xanithofdragons

I made an account at goodreads.com! I'm always wanting to read more, so a place where I can keep track of books I've read and books I want to read AND get book recommendations sounds pretty sweet. So if you're using it and want to share book recs or something or just be friends there, please comment or message me! And I feel like I should let you know that I decided to make an account while looking up lesbian mystery novels because this information is so important. xD

In fandom news... *sigh* I was already strongly leaning towards not buying it, although some kind of miracle in the track-list could have changed my mind. But alas, a miracle did not happen. Kisumai's management seems set on changing absolutely nothing and making absolutely zero progress ever, so I don't even want to support it all anymore. And since, with the debut of Johnny's WEST, I was feeling like I might need to hold back somewhere else anyway, well, Kisumai, if you're going to disappoint me every time anyway... I'll spend my money on groups that don't make me sad. Ugh, sometimes I feel like WataTai is the only part of Kisumai I really like anymore. >_<

Ah well, I do have Ebi releases to look forward to this summer. ♥ I did ultimately decide to buy the Johnny's Densetsu digest DVD since I do want to watch more Johnny's musicals. And I actually ordered two versions of Legend Story. ^^;

So I got my copy of Arafes '13 back on... Wednesday, but didn't post about it until now because I was busy working a ton of hours for Memorial Day weekend and because I've started actively looking for a new job again and that... takes up a lot of time and adds a lot of stress and I'm generally tired. I actually worked the day it came and ended up staying up late to watch it all that night because I couldn't wait.

( packaging picspam )

The entire DVD is all really good! I liked at the beginning how they looked back on the other Kokuritsu lives they had done. It was really cool that they had "corners" for each of the members, and that helped group the live into several different parts really well. I think Sho's was my favorite corner, although Jun's corner is really close too! If I'm leaning towards Sho's corner, it's probably because I tend to like songs where all the members have rap parts, and because COOL & SOUL was probably my favorite performance in this live. It's also cute how they switched the rap and singing parts for a Day in Our Life. ^^

Of course, the remixes in Jun's corner were great! I do really like remixes, and it's fun to hear familiar songs changed to be a little different. ^^ And, about the single request ranking... I feel a little bad for Aiba because although Endless Game and Breathless made it into the ranking as the new single songs of the year, Calling didn't. And none of the theme songs for Aiba dramas did either. >_< I will just pretend that Calling ranked in at #11, okay?

It was also great at the very end how Arashi expressed their gratitude to Kokuritsu at the end of the live and asked all the fans to, too! No matter how popular Arashi gets, they always stay really grounded and humble, and that's something I really respect about them. I don't remember which show it was, but I remember Nino talking on one TV show about how he's (they're) always planning ahead for when their popularity wanes and how they didn't expect to stay as popular as they are for as long as they have.

One last thing I want to talk about in this post is pairings. Arashi has such a tight dynamic that it's hard for me to pick a favorite pairing, so my favorite shifts around a lot. But I could really understand any pairing within Arashi being popular. I tend to prefer pairs that include my favorite members, so I tend to lean towards pairs with Nino. Until recently, I was leaning towards Nino/Sho, but that was always more because I really like YamaTarou than because of the dynamic Nino and Sho themselves have. Lately, I've been leaning more towards Nino/Aiba because they have a really cute and playful dynamic. ♥ And I saw some more of that in what small part of the MC that was included, so I was happy to see that. xD Nino always teasing Aiba in clearly friendly, playful ways. ♥

A translation post! It's only been, what? Three months? orz And it's a Johnny's WEST translation post! I've translated the messages from the My Best CD versions of Ee Ja Nai ka. Thank you to nadiah_kumako for posting images of Ryuusei and Hama-chan's versions. I used this video as reference for Shige, Kami-chan, and Kotaki's versions. I'm actually hoping to do more Johnny's WEST translations in the future, so let me know if there's anything in particular you hope to see translated. (I mainly have experience translating from text, so things like magazine interviews ^^)

Notes at the bottom

( Ee Ja Nai ka )
Please credit and link back to this post if reposting any part of this translation. Questions and comments are welcom.

I got the My Best CD versions of Ee Ja Nai ka in the mail yesterday. ♥

( images )

Rainbow Dream and My Best Friend are both really nice songs (I'd say I like My Best Friend a little more), but listening to them both in a row... they kind of both follow the same formula musically. ^^

Akito and Junta's messages were both really cute too! Akito's message was kind of messy and all over the place though. xD Junta's message was both longer and more straight-forward, but also kind of cutely repetitive. And Akito called himself a "pochadoru" a chubby idol. xD So cute.

I'm planning on at least translating Akito and Junta's messages, but I want to see if I can find scans (or at least pictures where the messages're legible) of the other versions and translate all of the members' messages together.

Today was a very good day because I had the day off from work and because Ee Ja Nai ka came in the mail today!

( Cut for lots of pictures... And spoilers? )

tl;dr I love the Ee Ja Nai ka single in all its versions.

I've been a bit busy to make a post about it, but I got my copies of Ebi's album on Thursday! I was really exciting about receiving packages in the mail two days in the row. It's kind of funny to see how different the travel times can be for items shipped through the same service though. ^^;

( Pictures )

I'm really happy with this album. It was getting late at night and I was tired during my first listen, but I kept thinking that I had to get to the second disc and listen to STAR SEEKER, and STAR SEEKER is amazing (even if I think the lyricist for it shouldn't be allowed to write English lyrics anymore). My favorite Ebi performance is their STAR SEEKER performance from Summary 2012, and the album version is pretty much that version of the song but with more parts to it. It's kind of funny to think that other times they've performed that song, they've pretty much only performed half of it. xD But all of the songs that hadn't been previously released on the bonus CDs with their DVD singles were really nice. I also especially liked HIGHER!FLY! because it's a really cool song yet I feel like I've never actually heard the full version before? Although I guess that's not uncommon when it probably mostly gets shoved into medleys...

That's part of why it's so great that Ebi finally released a CD album because although part of the appeal of doing DVD singles is to put the performance together with the song and sometimes there are parts of the song that don't totally make sense unless you see the performances, there are also times when hearing the full studio version makes you appreciate the songs even more. So I'm really glad Ebi released a CD and challenged only performing the music. ^^

I also like the bonus songs for the regular edition, especially 5 Rings. It's a pretty powerful song. And the DVD with the 5stars version was really fun to watch. I just watched it tonight, putting it in and thinking "Oh, it'll probably be about an hour..." No. Over two hours. ^^; Ebi can just talk forever. xD I loved how the staff couldn't hold back their laughter during Tsukada's interview and how the Ebi members wrote letters/questions to each other. They all looked so cute during the jacket making too. I also felt like I learned a bunch about their songs and history in the NogiMitsu part of the DVD.

I finally watched the main part of the SNOW DOME no Yakusoku DVD yesterday. After having it for over a month. orz There's the fact that I've been busier with work lately recently giving me less time to watch it, but there's also my general disappointment with a lot of Kisumai's recent releases that made me not very motivated to watch it. I had watched the Good Iku ze digest first after getting it in the mail, but it was a bit harder to get in the proper live DVD watching mode since it was a digest and jumped around a lot. I had also felt like the Forza performance was a disappointment when Forza's a song I liked a lot from the Good Iku ze album. :/

But moving onto the SNOW DOME live... It took me about until FIRE BEAT, the third song in, to start enjoying it much, but when they got to Everybody Go and they were on roller skates, it was like everything was right and I could get fully into live DVD watching mode! (Probably part of my disappointment in recent Kisumai releases is related to the lack of roller skates and cool roller skate dancing.) Because if you're going to have a gimmick, you gotta use that fully to your advantage. ^^ And Unmei Girl with mini-my-ft2 was really cute. ^^

I had been kind of worried when I had heard that Tama had a solo for this concert since I feel like I've heard several recent Kisumai songs where Tama's voice... doesn't really fit? Like they use his voice in places where it doesn't really work well or have him sing in a way that doesn't suit his voice in my opinion and it sounds off. The solo he did sing for this live worked really well for him, though. But what I'm describing is a part of what I see as a problem for Kisumai as a whole. It's like Mitsu and Gaya are the only members they know how to utilize really well and the rest of the members they haven't really figured out all their strengths AND how to play to those strengths. And so most of the group ends up under-utilized and/or poorly utilized. :/ So they might be working more towards a point where they have can bring out all the best from all the members, but it's still taking a while.

They sang a lot of songs I really like, especially the section where they sang Tabidachi no Uta, Catch Love, and keep on smile and in the encore. In an earlier post after the SNOW DOME/Luv Sick single came out, I wondered if Luv Sick or Motetai ze Tonight might become my favorite Kisumai song, but it's still Tabidachi no Uta. There's a certain feel to it that's different from a lot of Kisumai songs in a way I really like and it's such a hopeful-sounding song that it makes me happy to listen to it. But if there're songs that could maybe actually beat it, Catch Love is one of them. ^^ It's like both of these come from a specific category of Kisumai songs whose commonality I can't quite describe right now, but they can only be found in B-sides and album songs and I might compile a list of them.

Also, wow there was a lot of WataTai.

Like a lot a lot. ♥ (Click for full-size images)

Sometimes I feel like my feelings about Kisumai can be described by "WataTai makes most everything better" ^^;

I really like having mail to look forward to. ^^

( Cut for images )

I also got my certificate for passing the N1 of the JLPT last week! I don't think I mentioned passing it before on LJ, but I did, somehow. Even after looking at the results online, I half-wondered if it was some kind of mistake and I didn't actual pass, but I have the certificate now and the official paper report.

Another big thing this week is, with the release of the Johnny's calendars, getting contact from CDJapan that they need to upgrade shipping for my order of Kisumai and Ebi's calendars (presumably because Kisumai's calendar is HUGE). >_< The shipping was just way more than I was willing to pay, so I decided to let the order be canceled and order through YesAsia instead, because even with YA's high-ish prices for the calendars, it's still less than paying for EMS shipping. But I'm a little worried because YA listed the availability for Ebi's calendar as "ships within 21 days" and I now have experience of YA's availability being... weird... sometimes. Let's just hope this all goes well and I can get both the calendars I want.

I had my JET interview on Friday, and I feel like I did really poorly. >_< I tend to get pretty nervous at interviews, and I got really nervous for the JET interview. I feel like most of my answers sounded pretty convoluted, and I blanked on what to say for some questions. T_T I probably ended up sounding like I didn't really know what I wanted to do.

Ah well, I won't know anything for certain until April.

Also on Friday, I got my copies of Arashi's new single! But because I felt tired and had to work over the weekend (feeling even more tired), I didn't get around to listening to it until today. ^^; ( Cut for review and screencaps )

And last, but most WTF? Kisumai has announced a new album! But it's a single collection album... -_- Why? Why would they do this now?

To think of a few reasons why a musical group would release a single collection/compilation album: 1)To celebrate/commemorate big anniversaries (5 years, 10 years, etc.) 2)To close an era when changing labels 3)To signal an end when members are leaving or the group's disbanding 4)To signal the end of an era when they're about to shift musical direction/image or some other big shift 5)The record company wants more money with minimal effort.

It hasn't even been three years since their debut, and there's no word of Kisumai changing labels, so 1 and 2 are pretty much out. With their current activity levels, 3 seems highly unlikely, and if it was 3, they would've thrown Hikari no Signal on too. If we consider 4, the best possible scenario would be them using this as a turning point to shift to more equal focus amongst the members, but that brings up the same question as 3. Why isn't Hikari no Signal on there too when it doesn't seem like they're doing anything any differently from their previous singles? Knowing Avex and their sales strategies, 5 is the most likely reason. -_-

On the bright side, though, we do get Kis-My-Calling on the CD-only regular edition because why else would fans buy it.

I thought I'd celebrate Valentine's Day with my favorite pair, WataTai, so have their talk from last year's June issue of Duet. In this issue, they split Kisumai up by their usual hotel room assignments for three talks. I haven't decided if I'll translate either of the other two Kisumai talks from this issue yet.

In this talk, Yokoo and Fujigaya mainly talk about their relationship, past events, recent times they've hung out together, that sort of thing.

( The mutual love? pair )


Please credit and link back to this post if reposting. Questions and comments are welcome.