True Life Seek

Will I keep up with Berikyuu? Probably not. I didn’t keep up with Musume Dokyu or Uta Doki. Too many files to download, too much to keep up with. It’s going to need to be some kind of show for me to follow it regularly.

But before I get to watching it - I have high hopes for Berikyuu.

Haromoni is not the same show it was when I started watching it on a weekly basis. Two months ago, the majority of the show consisted of the Musume girls watching videos. Now an episode of Haromoni is more about the girls themselves. In an ideal world, the show would be better due to the changes. It isn’t. It is true that the girls are acting out the majority of the videos. However, the videos are still boring, predictable and repetitive. It makes me wonder if they filmed a month’s worth of episodes at a time. It’s possible to get a hit using the same format and the same gags over and over, but more often it’ll be a miss.

Berikyuu will save me from this! It just HAS to. We are all starved for variety entertainment from the H!P Kids. DVDs of material only come by so often. Appearances on the music shows only come with releases. There has never really been a steady stream of variety material from the H!P Kids. I am of the belief that the majority of them can be great entertainers in these situations. But am I giving them the benefit of the doubt? The fact is that the Kids - unlike Morning Musume - haven’t have the chance to disappoint yet.

We are two episodes in at this point. I don’t expect to update every day with something Berikyuu related. I’ll be lumping episodes together like here.

We were promised variety, so give me variety!

Manoeri. It’ll be fun watching to see if Manoeri is worth the solo career she is getting. I know that some people will focus on whether or not this girl can sing. It has been proven though that you don’t need a good singing voice to have a profitable career. These two episodes have both opened with Manoeri hitting the books and studying up on ways to take over H!P.

Still ended up being the best thing on both episodes.

We were promised game and quiz shows. This is the best that is offered? Guess The Object? Let’s see what they can do with this.

I’m assuming the girls are whispering into this vase so that no one else can hear what they are saying? But whether they are right or wrong is announced right away. I can’t get into the flow of the show with this.

I was looking for the interaction between the Kids. They all have to waste time doing a boring game, so my hope was that there’d be some fun between the girls themselves. It wasn’t going to come from the game.

Time. My first impression is that time is something Berikyuu needs but won’t be getting. They won’t be playing Guess The Object for 2 months (oh please don’t let this be the case) - but time is definitely missing here. The flow was way too rushed for me. What is the difference between this and a close up PV? Instead of lip-syncing in a music video, they are whispering into a vase. That’s all I got from this. The goal was to make sure everyone got their closeup. There was little transition between scenes. Once one girl was finished whispering into the vase, another was soon up. I couldn’t find much, if any, interaction between the girls in a situation like this. Time would solve the problem here..

I’m assuming that Berikyuu will be filmed once a week. I’m also assuming that this means we can look forward to the same format for each episode. This is bad. It may seem fine spread out over 5 episodes - but imagine 20 minutes of this rushed, pretty boring game show. Bad television.

This also means we get the Dschinghis Khan and Lalala Shiawase no Uta outfits for a week. Bad television.

Chinami sounds like she is moaning when she is whispering. Other than this, I couldn’t care less about the whispering.

If Berikyuu hopes to cram in Manoeri and the two Kids groups into every episode of Berikyuu, then it’ll be disappointing television. Even Musume Dokyu, Hello Pro Hour and Uta Doki all focused on a few members an episode. I’d love for everyone to be promoted. But in a 4-5 minute episode, with a full minute of that going towards promoting the next single or concert or whatever, there isn’t enough time to promote everyone.

Just think, I felt everything was too crowded and Maimi and Momoko were missing. Imagine if they tried to jam every member in a 4 minute episode like this.

This is just the first episode, but these are still some general concerns I have for this show. I really am glad that the Kids have their own show, but I can’t be satisfied with that alone.

Posted on April 2nd, 2008 by broomhead. Filed under Reviews, TV.
Tags: Airi Suzuki, Berikyuu, Berryz Koubou, C-ute, Chinami Tokunaga, Chisato Okai, Erina Mano, Haromoni, Hello!Project, Kanna Arihara, Maasa Sudou, Mai Hagiwara, Miyabi Natsuyaki, Morning Musume, Risako Sugaya, Saki Nakajima, Yurina Kumai