Resonant Blah...

Alright, a few quick observations about the Resonant Blue PV.

My biggest complaint with this video is that it's nothing more than a glorified dance shot version, much like THE Manpower, only less interesting because there's no opening or closing zooms - just fade-in, fade-out. There's some half-assed close-ups spread throughout the video but, from the way they're shot, they just look like different angles of the same take as the rest of the video. It's obvious that H!P put next to no money into this PV.

The 'lesser' members, and especially the Pandas, got completely screwed for this one. If I wasn't familiar with the group, I'd think that JunJun and LinLin were just backup dancers, and that's seriously, seriously shitty. Although Sayumi did get a fairly significant close-up, it was only one, so she kinda got the shaft too. Aika was right in the camera's face at the beginning of the video, but that was it. Even C-ute PVs spread the screen time around more evenly than this.

To be blunt, this PV is boring. I can enjoy it because the girls (or, at least, the girls who were in the video enough to be seen) look good, but beyond that there's nothing (I will say that I was impressed by the Special Generation-style wave during the bridge, though). I was hoping that H!P's flagship group would get better treatment than this, but I should have known better. From my first impressions, I give it a disappointing/10.

- cfb

2008 Year-To-Date H!P Purchases

Alright, last catch-up post for merchandise. In this one is all the stuff I've bought since the beginning of the year.

• Maimi 2nd Photobook
• Risako 3rd Photobook
• Natsumi & Maimi 16sai no Koi Nante Single
• Fujimoto Miki 1st Album
• Buono! Renai Rider LE Single
• Morning Musume Sakura Gumi Hatsukouen ~Sakura Saku~ DVD
• Buono! Renai Rider Single V
• Matsuura Aya Live in Shanghai DVD

So there ya go.
- cfb

Ohayocon '08 Swag

As mentioned in a previous post, I attended Ohayocon this year and returned with a pretty decent amount of merchandise. I'll only be posting pics of the H!P stuff here, simply because I'm OCD and would rather not throw animu DVDs and Puffy albums in with Morning Musume.

Anyway, everything H!P related fits into one pic:

• Matsuura Aya First Kiss
  
• Matsuura Aya T.W.O
  
• Morning Musume 'Musical LOVE Century' Soundtrack
• Momusu 4th Ikimasshoi!
  
• Momusu No. 5
  
• Momusu Best! Morning Musume 2
• Momusu Ai no Dai 6 Kan
• Pucchi Best 4

Two things: I'm enjoying the Ayaya albums much, much more than I originally expected to, and if I had known that LOVE Century was a musical, I probably would have put my money into something else. I can read katakana, so there was no reason for me not to know what it was, but I bought all the CDs from a booth that sold mostly v-kei/j-rock, so the person running it was getting tired of me asking about H!P, and I ended up rushing. >.<

For those who care, the rest of my purchases consisted of Puffy's Spike and The Hit Parade albums, the FLCL limited edition uber-box set, and some Strawberry Marshmallow figurines, as well as (late) Christmas presents for my friends. We never left the vendor's room for the 5 1/2 hours we were there, so I really don't have any exciting stories, other than the fact that I spent $450 in a day (please note, that included gas and food expenses as well!).

I'll be making one last merch catch-up post for everything I've bought so far in '08 (excluding what was posted here), and then I'll begin writing these as the stuff shows up.

- cfb

2007 H!P Purchases

Starting with the easy stuff...
I'll give a quick summary of everything H!P related that I bought in 2007. But first, a quick history.

I got into Berryz Koubou in mid-late June of '07, and have spent most of my spare (and some of my not-so-spare) money on H!P merchandise since then. I discovered C-ute shortly after Berryz, and my interests stayed fairly even until early December, when I discovered Morning Musume. By that time I had begun saving up for Ohayocon (which I'll talk about in another post or two), so the only Momusu-related merch I bought before the end of the year was their 10th Anniversary PV Collection. There was some Buono! in there too.

I'll recap by way of pictures.

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• All Berryz Regular-Edition Singles and Albums
• Ditto for C-ute
• H!P All Stars Single
• Buono! Honto no Jibun LE Single
• Buono! Honto no Jibun Single V
• BK Concert Tour 2006 Haru ~Nyoki Nyoki Champion!~ DVD - sadly, bootlegged (I had just gotten into them and it was cheap...what can ya do?)
• Berryz Single V Clips 3
• Momusu 10th Anniversary PV Collection

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All H!P Kids photobooks to date, with one exception - Risako's 1st. Disappointingly enough, I had ordered it along with her second, and HMV reported it out of stock shortly afterward. I'm hoping for one to show up on eBay, but I'll probably have to use an import service and pay out the ass. Also, Berryz 2007 Summer Live photobook (couldn't resist all those kawaii-tastic self-cam pics).

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• Berryz 2008 Calendar
• Berryz 4th Ai no Nanchara Shisuu Poster
• Also: car keys, jacket, spheal, and Point Blank 3 box

I suppose there's not much else to say here.
- cfb