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

Dschingis Koubou!

Well, after giving Dschingis Khan a few watches, I can officially say that my first impressions of the video were mostly right (I was going to write this a couple days ago, but I kept on running into problems with my approach, so I let it sit over the weekend). This is undoubtedly a step up from BK's previous material, and a massively fun video at that. It's nice to see the Berryz girls really coming out of their shells and having fun with the camera (which is one crucial idol ability that I feel the H!P kids have always been a little lacking in...understandable, since they're so young). Also, after the Risako-fest that was Tsukiatteru no ni Kataomoi (not to say that I don't like Risako - she's gorgeous - but holy hell UFA, cool it), I find it relieving that Khan divies out the focus more fairly. On a related note, despite not being my favorite members, it's obvious that Maasa and Chinami have much stronger, more-developed personalities than the other girls, and I think this video does an excellent job of giving them the camera time they deserve compared to previous releases (or, at the very least, they stand out more to me in this video than in others).

Point proven:


Another blogger (who it is I don't remember - sorry!) said that they'd like to see an alternate version of this video made entirely of the hallway shots, and I couldn't agree more. As much as I like the whole 'doing a play in front of wota kids' idea, I think it looks kinda lame in comparison to the other half of the video, and I'd probably enjoy this PV more if those scenes weren't there to distract from the awesomeness. Aside from that, I haven't got any complaints. March 12th can't come soon enough.

- cfb