j1m0ne’s blog

02 May 2007
I’ve spent most of the last few days catching up on anime (including a one-day marathon of the first season of Nanoha) and playing Stepmania, plus watching snooker and the Champions’ League; all stuff I haven’t had the time to do in the last fortnight or so. It’s a bit of a lull before my final exams (ever) at the end of the month. Yawn.

I laughed when Aice5 debuted below SECRET AMBITION (in its 2nd week) in the Oricon weekly.

Singles
Days/Say cheese!. Horie Yui

Her first single in a year, and it’s rather dull. Just like the anime it’s from…. I really liked last week’s Aice5 single (Brand New Day) though.
Rating: ★★☆☆☆

We can make it!. Arashi
It must be a really dull week, I’m listening to Arashi…. To be fair, they’ve had some pretty decent songs over the years; stuff like Hadashi no mirai, PIKA☆☆NCHI DOUBLE and A・RA・SHI are all nice, hummable pop tunes. We can make it! though, is dull as sin.
Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Asu e no hikari. Hinoi Asuka

Thankfully sounds nothing like the hideous Eurobeat of Hinoi Team. This is a pretty good single - not a huge fan of the lead single (which is also the ED theme for Seto no Hanayome) but the C/W songs are both good.
Rating: ★★★☆☆

Mata kaeru kara. UNDER GRAPH

One of the more consistently good mainstream Jrock bands around, it seemed they were going to make it big after the huge success of their first major label single Tsubasa which sold around 300,000 copies. It didn’t quite go that way though, with subsequent releases selling alright but nothing really spectacular. Bit of a shame methinks.

Mata kaeru kara, their first single in almost a year, is a little below average for their standards, it’s not as good as the last few ones like Paradigm and Yubisaki kara sekai o but still a pretty solid effort.
Rating: ★★★☆☆

UNDERGROUND. HIGH VOLTAGE

The cover is the best thing about the single, hah. Eh. I thought it sounded alright when I first heard it in Gurren Lagann but the full version is a little underwhelming. It sounds like a SPARTA LOCALS/9mm Parabellum Bullet reject.
Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Albums
Shoko-tan☆Cover~Anison ni koi o shita~. Nakagawa Shoko

I’d normally regard anime cover albums with suspicion but hey, it’s the multi-talented extreme blogger/cosplayer Shoko-tan, who’s dabbled in everything from singing to acting to modelling to voice acting. She’s more of an otaku than I am, and she knows more about ‘80/90s anime than I ever will. I’d be totally in love with her if I was a guy ^^;

Shoko’s made some pretty good choices for this mini-album (though I really could’ve done without the Sailor Moon song), though only two of her top 10 favourite anisongs that she listed during her appearance on Domoto Kyodai a few months ago made it here (Romantic ni Ageruyo from Dragon Ball and Zankoku na Tenshi no These from Evangelion). Too bad there’s no Harehare Yukai or DANZEN! Futari wa Precure but that doesn’t stop it from being one of the best anisong cover albums I’ve heard. The only drawback - there’s only 5 tracks #$%*&@…

Oh, and I’m sure most ppl will have seen this anyway but Shoko-tan cosplaying as Haruhi lecturing a bewildered Wada Akiko about otaku culture (i.e. tsundere, eroge, fujoushi, BL etc) still makes me grin whenever I watch it. It was funny how she admonished Wada for not knowing who Tamura Yukari (神ですよ！！- she’s God!!) was ^_^
Rating: ★★★★☆

THE BEST of mihimaru GT. mihimaru GT

A best of already? It doesn’t seem so long ago since their debut single Yakusoku (released in 2003). Oh how record companies love to milk pop acts. Is their sell-by date coming up? I’ve never been fond of these sort of hits collections so early into an artist’s career but mihimaru GT have made a couple of excellent singles (Itsu made mo hibiku kono melody, Tsuyoku tsuyoku and Kibun Joujou) so it’s a chance for people who’ve never heard the hip-pop duo to give them a go.
Rating: ★★★☆☆

Skipped:
-Didn’t care for w-inds. frontman Tachibana Keita’s Friend the first time I heard it in Blue Dragon.
-Kusumi Koharu gives me a headache.
-ET-KING. Don’t particularly like their brand of Ketsumeishi/Def Tech-lite pop.
-MUCC.

Still waiting:
the pillows’ album. I’m not too bothered about it anyway. It did make a good debut at No.4 in the charts though.

Next week:
Looks more lively, with new singles from B’z, Aqua Timez, angela, Remioromen and Yukarin’s Hoshizora no Spica as well.

Posted on May 3rd, 2007 under music, this week in japan • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback