BECK album parodies, ch 10 – 18

I needed to talk about something other than Last Friends for a while so I wouldn’t get so burnt out on the subject and then I realized that I hadn’t posted any more BECK album covers so I thought I would do that. I figured that I would post three volumes at a time, so about 9 chapters at a time. So here’s the next batch, chapters 10 – 18.

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Volume 3’s Color Page

Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin IV, 1971

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Chapter 14

This actually isn’t based off an album cover, but rather a production still from the movie One Million Years B.C. I thought it looked familiar, but I’m actually really proud of myself that I found this picture.

Rachel Welch, One Million Years B.C., 1966

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Chapter 16

Nirvana, Nevermind, 1991

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Chapter 5

Well, I wasn’t sure if this one counts or not and looking back, I do notice that Sakuishi does change some things about the cover to suit his needs, but this one is a long shot. The addition of the guitar is pretty big, but I thought that the vibe of the cover and the influence of The Smiths might work. I guess you can decide.

The Smiths, The Smiths, 1984

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Here are the ones I didn’t know:

Chapter 11, Volume 5’s Color Page and Chapter 13

I thought I knew Chapter 11, but I couldn’t find it at all. I’m not sure if the color page is an actual album or if it’s just fan service.

Chapter 15, 17, and 18

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Well, that’s pretty much all I got for this batch. As always, if you know any of these other ones drop me a line and I’ll post them. Thanks! Enjoy!

Last Friends Ep 02

So I figured I should give a basic summary for each episode, mostly just to refresh minds. If you’re looking for a more extensive summary, sorry, you won’t find it here, since these are mainly my thoughts on the episode itself. I don’t know if I would even call it a basic summary, just highlights or an outline maybe?

So highlights/outline of episode 2 of Last Friends:

• first off, no after-math of THE kiss
• Ruka walks Michiru from the house to the train station so she can go to work
• Michiru sees Sousuke watching her through the window at work and then goes home with him after work
• Ruka’s motocross coach tells her she might win the next motocross race with her current lap time
• Ruka’s dad comes to visit her and she takes him to where Takeru bartends for a drink
• Michiru finds her graduation year book behind the first-aid kit at Sousuke’s house
• Ruka does some internet research about surgery on Jyunshin Medical University Hospital’s Urology Department website
• Eri brings home the 5th housemate, Ogura Tomohiko, who in turn brings a TV from home
• roommates and Takeru watch movie, Takeru leaves in the middle during a steamy potential sex scene
• Michiru comes home late from work after telling Sousuke that she’ll be home by 8
• Takeru goes to Michiru’s work to drop off Ruka’s motocross ticket and to get a hair cut
• Michiru gives Takeru a protection charm (?) to give to Ruka and tells him she probably can’t make it to the race
• Sousuke watches from outside and watches as Takeru leaves on his bike
• Sousuke asks Michiru to cut his hair and silently threatens to cut his ear until Michiru says she’ll never cut another man’s hair
• Ruka is sad when she doesn’t see Michiru in the stands before the race, but then immediately becomes happy when Michiru arrives just before the race starts
• Ruka gets pushed off to the side during the race as she attempts to defend her lead and ends up at the hospital
• Ruka wakes up and as Michiru is about to leave, Sousuke shows up and introduces himself to Ruka
• on her way to the bathroom, Ruka overhears Sousuke and Michiru arguing, and comes in between them when she realizes that Sousuke is going to throw a chair at Michiru

I actually like the first episode more than this episode. There are too many things about this episode that bug me a little bit. But overall it is still a good episode. This episode is definitely more melodramatic then the last one. Hopefully the drama builds slower than its current pace, because I feel like the climax is going to be ridiculous if this is the set pace.

So something that bothers me, but also something that makes me really happy is the acting and the interactions between the characters. This is twofold and a sort of double-edged sword I guess. What is beginning to bother me is Nagasawa and Nishikido’s acting, but what I’m beginning to love even more are Ueno and Eita. For some reason I’m just not buying a lot of Nagasawa’s facial expressions. I don’t know what it is. I don’t think she is a particularly bad actor, but I’m just not feeling a strong resonance with her character compared to the others. Maybe it’s precisely that Ueno and Eita are doing so well that her presentation seems a bit shallow?

While Nishikido’s acting still bugs me a little, it is definitely growing on me. His creepy factor was bumped up a few notches with the cute wave just seconds after glaring at Michiru when he sees her and Takeru from the window. The hair/ear cutting scene also made me squirm a little bit.

On the flip side, I love the interaction between Ruka and Takeru. Their conversations are some of the only pieces of sunshine in this depressing landscape, especially this episode. Some of the scenes and lines I loved involve Ruka poking fun at Takeru. Her dad says that “he looks a bit weak” at the bar. Ruka says that Takeru rides sloppily as she talks about flying through the air on her bike. My favorite one though is Ruka’s reason for inviting Takeru to the house: to take away any man smell that Ogura might bring. “What do you think am I, an air freshener?” HAHAHA ^_^

Another double-edged sword of this episode was the music. There were parts I loved but others where I thought it was a real miss. I loved most of the piano work of this episode and have decided that the piano version of “Prisoner of Love” is so beautiful and heart-wrenching that I might just cry. There was also that creepy electronic music when Michiru finds her graduation album behind the first-aid kit. I thought it was pretty fitting. But what bothered me was the pseudo ‘80s sounding victory music that plays a little before and during Ruka’s race. What is that?! I’m serious when I say that it was distracting! The beautiful mood that was “Prisoner of Love” was just ruined by a bad part of the ‘80s! At least pick something good from the ‘80s to imitate if you must… T_T

Remember before how people were speculating that Ruka might be dead? Well, part of the narration of this episode leads me to think that isn’t true, but this is still a theory. After Ruka walks Michiru to the subway station (it might the train station… I’m not sure), Ruka’s narration talks about seeing Michiru’s tears that night and then she says, “if I had known maybe I could have done something. Michiru, if only I had known…” This is definitely Future Ruka talking, but is it Future Ruka during Pregnant Michiru timeline or Ruka in a week?

Another question I have is concerning the importance of the keys. As I was taking notes on episode 1, I noticed a key in the box that Michiru opens in the beginning of the episode and then in the opening sequence there is a shower of keys. I wonder what that is about…

There seemed to be more things that bugged me than things I loved in this episode. When Michiru meets Sousuke for the first time after leaving home, he doesn’t say sorry or anything. Rather she’s the one that says sorry. Meanie. That and buying the new lamp. It’s like he’s saying that his abuse of her didn’t happen. GRRR. Evil Sousuke. Well, I guess it’s more character development and not really anything to be really annoyed about. But the one thing in the plot that did seriously annoy me was the fact that after Michiru is asked to stay longer at the studio, SHE DOESN’T CALL SOUSUKE TO LET HIM KNOW THAT SHE WILL BE HOME LATER THAN 8. Are you serious? Even if Sousuke wasn’t abusive, isn’t it common courtesy that if you know that someone is waiting for you to come home at a certain time you tell them if you’re going to be late? And it’s not like she was told in the middle of her shift. She had just gotten off the phone. She could have texted him or something. That was seriously a dumb move on her part. That doesn’t excuse Sousuke’s following actions, but I wanted to shake her for putting herself in the line of danger.

The appearance of the 5th roommate is fun though. He’s kind of pathetic in a funny way. I like him. I loved that he jacked his LCD TV and brought it to the house as a house-warming gift. Too funny.

This episode definitely opened a lot of mysterious doors. They touched upon Takeru’s sex trauma a little and I’m curious to see how that will pan out. Rape? Molestation? Man? Woman? I’m guessing it’s a woman that traumatized him though. I remember the close-up on his caller ID as he was going to work in the first episode. For some reason I remember thinking that it was a woman’s name and that it had something to do with his trauma. Then there’s the question of how Sousuke will react to hearing Ruka call Michiru “my Michiru”. The possessive Sousuke DEFINITELY will not like that.

But for me the biggest question is Ruka looking at Jyunshin Medical University Hospital’s Urology Department website. “Surgical Operation Details”? “Access to the Hospital”? “Register for a Second Option”? “Gynecologist”? HUH?! O_O At first I thought that maybe she was sick. Then the preview for next week throws in a bomb with Sousuke saying, “this person is not a woman” and a close-up of Ruka’s face marked up in the graduation album. Then I thought sex-change and other possibilities along those lines. But there’s also the possibility of that line being taken out of context. He might just mean that Ruka doesn’t act like a stereotypical woman. But part of me thinks that it is definitely bigger than that. I knew that urology deals with the kidneys, the urinary tract and the like, but then I looked it up on wikipedia and it says that urologists also deal with the reproductive system of males. The other part that stuck out to me was that they also deal with “surgical problems such as the correction of congenital abnormalities and the surgical management of cancers.” So many theories on what I currently see as Ruka’s BIG secret.

So, I’m gonna watch episode 3 after my stress levels drop a little. I swear watching this show stresses me out a little…

Geez this post is long…

BECK album parodies, ch 01 – 09

So I these past few weeks I’ve re-watched and re-read some anime and manga that I really like but haven’t seen and read in a long time. I rewatched Noein ~toward another you~ again and remembered how much I loved it, even though the art quality near the end of the series really suffers, it looks artsy enough that it could possibly pass as experimental and not just plain shoddy. I really loved the music for that too. And I watched bits and parts of the Full Metal Panic series. I saw all of Full Metal Panic! and Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu because I hadn’t watched them for so long that I was having a hard time remembering what actually happened. But I only watched my favorite parts of The Second Raid since I basically remembered what happened.

Similarly, I re-watched my favorite parts of BECK, like the ending of the Greatful Sound sequence, and then re-read the manga afterwards because I liked the sequence of them in the US that didn’t get animated. Reading through the manga I remembered how much I enjoyed the album parodies that Harold Sakuishi does. I’ve looked around for a list of the parodies that he does, but either a list doesn’t exist or I just haven’t looked hard enough. So… I thought that I would make a list. But it is still incomplete as my knowledge of music album covers doesn’t really span all of time. Also, I don’t think that all the chapter title covers are album cover parodies, although a good amount of them are. Some of them I knew immediately and some of them took a little research. So I thought I would share the fruit of my labor with you all. I’ll also post the pictures of the ones that I didn’t know, granted they are album cover parodies, and maybe some of you will know them. Enjoy!

Chapter 4 bothered me for so long. I swear that I knew the cover, but I just couldn’t place it. And then boom! I found it…

Pearl Jam, VS., 1993

Sadly, chapter 4’s title page was the only one I could figure out. This first post doesn’t really show all the other covers I figured out. I swear I know more! These first nine chapters were just really hard because I’m not even sure if some of them are covers at all. Chapters 1, 2 and 8 didn’t have title pages, or at least the scans I’m working off of didn’t include them if they existed.

So here are the ones that I didn’t know:

Ch. 3, 5 & 6

I’m pretty sure that chapter 6 is an album cover but not sure about the other two… actually I’m not even sure if the chapter 3 one is a title page or just a credits page for Mangascreener.com…

Vol 3 Colored Page, ch 7 & 9

I don’t think that the colored page is a cover, but I could be wrong. Chapter 7’s cover page looks really familiar to me, but I just can’t place it. Chapter 9 has the potential to be an album cover, but I’m not sure.

Well, that’s all for chapters 1-9. I’m gonna look around some more to see if I can fill in these chapters and some of 10-19 before I post. If you know one, please share!

lukewarm for ayumi hamasaki

So, I can’t decide if I like Ayumi Hamasaki or not. I’ve listened to her GUILTY album quite a few times and I’m still unsure. I’m not really a fan of trance or electronica all that much and I feel like she has some of those influences. That and power pop, which I’m not a big fan of either. I really think it’s this power pop aspect that really gets to me because I do like some electronica influenced music (à la Hikaru Utada). I don’t know if some of her earlier stuff is R&B influenced, but since I didn’t really know her music beforehand and was expecting the R&B influence, her sound really took me by surprise. This is definitely a case of my preconceived notions that weren’t even grounded on her, but rather on her similarity to Jolin Tsai, who does fall into the R&B influenced pop category. But the weird thing about Hamasaki is that she seems to be power pop to at least the 10th degree. She really brings the melodrama with the guitar riffs and those epic violins you would find in some Hollywood feature film epic like Lord of the Kings or Braveheart, maybe even some Titanic thrown in there for good measure. While I don’t mind the epic, Hamasaki just feels… too much. Maybe it’s just this album. I need to go and listen to some of her older stuff to really make an informed decision, but at this point… Hamasaki is looking pretty mediocre, which confuses me because I know that she is immensely popular in Japan, so there must be some grounding for it. But maybe she’s just too pop for my taste…

namie amuro tells me not to cry… repeatedly

So I’ve never really been a big fan of Hip-Hop and now that I’ve been on my J-Pop trip, while I find that there are some Hip-Hop and R&B songs that I do like, it seems that on the whole I tend to steer clear of them. But lately, one song has been stuck in my head non-stop. I’ve been listening to it over and over and over and it seems to have found its way onto several playlists and helped to sprout some new ones.

I recently finished the J-Drama Himitsu no Hanazono. Let me first say that it was pretty entertaining. It’s a comedy about a fashion editor who is moved to the manga department and is put in charge of a popular mangaka named Hanazono Yuriko who secretly turns out to be four brothers.

But it was the opening theme that was stuck in my head, and is still stuck in my head. I think it’s been at least a week. For some reason I’ve always kind of glossed over Namie Amuro. I think it’s because she fits into that Hip-Hop influenced Pop that I seem to be unsure about whether I like it or not. But the track “Baby Don’t Cry” from her PLAY album is really, really addicting.

I think what really gets me is the beat. Since I don’t understand Japanese it’s hard for me to appreciate ballads, even if it is musically gorgeous, I just feel like I’m missing out on half the song without the lyrics. If the song is catchy and danceable then I’m definitely going to like it. And this is where “Baby Don’t Cry” fits. But I have to say that I’m a little disappointed in her live performances of the song. For some reason, I’ve always envisioned some kind of dancing with this song, but seeing her stand there and deliver the song, no matter how beautiful she is, seems a little boring. But maybe that’s just me.

I found that I’ve also glossed over Ayumi Hamasaki for similar reasons. And this next reason may sound really shallow, but for some reason her image bothers me a little. I can’t really put my finger on it. I think part of it is that she reminds me of Jolin Tsai from Taiwan. Well, I have heard the argument that Tsai is the Taiwanese version of Hamasaki and is really influenced by Hamasaki, in terms of at least image (those nails I tell you…), in terms of music I’m not sure, so I guess that makes sense. But I’m not a huge fan of Tsai so that connection isn’t helping. Hopefully I get over it though so that I can at least check out her music before I make any real judgment on her as an artist.

I think with Namie Amuro’s “Baby Don’t Cry”, I’ve become fully convinced of the power that music has on one’s emotions and mood. These last few weeks have been really stressful and by just putting this track on, it makes me happy and makes me forget my stress for a little bit. Awesome and scary at the same time. Awesome because it’s hard to believe that humanly organized sound can have such a huge impact on my mood. Scary because I think I’ve been putting the track on way too often and might be using it to run away from my stress and my problems. Sigh. Cue epiphany music…

music and bad lyrics… plus some more J-Pop to go around

I’ve always thought of lyrics as an important part of music, something that can either add to or take away from the piece as a whole. I think most people will agree with me that sometimes lyrics will either make or break a piece. However, nowadays, it seems like that even if your lyric penning skills are subpar, if you put the lyrics over a catchy beat, then you can get away with almost anything: the chorus of Mims’s “This is Why I’m Hot” comes to mind. Then there are awesome songs that I really don’t understand the lyrics to, even though I could recite the words off the top of my head: Oasis’s “Champagne Supernova” comes to mind here. I understand the individual words, but I don’t think I really grasp what the lyrics actually mean. My knowledge of the English language doesn’t really give me a leg up here; they might as well be speaking another language. Unfortunately, many times I find myself not listening to the words anyways. I always seem to have music playing so I don’t think my daily life is ever really quiet. Most of the time I’m listening to my iPod while I’m studying or walking to class and not really listening to the words of the song. I hear it, but I’m not necessarily thinking about the meaning behind the words 24/7. I think that’s why I can listen to foreign language music and not be too bothered by the fact that I don’t understand what they’re saying. As long as the song is catchy and I find it entertaining, it normally stays on my computer’s hard drive.

But recently, I feel like I’ve been confronted head on by the fact that I really don’t know what these various artists are singing about. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been listening to a lot more J-Pop and so the fact that I don’t know the words is made much more obvious. I makes me a little sad that I can’t understand what HOME MADE Kazoku is talking about in their songs. After googling the lyrics some of their songs, I really want to be able to hear what they’re rapping about. Especially since they’re a hip-hop, funk, and popish trio, their songs are really lyric and beat based. I got the beat, but miss out on the lyrics, which I find great since I find them to be a little more poetic than some other stuff. I’ve been listening to “Take It Easy” from their “musication” album non-stop.

About a month or two ago, I got a copy of NEWS’s new album “pacific”. NEWS is a J-Pop group made up of six guys who sing, dance, act and do other boy band things they seem do so well. Track 8 on the album is entitled Chirarizumu (チラリズム) and composition wise, it’s a fun pop song, it’s catchy and sounds like classic bubble-gum pop to me. Since I don’t understand Japanese, I finally decided one day to google the lyrics and attempt to find out what in the world they’re actually singing about. HAHA. I was so shocked when I found out the song was about an adolescent (I hope…) boy’s desire to peek up girls’ skirts. WHAT?! Knowing that now, I can’t listen to the song in the same way. You can’t. There’s no way. There’s just something vaguely disturbing about guys (they’re all over the age of 20 now mind you, and this album was released November of last year, so they were definitely not adolescents when they sang this song) singing about their desire to perform lewd conduct over a super happy, super innocent and clean sounding track.

Lyrics wise, it really amazes me what you can get away with nowadays. Maybe I was just young and so wasn’t quick to pick up on hidden meanings and double entendres, but I feel like things have become much more explicit. I mean compare Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” to Akon’s “I Wanna F*ck You”. No clever and sometimes cliché analogies, Akon doesn’t really even attempt that but rather he gets straight to the point. I mean, you can’t really get anymore explicit than that.

I’ve been shocked by explicit lyrics more than once, but the most recent occurrence was once again located within the realm of J-Pop. I was listening to KAT-TUN’s “cartoon KAT-TUN II You” album and found that I really liked the back beats on one of the tracks. The singing, if you could call it that, was pretty bad, but I really liked the beat so it was a kind of perfect walking-to-class-while-listening-to-your-iPod kind of song. So when I had some free time, I figured that I would google the lyrics. I really don’t know what I was expecting. The track is called “Make U Wet” for goodness sakes, so I had to have guessed the content of the song. So I googled and surprise surprise, it was what I thought it was. But the thing is, the lyrics are so explicit that they’re just hilarious, like rolling-on-the-floor, good-thing-I-swallowed-my- orange-juice-already-or-else-my-macbook-would-be-orange, I-can’t-believe-they- convinced-him-to-perform-it funny. I can’t even convey how amusing they are; you would have to google them for yourself to really get the full effect. But besides it being really funny, I find it a little scary that adolescent girls in Japan, and in America apparently, listen to this stuff and just eat it up. They watch their concerts and scream in glee when their idols make a move to take off their clothes. It’s like softcore porn for adolescent girls. Scary. I wonder how the guys in the band feel. I’m sure it must feel great to be loved by fans and everything, but I wonder if they ever get tired of taking off their clothes to satisfy the desires of adolescent girls.

J-Pop is taking over my life…

So I guess this would be my first official rant here, not that my last tirade didn’t count, but I guess I just saw that one as an intro of sorts.

So onto the topic of the day, and one that I’ve actually been thinking about for a while: J-Pop. For those of you who didn’t know or who hadn’t guessed, J-Pop is an amalgam of the words “Japanese” and “Pop”, so essentially Japanese Pop music. When I think of J-Pop, I mostly think of the American equivalent of bubble-gum pop. I actually find that I tend to term all Japanese music J-Pop unless I know for a fact that it’s considered J-Rock or Hip-Hop or whatever. For some reason genres such as alternative and electronica don’t seem to exist when I think of Japanese music. But I digress.

My obsession lately within J-Pop has been of the idol boy-band variety. And again, for those of you who didn’t know, the idol culture in Japan is a kind of fixture in entertainment media: guys and gals churned through the entertainment industry as singing, dancing, modeling, acting, and everything-else-in-between entities, who by the way, have to look dang good doing it. It’s like the Mickey Mouse club, except bigger and very much alive. Granted I was on the boy band wagon in my high school days, good ol’ Backstreet Boys, N*SYNC, 98˚ and whoever else popped up during the ‘90s, but this extreme fascination with J-Pop boy bands has left me a little confused. While I do have Japanese music that does lean towards rock and alternative, in terms of percentage, J-Pop seems to dominate my Japanese music while American music is taken over by alternative and rock. I don’t hate pop, but I don’t particularly like pop, so why do I seem to like it so much in another language? And here’s the kicker: I don’t even understand Japanese. I understand a few words here and there, but it’s not enough to string together a coherent sentence.

I think what really perplexes me is that it’s the boy band variety of J-Pop that I like and not something else within J-Pop. Why?! They’re cheesy, have stylists that apparently worked with Liberace, are decent singers, but nothing to write home about, and usually have embarrassing choreography. The lyrics to their songs are also sometimes really laughable, but that’s a whole other post, and yet I still find myself watching their videos, their concerts (cheese galore…) and listening to their music. So excuse me while I YouTube some more videos of NEWS, KAT-TUN, Kanjani8, and Tackey & Tsubasa. Geez, even their names are cheesy…

Sorry, I couldn’t resist and had to post some pictures…