Random Curiosity

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.

You might have noticed that I had been really looking forward to the Shoujo S PV since it’s such a good song, but the Sambomaster ED to Bleach isn’t bad either. I’ve been listening to the band’s songs on and off for the past four years ever since I first heard them when they did the Densha Otoko ending theme, and usually I find myself listening to the Bleach OP and ED together after each week’s episode. In any case, the PV for Kimi wo Mamotte, Kimi wo Aishite was actually pretty entertaining and featured a boy protects girl type love story that fits well with the song’s lyrics. The whole carrying-the-girl-on-his-back scene was laughable because the guy has such a constipated look on his face, and the rain effects could have used some work, but overall it’s a good video, and as always, I enjoyed hearing the full version of the song.

The single for Kimi wo Mamotte, Kimi wo Aishite is due out June 10th, 2009.

Having finally aired last night (thanks goes out to everyone who emailed me), SCANDAL’s Shoujo S PV turned out to be exactly what the preview indicated it’d be: girls playing guitars and singing while water is coming down everywhere. I thought the band members looked a lot better when not soaked, but the water coming down (along with some fancy camerawork) added to what otherwise might have been a more static video given how much of it is just the band singing and moving around in one spot. As it is, it turned out to be a pretty high energy PV, which is appropriate since it’s a pretty high energy song. And I enjoyed hearing the full version of it, particularly since the single isn’t going to be out for another month. It’s a shame though that the song is only a little over three minutes long, and the rest of the video shows that janitor guy while the girls laugh in the background. Anyway, it’s a fun video and worth a watch just to see the band.

The single for Shoujo S is due out June 17th, 2009.

The sub-title to this post should be “How A Song Gets Stuck In My Head.” I was actually looking around earlier to see if I had missed the PV for the current OP to Bleach, Shoujo S (the answer: I don’t think it’s aired yet, though I also found this clip that previews the PV), and I happened across a blog that was streaming a random song. Normally in these cases I immediately close the website because I find it obnoxious to automatically stream anything upon loading a page, but this time I paused long enough for the vocals to start, and the song was so good that I ended up listening to the whole thing. One search of lyrics later, I tracked down the title and the artists, and the PV for the song. It turns out that it was Negai by rapper Dohzi-T and singer YU-A (of Foxxi misQ fame apparently), neither of whom I was very familiar with. The PV was interesting as well because it looked like movie or drama quality and portrayed a whole love story in just under six minutes. It’s admittedly sappy stuff that not everyone will like, but I enjoyed the combination of song and video, and these are two more artists I’ll have to keep my eye on from now on.

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.

As many of you may know, popular singer and guitarist YUI performs the opening song for the new Fullmetal Alchemist series. It’s a pretty good song, full of energy, and the full version of it has been floating around the internet for a few weeks now. The PV for it finally aired yesterday, and while it’s not a very exciting video since the majority of it is just shots of her performing the song with a band, it does showcase her instrumental and vocal talents. It’s probably worth a watch if you like the song. If you’re looking for more, FujiTV’s Mezamashi TV also aired a segment a couple of days ago about the PV, and you can find that download here (thanks to yuistalker for the link).

The single for again comes out June 3rd, 2009.