from (it might be from Photo Technic Digital), but the Kikka one is from UTB+.

Hee. Morning Musume header. Left is from Rival Survival, right is from the recent Morning Musume concert.

I think they’re both news pictures, or fan taken pictures. Not entirely sure, but I don’t think they’re from official photosets.

9th gen header! Witness my mildly decent photoshopping.

This is from Photo Technic Digital’s photoshoot. It’s a really nice photoshoot.

Fail photoshopping #2! If you know where to look, that is. I put both of these Momoclo headers in rotation, but I’m probably going to take one of them out. The image effect on the first one was purely accidental (I had darken as an effect instead of overlay) but I saved it because it looked neat.

I think the scan is from Young Shounen Jump, but I’m not sure :/

Hipster no3b lololol

and my third Photoshop failure. Note how one of the buildings is missing an entire row of windows…

I don’t know which magazine the photo is from :/

S/mileage header number one. I had a hard time finding HQ versions of Saki’s picture, so I had to use the MQ version.

These are the pictures hosted in the galleries on their official website, but they’re also part of four separate spreads in Photo Technic Digital.

S/mileage header number two. I think I abused the overlay a little too much…

This is from another Photo Technic Digital spread, but this time it’s just one magazine.

Tokyo Joshiryu/Tokyo Girls’ Style header, using screencaps from their two “Kodou no Himitsu” PVs. I’m not very happy with this one… I might go look for some TGS pictures.

This is the final header I put in rotation, made from screenshots from supercell’s “Sayonara Memories” PV. It looks pretty neat when it’s up top.

I might add some more soon…

Actually, I’ve been distracted with plotting things that are never going to get written -_-;

Oh, and making new headers for the blog. I discovered wordpress has enabled rotating banners.

I’ll let everyone know when I update them.

Also, I swear I will do that poll post -_-; I forgot about that too…

This weekly segment involves me opening a music player (it’ll be either iTunes or the last.fm scrobbler) and hitting “play” while it’s on shuffle.

Conditions to the song that will be posted:

No instrumental versions. If they come up, I’ll just talk about the regular version of the song.

No repeats. If it’s already come up in this section, I’m not going to talk about it again.

At the moment, I don’t know whether I should include or exclude Western artists, since they don’t really fall under the scope of my blog. For now, if they come up, I’ll put them in a list in the post, and skip to the next song. (unless people really want me to talk about them for some reason)

Songs skipped this week: none.

This week’s song: no3b’s “Kiss no Ryuusei”

My second favorite no3b song! (the first being “Tane” for some reason)

If you like this, you’ll probably like S/mileage’s “Hatsukoi no Anata E“. (only song I could think of off the top of my head)

I’m currently debating the pros and cons of making a visual novel game with the Ren’Py software.

(I have the slight beginnings of a plot… hahaha -_-; someone talk me out of this)

I randomly remembered I have polls on the sidebar, so I will probably make a post with the results sometime this week!

ON TO THE POST.

This weekly segment involves me opening a music player (it’ll be either iTunes or the last.fm scrobbler) and hitting “play” while it’s on shuffle.

Conditions to the song that will be posted:

No instrumental versions. If they come up, I’ll just talk about the regular version of the song.

No repeats. If it’s already come up in this section, I’m not going to talk about it again.

At the moment, I don’t know whether I should include or exclude Western artists, since they don’t really fall under the scope of my blog. For now, if they come up, I’ll put them in a list in the post, and skip to the next song. (unless people really want me to talk about them for some reason)

Songs skipped this week: none.

This week’s song: Hinoi Team’s “SUPER EURO FLASH”

SUPER EURO FLASH WHOA-OH

Hinoi Team songs are always fun to dance to. And they have really simple dances!

But that’s because they’re para para dances XD

I always enjoy listening to Hinoi Team; they’re the first idol group I ever listened to. Even if I only learned one member’s name. Guess who.

Asuka Hinoi.

Unsurprising, isn’t it?

(I miss this group’s songs…)

I LOVE IT ALREADY.

Anyway, on to the weekly post!

This weekly segment involves me opening a music player (it’ll be either iTunes or the last.fm scrobbler) and hitting “play” while it’s on shuffle.

Conditions to the song that will be posted:

No instrumental versions. If they come up, I’ll just talk about the regular version of the song.

No repeats. If it’s already come up in this section, I’m not going to talk about it again.

At the moment, I don’t know whether I should include or exclude Western artists, since they don’t really fall under the scope of my blog. For now, if they come up, I’ll put them in a list in the post, and skip to the next song. (unless people really want me to talk about them for some reason)

Songs skipped this week: “Angel in the Night” – Basshunter
“Done Stealin’” – Carolina Liar
“Strange World” – Parachute
“A Million Ways” – OK Go

This week’s song: Perfume×DJ momo-i’s “Akihabalove”

You know, I’ve never watched the PV for this song before (I didn’t even know it existed). They dance so well together ^^

This is a pretty old song, and one of those few where their voices aren’t altered. It’s actually one of the first few Perfume songs I fell in love with (the other one being Dream Fighter).  I recommend this song for those of you who don’t like Perfume’s usual sound.

(Now that I’ve seen the PV, I want to learn the dance… ahahaha)

I commented on AKB48′s “Everyday, Kachusha” sales in an earlier post and how amazing it was, even if I didn’t like the song. Now they’ve broken the #1 record! Which is super amazing, but it still doesn’t help my opinion on the song (perspective-wise, I like it less than “Ponytail to Shushu,” which means I will probably never listen to it ever again).

I’m not going to type a whole post about “deserving sales” (they have worked awfully hard to get to this point), but you can either read Aimxaim’s post over at Janakya Mottainai or that one I wrote last year around this time in regards to Ponytail‘s sales if you feel kind of iffy as to whether the single actually should have sold as much as it has. If this were any release besides the voting single it probably would have sold about 600,000-800,000 first day. (I think. I haven’t really been keeping tabs on first day sales for AKB48 lately)

Reading back through the post I wrote last year (and finally making those corrections in regards to “senbatsu” and “voting”), this jumped out at me:

I’m hoping that the voting sales just inflated the sales of the song and that this isn’t a mark of the current music trend in Japan. Because Ponytail is really nothing special. It just happened to be the voting single. And with every voting single from now on, I can almost guarantee sales will be inflated. They don’t even have to put out a good song to make it sell an insane amount. That’s the other thing that bothers me. They know it’s going to sell well, so they don’t even try.

On the plus side, the sales were a reflection of AKB48′s popularity and the song didn’t really seem to have an effect on Japan/AKB48′s general music trend (EmEl was right!); on the downside I was right about the voting single thing and that they didn’t have to put out a good song to get the single to sell well.

I wish they’d tried with this release :/ Oh well. I’m looking forward to final election results! (I’m personally rooting for Kojiharu)

As it turns out, it will. Tsunku made a statement about the group “lacking something” when he made his announcement. The solution was clearly to put more people into the group. (those are my words, not his)

Whoever’s idea this was, it’s not going to go well. I haven’t read the reactions over at H!O, but they probably won’t be good. Also, the girls themselves don’t seem very excited about it.  And, as Arche-JoIyO pointed out, it could be like Kanna in °C-ute all over again, where some fans never really grew to accept the her addition (assuming this is only a one-shot thing, which it probably won’t be). I’m somewhat okay with adding someone, as long as no one is demoted.

Yuuka’s sad face broke my heart </3

Aw Yuuka :(

I’m really hoping Akari is put into the group, even if there’s probably a 0.00000001% chance. Especially since she’s not an H!P Egg anymore…

I was just listening to Vanessa Carlton today, wondering what happened to her, and then I went online and saw this! You can download the song for free if you are so inclined, there’s a link on the page.

And Michelle Branch’s new song is here:

Looks like she will release a new album this year :D

So, I come back to the internet to find that the Berryz Koubou, Manoeri, and Morning Musume PVs are out.

Well, Manoeri’s is a “riverside” version and not the real PV, but it’s still better than a 30 sec. preview (which was also released) because you get to hear the full song :D I LOVE IT. SO SO MUCH.

She also has stunning promo pics that were released a while ago (click for larger size).

My favorite ones are the last two in the series of pictures I posted (so fierce!) but I always love Manoeri smiling more :)

Quick opinions on the other two PVs:

“Ai no Dangan” has a pretty cool dance, powerful sound, interesting outfits (all I could think was “Berryz Kamen ver 2″) the screen had some really neat applications (displaying the dance shot and the close up versions in the background, showing graphiclight displays) and I really liked that although the PV was pretty basic in execution (all they really needed to film were dance shot/close ups, though they did have some other shots), they found ways to make the two work together in an interesting fashion, like having their solo shots put in front of the dance.  Massa’s hair looked awesome. I approve of more Captain(!) in songs, and the fairer line distribution trend Berryz Koubou has had for the past couple of singles.

“Only You” is more powerful then Berryz Koubou’s song, the dance is practical but doesn’t fit the song very well (it’s not sharp enough) and a lot of people have less than appealing hairstyles. I wish the song had better distribution after talking about it last time, but I guess it’s not easy to do with this song :/ Riho as third lead is a little weird since her voice isn’t exactly up to par, and Risa getting autotuned/vocoded was disappointing since she sounded so great in the concert rip (maybe if they’d had her sing over like Saki did in °C-ute’s “Bye Bye Bye?” though that might’ve sounded weird). Honestly, if they did it they should’ve kept it consistent. The verses ran a little weird, and the patterns went different lengths. Some of the shots in the PV were kind of like “Nanchatte Renai”‘s in a way – they all just sit there… but there’s floating gems this time. Oooh.

Oh, and Ai’s new hairstyle looks neat, but almost every time I saw her, I saw Ueda (a member of KAT-TUN). I’d provide a picture for proof, but I really only have pictures of Junno… here, Google one.

Also, AKB48 sold almost one million copies in one day! Which is amazing. I don’t like the song very much (when you listen to a song and start wondering when is it going to end after the first chorus, it’s not a good sign), but that’s amazing sales. Hopefully next single is better? I liked “Sakura no Ki ni Narou” as a song, and the PV somewhat, though the shots of people singing could have been done better and I’m pretty sure it was a thinly-disguised ploy to make people love Jurina (guess what, it kind of worked on me ahahaha).

Eh. I don’t really know what else to talk about, so I’ll just end the post here…

I’m going on hiatus for the week… again hahaha.

I’ll fill the rest of the post with video spam of stuff I wanted to talk about and haven’t gotten the chance to.

Note that most of it is After School haha -_-; I want to talk about their MV so much but I haven’t had the time to write a proper post.

After School is back!

I love the instrumental. I’m a little disappointed that the main focus is Raina instead of the new girl, but oh well.

I COULD WRITE SO MUCH MORE ;~; I’m in love with the atmosphere of the MV.

Instead of a drum line concept like their last release, Bang!, After School picked up tap dancing as their theme.

The dance… eh. It looks neat because they’re so in sync though. Liked Because of You and Bang!‘s dances more.

S/mileage’s new single

初恋の貴方へ – Hatsukoi no Anata e.  This is my favorite B-side of theirs by far. Even though I do love Smile Bijin an awful lot, I love this song more. I’m not quite sure why, haha.

A-side was not really enjoyable (though the PV was fun), and their cover of Koi wo Shichaimashita! is not as likable as their cover of Otome Pasta ni Kandou or their cover of Chokotto Love.

And then their new single is apparently going to have all three of these covers? (so says CD Japan) Why?

Though, maybe they’ll make a PV for them! That’d be kind of neat.

Dream5

I know them mostly as “the group Ven introduced to me because Shuuta was involved with choreographing their dancing and they have great talent and I forgot about them until their videos were posted on avex’s channel.”

Oh, and it’s four girls, one guy. I wasn’t aware of that until they released Koi no Dial 6700. /fail

Ven showed me this one:

Though it was a TV performance of some sort instead of a dance shot.

They covered Koi no Dial 6700:

And they’re releasing a mini-album May 4th! (the title track is another cover) :

For more videos I suggest just looking them up on youtube, there’s lots there.