Brainstorm This!

So, Morning Musume have come out with a "Loose Shot" version PV for their next single, Brainstorming, the release of which is about 7 weeks away still. The early reactions I've seen seem to have reached a consensus that the song is good, the dance is amazing, and that Ayumi looks delicious in twintails.

So, let's take a look at the video, shall we?





So, straight away we can see that the "loose shot" version is basically a basic as fuck dance shot version. Video wise I'm not going to make a judgement call until the actual, full version is released, because hell, it's going to need 3billion times more sparkles before Tsunku is happy with it. The colour scheme is weird, again. Why they've just split into two colours I don't know. Just like in Wakuteka I didn't have a fucking clue why they were split into three colours. They all have their own colours, couldn't they, you know, use them? Group them into RGB affiliation if they're so inclined, but what's the point in having member colours if no one ever uses them?

Right, the song. It's better than Help Me within 4 bars, so that's that sorted. Now, I'm obviously not spazzing out in a fit of insanity at it being amazing, because it's not. There are lots of problems. The main lead synth has no bite, it's another one of Tsunku's toothless breathy synths which I wish would all die in a fire but as of yet I've been left sorely disappointed. On the other hand, the bass synth and the chugging guitars bring up the low end significantly, so we're not left with something horrendous like Onna ga Medatte Naze Ikenai in which your ears are violently assaulted by an unbalanced high end which causes disorientation and/or unrelenting rage. The vocoding is slightly overused. The final cadence and little breaks all have no seeming point whatsoever.

However, despite these drawbacks, I'm actually not disliking it. In actual fact, I find myself enjoying it. It's certainly the best example yet of post-Aichan, "Colourful" era Momusu, combining Wakuteka's intriguing beats, chugging guitars and bassline with some of Help Me's bizarre and pointless structural fuckery and coming out with a song that doesn't suck. That's not to say it's a better song than Wakuteka, just that it embodies the spirit of the current era better.

Also will say that Riho and Ayumi's vocals have seemingly improved somewhat. Guess Orange Goblin spurred them on a little bit.[/meta]

Regarding the dance, to my uneducated eyes it's certainly no Dream5 (a post on whose awesomeness shall be forthcoming at some point in the near to distant future), but the mock-fight between Riho and Ayumi was certainly fun. Seems to me that recently they've started putting a lot more focus on positioning over dancemoves, which certainly draws the eye better. Again though, I'm certainly no authority. I honestly wouldn't care if there wasn't any dancing in a PV at all.

Finally, as to Ayumi's twintails, the girl's so damn awesome and cute anyway it doesn't matter what hairstyle she has, she could do a Miichan and get a crewcut and I'd still love her.

Anyway, in conclusion, whilst there could certainly be some improvement, I'm enjoying this and I'm hoping that Tsunku either continues to strengthen his songwriting in this genre or throws us metalheads a real bone sometime. Been ages since Momusu did anything I could headbang to. Get to it, Tsunku!