Well, ten hour shift of unpacking and shelving is imminent tomorrow as Panama City Beach attempts to open its first Borders store, with yours truly at bat. It will be a fantastic hotspot for literati and just plain cool people. On the downside, I'm weary to my bones from yesterday's sort, but on the upside I'm really hyped to get stuff done. I don't know really, why I'm opening a Pink Wota article with a lengthy treatise on my own state of being, but in my most Garrison Keillor of moments I like to pretend that I can mix my personal with my objective blogging and something great will come of it. Hopefully this will not be people just scrolling past my introductory paragraphs; hopefully this will be a little way to bring you all inside my head, to show I mean it when I say "comfort blogging".

I was feeling very down and out about Pink Wota this week. Maybe it was just a lack of serotonin, or a lack of adrenaline, but suddenly it seemed like I couldn't, and didn't really want to, keep up with the crowd. Celestia said pretty much everything I wanted to say regarding the Resonant Blue Another Version PV, except this: Sayumi and Eri aren't exactly resonating sadness when they're having a ball at the amusement park. :\ It just seemed out of place. Everyone else seemed sorta lonely - even the Pandas. But Sayu and Eririn? Just chillin', eating ice cream. "Oh, I'm sorry, were we supposed to be resonating sadness? Okay, we'll just glare at the camera, here."

And yes. Koharu more than makes up for making me want to punch her for smiling all through the Dance Shot by being smoking hot in the story footage.

Thus, finding not much to say about current events in the J-Pop world - and learning that one of my longtime friends is going to be in Japan with the JET program for Ayumi Hamasaki's 10th Anniversary Tour (and has more or less promised to bring me back swag of epic proportions) - I find not much to do here on Pink Wota. Just a slump, just a slump.

What lies beneath is an article I've been kicking around for a month or so. It's not much, but I like to think a good retrospective is nice once in a while.

No secret that Melon Kinenbi's This is Unmei is one of my favorite H!P songs of all time. No secret that I practically worship Masae Ohtani and modeled my new split-level hairstyle after one of her many incarnations. No secret that Melon Kinenbi is just fantastical.

But what struck me as I started to stalk YouTube, watching performance after performance by the group (spurred on quite a bit by the live-footage PV of Charisma, Kirei, is that they work more effectively than any other H!P commodity as a live act. I don't mean this in the arena sense of "knock your socks off" showmanship, not really. Morning Musume, Berryz, C-ute, Ayaya, Gomaki, all have put on amazing concerts and cannot be discounted as things unforgettable by fans who have had the pleasure of seeing them in person. But Melon Kinenbi brings a more dressed-down, "club" feeling to their performances. This translates very well onto DVD. Most notably in their recent fan club release, ~LOCK ON!~

So I began to compile the live clips I could find of my favorite Melon Kinenbi song - This is Unmei - in order to extoll the virtues, the evolution, and the mystique behind Melon Kinenbi live.





Live Tour 2003 Haru ～1st Anniversary～



I always love it when they retain the opening lineup as featured in the PV. The way they sell their "lines" even though they're obviously piped in is excellent, and you'll see that in every one of these examples. This is the craziest I've seen the crowd yet, with crowd surfing. CROWD SURFING. The exploding streamers are a nice touch. This reminds me of TeniMyu, to admit something really embarrassing. Perhaps this is because I've not watched any TeniMyu in a long time and I'm having a jones.

All this aside, everyone's outfits are sort of wtfery.

Smoke machines also - they're pulling out all the stops. This is Masae's best "No no no noooooo!", in my opinion. Sometimes she loses her voice, but here she rides that perfect line between belting it out and breaking the mic.

They sound vocally stunning, and I love the crowd energy, but they're not really owning it yet.

Hello!Project 2005 Natsu no Kayo Show



A truncated version of the song, yes, but their outfits are super and I love how they own the crowd even at H!P concerts. Even next to MiniMoni, Berryz, and C-ute, they're in a class all their own.

What's up with Koharu's squeaky little "san ni ichi!" all on her own? D: Oh, yeah, it was her premiere year. But wooowwww...how anticlimactic THAT was.

This pales in comparison, I must say, to the H!P Wonderful Hears performance of 'Saa! Koibito ni Narou', in which different Kids, and even Okada Yui, take on the opening lines with great power. From that performance alone I draw my belief that Maimi is destined to be the next true Bitch Goddess of H!P, and I mean that in the best, most complimentary sense ever. For instance, Hitomi and Masae are the Bitch Goddesses of MKB.

Live House Tour 2006 Syakunetsu Tengoku in Yokohoma Blitz



This one has a great opening, featuring a spoken word of the monologue. It is in this year, 2006, that I really start to get the feeling of the MKB we know today. The progression and maturation, not at all a stagnation, has done them well. They are aging like the finest wine, or perhaps the finest volatile rum. I draw your eyes to Hitomi rocking the amp, and the great crowd energy which has become par for the course. Hitomi, I should point out, has gone from being the would-be-gyaru that I sort of hated in H!P to one of my top H!P crushes. That, and she has a butch way about her these days - see the next video for ultimate proof of this. The camerawork for the arm-spreading moment right before the breakdown at 3:00 is awesome.

As much as I love Megumi, there's always something off about her delivery of the "Ii ko de ne" line that lacks Hitomi's commanding tone, but then, Megumi and Ayumi sort of make the "good little girls" of MKB while Hitomi and Masae are - were you reading the last review? - the Bitch Goddesses.

~LOCK ON!~ House Tour 2007



NOW THIS IS WHAT I'M TALKIN' ABOUT.

I love the "club" feeling, their dressed-down outfits, Hitomi's super-dyke look (I'll let you know when I pick myself up off the floor), everyone's hair, everyone's energy (even Ayumi is rockin' it like a punk chick!), just...EVERYTHING. The staging (come on...Masae on a bench, with Megumi standing on top of her???) is incredible and impromptu-feeling. Look at Hitomi's amp-rocking hip thrusts! For that matter, just look at Hitomi's hips. This is proof positive for me that MKB are THE superior live Hello!Project act. This might be because this is the sort of live act *I* like to see. A group just having fun and rocking out.

At the same time, though, I'm in love with over-the-top stagings the likes of which you'd find in an Ayumi Hamasaki Arena Tour. I suppose, for me, it has to be one of the other. A perforance that sort of makes you smell beer when you're watching it, or a performance thattransports you to a completely different universe. I want nothing in between, perhaps, because the results always seem to strike me as either over-ambitious, or unrealized potential.

There were many more performances of This is Unmei that I wanted to include, but I figured both for brevity's sake and the fact that YouTube pulled them, I would just overlook those.