I've been really looking forward to a S/mileage album ever since I got into S/mileage, right around when they major debuted. Here's my take on their first album.
同じ時給で働く友達の美人ママ – Blah Blah Blah Tsuji Nozomi
Kind of a predictable album opener – Tsunku tends to start albums with the most recent single. Like in MM’s newest album. And Berryz’ newest album. And Mano’s newest album.
踊ろうよ – Odorou yo!
Thanks a heap, Tsunku, for the lovely opening rap lines. I couldn’t help but think of Insane Clown Posse. But once S/mileage starts to sing the song becomes lots of fun. Some of the effects on the vocals, especially in the verse, give a little something extra to the song, like when the ends of the vocal lines are looped. I love the part where each girl sings a line and the rest join in at the end; very classic pop sounding. A good choice for S/mileage’s first album song? I believe so.
女ばかりの日曜日 – Onna Bakari no Nichyoubi
Well, this one gets you on your toes with the hyper-intensive intro. Once it gets started, though, it sounds more like the Beatles. God, Tsunku, I’ve used your name and the Beatles in the same sentence more times in the last few weeks than I ever had before. But not that it’s bad – why not go to a legendary group for inspiration? And it’s not that the songs are copies; it defiantly sounds like it came from the brain of H!P with all the familiar backing track effects and synth. You’ve left your mark, Tsunku.
夢見る １５歳 – Yume Miru 15
Love the placing of this song in the album. It’s been happy and genki up till now, but strap in, because this song cuts the shit and brings out S/mileage’s darker side. I love every bit of this song except Dawa’s awkward whisper at the end. “Summer love”? Pretty sure we were all clear on that throughout the whole rest of the song. The lyrics aren’t so subtle about it being summer. (Not that Japanese lyrics are ever subtle on that subject…)
シューティング スター – Shooting Star
I love the intro – clearly some real instruments were used and extra time was taken to make it sound good. Once we get into the vocals it does dissolve a bit into the b-side style, but the melody is fun and I can just see the relaxed dance that they’ll come up with for this one.
○○ がんばらなくてもええねんで！！ -- Gambaranakutemo Ee Nende!!
My favorite S/mileage song ever. No reason for me to review it twice.
スキちゃん – Suki-chan
My least favorite S/mileage single. But I’ll admit it’s really grown on me. Everyone else seems to be crazy about this song, so I guess I’m in them minority.
学級委員長 – Gayuuinchou
Well, if you’ve been keeping up with Bijou Gaku, you’ve already heard this song quite a few times. But it might be my favorite new song on this album. I wish their voices were stronger, but they’re just kids still so hopefully as time goes by they will sing it better in concert. I like the minimal piano backgrounds and the vocal melody is just the right amount of sadness. And HELL YES at Sakitty’s solo in the instrumental break. That girl is freaking awesome and without a doubt in my mind, the best singer of the group. (Although Kanon makes me doubt myself from time to time…)
しっかりしてよ！もう – Shikkari shite yo! Mou
Another great track. To me, it sounds a little like something from Morning Musume from the pre-Love Machine era, at least in the vocal melody. I liked the long dramatic pause towards the end too.
Yeah, these seem really tacked on. Did they just forget about it until the very end? “Oh shit, I forgot about all those, just drag them to the album track list and burn them; the goddamn truck’s already here.” I mean, I like these songs, so I’d rather hear them integrated into the rest of the album, like Suki-chan. But, I do think that aMa no Jaku is as good track to end with. Just like Yume Miru 15, it’s a bit different than all their other songs.
In conclusion? This is a great album. I've really liked all of S/mileage's stuff put out so far -- they've really had a consistently good track record so far. This album doesn't hit a hiccup, either. It's a solid release, with the only flaws being that it has a LOT of singles in it and doesn't leave a whole lot of room for new material, but that's bound to happen when you have a group that has indies singles and then later debut singles to squeeze into one release.
If We are Buono! didn't exist in 2010, this would be my favorite H!P album of the year. Go S/mileage.
Linlin and Junjun both graduated yesterday. I would like to take this time to make some comments about both of them.
PS, I don't have anything to say about Kamei. Never was really a fan.
First, to Linlin.
Your vocal power has always kept my eyes on you. I love how you are proud to be Chinese and not afraid to show it to your Japanese co-members and fans. I feel that the MM fanbase (in Japan, at least) has not given you the credit you deserve. But rest assured that your foreign fans have supported you a lot. Perhaps because they're also foreigners. You have a beautiful voice and it is truly the greatest shame of Morning Musume's history that it was not put to more use. Your energetic and crazy personality was also essential to the group. We will all miss you so much. I am sure you will succeed in where ever you decide to do.
To Junjun:
I won't lie and say you were a good singer. But you're the funniest girl to ever come through MM. You're not afraid to speak your mind and never took things too seriously. You are an honest person and that drew many fans to you. Just as with Linlin, I feel the Japanese fans weren't as receptive to you as they should have been. But all of us at Hello Online sure loved watching you on TV and during MCs. MM's personality sure won't be the same without you.
Goodbye to both of you, Pandas. This graduation came way to early.
Now I have to stop or I'm going to sob all over my keyboard.
These are just the first week sales. 10 My Me sold 16K total. No way is this album going to top it.
But does it deserve such suckiness? Not really, in my opinion. I actually like it quite a bit better than the last album. So, let's take a look at each track.
Fantasy! Juuichi Review
ブラボー！ - Bravo! Just what you’d expect from a H!P album track – sounds like a b-side with slightly better production. The “cute yelling” were fine for the song, but not from Morning Musume. It’s fine if they do really genki songs, like Guru Guru JUMP!, but you have to have a crack head member like Koharu to pull it off, which they don’t anymore. Some of the layered voice effects in the verse definitely make the song more listenable, but the chorus is very predictable.
Fantasyが始まる – Fantasy ga Hajimaru Once again, Sayumi’s vocals are right where they need to be – smothered in auto-tune. This is one of the tracks I like a lot from this album, and I think the dark and sad sound really fits Morning Musume and is the kind of thing that they can really pull off. The chorus really sticks in your head even after the first listen. The muted backing track adds to the dramatic feeling it gives off. And the line distribution is very nice; I’m definitely hearing LinLin loud and clear.
女心となんとやら – Onnagokoro to Nanto Yaru Hmm. This is an interesting one. The kind of cheery hip-hop beat offsets the children’s song melody in a way that seems strange at first, but is actually executed quite well. I really like hearing lots of Gaki here, I think her voice suits this kind of thing well. Not really a stand-out song, and probably more fitting as a b-side, but I don’t skip over it I listen to my iPod and without a doubt it grows on you as time goes on.
愛の炎 – Ai no Honou So far, my favorite track. The piano intro is very haunting, and I think Reina’s voice suits this song perfectly. Her falsetto sounds really nice. A few times her voice gets kind of whiny, especially when she says “Yeah”, but I’m pretty used to how that sounds so I don’t know what I expected. I like the contrast of the intro and the subtle Latin beat during the verses – I find myself listening to the beat more than the vocals sometimes. I look forward to hearing this live.
I'm Lucky girl Some of the “techno” effects in this song are so cheesy that it is distracting, but once the vocals start and those are gone the song gets more listenable. The verse vocal melody is pretty uninspired and repetitive, which is annoying since I know for sure Tsunku can do way, way better. This is one song that I might skip over when I listen to this album.
すんごいマイバースディ – Sungoi My Birthday I love the “churu churu” parts so much, for no real reason. The songwriting sound is very familiar, but it’s neat because I’ve never heard any H!P songs that sound like this. At times I even think the chorus sounds like something the Beatles would write, and I’ve never said that about anything Tsunku’s ever done, so… wow, congrats, Tsunku, you managed to emulate the most popular band ever. This is a good song and also one of my favorites.
1から10まで愛してほしい – Ichi kara Juu made Aishite Hoshii Don’t really get what the title means… Interesting choice of words. But other than that, the song blends in pretty well with other peppy songs. It’s a little bit better than Bravo!, but man, not by a whole lot. This doesn’t even sound like a MM song; it sounds like S/mileage should be singing it. And I am really getting sick of all of the “Ooh Yeah’s!” on this album. Didn’t we get enough of that with Seishun Collection?
愛しく苦しいこの夜に – Itoshiku Kurushii Kono Yoru ni Eri really gets the spotlight. Her pitch and clearness are there, without a doubt, but this reiterates the reasons why I can’t agree with others who say she’s a better singer than Reina or Gaki. She’s not. She can keep it together way better than Jun or Sayu, but she has almost no tone. Reina can sound nasally too, but she has a solid vibrato and her falsetto better, and she also has consistently sounded better live. But, regardless, even if it would have been JunJun I am happy that one of the grads got a big part to shine in.
電話でね – Denwa de ne Ai’s solo. Am I mad about this choice? Yeah, kind of. If I cared about the stuff MM was putting out then I would be more angry about it. But after the decision to graduate Lin and Jun I really just have given up on the focus not being Ai and Reina. But, if anyone deserves to get a solo, it’s Ai—she sounds very good all the time, and this track is no exception. The song itself is pretty uninspired though. (Is that the second time I’ve used this word in this review? For fuck’s sake, Tsunku.)
青春コレクション – Seishun Collection It sucks.
Hope you enjoyed it!
Not even bothering to check out Mano's new album, so there is no chance in hell that a review for that will be up here. But I'm in the midst of listening through S/mileage's new album, which is, sadly, a lot better than this.
Really can't believe I didn't see this one coming.
Their new single is called "Shortcut". I guess it makes sense. But I didn't even H!P would do such a random tie-in.
Here's another shot.
But, sadly, both Maeda and Dawa with short hair actually look better than Kanon with short hair.
Caption: "Disaster"
Dawa actually looks a lot like Maeda Atsuko with the new haircut. I do actually think she looks better. Yuuka looks good as well... but I think we'll have to wait and see with her.
So, I know this goes without saying and everyone seems to know about this, but it happens to such an extent in this PV that it bears repeating.
HEY AI-CHAN STOP TOUCHING YOUR FUCKING FACE
Ha ha, anyway, now that that's been established we can say for sure that this is a Morning Musume PV for their newest single, Otoko to Onna no Lullaby Game. The song is much better than all of the other recent MM singles (with the exception of Kaitenzushi), and while it sticks with the same kind of sound it still stands out with it's powerful melody and dramatic strings and drums, and of course, with the bits of silence.
I would say for the most part, everyone looks good. Eri, who I normally never notice, really had me checking her out a lot here. (Just in time, right? Awkward laugh)
Gaki's haircut looks pretty bad in some places, though, like when they straightened it.
As far as all the sets and everything, I really liked how they varied it up with all the different backgrounds. I particularly like the flower pool and the lighted backgrounds. I thought it matched well with the dramatic and kind of random nature of the song.
The dance is pretty uninspired here. It just looks like Nanchatte Renai, and I wish that they didn't look so awkward during the pauses in the song.
Hey, at least it didn't sound like Nanchatte Renai, right?
"This is the best we could come up with guys, I'm sorry. We spent all our money on the mesh to make those dresses even more poofy and unflattering."
But at other times the dance can be lots of fun, mostly because it's all hair-flippy. It looks especially good with the dark background and bright lights.
Whoa, look out.
It may sound like I'm not too happy with the PV, but I actually am really happy and at the obvious effort that went into it (I mean, at least compared with everything else they do). The song is also a welcome break from the repetitive sound we're so used to from MM, but I would have liked if the line distribution had been more even. Eri was given justice for her last single, but Jun and Lin weren't at all and still felt just as tacked-on as Aika.
D'aw, Junjun.
I loved the ending of this PV, too.
FLASH!
Let's just say that I really hope this PV and song is an indication of what MM will be up to in the future with the new 9th gen members.
By the way, some of which sound quite good -- the latest Bijou Gaku had some previews of some singing. Some of the girls look really cool and I hope they are considered.
Well, if you had any doubts, this should change your mind:
Ha ha, just kidding. But seriously, I have wanted to compare these two games for a long time, but never really got down to defining what about each game was good and bad. Although a lot of what I'm saying here has already been said, I just wanted to give my 2 cents on it, since I love both games so much.
Disclaimer: I’m not a technical expert on computers, nor am I able to explain the subtleties in graphics, or really go into anything in-depth in mechanical terms, so keep in mind that this review will be mostly based on my game-play and “emotional” reactions to both games. So, if I complain about things and I fuck up and say things that turn out to be wrong, I’m sorry, but at least I warned you that this is not a “professional” analysis of the two games. This is just a reflection from a normal person who loves both games, has spent innumerable hours on both of them, and who, I can safely say, has managed to explore almost everything in both of the worlds.
Let’s start off with the easier argument: Oblivion > Morrowind
A lot of this stuff goes without saying: better graphics, better physics system, better map system, better journal system, more straight-forward combat. If you were a passerby and had to compare the two based on looks and face-value playability, most would (reasonably) pick Oblivion as superior. As far as how it looks, I remember being really impressed with Oblivion when it first came out, especially character and creature animation, which was clearly far better than it had been in Morrowind. So many aspects of gameplay were smoothed out, especially ones that had me tearing out my hair in Morrowind. When you hit a target with a weapon or spell, it always worked, and you got the satisfaction of having at least done something instead of that “whoosh” sound of you missing the target right in front of your fucking face that became so ingrained in my mind with Morrowind. I loved how the block option was manual, and you didn’t just have to wait for your character to decide to dodge an attack, plus you can block without a shield, which as far as I remember, didn’t happen in Morrowind. One thing about Oblivion that I really like was the leveling-up perks – when you hit level 25, 50, 75, or 100 for any skill you got new moves or were able to cast new kinds of spells, or other useful things that made gameplay easier as time went on. I gotta say, nothing is better than getting to 100 in Armorer and only ever having to carry around one repair hammer all the time. Some of these perks are pretty useless, like some of the jumping and rolling moves that you can do, and rarely come in handy, but some of the new power attacks for Blade and Blunt are quite fun to pull of successfully.
So, let’s talk about Oblivion’s maps. I can for sure say that my least favorite aspect of Morrowind was that it was too fucking hard to find anything in it. You would only get these vague text directions that rarely led you to the place on the first try, and even if you were on your mini-map it was hard to pick up that there was an entrance on the map that you couldn’t see in-game. I swear, there were way too many quests that I couldn’t complete just because I couldn’t find the damn place. Now, I’ll admit that was younger when I was playing this a lot – probably from about age 10 to age 15 – but I do think that for any gamer it would have caused problems. So, on the surface, Oblivion is miles ahead of Morrowind – the maps are clear, directions are somewhat unnecessary since it just points it out to you on the map, and all locations you will ever visit have their own map marker. Playing the game through the first time, it was such a relief to just be able to bring up the map screen and see exactly where to go. The fast travel option also came as a welcome addition – with Morrowind, one quest could easily become a long journey and the time it took even after you finished the quest to get back to whomever was going to pay you seemed tedious at the time.
The journal system of Morrowind seems to be universally accepted as a confusing, unorganized mess, so it’s easy to argue that Oblivion, at least in that category, has Morrowind beat for sure. You can view all available quests to you, or single out a specific one to see the sequence of events and what to do next. A lot of Morrowind’s more cryptic and confusing puzzles are worked out of this system because of the more directed journal entries – there is never a whole lot of speculation about what must be done in a quest because it will just tell you most of the time. But now, to counter all that, let’s re-examine some of these aspects that, on the surface, appear to make Oblivion > Morrowind.
Are the graphics really better in Oblivion? Well, yes, they are, you can’t argue that. But I can say for sure that I don’t like them as much as Morrowind’s. In a way, they feel too real – it feels more just like a medieval European RPG than a completely new fantasy world. In Morrowind, sure, the stuff looked pretty stiff and waxy, but it had a wonderfully “weird” charm to it, and the sometimes sub-par visuals never hampered the game from being fun. But in Oblivion, I feel like I wasn’t in a whole new universe – the people looked too normal, the landscapes were uninspired, and the creatures weren’t strange and colorful enough. So, yeah, on paper Oblivion has Morrowind beat on graphics quality, but as far as personal opinion goes, I think a lot of people find a fascinating aspect of Morrowind’s visuals that was never there in the fourth installment.
What about the combat system? I do think in most ways this is superior, since it just makes more sense than it did in Morrowind. But I think the leveling system change was a mistake, and caused Oblivion to feel “done” much sooner for me than Morrowind – to this day, I feel like Morrowind still has stuff to conquer that I haven’t done before. But in Oblivion, you get to a point where, at about level 30, you pretty much have all of the best items in the game available to you and there are no real “challenges” on the road ahead. Also, it just takes too fucking long to level up in Oblivion. I’ve had a character that I literally played with consistently for over a year and I never made it past level 40. The huge drawback is that only upping your major skills gets you level advancement – advancing minor skills helps you increase your attributes when you level up, but it doesn’t bring you any closer to the next level in the process. At first, this isn’t a big problem, but after not too long you’ve maxed out a few of your major skills (I’ve found that any armor or Destruction magic skills get to 100 way before anything else does), and now, it takes that much longer to level up because now you have less options available. After you get past a certain point, leveling up just gets so tedious and by that time, as I mentioned, you feel like you’ve already done everything the game has to offer, so a lot of the times that’s went I quit playing the game for a few months. So, although fighting stuff is easier here, Morrowind’s leveling system and un-changing enemy difficulty allowed for longer playability and a larger sense of accomplishment.
As far as maps go, I did say the joy of finding shit easier in Oblivion really never got old. But I admit it takes some of the challenge out of the game, and the fast travel especially can, in the long run, make the game less fun. I mean, you can choose just not to use the fast travel, but that’s hard to do. Sometimes you just fought your way through a dungeon for an hour and you just want to exit the door and travel to your destination right away. With Morrowind, it was super annoying to have to walk pretty much everywhere, but it made the game seem so much more immense and you got so used to seeing the landscape. In Oblivion, I feel like I was not even on the roads that much and never got used to how the outside looked. In practice, though, the biggest complaint (fast travel or not) about Oblivion’s map is that it’s NOT BIG ENOUGH. There aren’t enough places to go in this game. To some extent, the map system makes this seem even truer, since it’s a lot less likely that you’ll just stumble upon to a new cave, since it’s marked on the map, whereas in Morrowind that happened all the time. But I don’t think that it’s just a psychological thing that comes about from stuff like fast travel or map markings – the game really is too small.
On a similar note, the journal system, while undoubtedly a leap up, can make the game too easy. Most times it just fucking tells you what to do, even when it’s completely obvious. Even stuff that might not have been clear right away could have been figured out without the journal detailing every word of what to do to get an item or defeat an enemy. While there were times in Morrowind where I was really stumped, I could use those few occasions to look up a strategy guide or something, while the rest of the puzzles were usually doable, if you spend some time with them. But in Oblivion, it just seems like it’s compensating for past mistakes by spelling it out all too obviously.
So, what is the take away from all this? Casual RPG gamers would probably go for Oblivion, because they weren’t used to an extensive game like Morrowind and they weren’t expecting something similar from the fourth game. But, among Elder Scrolls fans in general, there seems to be a consensus that Morrowind had many indefinable qualities that made it more fun, and kept us playing long after the main quests of the game were completed. It was just like we knew that something else was still out there, and that if you kept spending time with the game, that some weird crazy stuff would turn up from time to time. Oblivion feels a lot more like a linear-storyline game – there’s point A and point B, and eventually you will probably get to point B and be done with the game.
The reason I chose now to write this post is that rumors have re-ignited about Elder Scrolls 5 being in production, and some speculate that it even has been for the last two years. While it’s uncertain how long it will be before we get any kind of release date, some comments made by Bethesda people have implied that the wait is not as long as I (and, I assume, most others) had anticipated. So, with two really solid games behind them, what do I want to ask of Bethesda for a new TES game? As I mentioned above, unfortunately many of the things that made Morrowind great are kind of hard to explain or define, so it’s not like I can just make a bullet-point list of all the things Bethesda should fix. But I can take a stab at some general aspects that I want to see:
• More challenge • More item variety and number • More faction quest storylines (Mages Guild, stuff like that) • Make the game weirder • Make the game bigger (but don’t fuck it up like Arena)
So, yeah, I dunno, Bethesda, just work on that stuff I guess.
Thanks for reading, everyone! I’ve been wanting very much to do something like this for a while.
