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「否定の彼方へ」 (Hitei no Achira he) “To the One Who Rejects Me”
“Beyond the winding road”
Would I really let the final episode of Pandora Hearts slip by without saying something about it? Hell no. Read on if you’re following the series, but stop here if you plan to watch it later.
SCANDAL, the self-proclaimed “Most Powerful Japanese Girlie Pop Rock”, appeared on NHK’s MUSIC JAPAN Shinseki Anisong Special (新世紀アニソンSP) earlier this month. While I didn’t know anything about them prior to today, some of you may know them for performing “Shoujo S”, the tenth opening theme to Bleach.
Anyway, instead of performing one of their songs on this TV special, SCANDAL opted to perform a cover of the ever-so-popular K-ON! ending theme, “Don’t say ‘lazy'”. They’re not quite the Yui, Mio, Mugi, and Ritsu we know, but they are a real-life group of high school friends from Osaka who formed their own band and made it to the big leagues, so it was pretty cool to hear their rendition of this awesome song. The only thing that would’ve made this a bit cooler is a keyboardist for the true Houkago Tea Time composition.
P.S. Anyone else see a bit of ZONE in them?
Since there’s no new episode of FMA today, this seems like a good time to talk about the PV for the second ending song which started airing on M-ON! and SSTV earlier this week. You may remember that when I wrote about the PV for the second opening song Hologram, I mentioned that I’ve been listening to LET IT OUT a lot more recently, and that still remains true. While Hologram was a much catchier song at first, after repeated listens, I much prefer LET IT OUT. I found the lyrics really fitting for FMA in relation to Ed and Al, and I love Fukuhara Miho’s voice. Combined with her looks, which you can see in the video above, she reminds me a bit of Itou Yuna. The PV itself was actually pretty interesting as well because it didn’t just have her and a band performing the song, it also told the story of the solitary-looking guy who finally lets it all out at the end.
It’s an all-around good song, and I’m happy to have heard the full version and seen the PV now after having been teased by the commercial for it these past few weeks, especially since the CD for it isn’t due out until next month. Actually, now that I think about it, September 9th isn’t so far away anymore…
Today I have the privilege of bringing a new PV to your attention (read: made to do). The ending single for the popular supernatural series Bakemonogatari, “Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari” (Your Unknown Story), was released today and along with it, the PV for the song.
Prior to hearing this song, I didn’t know anything about supercell. Even now, I still claim to know nothing except for the fact that they’re a unit comprised of Nico Nico Douga creators/performers. Centered around their composer “ryo”, who was responsible for a bunch of popular Hatsune Miku songs, and their vocalist “Gazelle” a.k.a. “nagi”, who was supposedly a really famous Nico Nico Douga singer before deciding to “retire” from the scene, supercell makes me wonder if the likes of Hollywood would ever look to YouTube to find amateur artists to perform the theme song for their next blockbuster hit. Hella unlikely I bet. However, this does go to show how you can make it big via online videos in Japan.
Being the “Internet people” that they are, apparently many of the members haven’t made any TV appearances yet. As such, it still remains a mystery as to how some of them look. According to Patrik, maybe they’re “ugly” and don’t want people to be turned away from their music based on how they look. We jest, but I’m inclined to think that way since people tend to be pretty shallow in showbiz. In any case, this probably explains why the PV features good looking actors/actresses in a story-like setting. Even if this kind of PV isn’t your thing, listening to the song alone makes it worth the watch.
Oh yeah, Omni said the main girl, played by Fukunaga Marika (福永 マリカ), is pretty cute. Personally, I’m edging towards Kitade Naho (北出 菜穂) but only after seeing her profile shot. Enjoy~
The current Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood opening song is performed by a group called NICO Touches the Walls that I wasn’t familiar prior to this, but apparently they had sung an ending song for Naruto last year. Regardless, I took an immediate liking to Hologram back when I first heard it in the commercial that aired for the current FMA story arc, and over a month later, I still like it, especially the way the song starts. It’s worth noting though that I’ve been listening to the new ending song LET IT OUT a lot more and am interested in the PV for that too after seeing a commercial for it during last night’s episode of FMA. In any case, despite the catchy song, the PV for Hologram is rather bland. It has a lot of colors and semi-flashy effects, but the video mainly just shows the band standing around and playing the song. It’s not worth watching more than once or twice.
The single for Hologram is due out August 12th, 2009.
If you haven’t heard of ELLEGARDEN or Hosomi Takeshi, watch the above video first before reading the rest of this. Having not heard of any of those before now, my first reaction to it was that it was surprisingly good English from a Japanese band (and it reminded me of how I recently found out that Mizushima Hiro also speaks good English). You probably could have fooled me into thinking that this was any random American group, and only after looking them up did I realize that the HIATUS is a Japanese group led by former ELLEGARDEN vocalist Hosomi Takeshi. I’m not writing about it just because it features good English though – it’s a very catchy rock song too, and I love the way the song starts and the chorus. The PV was interesting to watch as well, if a bit abstract with that man made of rock. It’s pretty good stuff overall, and I’ll have to pay more attention to Hosomi Takeshi’s music from now on.
The album Trash We’d Love that Ghost In The Rain came out on was released a couple of weeks ago.
I know I’ve been posting a lot of PVs lately, but there have just been a lot of good songs and videos that have gotten my interest. May’n’s latest falls into the former category. You may remember that I wasn’t too keen about Shangri-la as a series, however one of the bright spots was the May’n opening song. It’s very catchy, and May’n shows off more of the vocal talents that we heard in Macross Frontier. The title also has some interesting background to it because it’s based on an old poem of the same name by Yosano Akiko. The PV, unfortunately, isn’t that great since it just has May’n singing and dancing, and there’s not a lot of variety in camera shots. I realize of course that I’ve been spoiled by some good videos lately, so your mileage may vary. In fact, when Divine saw the video, he mentioned that he was content with just watching May’n dancing in that outfit for four minutes. In any case, I love the song, but the PV not so much, and I’m still not that inclined to find the time to watch Shangri-la.
The single for Kimi Shinitamou koto nakare is already out.
A commenter on the Negai post last week reminded me of some of the past groups I’ve posted about, and one of those groups put out a really good song recently. MONKEY MAJIK is a band that I talked about a few years ago but haven’t been paying attention to for a while. For those of you who aren’t familiar with them, they’re a group led by a pair of Canadian brothers who speak Japanese. Aishiteru is the aptly-titled theme song they perform for the NTV drama Aishiteru (which incidentally I hear is quite good). It’s a really nice love song that, like their others, is a mix of English and Japanese. The PV was very interesting to watch too because it’s a combination of papercraft-esque animation with ragdoll characters and real life. I’m not sure I completely understand it, but it appears to tell the story of a guy in love who falls out of heaven, gets eaten by a fish, and the girl saves him in the fish market. I know it sounds like of stupid, but I thought it was worth the watch and definitely the listen. I’m even curious about the drama now.
The single for Aishiteru is due out June 10th, 2009.
Asu he no Kizuna is one of those songs that I knew I’d like as soon as I heard it, and I’ve been enjoying the full version of it quite a bit recently. As I mentioned a week ago, I had seen a commercial for single and had been very interested in the PV, but the reason for that was because of the way HIMEKA had been dressed up. It was, to put it delicately, not the most flattering. In fact, I found the actual PV kind of difficult to watch because the outfit and the excessive make-up was very distracting, especially since this is one of those videos that focuses a lot on the singer. It feels like they’re trying too hard to market her as a classically beautiful idol, and that just doesn’t suit her. There’s just so much more they could do with someone who has a background like hers (her real name is Catherine St. Onge, and she’s French Canadian) and has such a great voice. Anyway, to its credit, the video isn’t entirely made up of shots of her and mixes things up a bit with that little boy and the painting. Plus, as I said, I still really like the song itself, and that alone made the PV worth a watch.
The single for Asu he no Kizuna is due out May 27th, 2009. You can also keep track of what HIMEKA is up to via her blog which is written in English, Japanese, and sometimes French.
Edit: I’ve re-encoded and re-uploaded the PV so that the audio and video are in sync.
The PV for Eden of the East’s ED aired earlier this week on M-ON!, and I had completely forgotten about it until I was reminded by the commercial that aired during this week’s episode (which I’ll get around to blogging later today). I had really liked the TV-size version, helped out by the fact that it’s got a very nice papermation sequence accompanying it, so I had been looking forward to seeing what the PV was like. It turned out to be not nearly as fun as that since it just had the band standing around playing the song, though I have to admit that this was new to me in the sense that I’m not very familiar with school food punishment as a group. I at least enjoyed hearing the full version of the song – the beginning (the first verse) and the end are the best parts, and I didn’t like the middle of the song quite as much because of the long instrumental section. Regardless, the PV is worth a watch if for no other reason than to hear the full song.
The single for futuristic imagination is due out May 27th, 2009.