aleyna lectures

np. Endlicheri☆Endlicheri – 染井吉野

I wasn’t going to publish this, but well~.
Then I’d like to warn that this text is not nearly as well organized as my other work usually is.
Try to bear with it, though.

The main subject now being the ‘Tackey Special Project’ aka ‘Dance Unit’ aka 舞闘冠 [Butoukan].
Let’s state this first: I have always liked Tackey and definetely have a very weak spot for him even nowadays.

He has had this.. ‘power’ within the whole JE for a long time. In his Junior days he was asked to lead the separated juniors. And he did not only lead and coach them but also worked seriously in arranging the huge Junior Concerts back then. Basically, they were all scripted and lead by him.
Being hugely popular within the juniors (getting public gratitude and thank yous from them in a regular basis) and of course his debuted kouhai, I was kind of.. waiting for him to make his next move.

So when the ‘Takizawa Hideaki Special Project’ began this (2007) autumn, I was happy and expected a lot. I hope you’ve been browsing through my separate “Special Unit –post”. If not, go there now because I’ll be referring to it quite a lot when writing this one.
The auditions clearly had a goal, and when it was finally revealed that this’d be a specified ‘Dance Unit’ “for SC and maybe even further”, I was so glad for Yara (after first seriously pitying him for getting such a shock because of Tackey first ^^).
Then it kind of.. dawned on me that they never really revealed, not even in the SC CSP, what is the group going to do. Since Tackey clearly hinted that this group would most likely expand itself beyond SC, I am really curious.

There are a few reasons I wouldn’t like 舞闘冠 to debut, and not the smallest of them being the fact that I don’t actually want to break up [u]A.B.C.[/u] Like it wouldn’t be enough that they’re basically the next [u]MA[/u] now that JE’s going to bury that one under first, but to split them apart..
[u]Kis-My-Ft2[/u] is generic with too many members, plus there are very many juniors just waiting to form another one alike-group and I have no doubts JE would gladly split them apart because that’s what they’ve been doing anyway during this past year – for HSW’s sake nonetheless..
[u]Yara[/u] has been getting a lot of attention lately. First Dream Boys 2007, then 舞闘冠 and now he’s even the second lead for SHOCK. Warm gongratulations, you do definetely deserve it.

Okay, that done now let’s go to the main point. The PV and the song (I suppose that was meant to be the main point.. anyway).
Tackey did all the filming, editing and planning for the PV. It seems that many in the fandom have been surprised by this, but actually, he’s pretty accustomied with it. And this guy – whatever he decides to do, he’s going to succeed in it.

舞 = [bu] = Dance
闘 = [tou] = Battle/Fight
冠 = [kan] = Crown

It was revealed in completely-tackey-style in the CSP. The members had no idea of the name either, so when Tackey explained it, they were all (members, hosts and audience. Plus me) baffled.
Cheap for SC to make the boys introduce themselves as the members of the group.
How it makes me wanna smile to see Yara grinning widely like that. After all MA’s been through for the last months.
Hamanaka seems to have that same awkward funniness that Akanishi Jin (nowadays KAT-TUN) had when younger ^^ Yes, Tackey and Yara are going to eat you alive..
As as much it surprised me that Senga didn’t make a fool of himself in the intro-part, he does it later.
I won’t explain the whole thing as the clips are in my other post.

The making-of is funny. Everyone gets teased somehow.

Finally, the song and the PV.
舞闘冠 – Now and Forever.
As a song.. it’s nothing special. Catchy, happy, poppy with no basically no specific singing talent needed in general. Some parts exceed the normal voice range, but enough of that.
It fits the sc. “JE-format”, but is far from the worst ones this year. Actually it might get in my top-5 musically. Which is a lot.
You see, the Japanese tradition can be heard throughout the song, even though the outcome is poppy. Huge, huge plus-points for that. Yara’s voice is also kind of unique with a certain raspiness and a few low notes (that aren’t exactly on-key but certainly not off-key either.. hard to explain. Give a listen to his ‘[i]Jealous Train[/i]’ or ‘[i]Next Dream[/i]’, where they’re even clearer to hear), so with him doing the lead vocals.. I can’t complain.

And I just have to poke about the sabi-part ([i]//edit: khrm, the chorus, I mean//[/i]). After the first-listening, I was so certain I heard ‘Wishing you, 貴女, happy day’. But two more times and I got it right [‘Wishing you another happy day’, for those who couldn’t follow] ^^
I woudn’t have it minded being ‘my lady’, though.

The solo-parts are almost worth kyaa-ing. But since I don’t do stuff like that (no one is allowed to remember what happened with the HERO-movie), I can calmly point out that they sing better than an average JE-group. And a lot better than some ([i]//edit from the original post here//[/i]).

The PV. As Tackey pointed out, he wanted this not-to-be a typical idol-JE-PV. And he succeeded. Some people were complaining this not having enough face-shots of the boys (notchnotch for NEWS – HWM or things like that), but as he said in the SC CSP, he wanted it not to match the usual patterns.
Well~ That’s two-sided since yes, he succeeded in not copying the other Japanese boybands. But the PV was shot and directed to a more.. shall I say, foreign, style.
The dance also wasn’t exactly what I had expected (or then he just cut those parts), meaning that I wanted to see some Dancing with a capital D for this, since it IS a dance-unit after all.
The end note shall be that the PV is happy and the song is ok if not good and all the boys look happy. It’s infectuous.