My 25th Anniversary Nishida Hikaru DVD Collection Arrives!!

Whooohooo~! As you can see, my CD Japan package came in today, and so for the very first time, a DIGITAL DVD enters my Nishida Hikaru Collection!!! So excited! Not only do I get to FINALLY see the clips from her first two video collections in crisp digital form, but also the later clips which would have filled her third video collection, if they had ever made one, that is!

From her First Video collection, we have

1. Fifteen

2. Nice Catch!

3. Oh My God!! Da Ne~

4. Tokimeite

5. Ikkiterutte Subarashi

6. Kagayaki! Kudasai

And then from her Second Video collection, we have,

7. Namida Tomaranai

8. Kitto Aiga Aru

9. Jinsei Kaechyau Natsu Kamone

10. C’Mon3

11. Go! Paradise*

12. Watashi No No.1

And then her later releases, including a few I’d never even seen before: 

13. Melody

14. Aa Honto Yannachyau

15. Love Is Changing

16. Dan Dan Musume

17. Pure

18. As Pure As

19. Sorairo

And then we come to a handful of Live Clips from Hikaru’s Video Concerts:

Pun Pun Pun (from Manatsu No Surprise Concert 1990)

Koi Wa Shiroi T-Shirt and

Kokoro Dake Sobani Iru~Here In My Heart

(from Manatsu Jouzu LADY vol. 2 Concert 1992)

Burning Tonight and

Jinsei Kaechyau Natsu Kamone

(from Live Two-Four 1996 Concert)

And one extra bonus that was so cool that I didn’t even know about was that Hikaru herself doing VIDEO COMMENTARY along with a few other people from the MANASEPRO team about the clips as they played! It’s times like this that I REALLY wish I understood Japanese better! Had to watch the clips mostly guessing what they were talking about, oooh, subs would have been SO NICE! Still, a very nice bonus!

After watching the video (twice!), I just HAD to dig up all my Hikaru Goods, and decided to take pics of 'em all! In celebration of the this awesome Nishiida Hikaru DVD release, I present my entire Nishida Hikaru Collection along with its new addition!

First up, my Nishida Hikaru 3cm Singles Collection…

Then Albums, EPs and Maxi-Singles…

Hikaru Photobooks and Magazines:

And my Hikaru Videos including the *new* DVD Collection!!!

Just about the only thing I wish they could have included were the commercial inserts that were in the original two video clip collections because those were just as fun to watch as the videos themselves! But I’l still pleased as punch here- So NICE to see my favorite Pony Canyon Idol girls in DVD format! Now if only RIBBON can FINALLY get a DVD treatment of their own, I will be SET!

* This Single was a song Hikaru sang with a group called Sweet Beat Soul, MAN, whatever happened to these guys? They accompanied Hikaru on a couple of her later concerts and they were SOOOO GOOD! The guy and girl had such beautiful voices, they really gave the concerts an added PUNCH!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Revisiting The 2012 Idol Olympics with Dal Shabet

Browsing around online one night, I came across an article headline that read: “Dal Shabet’s Jiyul injured early on in Idol Olympics”. I went, “Huh! Dal Shabet appeared on an earlier episode of that Idol Olympic show I watched last year! Clicking onto the article ink, I was stunned to see screenshots of the aforementioned track race and realize it was the exact same episode I’d seen before when I was obsessed with After School! WHAT! DAL SHABET was one of the groups participating at THAT TIME? I HAD to dig up my copy and watch it again, and yep, sure enough, not only were my beloved gals THERE, athletic member Kaeun was the one who actually WON the 100 Meter Running Challenge!  I had COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN that they were there!

Holy CRAP! While I remembered not only the race (as you can see in my earlier post, at the time it was all about the Afterschool girls Eyoung, JooYeon and THEIR member named Kaeun ) but also the fact that super-athlete Bora of SISTAR, who was predicted to win, was beat out by another girl. COMPLETELY BLEW MY MIND to realize it was Dal Shabet’s KAEUN! Clearly, at the time I watched this, Dal Shabet were "just another group" to me", now I LOVE all of them so MUCH! I had to sit down and watch this show ALL OVER AGAIN!

And while it was heartbreaking re-watching the race and seeing Jiyul falling and hurting herself (I didn’t remember this mishap at ALL for some reason), it was THRILLING seeing the 2012 Idol Olympics through new eyes as I saw all the Dal Shabet girls participating in the events! 

Just looking at the crowd and recognizing pretty Serri standing there for the first time was exciting for me, woulda been great if they’d aired the powerwalk event (which seems like Dal Shabet won but Kaeun got disqualified!) and it was fun watching Subin in the vaulting event (though she got out first!).

Special Heartwarming bonus when Kaeun won her Gold Medal for the Running Race and sweetie pie Woohee is seen proudly backhugging her big sister as she’s interviewed! Additionally, was pretty relieving seeing my darling Jiyul smiling at the podium behind Kaeun. I was SO worried about her after she limped off the racetrack favoring her injured elbow.

Funnt to think that the first time I watched this show back in July of last year I hardly knew any of the groups, now when I watch it, the show is FILLED with groups and artists I LOVE! I was equally surprised to see HelloVenus running in the rookie race! The announcer even states that the rookies you see running today may one day become the artists you love, a statement that has never been truer!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Oh, Shigechan, You So Funny

Okay, Okay, I don’t really know if Shigechan was the one filling out these hilariously cute “guesses" at how to spell numbers (I see Reina and some other girl at the podium who could also be culprits), but when I saw this screencap up on a forum, I instantly smiled and thought “That’s Classic Sayumin!”
 Ya gotta love the guesswork that went on here- there IS a certain logic that if 10 is written TEN, then why couldn’t 100 be written TEEN and 1000 written TEEEN?  And I love that Eight is spelled the way Kanjani Eight spells it in their EITO RANGER movies! Hahaha, Just Adorable!

*Thanks to the original poster of this pic!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Up Next: I Hear Your Voice

Entering into the category of “Dramas It’s In My Best Interest to Watch Since My Friend Won’t Stop Talking About Them” is the recent K-drama Neoui Moksoriga Deulleo (I Hear Your Voice), and having just watched the first episode, I have to say that I can already see right away why she’s been RAVING ABOUT IT so much! A drama that seems at times a mixture of Family Melodrama, High School Comedy, Sci-Fi Paranormal AND Crime Mystery, the story of I Hear Your Voice concerns a High School student named Soo Ha who has the uncanny gift of ESP- when He’s looking into the eyes of someone, he can hear their thoughts, and the life of a young up-and-coming woman lawyer named Hye Sung who’s still struggling to make it.

At first you have no idea how the two might be connected, but as the story unfolds, you find the two have a dark past between them… Seems when was just a child, Soo Ha was involved in a car accident and witnessed his father being brutally murdered. The only witness to the crime was a young Hye Sung who, though threatened by the criminal that if she spoke of what she saw, she would be killed next, bravely took the stand to put the murderer away.

Fast forward to the present and we see that because of the incident, Hye Sung has become a lawyer working within the justice system, and Soo Ha, now a school student, has become a focused young man, who has spent his growing up years getting fit and sharp with fighting skills (as well as those aforementioned mind-reading powers) because of a promise he’d made to Hyesung all those years ago: to protect Hyesung from the criminal. But when they finally meet up again in the present day, things don't go quite the way he planned...

My friend Car has been just gushing about this drama for the past few weeks, and it eventually reached that point where I as better off just watching the show since she was telling me the whole story ANYWAY! Going online to check it out, I found the drama starred quite a few actors and actresses I'd known, including Lee Jong Suk in the role of Soo Ha and I was pleasantly surprised to see actress Lee Bo Young in the title role of Hyesung! This might be worth checking out, I thought, and cautiously downloaded the first episode.Well, that first episode just BLEW ME AWAY, the second episode just as good, and so now I’m in the process of getting the REST of them! So Far, So Good!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Part Three of my Dal★Shabet Obsession Arrives!!!

It’s been just about one month to the day since I opened my eyes to the wonder and charms of Dal Shabet, and with this third order of DS goodies, I can now proudly say I’ve pretty much got all of their official releases! 
Can’t believe I once thought I’d be satisfied with only their latest releases- once I fell in love with them, I knew I needed to have ALL the Dal Shabet albums, including their earlier stuff, and I'm sooooo glad I did, so many of the other songs on the albums are freaking awesome, songs like Hottie off the Supa Dupa Diva album and Just Stop from Pink Rocket are BIG faves now! 
   Besides the aforementioned album Supa Dupa Diva, this latest (and, for the moment, final) shipment contained Dal Shabet’s mini-albums BLING BLING and Viki’s last album HIT U.  The BLING BLING CD came with a card of Serri, and the HIT U CD came with a trading card of...Kaeun! Seeing as how the card I got for the Bang Bang Album ALSO was Kaeun, It seems I’m quite lucky when it comes to Dal Shabet’s most athletic member!

  And as you can see in the pic, the other part of the order was to treat myself to my ever-growing love of uber cutie Jiyul- both she and Ayoung (and at some earlier point, Viki as well?) all made the covers of MAXIM KOREA, Holy Toledo, when I saw that sexy Jiyul on the cover, I was like I NEED THAT ISSUE LIKE NOW!!!!!! Haven't needed a MAXIM so much since my Catherine Zeta-Jones days! LOL. Maybe later I'll get the Ayoung one, too, as she's one of my favorite members too. Hell, I love ALL those girls!

Yep, I'm a Dal Shabet Maniac (can I sincerely call myself a DARLING now?), we'll see how long I can sustain this emotional attachment! Should have leveled off by now, but I keep finding new clips, interviews, and performances that show me new elements about them, making me LOVE them more and MORE!

 PS: Besides the wonderful Ayoung/Jiyul pictorial, this issue ALSO came with a smoking hot photoshoot of SPICA's sexy Jiwon! How's THAT for a cool bonus?!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

An Aimi Satsukawa Slight Return

Oh, and one more thing about Gekiryuu ~ Watashi o Oboeteimasuka? that I just HAD to mention is that besides the awsome lead actors and actresses, the show's full of other familiar faces with folks like Morimoto Leo, Tanaka Misako and Kaku Chikaku , but the one that I was pretty pleased to see is the return of cutie Aimi Satsukawa, last seen by me as the wily model Mano in Going My Home, here playing an equally sexy (and just as caustic and emotionally unbalanced) young thang named Rumi!

So funny to see her playing such extravagant characters lately, especially when you consider the first time I saw her was as the very meek role of crazy Eriko Sato's nerdish little sister Kiyomi in Funuke Domo~ Show Some Love, You Losers! Now that's moving on up!
  Reading up on Aimi in her AsianMediaWiki stats, looks like she's been a busy gal since I last saw her!  Wait...she was in the Denjin Zabohga Movie, too? LOL, who woulda thunk it?!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Requiem For One Long Gone

Just started watching another dark and surreal drama with the new mystery Gekiryuu ~ Watashi O Oboetemasuka? starring Rena Tanaka, Kenta Kiritani, Ryoko Kuninaka, Tomosaka Rie and Koji Yamamoto.

Tanaka Rena as Misumi Keiko

Kiritani Kenta as Higashihagi Koji

Kuninaka Ryoko as Midohara Takako 

Yamamoto Koji as Sabashima Yutaka

Tomosaka Rie as Akiyoshi Miya

20 years ago, seven schoolmates took an excursion on a bus, and somewhere along the way, one of the girls named Fuyuha mysteriously disappeared and was never seen again. Fast forward to the present, and the remaining students have all grown up and moved on, til Fuyuha and her unexplained disappearance have all been mostly forgotten about. When we check in on the surviving students, we find that all of them have been living turbulent and troubled lives as adults, til one day fate seems to bring them all back together, and then one day one of the women gets a chilling email with one single line and signature: 

"Do You Remember Me?- Fuyuha."

As the colleagues reconnect and explore the strange emails they are all suddenly receiving from their supposedly long-departed friend, each is forced to examine the life they've been leading as they look back at their days of youth where everything was bright and optimistic, with their whole futures ahead of them.

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

A Wild KARA Sighting!

Haha, been enjoying all the celebrity guest appearances in the episodes of Galileo like Kiritani Mirei and Aoi Yu among others, but the gal that appeared on Episode 10 in cameo as a humble secretary was one that I just did not see coming! I was like, "Hey...that girl looks familiar....looks like....HARA!!!" LOLOL, made me laugh out loud!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

What Dreams May Come: The Haunting New Drama "Double Tone~Futari No Yumi"

Just started watching the incredibly haunting and melancholy drama Double Tone/Two Yumis, the strange tale of two women named Yumi, one a simple housewife and the other an up-and-coming designer, who uncannily see each others' lives play out in each others'  dreams.! At first only mildly curious about the dreams they've been having, their fates take a darker turn when they find out that the dream are not only real, but are separated by years... years in which one woman has apparently passed away! A J-drama with a decidedly David Lynchian twist!

The drama stars pretty actresses Nakagoshi Noriko (last seen by me in Lucky Seven, though I admittedly don't remember her) as designer Yumi Nakano and Kurotani Tomoko (who I hadn't seen since appearing as the ex-wife of  Takano Bucho in Hotaru No Hikari) as troubled housewife Yumi Tamura, two awesome actresses who make this show really something to watch!

Such a gripping and thought-provoking drama, I was crushed to find that this show is only going to be 6 episodes long, so rather more like a long movie than a drama proper, but perhaps that's all for the best...a very linear tale like this certainly doesn't need any unnecessary sub-plots or characters to get right to the heart of the situation!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com