Nenuial

... I'm trying to think of what to say about Kamisen's new PV.

And none of it is particularly good.

Except that Okada is his usual handsome self in it. hahahahahah


Right. Let's get down to my few comments. In point form, because I really don't know how to expand on them...
Positives first.
+ I like the song. :)
+ The colour/contrast adjustments were nicely done. That slighty gritty, grungy feel without overdoing it.
+ Kamisen's styling was pretty good too. Good thing they were wearing some colour to stand out better against the background.

( On the flip side... ).

Since I'm taking what feels like an eternity to select a sensible number of screencaps for my Vibes post, I'll do the Swing! PV review first. :D

This was my favourite PV of 2008. Musekinin Hero was close, but Swing! managed to come out tops in my opinion. :)

It was quite similar to Musekinin Hero in the sense that Swing! also had the concept of portraying a particular scene. But where MH was simple, desaturated, crazy and hilarious, and located in an office, Swing! was full of high contrast and intense colour, with more sedated and subtle humour, and took place in (what seems to me like) a jazz lounge. Swing! actually has less of a storyline that MH did. It seemed to me like MH was focussed on capturing the kooky character of K8 (which is a very clever idea, since their personalities are really what makes Eito stand out) but Swing!'s focus was in capturing the scene rather than the people in the scene.

I thought that the PV really succeeded ini achieving the essence and feel of the song, as well as being cool in itself. XD There was just this "sparkly" impression all throughout it, which may be due to the lightings and the blurring effect in some shots (more on that later in this post~). And for me, the art direction managed to hit the correct era (retro-ish, somewhere around the 1930s-1940s?) for the music whilst not looking exactly like it was set in the era. In other words, it felt retro without looking obviously retro.

( On to the part with lots of screencaps! )

Swing! was a really enjoyable PV for me. I'll admit that a lot of my favour for this PV stems from the fact that I love this song. I really liked it a lot - even before I saw the PV. I fell head over heels when I saw the PV, and when I saw the SCP performance I became obssessed. XD But the music, the visuals - they all just worked together magnificently. It was plain and simple in concept and devoid of special effects, but there was a lot of technical detail in there from the lighting to the framing. *applauds director and art director* All that detail isn't really obvious (even I didn't notice a lot of the composition details until I took more screencaps), but it's certainly there, and it certainly makes the PV worth watching and... fabulous. :)

No, this isn't about Tacchon - I couldn't quite resist making the title of this post sound like the title of his other solo. XD Instead, this is about V6's new PV, Cho (Butterfly). It just came out yesterday and I was so happy when I saw the download link (I have an odd feeling that I was anticipating it more than I did Step and Go -_-" ).

The song itself I kinda like. Don't love it, but I like it somewhat. :) The Spanish flavour of the song works. Vocals were great as always. Taichou's and Inocchi's solo parts were good~

The PV... Erm, "okay but could be better" would be my judgement on it. Like Step and Go, I just feel that more could have been done with the PV.

It was more of a conceptual than a narrative vid, having no apparent storyline to it. Perhaps I'm a little biased because I tend to prefer narrative music videos to abstract, conceptual ones, even though those can be interesting to watch. ^^ But I really disliked having the dancers in the vid. They were really distracting and often made the scenes too "busy" and seemed pointless.

Post-production work on this seemed fairly good. I didn't have anything that really annoyed me in the editing, colour-correction and so on. I thought the overall look of the PV suited the song - slightly mysteriouos, moody... "exotic" (@ duckii_mustang: XDDD ). Maybe a biiiit too much green/purple hues for my taste, but I can't really argue against it since it works.

V6 themselves? Lookin' good, guys. (But Okada, please shave. It's not at all nice when you look like Go. >< ) I think the dance should be interesting to watch when they perform this on Music Station and other music shows. But I do wish that they had better outfits in the PV. The outfits were too... normal. It should have been sharp, clean suits. Or at least jackets like the white one Okada had on in some scenes. Even if it was shiny silk/satin ones (if they must have some 'bling' - though I don't particularly care for it)... but I definitely think some 'cool' outfits would have served the PV better. Something more dapper than those normal clothes. Ah well.

( Caps! )