In this round:
1. Hitomi Yoshizawa vs. 5. Rika Ishikawa
2. Koharu Kusumi vs. 3. Aika Mitsui
Yoshizawa Finals

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There were not many Ai Kago reactions after all.

Buono’s Kiss!Kiss!Kiss! PV was released and can be viewed at some boys blog. I haven’t watched it yet so I don’t have any opinion. I just like that, after 2 previous singles, it’s possible to label this PV as “Typical Buono.”

There are more reviews for Perfume’s GAME. Shanimuni Paradise and boylikesmusicPerfume. It pains me to see that neither of them enjoy “take me take me” as much as I do. I will freely admit that I’m liking this song because it was made for the exact reasons Shanimuni points out:

If there was ever fan service in a song…….

They had an album called Fan Service, they are not above this!

I do enjoy that GAME is getting reactions to Perfume across the blogs. It’ll take some time to win over more fans and there are some who simply won’t pay attention to this group at all. This is slowly changing.

Posted on the Hello!Online tracker was Morning Musume’s appearance on Utaban. I am going to review this for TLS later on today as I have some fun comments for it. But real quick, this is a combination of mainstream Japan’s opinion of Morning Musume (Utaban doesn’t care about Momusu anymore) and an episode of Haromoni (boring rubbish as we watch Momusu watch other people do nothing). I would recommend watching this but it really is no different from the last few years of Morning Musume on these shows.

As for Airi Suzuki’s third photobook (from strawberrie)…

Aika. Kanna. Junjun.

As this is the first entry of this style, I want to catch up on a week of entries instead of just the most recent. I’ll be focusing on the last few days if I can. Furthermore, I have a lot of blog reading to catch up on. I’ve been working on the new theme today so I’m pretty far behind.

There is a new wave of podcasting in our International Wota community. My Pleasant Vista, Pink Wota, Stuck in a Pagoda with Motoko Aoyama, The H!P Opinions of a Metalhead and Raid My Minibar all have new podcasts within the last few days. It is a much more personable style that lots of IW bloggers have taken to. I really am interested to see not only who keeps at it but who else decides to try their hand at podcasting.

As for the current podcasts, I have to admit that I’ve skipped over the music that is played. I either know the song already or would rather listen to the suggested music at my own leisure. I wouldn’t suggest to anyone that is going to be podcasting to completely drop the idea of playing music. It depends on what type of audience you want. Personally, I love talk radio. Therefore, I am going to enjoy the parts where the host is talking more so than the music the host plays.

The big news today that I want to share comes from wiki.theppn.org, which has the sales charts for Oricon Week 17. What’s important to me is Perfume and Morning Musume.

Morning Musume clocks in at 3rd with 48k sales. Is this good? I think lots of fans will definitely be happy. I wouldn’t call it a resurgence yet though. It’s an improvement in sales but that’s only because Mikan sold so horribly on the Oricon chats. It’ll be interesting to see where RB goes from here and what style Morning Musume uses for their next single. With Kanashimi Twilight and now Resonant Blue being reasonable successes (at least compared to other recent MM singles), it wouldn’t make sense to switch things up again.

Perfume’s GAME sold 154k and is #1 for the week and I am so happy about this. When I first became a fan of Perfume, I never expected such things. I am under no illusions that they got #1 because of a relatively weak competition in albums this week. However, 6 figures is still 6 figures. Perfume’s popularity can be maintained if handled properly. Releases from the group have been spread apart, so overexposure doesn’t scare me at this point. I do know that the higher they climb, the harder they will fall.

Well now I am caught up on Haromoni. I don’t know if that is a good or bad thing.

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Was Haromoni worth watching? It took me a week to watch it. There’s your answer.

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Stolen from JPH!P - scans too oh damn oh damn

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Last week’s episode was better than usual, but it came with the promise of Koharu Kusumi in a Superman costume this week. Haromoni licenses music or at least samples it. If they don’t play the Superman theme, I am ended this series and never watching Haromoni again.

I almost hope they don’t play it.

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Yoshizawa Region

1. Hitomi Yoshizawa vs. 5. Rika Ishikawa
2. Koharu Kusumi vs. 3. Aika Mitsui

Yajima Region
1. Maimi Yajima vs. 4. Kanna Arihara
2. Chinami Tokunaga vs. 3. Sayumi Michishige

Suzuki Region
1. Airi Suzuki vs. 4. Risa Niigaki
2. Arisa Noto vs. 11. Ayumi Shibata

Tsugunaga Region
2. Chisato Okai vs. 11. Yuu Kikkawa
4. Mai Satoda vs. 8. Atsuko Maeda

Representatives
C-ute: 4
Morning Musume: 4
Ongaku Gatas: 4
AKB48: 1
Berryz Koubou: 1
Melon Kinenbi: 1
Milky Way: 1

In this round:
3. Aika Mitsui vs. 6. Ayaka Kimura
2. Koharu Kusumi vs. 7. Risako Sugaya

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Well it wasn’t as bad as the last month.

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