OK, I'm watching a Hello Project playlist right now and Suggoi FEVER! just popped up, so how could I not write about it?! Look how cool and wonderful this music video is! Riley has the best close-ups! And I love that it's an actual SET and not an overly-CG'd confusing mess like Wake Up Call's MV is. (More on that next time.) Nah, this is an actual physical set (you can even spot shoe marks on the floor!), and it makes allll the difference.
Of course, one of the greatest part of this video is after the dance break, when all the Morning Musume members get down and worship--err, present the graduating queen herself, Fuku-chan! And then she gets some great moments with 17ki. Of course, all the close-ups everyone gets in this MV are awesome, cute, and fun. Riley's really such a scene-stealer though!
And the song itself? It's fantastic, of course. I could do without that creepy voice yelling "SUGGOI!" over everyone (I think more or less everyone feels that way? lol), but it doesn't distract too much from the song, imho. The very first time I heard a preview of this song on Twitter, I thought of Rasputin. It's absolutely got one of those 70s-era Eurvision vibes to it, but mixed with some of the typical "cool" and "disco-y" HP songs (Seishun Night! and Sukatto My Heart immediately come to mind, but Suggoi FEVER! is so much cooler than both those songs!).
Also, going back to the MV, I love how they're all wearing pink, the member colour of the great leader herself. Soon to be former leader. I can't believe her graduation is so soon! It's....*checks date* It's in 2 weeks!
The other songs on Mizuki's graduation single, other than her solo Neverending Shine, are Suggoi FEVER! and Wake-up Call ~Mezameru Toki~. I love both these songs. A lot.
Morning Musume's singles have been much better lately. For me, the weakest of the more recent singles (15ki+ onward) was Lovepedia. Even though I thought it was a great song, it wasn't *amazing*, and I ended up not being entertained by there being two arrangements of the same melody. They're both all right songs, though Lovepedia is the far better of the two, only because Ningen Kankei No Way Way samples TURKEY IN THE DAMN STRAW in the middle, and that makes me automatically dislike it quite a bit, no matter how hard I try to ignore that part. In fact, the more I try to remind myself that it's truly only, like, 5 seconds of the entire song, the more I can't stop noticing it and allowing it to ruin things for me.
It's kind of like the OG Morning Musume album song, Harajuku 6:00 Shuugou. I freakin' looooove that song, and it's honestly and genuinely one of my very favourite non-single Morning Musume songs of all time, and yup, that includes everything in the Platinum, Colourful, and Mizuki eras. That being said, I can never let myself full enjoy it because of that stupid T-rex sound at the beginning and middle.
Why is there a T-rex roaring in the song? It makes no sense whatsoever. I'd understand if it were, like, a Hyokkori Hyoutanjima-style song where they were hunting for dinosaur bones instead of being pirates, but no, it's a song about picking a way-too-busy spot (Harajuku station) to meet a date at 6pm. It's all about crowds and cool/hip young people hanging out in Harajuku, and nothing to do with dinosaurs or dinosaur movies. It's just so out-of-place and increeeeedibly annoying and impossible to ignore. It's really really too bad, because it is such a fabulously good song otherwise. I really, really wish there were a "non-dinosaur" version (doesn't that already sound like something Hello Project would totally do anyway?).
That being said, there's some music where I'm totally able to filter out the parts or sounds I don't like. I don't know why. Why is brain (and my ears!) able to do that with some music, but not others? What determines that? It can't be the level of annoyance or intrusiveness, as a certain piece of Zelda music from Twilight Princess debunks that. I'm thinking of City in the Sky. Not only is it easily by favourite piece of music from Twilight Princess (and yes, that includes Midna's Lament...yeah, I know I'm weird); it's also one of my favourite pieces of Zelda music of all time, across the entire franchise. The thing is though, is that it's got a really annoying "honking" sound throughout. I don't know how to describe it; the first word that came to mind was "honk", but it's even odder than that. Should anyone else be reading this, here. Check it out for yourself:
See? Isn't it really annoying? It's super intrusive, I find, yet I can somehow ignore it and just focus on the synth-y string-like melody that makes up the piece instead. And to say I adore that part of the composition is really an understatement, and it really does transport me to another place, and works as the soundtrack to the City in the Sky so unbelievably perfectly. I remember reading a description of City in the Sky's music by someone who wrote that it sounded like a beautiful palace that you didn't belong in, it was pretty but not for you...not a place for humans (or Hylians) to step foot in. If you've every played through City in the Sky in Twilight Princess, you know that's spot-on! Or at least, I feel that it is.
Anyway, weird how the brain works when it comes to listening to music and absorbing it as part of our listening experience and/or our gaming experience--and movie experiences too, but that's another post for another day. On that note, my actual thoughts on Suggoi FEVER! and Wake-up Call will also have to wait for another post on another day! This post was supposed to be about them, but it looks like I got side-tracked--something that happens to all of us, I think. The beauty of writing a blog for oneself is that it simply doesn't matter. Freedom! :)
So it's the end of an era--the Mizuki era. MIZU-KI/ミズ期 (if you speak Japanese, you probably get the word play here--with the キ in 聖 being replaced by 期, as it's been her era). Her graduation single is pretty awesome, with her getting her own solo (Neverending Shine) written by Tsunku, which is all any of us could hope for. Unfortunately, I'm not big on ballads, so maybe I can't really appreciate it the way everyone else can--not that I can't appreciate it all, though. That would be unfair to say, especially as there are, quite specifically, some Tsunku-penned ballads that I actually really, really like, such as The Vision and Tsumetai Kaze to Kataomoi, to name a few (also both from graduation singles).
Anyway, regardless of my music tastes, I feel like there's something missing about Neverending Shine. I'm not good at describing music--or perhaps more accurately, I sound like a fool describing music--because I don't know any of the proper terms to use. So I do my best. (But also, who cares, as this blog is something I write for myself for fun, and not for a specific audience as work or any kind of professional capacity, so...HA!). But yeah. What I can say about Neverending Shine is that the chorus is just so unsatisfying. I feel like there's going to be this interesting kind of half-note up, but instead it just goes kind of flat. I feel like I'm getting blue-balled here, which is particularly frustrating considering it's a graduation ballad for FUKUCHAN, of all people. The one & only Mizupon! But everyone else seems to like it, so that's good, at least. I just wish it were more interesting. More musically,,,,complex, I guess. It just feels too ordinary in general, let alone as a graduation song for someone like Mizuki Fukumura.
But the rest of the single? It's awesome! Wake Up Call and Suggoi FEVER!. I love them both. Did you know that Suggoi FEVER!'s orignal title was Fever Anytime Joutou? (Yeah, the same lyric they repeatedly say throughout the chorus.) Apparently Tsunku forgot he had already submitted the song under that name, and titled it Suggoi FEVER!. Ha!
Anyway, I'll talk about that song (and Wake Up Call) another time.
Can't wait to watch Mizuki's graduation, though I'll have to wait a day or so afterward, as I'll be out of town.
And before that...the double Tsubaki grad for Riko & Yumeno! It's gonna be crazy!
Ahhh, I'm so excited! I found my blog! I want to update again, and journal my thoughts, and write movie reviews because I spend so much time watching movies and thinking about them. Well, the ones that move me, anyway. Which isn't that many of them. But the ones that do, do. Like, a lot. Ahhh!
Yay for writing.
I've been working on so many short stories since I last updated here (apparently 3 years ago?!). I'm still working on them and tackling new ones. I finished one and hated it, but it was just a skeleton, and not an actual story. But it hurt to look at. One day, I'll be brave enough to revisit it and modify it into the story it's supposed to be.
I *did* start off another story that I'm REALLY happy with, but I got stuck. I'll be back to it, though.
Something that made me smile. I was recalling how in July of 2019, just before my transplant, I was sitting in absolute silence on my computer chair, as I am now, staring down my hallway, thinking how I enjoyed my alone time in my cozy apartment, and wondering, what if this is one of the last times I get to do this? What if I go to the hospital and never return, and never again get to enjoy the solace of my apartment, sitting in my computer chair?
And here I am, remembering this, as I am ....sitting in my computer chair staring down the hallway! I felt my face break into a smile when I realized this. I survived!
I feel so fucking selfish saying this during Covid when EVERYONE is in danger, but sometimes I can't stop being afraid of cancer. I am so so so so so so so so so SO grateful to be in remission and to have gotten a life-saving transplant, and then I feel guilt about all those who didn't make it, and I wonder why I'm still alive, but then I think that could all change in an instant anyway (I used to feel guilty all the time before I relapsed), so then I'm scared again instead of feeling guilty, which isn't much better, and it's just a back & forth of ugh. And I was just reading the Facebook of someone who lost their wife to cancer last year and looking at the photos I was immediately reminded of my mother but at the same time, picturing myself in her position and thinking about my own mortality, yet also feeling guilty about being alive while my mom (and other people) aren't, while also missing her deeply. It's just such a mess of complicated feelings that there aren't any words for, except this word salad I just typed out.
I've just spent an hour sitting with my eyes closed "checking" all my thoughts. (Not that that's anything out of the ordinary.) After that, in an unrelated event: going to the bathroom to pee took 5 hand washings. (Totally not something out of the ordinary, either.)
Having both the obsession & compulsion components of OCD is not something I thought I'd ever had to deal with. I always only used to have the obsessions. Well, I guess the compulsions part too, though my compulsions were always internal (checking my thoughts, as opposed to external physical things). Now I got the hand-washing and all that external physical crap that I do...so yeah, full-fledged obsessions AND compulsions. The worst of both worlds.
