Nenuial

Attempting to distract myself from a sudden bout of emo-ness.



The pronounciation is all over the place, but no surprise there. XD 
I'm quite fond of the harmony - and the fact that the whole thing sounds so doowop-ish. ♥ I do wish that Sakamoto was more prominent in it because as far as I can tell he's just holding down the bass line. Then again, he does have the steadiest voice of the lot...

C'mon, Johnny-san, get these guys a proper album of their own already! They're probably the best (vocal) sound in your agency. haha

My Singapore weekend largely consisted of bookstores and meeting friends. hahaha On Friday, I met up with snoew, and on Saturday with Luke and his girlfriend. On both days I visited Kinokuniya (two different ones, of course), and on Saturday itself, I spent about 5 hours in the Takashimaya branch of Kino. Yes, five. I got to Taka at about 1pm and was due to meet Luke at 6.30pm. I went straight into Kino and never came out until 6.15pm. 8D And I totally forgot that there was even a second floor to that particular branch of Kino. >_>

Anyway... snoew is very good for the Singaporean (and Japanese) economy. Where I was instrumental in luring her into Arashi fandom, she's instrumental in getting me to spend on V6/K8 fandom.

( So I bought V6 albums... )


But overall, I spent very little in Singapore. Compared to my sisters, that is. My total purchases probably came out to about... Just around SGD100, maybe? Those two albums, several markers, a coloured ink pad and two manga from Kino... That's about it. lol OOoohhhh speaking of that: snoewwwww, I'm totally going to have you buy more Ouran manga for me from Singapore when I decide on other interesting volumes. XD I discovered that there's a Singapore company licensed to translate Ouran and Otomen and some other manga to English. The price is like, half of Shojo Beat's. So I bought volumes 12 and 13. :P
(Of course, Shoujo Beat comes from the US, and the cover design and all is rather prettier. But still! I'd rather buy the cheaper Singaporean one since the translation is fairly decent. Although I do wish they'd simply ignored the whole senpai suffix and went with just the names, because calling characters "Senior Tamaki" and "Senior Hani" and so on is plain awkward.)

( And then I bought a bracelet... )
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Sooo funny! I can't wait for the proper translation~
And I love their Heyx3 outfits! (Except maybe Nagano's tight-fitting shirt. That just looked strange with the vest... ) It's like a pastel version of the same colour palette as the MS set. On MS it was white, black and bright pink. Here it's white, grey and pastel pink. I really like it~

Vague translations of bits follow the cut... ^^
( XD  )
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musicmind may not have blown me away as Vibes did or amuse me as much as Love & Life or have as many songs that I liked as Voyager, but... there were definitely parts that I liked.

I liked how there was a sort of jazzy feel to the whole concert, mostly because they had a brass section in addition to the usual band... and because the musicians weren't hidden away somewhere - they were in plain sight on either side of the stage and whenever any of V6 wandered near enough, the tracking spotlight would also end up illuminating whichever musician was nearest XD I think there was a sequence where they got the brass section (or was it the guitars?) to kind of join in the song. I thought that was really quite nice :)

Their Christmas medley - Silver Bells/Lonely Holy Night/2nd Bell - was a huge favourite of mine. I was kind of glad that they didn't include Miracle Starter since I don't like it quite as much as those other three songs :P
There was a simple little candle sequence during Lonely Holy Night that I thought was a nice touch. Nothing fancy, but the simplicity suited the atmosphere.

And it's just amazing how Okada Junichi - barely visible in the half-light - can make an action as plain as blowing out a candle look... stunning.


( Read on for V6 and Eito~ )

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At long last! Finally, my Vibes con post. XD

* I couldn't cut the image count below 100, so... I suggest you open this in a new tab or something and then come back to in after a while when it finishes loading. 8D
Oh, and some of these are linked thumbnails to the original larger images (just see if there's a thin olive-green border around the pic). ^^

The opening of Vibes was... impressive. It didn't exactly start with a bang nor was it grand and startling, but it was certainly impressive. You don't see V6 for a whole minute (about 1 minute and 20 seconds 8D ) from the instant the lights dim and the anticipation is built solely through the music (which starts off almost sci-fi-ish and turns into a suspense-inducing piece full of bass and electronic sounds) and the video. Then there's a moment of darkness and silence. And finally V6 arrive on the scene - rising up to the second level of the stage, dressed in cool-looking checkered black and white, with white trilby hats~ - and proceed to stun us all with NEXplosion.

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*looks at clock*
It's 4.30 AM.
I took me four hours to write this post. FOUR. No wonder I feel exhausted.
I'd comment a bit more, but I'm too tired now 8D I'll probably add formatting of font colours after I wake up. heh 12.30PM: Formatting done~ Now to add comments...
Hope you've all enjoyed reading this and looking at the pics (even if they are rather Okada-centric) ^^;;

12.30PM Addition:
** "This was one of those run-around-the-hall-and-wave-at-fans times (which I'm glad V6 didn't do that often - I'll explain later"
The explanation - I've found that if I have to spend half the concert watching the artistes run around the hall/arena/stadium and wave to fans, it's boring. And somewhat irritating. And makes me glad that I didn't buy the DVD(s). Because I'm not going to pay several hundred ringgit just to watch a concert where they don't really perform. Yea, they're still singing throughout but y'know... I'd like to actually see some dances and so on. It's nice when they move around once in a while to interact with the fans, but I prefer it when they do that less. *is trying hard to not to mention names*
So I was really glad that V6 didn't do spend that much time on this. They spent more time actually performing, which thoroughly suits me.

** One thing I really liked about this concert was the way they kept the stage gimmicks to a minimum and yet managed to make it look impressive. The synchronisation of those vids with the music and how they spread the videos across 5 or 6 separate screens sometimes was marvellous.
(And I was doubly impressed when I found out that it was Okada who was behind most of the production ideas XD Huh. Yet another Okada-MatsuJun similarity. But even so, I don't think I'd have wanted to be the video editor working on all that footage. If I was, I'd have been one of the two who went insane. I can just imagine the amount of work and stress for it... 8D )

** And the costumes!! I loved most of them. :D (I really liked Voyager's too, but I think the nice ones here really surpass those - primarily because of the colour choices.) Not sure just how many pieces were designed by Go, but if he could come up with those outfits in the opening sequence... He's really not bad. Go, can you design Arashi's concert outfits next time?

I've been going through my video folders lately... and I keep coming across random vids that I wish were subbed or that I wish I could sub. The list just keeps growing! @_@ hahaha

One would be part of the 2002 Johnny's Sports Day, namely the part where the representatives of J-White and J-Red have a little contest in order to pick their "cheer teams" (or whatever you call it) from the B-Rap school (GeI, yay!). I like this part because J-Red was represented by Taichi, MatsuJun and Okada. With that combination, it's a 100% elenniel bias. :P
The "cheers" that resulted from the nanshiki Globe duo (Red) and the Anko the KANCREW trio (White) were hilarious too, making fun of the various JE guys. The KANCREW one especially. XD They managed to poke fun at KinKi Kids, Jun, Okada and Nagase among others. lol~


This afternoon I downloaded one ep of VVV6 - because there was Will Smith and Okada. How could I resist that combination?? I watched it and cracked up. Especially when Will decided that he had to give Okada something in return for the wonderful ootoro (or was it sushi? I forgot) that Okada just gave him... and he picked up a pillow from the hotel sofa and handed it to a slightly puzzled Okada, saying that in America, they give these for special days. "You can open it later." LOL ( I should screencap that part one day...)


Then just now, I found a 2003 GeI episode lurking in my Arashi folder. And I soooooo want to sub this or see this subbed. Why?

This is why:

MatsuJun! On GeI! With Sakamoto!! I completely forgot that I had this! I haven't seen it in eonsss.

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Yay! Sub finished~

I really meant to have the cheerleader episode done for today as well, but couldn't encode and upload in time (I wanted my bandwidth and RAM to be free in case they messed with my Peercast connection. ^^; ). But in any case, the birthday surprise clip is do-ne! :D :D


Gakkou e Ikou [2004.02.24]
( Links here... )

This clip is so hilarious... from my V6 favourites (Okada, Nagano, Sakamoto) practising the birthday song at random intervals to Ken and Inocchi's VTR to Go's telling everyone thank-you-now-please-go-away. XD

*pesters everyone to download and watch this*

*ditches previous boring RL post*

V6-san. Vibes was nothing short of impressive.
I may not have liked as many songs as I did in Voyager, but your performances in Vibes were undeniably cool. No solo songs, no backdancers, no giant props, no over-the-top costumes (ok maybe those red jackets with red roses all down the front were too much), no fancy skits (those should only be done by Eito anyway XD ) or very elaborate setups. Your props were the stages and the huge digital screens - all used to great effect. It's worthy of a huge picspam post. But static images just won't do your concert justice. Nevertheless I might do it anyway. haha

Bottom line: I liked it :)

And!

Sakamoto!

Tapdances!

♥

Music Station Super Live, V6 & Arashi - Comments typed as I watched them on Friday... Bracketed comments I'm adding now.
V6:
Sakamoto! hair! so short
v6 went on a tour together?
okada <3 <3 <3
Nagano!
... nande Light In Your Heart? [Why not Chou? :( ]
but thankfully no frills and fringes [on the clothes]
Okada-Sakamoto harmony <3
Nagano sounds like he's straining a little

( Jun and Junichi... )


I don't want to leave K8 out of today's flail post (which might be the last flail post of the year for me? Depends on how busy I am the next few days), so here's me flipping out over the January Potato scans from Vendy. =D
( Pink and purple... )

Oh! Oh! I just watched this old clip of V6 on Music Station - when they performed Mejirushi no Kioku... and Okada played the piano! ♥ ♥ Every time I watch him play the piano I just melt... :3

Ok I'm done. ^^ Flu symptoms forcing me to bed now.

ohmiya_sg uploaded the HD cuts of some of the JE performances and so I grabbed some. Along with the softsubs from newshfan. (Only problem is that the videos lag when played with the subs. >.<" If I don't use the subtitles it's fine. Anyone know how to overcome that issue?)

My favourite part is definitely V6's. :D I would've liked Eito's part more if Yoko hadn't turned up in that appalling perm. After seeing the recent Mezamashi, Zoom-in and other news clips of Ryo and Hina receiving the Oricon award on Eito's behalf for top-selling DVD of the year, I think I have to be resigned to the fact that Yoko's going to have horrible hair for the next month at the very least. *sad*

I'm getting sidetracked.

I screencapped the V6 clip in all it's HD glory and for once didn't resize the screencaps - because I think everyone should enjoy the delightful images at full size. XD Click ze thumbnails to go to the Scrapbook gallery ;)


I've no real complaints about the outfits, except that I'm not very fond of that dullish red plaid pattern on Go's scary and Okada's shirt. But I like the white coats! And the hats!

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