Birthday; Personal; Single Review; PV Review; Plastic Tree; Alone Again, Wonderful World
Well, my birthday is officially over now. Oh man. Today was a great day. Well, yesterday (15 April, obviously). Here is what I did.
Before my birthday began I went to a water garden and caught things in a net. I also held a tadpole. It was pretty terrifying. I always kind of think of birthdays as an excuse to act like a little kid, so I get really excited. Today my friends came over for the celebration and gave me presents. We played video games and watched wrestling for hours, my two most favourite pastimes. Also, vegeta_eyes swore at my mom. That was awesome. I got a movie I had been wanting (you don't need to know what it is... trust me), and the entire culinary program of a local college was sent out to find a gift for me; a fruit punch soft drink that I liked a lot as a child. I hadn't seen it around in almost a year, and I got to have some today with my cake. My cake was a chocolate cake with chocolate mousse center, covered in chocolate ganache and chocolate sprinkles. I cannot describe the deliciousness. The cake was egg shaped, like the Plastic Tree song. Speaking of Plastic Tree...
If you'll recall shortly after my rambligs on Ryutaro on Valentine's Day, I mentioned that Plastic Tree was releasing a new single. I didn't want to talk too much about it until I'd had a while to listen to it, and make sure everybody who wanted to buy it would, instead of posting it the day it came out. Well, believe it or not, Alone Again, Wonderful World is currently climbing the Oricon charts. I know that my fandom of this band amuses and horrifies all of you, so I guess I will give you some explanation of it.
Single Review - Plastic Tree - Alone Again, Wonderful World
This song was written entirely by Ryutaro. So, naturally, this is a song that is going to hurt your feelings. At the forefront of the song is my least favourite subjects, memories and solitude. People the world over cry for billions of different reasons, but those two things are probably the universal signal for "grab a tissue". Luckily, it's being performed by the band that also represents the same thing. Another reviewer led me to believe that this was a "nice, uptempo ballad", but luckily, I was able to read the title of the song and quickly deduce that this wasn't going to be working out so well for them.
The opening to the song is wonderful, in that Plastic Tree trademarked variety that immediately invokes thoughts of ending and finality. Their last several singles have that sort of "final anime episode that kills off everybody you love and just plain hurts your feelings because it can" ending song vibe. Slow zoom out on Spike's face as Plastic Tree slowly fades in. That sort of thing.
Ryutaro's voice is perpetually getting smaller and meeker. He is becoming a little girl. His singles become progressively softer and pretty, as the albums themselves seem a bit rougher and more experimental for Plastic Tree. For a band that is getting noticed certainly a lot more than they used to, I couldn't be more pleased with the direction Plastic Tree is going. This is how a band is supposed to roll, are you watching, everybody else?
So Ryutaro's been throwing a lot more random English words into his songs recently. I blame Akira. Don't ask me why, just blame him along with me. However, after the Nerveless Smile fiasco and his already random accent that he is working, I always smugly thought "Hey, at least I can speak English better than Ryutaro. Way better." It was something to be proud of. However, despite my odd inability to actually understand English when it is being directed at me, I was able to pick up exactly what Ryutaro was saying. Singing. He's improving. I am now forced to only be able to take pride in my Japanese pronunciation as compared to him. It is sad enough to write a Plastic Tree song about. Let's take a look at the interesting words of the English language that Ryutaro now knows:
- Alone
- Again
- Wonderful
- World
- Hello (borrowed from his previous knowledge of it from Harusaki Sentimental.)
Awesome.
I'm actually quite impressed by the arrangement of this single. It flows together quite smoohly, and alright, yes, the pacing is a bit more upbeat than usual, though the song is sadder. But that seems to be the vast way of things Ryutaro does. Overcompensating for any thoughts of happiness by slathering on even more depressing depression. "Hmm, another guitar rift? Wait, let me write another verse about missing my family and never being able to see them again because from my sadness I am no longer the same. Yeah."
Yeah.
The PV is enjoyable. It does not feature the band members besides the vocalist as must as it should, I suppose, but luckily it doesn't take the An Cafe route, and I can see not only Akira, Buchi and Tadashi, but also I can tell what they are wearing! Ryutaro was recently in a photo shoot with Miku. So hopefully he gave him a good and awkward talking-to about trying to be the only member of a band, or else Miku gave him the idea to be in the PV as if he were a solo artist. Hopefully they will both go back a little bit and stop right there. But hey, if Ryutaro continues bogarting the screen time, maybe he will start wearing a puffy hat and short shorts as well. Or even more awesome Gadget Grow to compensate for it. Here's hoping.
So at the beginning we see... A GIRL?!?!?! WHAT? Yes, a girl who has locked herself in a phone booth and sat at the bottom of it, looking... like Ryutaro. You know he had to sit in there for about three hours before the shooting started, just to gather himself and call his mom. So, where is this girl off to? Nowhere, apparently, as she is out of shot in approximately twenty seconds. The camera scrolls upward toward the top of the booth and OH MAN WHAT AN AWESOME PAIR OF SHOES IT IS RYUTARO.
Yep, he's just sitting on top of the phone booth. No wonder the girl seems to be stuck in there. Would you come out of a phone booth if a big man in a big hoodie was sitting atop it crying? So, there's Ryutaro. His hair is lighter, deceptively pretending he is in a lighter mood, and it is blowing freely in the wind. Once again, we see that Ryutaro has gone off to the top of a building to be sad. This seems to be a habit of his. I'm assuming it is. He stares at the sky as the pale sun and camera revolves around him. Ryutaro invokes the unholy power of his most favourite word (kanashimi), and the chorus begins. Nice to see he's still staying true to his roots. Man, his hair is all kinds of crazy. He looks like a manic depressive scarecrow.
He continues looking horrendously awkward and uncomfortable, and I am struck by the overwhelming feeling that he is about to burst into tears.
OH SHIT HE DOES.
No, that's not a tattooed gang symbol. It's a tiny black tadpole tear. Yeah, I held one of Ryutaro's tears. It was slimy and moving and had miniscule legs and squirmed around and made me uncomfortable and afraid until I tossed it at a lily pad. So, in case you ever wanted to know what Ryutaro crying felt like... well, that's it.
His tears become more enormous and frequent and float away into the sky as Ryutaro continues being a thirty-five-year-old emo kid and singing about the old reliables: being lonely and "you, why aren't you here, you are gone far away, you won't come back".
Whoever you are. Come back to Ryutaro.
Yeah, I agree, Phone Booth Girl, that does seem like a pretty bad idea.
At this point he breaks out with the kanashimi and lays back, singing as much as he can. The tears stop and the camera starts going completely insane, looping all the way upside down at a slow tilt and revealing a lot of people in black standing on the rooftop. Yeah, I was scared at first, but it's okay.
It starts revolving and making me dizzy since everything is completely upside down. You want to fast-forward or look away but OH MAN IT'S BUCHI LOOK HE'S THERE, PLAYING THE DRUMS. Tadashi and Akira are there too, and I enjoy this solo. That's right, Miku, a solo. It ends and we go back to Ryutaro who starts emphatically gesturing and doing his best Robert Smith mini-dance. He sings upside down, and the tears come back, but it is soon righted.
He looks at his fingernails before wonderful world becomes PARALLEL WORLD and you get the feeling that a recent Graphic Design Community College graduate has gotten hold of the footage and is just pushing whatever visual effect button happens to come under their fingertips. In 1983. No, it's neat. More band shots with Ryutaro at the back, so you can see the band members. Woo. I'm sorry, Buchi is rocking the house in this PV. So it ends and they stand there a moment, and oh man I was so excited the first time I saw this that I started it over and watched it again.
As for the rest of the single, it comes with several other songs, depending on your version. The "B-men" is called Psychedelism, which, as I guessed upon sight would be some awesome Melancholic-esque disco song thing, ended up being roughly that. It is rock and good. I almost prefer it, though Alone Again is certainly catchier. I guess it is more my style. It is a grainy, harder-edged, okay, "psychedelic" sounding rock, like back when they were visual. I really like this song.
Also you can get Alone Again and Psychedelism instrumental for your karaoke purposes, or if Ryutaro just bothers the hell out of you. Whatever it is that one does with instrumentals.
Also included is special song Hajimete no XXX. It's not what you think. On any level. It takes Alone Again, Wonderful World, which is now reinvisioned as "Parallel World". It has this psychotic chipmunk/child/helium effect happening on the song, which I must mention I have been doing myself through an audio program to Ryutaro's last five singles (I swear he is watching me somehow. I hope he likes this review?), and the band comments and prattles along over it. I can't even describe it, so in honour of my birthday and enthusiasm over Plastic Tree, I will share it will all of you.
Hajimete no XXX.
Please to enjoy.
So, all in all, a great addition to the Plastic Tree discography, I think. I'd love to hear everyone else's opinions on it, as well, if you have heard it or seen the PV, or just from listening to me fan-boy for a few hours.
Regardless, Ryutaro now has a big challenge to outdo the sadness of Makka na Ito. If he chooses to take on this challenge, we can look forward to Plastic Tree being around for at least another fifteen years.
Also, I'd like to thank everyone who sent me birthday wishes, and once again, all of you for reading. And I want to post this here as well, a gift that was made for me by the wonderful Miss oh_mango. I am very appreciative.
哀愁ナラ今日モ更新終了
感傷ナラ明日モ申請中
Before my birthday began I went to a water garden and caught things in a net. I also held a tadpole. It was pretty terrifying. I always kind of think of birthdays as an excuse to act like a little kid, so I get really excited. Today my friends came over for the celebration and gave me presents. We played video games and watched wrestling for hours, my two most favourite pastimes. Also, vegeta_eyes swore at my mom. That was awesome. I got a movie I had been wanting (you don't need to know what it is... trust me), and the entire culinary program of a local college was sent out to find a gift for me; a fruit punch soft drink that I liked a lot as a child. I hadn't seen it around in almost a year, and I got to have some today with my cake. My cake was a chocolate cake with chocolate mousse center, covered in chocolate ganache and chocolate sprinkles. I cannot describe the deliciousness. The cake was egg shaped, like the Plastic Tree song. Speaking of Plastic Tree...
If you'll recall shortly after my rambligs on Ryutaro on Valentine's Day, I mentioned that Plastic Tree was releasing a new single. I didn't want to talk too much about it until I'd had a while to listen to it, and make sure everybody who wanted to buy it would, instead of posting it the day it came out. Well, believe it or not, Alone Again, Wonderful World is currently climbing the Oricon charts. I know that my fandom of this band amuses and horrifies all of you, so I guess I will give you some explanation of it.
Single Review - Plastic Tree - Alone Again, Wonderful World
This song was written entirely by Ryutaro. So, naturally, this is a song that is going to hurt your feelings. At the forefront of the song is my least favourite subjects, memories and solitude. People the world over cry for billions of different reasons, but those two things are probably the universal signal for "grab a tissue". Luckily, it's being performed by the band that also represents the same thing. Another reviewer led me to believe that this was a "nice, uptempo ballad", but luckily, I was able to read the title of the song and quickly deduce that this wasn't going to be working out so well for them.
The opening to the song is wonderful, in that Plastic Tree trademarked variety that immediately invokes thoughts of ending and finality. Their last several singles have that sort of "final anime episode that kills off everybody you love and just plain hurts your feelings because it can" ending song vibe. Slow zoom out on Spike's face as Plastic Tree slowly fades in. That sort of thing.
Ryutaro's voice is perpetually getting smaller and meeker. He is becoming a little girl. His singles become progressively softer and pretty, as the albums themselves seem a bit rougher and more experimental for Plastic Tree. For a band that is getting noticed certainly a lot more than they used to, I couldn't be more pleased with the direction Plastic Tree is going. This is how a band is supposed to roll, are you watching, everybody else?
So Ryutaro's been throwing a lot more random English words into his songs recently. I blame Akira. Don't ask me why, just blame him along with me. However, after the Nerveless Smile fiasco and his already random accent that he is working, I always smugly thought "Hey, at least I can speak English better than Ryutaro. Way better." It was something to be proud of. However, despite my odd inability to actually understand English when it is being directed at me, I was able to pick up exactly what Ryutaro was saying. Singing. He's improving. I am now forced to only be able to take pride in my Japanese pronunciation as compared to him. It is sad enough to write a Plastic Tree song about. Let's take a look at the interesting words of the English language that Ryutaro now knows:
- Alone
- Again
- Wonderful
- World
- Hello (borrowed from his previous knowledge of it from Harusaki Sentimental.)
Awesome.
I'm actually quite impressed by the arrangement of this single. It flows together quite smoohly, and alright, yes, the pacing is a bit more upbeat than usual, though the song is sadder. But that seems to be the vast way of things Ryutaro does. Overcompensating for any thoughts of happiness by slathering on even more depressing depression. "Hmm, another guitar rift? Wait, let me write another verse about missing my family and never being able to see them again because from my sadness I am no longer the same. Yeah."
Yeah.
The PV is enjoyable. It does not feature the band members besides the vocalist as must as it should, I suppose, but luckily it doesn't take the An Cafe route, and I can see not only Akira, Buchi and Tadashi, but also I can tell what they are wearing! Ryutaro was recently in a photo shoot with Miku. So hopefully he gave him a good and awkward talking-to about trying to be the only member of a band, or else Miku gave him the idea to be in the PV as if he were a solo artist. Hopefully they will both go back a little bit and stop right there. But hey, if Ryutaro continues bogarting the screen time, maybe he will start wearing a puffy hat and short shorts as well. Or even more awesome Gadget Grow to compensate for it. Here's hoping.
So at the beginning we see... A GIRL?!?!?! WHAT? Yes, a girl who has locked herself in a phone booth and sat at the bottom of it, looking... like Ryutaro. You know he had to sit in there for about three hours before the shooting started, just to gather himself and call his mom. So, where is this girl off to? Nowhere, apparently, as she is out of shot in approximately twenty seconds. The camera scrolls upward toward the top of the booth and OH MAN WHAT AN AWESOME PAIR OF SHOES IT IS RYUTARO.
Yep, he's just sitting on top of the phone booth. No wonder the girl seems to be stuck in there. Would you come out of a phone booth if a big man in a big hoodie was sitting atop it crying? So, there's Ryutaro. His hair is lighter, deceptively pretending he is in a lighter mood, and it is blowing freely in the wind. Once again, we see that Ryutaro has gone off to the top of a building to be sad. This seems to be a habit of his. I'm assuming it is. He stares at the sky as the pale sun and camera revolves around him. Ryutaro invokes the unholy power of his most favourite word (kanashimi), and the chorus begins. Nice to see he's still staying true to his roots. Man, his hair is all kinds of crazy. He looks like a manic depressive scarecrow.
He continues looking horrendously awkward and uncomfortable, and I am struck by the overwhelming feeling that he is about to burst into tears.
OH SHIT HE DOES.
No, that's not a tattooed gang symbol. It's a tiny black tadpole tear. Yeah, I held one of Ryutaro's tears. It was slimy and moving and had miniscule legs and squirmed around and made me uncomfortable and afraid until I tossed it at a lily pad. So, in case you ever wanted to know what Ryutaro crying felt like... well, that's it.
His tears become more enormous and frequent and float away into the sky as Ryutaro continues being a thirty-five-year-old emo kid and singing about the old reliables: being lonely and "you, why aren't you here, you are gone far away, you won't come back".
Whoever you are. Come back to Ryutaro.
Yeah, I agree, Phone Booth Girl, that does seem like a pretty bad idea.
At this point he breaks out with the kanashimi and lays back, singing as much as he can. The tears stop and the camera starts going completely insane, looping all the way upside down at a slow tilt and revealing a lot of people in black standing on the rooftop. Yeah, I was scared at first, but it's okay.
It starts revolving and making me dizzy since everything is completely upside down. You want to fast-forward or look away but OH MAN IT'S BUCHI LOOK HE'S THERE, PLAYING THE DRUMS. Tadashi and Akira are there too, and I enjoy this solo. That's right, Miku, a solo. It ends and we go back to Ryutaro who starts emphatically gesturing and doing his best Robert Smith mini-dance. He sings upside down, and the tears come back, but it is soon righted.
He looks at his fingernails before wonderful world becomes PARALLEL WORLD and you get the feeling that a recent Graphic Design Community College graduate has gotten hold of the footage and is just pushing whatever visual effect button happens to come under their fingertips. In 1983. No, it's neat. More band shots with Ryutaro at the back, so you can see the band members. Woo. I'm sorry, Buchi is rocking the house in this PV. So it ends and they stand there a moment, and oh man I was so excited the first time I saw this that I started it over and watched it again.
As for the rest of the single, it comes with several other songs, depending on your version. The "B-men" is called Psychedelism, which, as I guessed upon sight would be some awesome Melancholic-esque disco song thing, ended up being roughly that. It is rock and good. I almost prefer it, though Alone Again is certainly catchier. I guess it is more my style. It is a grainy, harder-edged, okay, "psychedelic" sounding rock, like back when they were visual. I really like this song.
Also you can get Alone Again and Psychedelism instrumental for your karaoke purposes, or if Ryutaro just bothers the hell out of you. Whatever it is that one does with instrumentals.
Also included is special song Hajimete no XXX. It's not what you think. On any level. It takes Alone Again, Wonderful World, which is now reinvisioned as "Parallel World". It has this psychotic chipmunk/child/helium effect happening on the song, which I must mention I have been doing myself through an audio program to Ryutaro's last five singles (I swear he is watching me somehow. I hope he likes this review?), and the band comments and prattles along over it. I can't even describe it, so in honour of my birthday and enthusiasm over Plastic Tree, I will share it will all of you.
Hajimete no XXX.
Please to enjoy.
So, all in all, a great addition to the Plastic Tree discography, I think. I'd love to hear everyone else's opinions on it, as well, if you have heard it or seen the PV, or just from listening to me fan-boy for a few hours.
Regardless, Ryutaro now has a big challenge to outdo the sadness of Makka na Ito. If he chooses to take on this challenge, we can look forward to Plastic Tree being around for at least another fifteen years.
Also, I'd like to thank everyone who sent me birthday wishes, and once again, all of you for reading. And I want to post this here as well, a gift that was made for me by the wonderful Miss oh_mango. I am very appreciative.
哀愁ナラ今日モ更新終了
感傷ナラ明日モ申請中