The ever-so-prolific 榊原ゆい (SAKAKIBARA Yui) will release her fourth full-length album on September 10 2008. That's just two weeks after C74, so don't rule out advance copies being available that weekend. Much like her three previous albums, 「JOKER」 will be a compilation of her (11) most recent game/anime themes along with four new tracks. Similarly to Haruko Momoi, she covers a select variety of musical genres but mostly oscillates between cute JPop and straight-up denpa. I've actually been aware of her work for some time, but didn't think about featuring her on 電波の世界 until 愛撫 from I've Sound Blog made the suggestion. The cover isn't available at the moment, but StarChild has a rather nice promotional picture which clearly hints at the art direction; not that it's entirely unexpected. She clearly has no issue with demonstrating her assets, as she has shown in the past. Here's the track list... Get Love Power!!!
01 Love Game
（JOKER～prelude～）
02 JOKER
(オリジナル新曲)
03 Einsatz
（Dies irae OP主題歌/light）
04 Believe
（オリジナル新曲）
05 Happy Leap
（タイムリープ OP主題歌/フロントウィング）
06 Over the Light
（七彩かなた 挿入歌/千世）
07 Together
（暁の護衛 ＯＰ主題歌/しゃんぐりら）
08 ふるふるっ☆
（ふるふる★フルムーン OP主題歌/Little princess）
09 Till I can see you again
（Chu×Chuぱらだいす EDテーマ/ユニゾンシフトアクセント）
10 Get Love Power
（こんぼく麻雀 OP主題歌/あかべぇそふとつぅ）
11 Aqua Voice
（朝凪のアクアノーツ OP主題歌/Fizz）
12 Ready Go!!
（Fate/タイガーころしあむ OP主題歌/カプコン）
13 Imitation
（Imitation Lover ＯＰ主題歌/light）
14 Girl meets Boy
（ラテールイメージソング/Gamepot）
15 message!
(オリジナル新曲)
In related news, she will be performing alongside Momoi and many other artists who had their songs collected under 5pb.'s massive 「THE WORKS～志倉千代丸楽曲集～」 game themes compilation series, all three volumes of which will go on sale on July 30th. If you're near Tokyo's Studio Cube 326 on August 23, then you know exactly what to do. Seeing as how this series should contain a lot of denpa tunes, expect to read more about it in the coming weeks.
9 comments:
Hadn't heard about this new album before your post - I'm going to grab this one when it comes out for sure, but two of her best themes from the last year are nowhere to be found on the tracklist... what the hell, people :(
(Said themes I'm referring to are 'Prism*' from Prism Ark LoveLove MAXIMUM! and Koisuru Kioku from the Yotsunoha OVA. Admittedly I can see that since Prism* was a duet there might be some issues there, but why the Yotsunoha non-presence? It was a single and everything!)
Since you're obviously a fan, how do you think her recent decision to ban wotagei performance at her concerts will influence her career? Personally I think it's nothing short of ridiculous. I'm not really big on synchronized fan reaction but if they paid to see her they should be able to do whatever the fuck they want. It's also put a slight damper on my appreciation of her music. If I was a hardcore fan I'd be really pissed about this holier-than-thou attitude.
What exactly is a "wotagei performance"? The Wikipedia entry seems to say a "wotagei" is an idol-obsessed otaku but otherwise isn't particularly verbose on the subject.
Actually in this case, Youtube has a much better answer to your question than Wikipedia ;) But long story short it is a synchronized sort of idol worship dance that in turn probably derives from much older traditional Japanese dancing. Not unlike contemporary American hardcore "moshing", some movements can be pretty sudden and violent. But in contrast, there is no direct contact between performers.
Sakakibara's reason for banning wotagei performance is twofold. First she (somewhat understandably) declares that wotagei can cause harm to other attendees if contact is made. But the second reason is that she feels like it is a direct lack of respect to her performance when people are not constantly looking at her when she sings, i.e. it attracts attention away from her act. She's a denpa singer for fuck's sake, her themes are used to open erotic anime games. If it wasn't for those crazy fans/game customers, she wouldn't have anyone to sing to!
As an aside, I'm not sure how people came to the "ota-gei" romanization, since the original Japanese term is ヲタ芸, clearly wota art. Yes I know it's pronounced ota not wota, but still. Reminds me of how people sometimes write "dempa" even though there is no 'm' in hepburn romaji.
You say that the attitude would bother you if you were a hardcore fan, but here's the way I see it: Yui can be as much of a prima donna as she wants because she's an idol. If the idol says all eyes must be on her, then god dammit all eyes should be on her. It's all part of a persona, and that persona happens to be that of someone who's thoroughly above you: one look at the way her body is flaunted on each of her album covers tells the full story there.
So I'm amused by the wotagei ban, personally, but as for how it's going to affect her career... umm... probably not that much, all things told. I somehow doubt her target audience (primarily socially retarded, out-of-shape nerds with eroge addictions) is swayed too much by the presence of synchronized dancing off-stage as well as on, and the wotagei nuts themselves don't seem too plentiful in the grand scheme of things so they'll just find another idol to latch on to. No harm done in the end.
But maybe that's just the sympathist in me, the one that likes it when celebrities get away with being assholes simply because if I was in their position I'd be abusing my power left and right as well.
Either way, this fan's decision to buy or not to buy JOKER is completely independent of whether or not people will be doing their subculture dance thing at her concerts - it is, however, entirely dependent on whether I'll still have a job come September.
And while I'm at it I'd like to note that Sakakibara's still less of an elitist than, say, KOTOKO: hasn't quite moved into the "fan club only" territory of bleeding fans dry yet.
Wait, wait, wait, C74? @_@ Damn my slow connection, I haven't even finished listening to all the C73 stuffs I've amassed just yet. *panics* Okay, 2 months, 2 months... Need to clean my HD by then...
Actually C74 is about a month away now ;) But as interesting as the event always is, this time I don't have much to look forward to other than Zun's latest Touhou SHMUP and of course random surprises. MOSAIC.WAV have nothing lined up (so far) but I'm not counting out a new PV or something visual-related...
DAMMIT you're right, it's almost August. Ah well, we'll get to that when we come to it. I don't even know what's due out at C74, so I guess that still gives me some of time to look that up.
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