It’s been a long time since I’ve watched any of the stages and that’s because AX is usually my own version of Christmas and I get far more excited over that. Plus, I never actually seem to be in one of my phases of actually caring about the band and so just get hold of each stage as and when I can, this is actually the first time I’ve got hold of one of them straight after release. So what are my expectations? Well considering my absence has meant that I’m still yet to really get into K5 or B6 I’m having to go off anything before then to really compare it against. Which means I should be loving half of it and half of it should be really dull as dishwater generic idol pop that anyone with a basic knowledge of Japanese music could have sprung out of their ass. My biggest fear going into this will be the lack of familiar names and faces as I may find it hard to care about all but a few of the girls.
Apologies in advance for the rubbish screencaps, video wasn’t exactly amazing quality.
Setlist:
00. Miniskirt no Yosei
-overture-
01. Mokugekisha
02. Zenjin Mitou
03. Ibitsu na Shinju
04. Akogare no Popstar
-mc-
05. Ude wo Kunde (Maeda, Kuramochi , Nakaya)
06. Enjo Rosen (Sashihara, Takajo)
07. Itoshisa no Akuseru (Takahashi)
08. Hoshi no Mukougawa (Iwasa , Kojima, Nakata, Oota)
09. Saboten to Gold Rush (Katayama, Maeda, Matsubara, Nakagawa, Ooya, , Shinoda)
-mc-
10. Utsukushiki Mono
11. Ai wo Kure
12. Matenrou no Kyori
-mc-
13. Inochi no Imi
-ec-
14. I’m crying
15. Zutto Zutto
-mc-
16. Pioneer
00. Miniskirt no Yosei
Old habits die hard, and while I completely forget the fact that I’m used to the overture coming up first I’m instead greeted by three girls and I have no idea who they are. Thankfully they don’t annoy me with their song but it’s fair to say that I’m relieved when I realise it’s those Zenza girls or whatever they call them who aren’t actually part of the main stage. Not an overly annoying song but it’s instantly forgotten once the overture starts as I remember what is actually going on.
01. Mokugekisha
So straight after the overture is some sort of weird projection of riots, is this a new thing that they do at the start of every show? Really these riots don’t look very fearsome at all and it just looks like the kind of crowds you’d get after any Premiership football match so if it’s meant to have some kind of shock value it didn’t really work. The song is AKB through and through and is decent enough, with my Japanese being rubbish though I don’t see the connection between the song and the video we’ve just seen. Knowing AKB there probably isn’t even a connection at all. The most interesting thing of not is that they all start the song lay on the floor, but it’s not that great if that’s the most stand out thing really is it?
It was nice to see the likes of Haruna, Atsuko and of course Takamina up there but it wasn’t too long before I found myself looking for Minegishi and when the realisation set in that I was going to be seeing her I couldn’t help but feel bitterly disappointed. No more Itano either was a reality I didn’t fancy facing up to. Sure I could go and grab K6 anytime but not seeing the old gang together was going to take a lot of adjusting to. Looks like I’ve got a lot of new name learning to do in the future. Wonderful.
At the end of the song we get the projection again so I’m guessing ti does actually have some relevance but once more it just sounds like football fans to me so the dramatic boom at the end isn’t too convincing for me.
02. Zenjin Mitou
Not bad but certainly not breathtaking, reminds me a lot of a poor man’s Yume wo Shinaseru Wake Ikanai with a slightly exotic twist to it; up against such an epic track though it was always going to come out second best so it’s a shame I’m thinking of it in its shadow, hopefully that won’t last forever. Special comment has to go on to the costumes that the girls are wearing, they’re rubbish. They may not be as bad as the papier-mâché from Haru ga Kuru Made but they look just as cheap and don’t even has as much charm as their crappy cousins. I suppose the sleeves look alright. Maybe I sound a little harsh on this song, it’s not too bad in all honesty but it isn’t grabbing me by the grapefruits.
03. Ibitsu na Shinju
As the third song starts it gets my hopes up as only Takamina and Mariko are left on the stage for a brief moment, there could actually be a song here performed by two members that I actually know and like! It doesn’t last long though as it becomes apparent it’s just for a costume change, and one that looks like a Christmas present got into a fight with a box of jewellery. It’s a stage getup but it’s better than the last one and the kind of thing you’d expect to see from a group that doesn’t like to make much sense. On a side not, I can’t believe I went all these years without knowing “jewellery” had two “l”’s in it, how embarrassing.
The introduction already sets it apart from the songs before it as it actually sounds a bit different, plus Haruna’s voice that sings the opening lines is still as confusing to me as it was when I first heard it. Can she actually sing or not? She’s in tune but she probably shouldn’t be; I don’t understand it. This song makes me think that this stage may be pretty good and it’s not going to be filled with the usual stuff that has only filled half of them in the past and it’s helped in no small part by a solo Takamina couple of lines. The instrumental section where the over the top guitar solo should normally be helps make it interesting too simply because it’s a bit different.
04. Akogare no Popstar
When did Atsuko learn to sing in tune? I really must have been away too long. It’s a nice opening line delivered well but I can’t help but feel a bit of RAGE inside of me when another happy clappy song starts up after that as it would have been nice to have had it mixed up a bit at this point. I suppose I can’t hold too much against the song in terms of its positioning in the track list since I usually just leave my AKB songs on random anyway so it’s probably not going to cause me to cry about it anytime soon.
It does deliver us our first stupidly happy guitar solo that would have had a better home back in the 80’s but it’s just those kind of moments that I like for some reason and it’s a bit strange when it’s interrupted halfway through by…well I’m not really sure what by, just another noise of some sort to bring it back into the chorus when really it probably should been allowed to have carried on slightly longer. I am being extremely pedantic though but that’s what writing these reviews does to you.
Usually I don’t care for these stupid MC’s that idol bands do in the middle of their performances but my extremely biased nature means that it involves Takamina they don’t seem so bad, though I would argue that it is with legitimate reason. Whenever Reina was involved with this kind of thing in Morning Musume it was still just as dull to me as it would have been if it would have been Makoto doing it (Ogawa of course, not the hero that is Bowl Head) despite the fact that I preferred Reina over Takamina for a long time. That’s because they’re all staged and any jokes that are thrown in generally aren’t funny because it’s coming from someone with a Japanese sense of humour. Of course, not knowing what they’re talking about most of the time doesn’t help me but in Takamina’s case this doesn’t seem to be an issue.
To my knowledge there never has been and probably never will be an idol that enjoys what she does on stage as much as she does. Never before have I actually been in admiration of the sheer work ethic of any of these girls until she came along. When Takamina is happy, I can’t help but feel happy, when she’s crying, I can’t help but feel myself well up a little bit. Sad? Probably, in fact, definitely. The fact that she is so genuine in everything she does though is just so refreshing so actually seeing her happy talking about whatever rubbish it is she announces here is nice to see and it’s that kind of thing I will probably never get bored of seeing.
Anyway, back on to the actual review…Sashihara makes an appearance here, huzzah someone else I know even if I don’t exactly know much about them. Why the hell does she say thank you so many times though? Okay all the members go through their usual introduction stuff, although I actually found this quite educational in terms of learning names I can’t be bothered commenting on it all as it simply won’t be very interesting to read or write and I’ve talk enough rubbish on this bit already.
05. Ude wo Kunde
I’m glad to see that Atsuko gets her share of solo lines here because of the brief glimpse we got of her voice earlier and I was actually pretty impressed. It’s also great to see one of the girls playing an instrument on stage again too though it’s Sayaka Nakaya which is a girl I have no idea about in the slightest, either way she doesn’t seem to be sitting too comfortably. Like Zenjin Mitou this is already quite exotic sounding with its flamenco styled guitar and I’d say that it’s certainly one of the better songs so far.
06. Enjo Rosen
In truth I’m really not impressed with this song at all as it reeks of mediocrity and the costumes are pretty meh too. We have two girls I don’t have much opinion on in Sashihara and Takajo though the former being my preferred of the two. This is mainly because Takajo’s face irritates me, harsh I know but true. Every time I see her I get angry for some unknown reason and yet whenever she actually does anything I’m pleasantly surprised by the fact that it doesn’t annoy me. She actually seems like an interesting member and she hasn’t actually done anything to upset me so I have no idea where my irrational dislike comes from. Maybe it’s being stuck in units for songs like this that make me think she will forever just be lingering in the background for me.
07. Itoshisa no Akuseru
Never have I had such a quick turnaround in emotions about a song as when this first started. I like to give songs a fair chance but even after the first couple of seconds I couldn’t help but feel that we were going to get yet another generic AKB song and it was actually pretty depressing. That soon changed though when I saw Takamina step out by herself wearing some kind of badass costume with…a lightsaber? I couldn’t believe what I was seeing; this was actually a solo song for Takamina. I don’t even feel it’s bias when I say that it’s the best vocally so far (duh) but the effort she even put into the choreography just blew everything away that had appeared so far. In truth though I actually preferred the verses of the song than I did the chorus as it wasn’t especially catchy, which is a shame.
When the inevitable guitar solo arrived I was wondering what exactly Takamina would be doing with herself on stage considering she’d be throwing herself around a lot more than anyone else had already and thankfully yes, she did put her lightsaber to good use. All I could think of while she was dancing around like a fool with it was how she’d make the greatest Samurai Warriors character ever with this dance as her musou. I can’t believe I actually just put that…
This is one song I’m really curious to find a translation of as I get the feeling it’s gonna be pretty hilarious. The cretins in the audience don’t give a loud enough cheer at the end though it has to be said.
08. Hoshi no Mukougawa
I had a bit of a depressing though while listening to this song: it sounds like I’ve heard ten AKB songs already that sound a bit like this one. My problem in the later years of Morning Musume was the direction the band were heading in, more specifically between their sixth to ninth albums and yet I carried on listening. Now, I suppose I should take into account the fact that AKB already have more stages than Morning Musume have studio albums and so it’s gonna be easier to compare songs and the group hasn’t been around anywhere near as long but there seems to be a lack of progression between the stages. Even if it was a step backwards in terms of a sound that I’d actually enjoy in accordance to my own personal tastes I’d like to at least see a bit of a change to see that things aren’t always going to be the same.
Like I’ve said so many times already in this review the song rolls on nicely but doesn’t do anything special that gets my attention and in truth it could well have appeared on any of the other stages. I know the whole concept is very different but there is a pretty clear difference in sound between most Momusu albums but you could just take a dozen random songs from AKB stages and stick them together to make an entirely new stage and there really would be very little difference to notice. Don’t get me wrong, AKB do some vastly differing sounding songs but there is nothing that sets each stage apart from one another, you get me?
09. Saboten to Gold Rush
I get a very similar vibe from this that I did the first time I heard Yuuki no Hammer and that’s not bad thing. Too many times I’ve heard the intro to that song insulted by people on the net because they say it’s too “weird”, I wouldn’t constitute it as weird myself but it is the group doing something DIFFERENT, which is always nice considering the last point I was just making. On first impressions only this and the Itoshisa no Akuseru would make it through to a list of my favourite AKB songs and the latter would probably only do so for one very obvious reason. Despite the chorus featuring a bit too much it’s probably the first song that hasn’t had me thinking “verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, chorus”.
10. Utsukushiki Mono
Gah, promising start but it feels like I’ve heard that drum beat a thousand times before. Still I’m liking the vocals here too, especially the whole thing of them overlapping with each other with the talking. I still can’t believe how good Atsuko sounds and she totally nails the whole atmosphere the song is trying to pull off. Sadly she isn’t joined by everyone in this as one or two of the girls come off as a bit pathetic in their attempts of being sultry, Natsumi Matsubara really comes off looking like a tin of paint in this song for some bizarre reason.
I’ve already seen some people complaining about the talking in this song over the chorus but it doesn’t really bother me and the instrumental part of the song is really epic. Thinking about it, if the talking wasn’t in there it probably would have been yet another familiar sounding chorus but it sort of gives a weird haunting quality to it which is kinda cool methinks.
11. Ai wo Kure
Keeping in mind all that has already been said about previous songs the most disappointing thing about this one is the lack of inspiration from anyone, nobody really seems to grab it by the scruff of the neck and it make it their song, even Takamina goes missing for large portions of it. It’s another foreign sounding one though, so I suppose I should be relatively satisfied in terms of wanting some sort of theme to the stages. I actually don’t have too much to say on this song at all unless I repeat a lot of what has already gone before and nobody wants that.
12. Matenrou no Kyori
Pretty deceptive when it starts off this song is. At first you think you’re gonna get a pretty serious sounding rock orientated song before you change your mind and think you’re gonna get typical catchy idol pop before it goes back into quite a rocky number. For “you”, read “I”. I do tend to like the songs where the girls are split into smaller groups and sing the vocals in said groups until it’s time for the chorus where they all group together to make it sound a bit more epic but strangely this is another song where I actually prefer the verse to the chorus. It’s just missing that special something that kind of fails to get a real hook in but maybe I’d like it better if I’d heard this on A3 or A4? Who knows? It does have to be said that the guitar solo is exactly what you’d expect and we’ve been pretty deprived in that section thus far for this stage so that pleases me. Cheese ahoy.
13. Inochi no Imi
I like Takamina’s hat. I also like the fact that she is opening another song with Atsuko. I suppose the costumes are also the best we’ve seen so far even if those baggy pants do stink of “The Peace!” This could have been a truly epic song if it had had well timed bells ringing out in it like Sakura no Hanabiratchi but of course this isn’t a graduation song so having bells in it would be stupid…..shut up. This definitely has the look and sound of a song that should be closing the show though so I think they could of messed up a bit on that one. I like the song already but I get the feeling this one is going to grow on me a lot more as time goes on and I’m a sucker for the militaristic imagery as well.
On reflection the costumes actually are far better than those used in “The Peace!” but the buckles and stuff on the front of the shirt actually look painted on…I hope I’m wrong because that would be unnecessarily cheap to say the least, especially for a group that now has enough budget to get tanks and helicopters in their music videos.
14. I’m Crying
When I first saw the title of this song I was hoping we’d get another slower track here, I mean we’ve only really had two here so far and none have been featuring highly in the epic factor. Although that isn’t what you get here I was really impressed with the song, though more so with the instrumentation than the vocal parts. It’s sort of sinister sounding and for some reason this is something I find that AKB does really well, look no further than “Inochi no Tsukaimichi” for proof on that one. I suppose there is something a little unsettling about a group of Japanese schoolgirls singing together in unison though. It’s also strange that despite the fact we’ve seen so many variations of it in the past already the school uniform costumes are also really good as well. One thing that isn’t convincing is the use of Engrish, especially not in the last line of the song but that’s being a bit fussy about things.
15. Zutto Zutto
I’ve been waiting to write about a song like this since the start of this stage and finally here it is. Though, once again, the chorus falls slightly short we finally have a genuinely catchy and stupid idol pop-rock song along the lines of “RUN RUN RUN”. This is one song that is definitely positioned well in the track list but it does seem like we’ve been waiting for it forever. Having two songs in this style wouldn’t have gone amiss but I suppose that’s personal preference more than anything else.
Of course Takamina kicking things off helped a great deal. Seriously though, the fact she has such strong vocals compared to many others in the group and that she was a familiar face for me at least stood the song in good stead from the start.
16. Pioneer
Guitar is great here, shame we don’t really get enough of it. It’s nice to see the stage ending on a relative high even if they still think that “Inochi no Imi” would have made a far better closing song, in fact just swapping these two around would have made more sense to me. I can’t say too much here that wasn’t said about the last song as they are much in the same style, which is something I asked for so it’s all good, we do get a pretty nice silly solo in this one too which is never a bad thing.
So what have we learned from this stage? Well I certainly haven’t learnt any more member’s names and none of the new members have really stood out for me which I guess is a bit disappointing but at the end of the day there’s at least some girls in there I already know and like and so it’s just good to hear new material. Much like most other stages this was filled out with some songs that were very run of the mill as well as some which were actually pretty damn good, it just so happens that most of those actually seem to come in the second half of this stage. I’m not going to panic about the fact that I wasn’t blown away by A6 on first impressions as I don’t think any stage has ever done that to me, it’s always taken me a few watches or listens to really appreciate them and even then I have to filter out the songs that doesn’t really interest me so much.
All in all it was pretty much what I expected and a bonus of a Takamina solo is of course no bad thing, and I’m sure I’ll learn to love it in time. Just don’t ever expect it to remove “Bird” from its perch. lololololol
