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Hajimemashite minna san....welcome to my site on my fave Japanese Pop Culture likes such as dramas, movies, magazine scans, promo events etc. Mainly concentrate on my faves...Risa Watanabe... Kyoko Saito... Yui Kobayashi....Miyuki Watanabe.... Nene Shida.... if you're a fan at all of any of them then you've come to the right place(!) but many others are featured here besides them. Do mainly quick reviews on things I've watched, try to make the reviews brief, quick to read through with not too many spoilers, just whether they're good or bad and why I thought so plus whether you may find them enjoyable. Many, many screenshots are included from everything I've watched plus any video trailers if they're available. Hope you find something that interests you, don't hesitate to comment, arigato gozaimasu!

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Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Nogizaka46: 'Nogizaka Singles Series' #8- "Kizuitara Kataomoi"



 Hopefully that video will stay on YT for a while, the same version was there for so long and was deleted but luckily it got re-upped as I enjoy that version more than the PV. Actually there's quite a few live versions of the song but all of them are about a minute shorter. Not sure what rank I would put this song at as far as my fave A-sides go, probably around 6th but to me the real gem is the B-side and have a video of that at the bottom. What's best about this song is the vocals, to me it's their best sung single to date.

WARNING: These posts tend to be quite long so if you haven't yet it'd be a wise to grab a snack or perhaps refill your pint of lager.

 Will have one more post in this series for the next single, think after that all of their singles have been well represented here. But as mentioned a few other times these posts aren't just about the song(s) but what the group was doing during that time frame so actually could call this series a mini 'History of Nogi', I'd be willing to teach that class in school.
 Every single's sales have increased up until this point, the first one sold about 220,000 copies in it's first week out, "Kizuitara Kataomoi" sold over twice that amount with sales of 458,000. The single was released on April 3, 2014 and was the tenth best selling single of the year as it sold just shy of 550,000 copies. It was the group's seventh straight chart topper and now that number is up to fifteen straight. Sure that streak will be continuing for a few years and the new single is coming oh so close to being the group's first million seller. There were four versions of the song released, here are the covers with the first one featuring Nanase who was the center for the song, the above pic is the lineup for the A-side.





 Almost forgot and bet a few others may have too which was that this was the first song Rena from SKE sang with the group. She was a part time member for about 14 months and appeared on four of their singles.






 Don't miss her too much from Nogi but do quite a bit from SKE, Rena has been too quiet as of late. On to more of the 'Nogi history' and on February 23rd the group performed their second birthday concert which I think has been posted about already though well over two years ago.


















 If it's cards you came for you won't be disappointed as there's plenty of them here. Think C-ute has a higher per member average for their cards but with 35 members Nogi's total eclipses them by a mile.



























 Right around this time is when I started posting so much about Nogi which is why there will be only one more post for this series. Almost all of the pics for today are brand new but if the series keeps going on for too long then there would be way too many duplicates.
 This is one event that I don't recall posting about which took place on March 9, 2014. On that day five members.... Mai, Miona, Nanami, Nanase and Rina were at a press conference for NTT. It was a campaign called '33 Colors Love Story' where you could call a number and here a pre-taped message from one of the 33 members. Eventually that total went up to 38 and is now down to 35, so far I've ignored these so called third generation members.


















 Plenty of mag spreads for that February to April period, only going to post a few as most may have been posted already but once again that was well over two years ago. Here's a pair we've seen quite often over the years, Mai and Nanase from the March issue of Entame.












 More Entame pics but these are from their April issue and it features Mahiro and Sayuri.







 Luckily the single didn't come out in October so we won't have to worry about Nanase crashing the party but then again zombies never sleep....


.... let's hope she stays in that trance then until the end of this post. To this day we never see enough of Reika who was my first fave member and really looks quite good these days though you may not know that due to her lack of mag spreads and being at events. Really fine set of pics of her here from issue #4 of Young Gangan.








 Hope Mai's graduation in June hasn't started a trend but you really have to think that we're going to see many of them in the next two years among the older members, from the March EX-Taishu.






 2014 saw the release of the 'Nogizaka Quaterly' series which was put out by BLT, it came out four times that year and featured all of the members. Wish that series was still around as I thought the pics and videos for the series were quite good. Almost positive that all of the member's pics have been posted but here's a few that appeared in the first issue which came out in March.











 Whew, hope you grabbed enough food or lager as these posts seem to go on for an eternity. We're almost done though and naturally the group appeared on every music show that aired promoting the single. Too many of those shows to post so here's some from the 'Music Fair' show.

















 You ever wonder what it'd be like to use a time machine and go back 50+ years? Probably not but if you did the you'd end up in the midst of Beatlemania. Sure folks would ask you what music was like in the future and you'd try explaining to them J-Pop or more likely Nogimania!!!! Bet those lads from Liverpool would have never stood a chance against the likes of Nogi back then though they may have been invited to appear on a 'NOGIBINGO' show.
 If the curious music fans back then asked what would be the perfect example of a J-Pop song then of course you'd point them in the direction of this song. Wonder how you'd play a video for them as there were no computers, DVD's and things like that then. But your laptop would work and when you played possibly the finest of all pop tunes "Danke Schoen" then your time machine had better be big as a few million would want to return with you to the future.
 Now wouldn't ideas like that make their variety shows so much more fun? Actually how about a film like that though there was one similar to that which was released at the end of 2014 that featured three members. On to my all time fave Nogi tune and it's close to being my all time J-Pop tune, of course it has Erika as the center as she spent most of her first five years living in Germany.





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