•Just finished watching another Years’ End / Beginning with the 61st Kohaku Uta Gassen on KIKU over here…Was great to see all the old and familiar faces again, (as well as a whole SLEW of new ones!!) and though the program seems to be leaning more towards a younger audience in recent years, it was still as fun and entertaining as ever, and still a must see at the beginning of each year!
Some Highlights:
•AAA’s first appearance on the Red and White!
Man, this was a long road for the Avex Trax hipsters! Since winning the Record Taisho years back, it’s taken soooo long for them to make it to the Kohaku, they’ve already lost a member! Ah, but they were beaming and having a helluva time! Car added that she loved their outfits- it’s true, they looked and sounded great!
•When I first heard Ayaka Hirahara’s “Voyagers”, my mind immediately brought forth images of an animated Ayaka bursting out of a cascade of Hayao Miyazaki style waves before shooting into the sky and spinning in the air among cartoon seagulls, the song was SO OVERLY DRAMATIC! Then when Ayaka preformed Voyagers onstage, it was set against the images of oceans of fish and birds soaring in the sky- Images befitting the equally overly-dramatic Ayaka Hirahara!
•Just like they did in the FNS Kayousai a few weeks before, AKB48 ‘s scattered appearances throughout the show really helped liven things up and really made the show feel festive!
Somehow, their genki dancing backing up acts like Godai Natsuko and Hosokawa Takashi just bumped things up a notch and partied things up, and their cheering on Akiko Wada (along with the rest of their Akagumi teammates) HAS to be the Genki High!
•“Matsuhima Kikou”
With the absence of both Yoko Nagayama AND Ayako Fuji, it was nice to see Mizumori Kaori onstage singing this sweet and happy song, reminding us that enka could be FUN!
She’s just beaming singing this one, but I have NO IDEA what those dancers in the background are doing with those blue sheets…
•I love Kana Nishino’s “Best Friend”, and was thrilled to see that she’d be performing it on this year’s Kohaku…I was a bit disappointed, however, to find that not only had they shortened the song considerably, she’d cut out all the “highs” in the song (the “Sukidayo…Daisukidayo” lines) except for the last one! :(
•They had Tendo Yoshimi closing the Kohaku a few years back, and once again, she shows that she’s got he power to deliver the goods. Right after this awesome performance of “Jinsei Michizure” ended, Car called me up to say “MAN, That Yoshimi Tendo is frickin’ AWESOME!!” Indeed! They should have put her performance towards the end of the program!
•When TOKIO came out and chose “Advance” to sing, I was surprised they hadn’t picked their hit of the year “Na Na Na” to perform, but I have to say that in the end, it was a pretty good choice – they rocked!
• Kana Uemura's heartbreaking song for her beloved grandmother "Toilet No Kamisama" brought tears to my eyes! Was cool to see that since it was more of a story than a song, they let her sing the entire song without cutting any of the lyrics out! They STILL had to cut out the orchestra ending, but I'll let that slide- if they'd kept it in, that would have made the performance over 10 minutes!
And of course, having Arashi as the hosts of the evening (along with cute Nao Matsushita, who got prettier and prettier as the night went on) was definitely a plus, the boys brought their affability and goofiness even to this venue, had to laugh when Sho kept getting tongue-tied trying to say “Funky monkey Babys” HAHAHAHA
PS:
I’ve GOT to get my hands on a nice AVI file of this concert. While I’m glad that KIKU even AIRED the show, their broadcasts all seem to suffer from this awful “slurring” effect every 20 minutes or so, where the audio tape sounds “stretched”, and it always seems to happen right in the middle of a great song (like Ayaka Hirahara’s Voyagers”…was SOOOO IRRITATING to have that glitch right in the middle of the song!
Not only that, KIKU had this MADDENING way of inserting the commercial breaks right AFTER the hosts announce the song and just BEFORE the artist started singing, so that when it came back from commercials, it went RIGHT INTO the song, and if you were taping it (like me), you inevitably missed the first few notes of the performance! BUGGER!!!
