I
usually don’t care for Johnny’s groups aside Arashi (嵐)
or SMAP (when I’m in the right mood for KimuTaku [木村拓哉]
and his “friends”, of course), but I came across NEWS’ “KAGUYA” and just
had a serious reality shock: this song is pretty nice.
Musically,
it’s a song that fuses traditional
Japanese elements with electronic dance music, which, per se, is not that
innovative at all. However, it results in a cool and energic song that loosely reminds
me of the best moments from Korean boybands (SHINee, I’m looking at you).
Visually,
I wasn’t expecting such a pretty, yet simple, music video, so it was a second
reality shock. It’s all courtesy of famous visual artist Mika Ninagawa (蜷川実花), which was also responsible for
AKB48’s or infamous “Heavy Rotation” video in 2010, and the visual design for Megumi
Hayashibara’s (林原めぐみ) “Vintage White” compilation in 2011.
As
I said, the video is simple, yet beautiful, with all the colors, traditional Japanese elements and homoerotic feel. Also,
even though the guys aren’t the most amazing dancers in the world, at least a
couple of them are charismatic. In fact, the blonde one, Yuya Tegoshi (手越祐也), keeps flirting with the camera
through the whole video. Well, all of them are trying to flirt with the camera,
but Tegoshi and Takahisa Masuda (増田貴久),
the boy with a round face, are the ones who succeeds it in a more natural and
suitable way. I liked it, even though I didn’t quite understand how the
homoerotic appeal was related to the overall theme, which was the Princess Kaguya tale. In the end, it’s
probably just insipid fan service
for the fangirls.
“KAGUYA”
was released as a single in January 2015,
reaching #1 on the Oricon charts and
selling 150,052 copies. Lyrics were
written by MOZZA, while music was composed by take4. As for the arrangement,
CHOKKAKU was the responsible.
Source: jpopasia.com
"Kaguya" does strike me as having some of that "Boys' Love" flavour in the video. I've leafed through some of Ninagawa's photo essays, and the video looks as if it popped out from one of those books. There's also a bit more muscularity in the music when compared to the average SMAP tune.
ReplyDeleteSMAP is always our lowest point when it comes to Johnny's, hahaha. Buti I'll repeat myself here, nothing is worse on Johnny's world than Sexy Zone. Even SMAP released a single I liked earlier this year.
DeleteDuly noted on Sexy Zone, then. I will probably then have my New Year's breakfast at that point. :)
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