Featured Artist: JYONGRI

Note: My second major change to The Keizou Journal is a revamp of my Featured Artist posts. I’ve decided to include a PV, pictures and a brief bio in one embed. This allows you to listen/watch a PV, view photos and read a bio of the artist at ONE time(!)

My first revamped Feature Artist post is Jyongri. Be sure to vote on the poll and post any suggestions or comments you may have. ENJOY!!!(^_^)

Video/Slideshow/Bio
This includes one of her latest PVs, “Kissing Me”. I recommend you watch it from the site where I created it. That way, the size of the video and pictures will be larger. (Sorry in advance for the slightly delayed sound. I uploaded it several times, but it kept being delayed.)

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Playlist
I’ve also included a playlist of my favourite songs by JYONGRI.


Opinion
Jyongri is my all-time favourite artists out of all the ones I’ve featured so far, mostly because all her songs combine Japanese and English lyrics very beautifully. I also enjoy how her songs are very upbeat. Jyongri is a fairly new artist, debuting about two years ago. She’s definitely an artist I expect to grow into a very popular Japanese singer/songwriter.

Review: 5 Centimetres per Second

Summary
Alternative Titles: 秒速５センチメートル, Byosoku Go Senchimetoru
Genre: Romance, Drama
Release Date: Mar. 3, 2007

Tono Takaki and Shinohara Akari are close friends who become separated after graduating from high school because of their families moving. They keep in touch with each other through letter mail, but they’re afraid that they’ll never see each other again. One day, Tono decides to visit Akira.

Review
5 Centimetres per Second is definitely one anime movie I’ll never forget. I initially had high expectations for the film and they were almost exceeded. In my opinion, the strongest part of this movie was the animation. Saying that the animation quality was breathtaking would be an understatement. I thought the animation was so well done, it was beyond breathtaking. Everything was just extremely detailed and flashy. Even minor things like the main character’s watch and packages in a convenience store are drawn with so much detail that it looks like the real thing.

As you might have guessed, the story isn’t one of its strong points. The story isn’t very original and it’s a fairly simple slice of life story. However, the way that the story is told is the strong point. The story is told mainly using the thoughts of the main characters. In other words, what they were thinking of during each scene. This way of presenting the story makes every line of speech very poetic and touching. Overall, it gives added value to the simple story.

The only part of 5 Centimetres per Second that I disliked was the last 5 minutes. These last 5 minutes contains a montage of several different scenes. The montage was nice to see, however, the problem with it was that some of the scenes were flashbacks, while some where completely new. The new scenes cause you to desperately want to see what happened to lead up to that scene. However, the only thing you can do is guess what happened. I thought they should have eliminated the montage and added another 30 minutes to the movie to clarify some of these parts.


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Pros

• Best animation quality, I’ve ever seen in any anime
• Story is told in a very poetic way
• Sound effects and background music was excellent

Cons

• Very simple slice of life story
• Last part contained several puzzling scenes; have to guess what happened to the main characters

Recommendation
Just watching the first two episodes would have made a near-perfect ending. Therefore, I recommend the first two episodes. I can’t say the same for the last episode. Just be aware that you might be disappointed if you watch the last episode.

Rating: 9/10

Announcement: Introducing anime movie reviews

Like I’ve announced before, on the 18th of June, The Keizou Journal will be in operation for one year, yay~(ノ^_^)ノ. Therefore, I’m starting to make some major announcements.

My first major announcement is that I’ll be starting to review anime movies. I made this decision because I’ve watched a few anime movies lately that I thought would be fun to review. However, the number of anime movies I’ll review will be very limited since I don’t watch them often. Also, I’m placing restrictions on what anime movies I can review.

I won’t be reviewing anime movies based on an existing anime series, including adaptations, sequels and prequels. For example, I won’t be reviewing the Naruto or Bleach movies because they’re based on an anime series. Everything else, I can review.

Stay tuned for my first anime movie review, which I’m close to completing.

Review: Attention Please

Summary
Alternative Title: アテンションプリーズ
Genre: Comedy
Episodes: 11
Broadcast: Apr. – Jun. 2006
Starring:

• Ueto Aya as Misaki Yoko
• Nishikido Ryo as Nakahara Shouta
• Aibu Saki as Wakamura Yayoi
• Uehara Misa as Hirota Saori

As a child, Misaki Yoko always hung out with boys and stayed away from girls. When she becomes an adult, she starts a band with four of her male friends. One day, the band decides to break up because one of the members, Tsukasa, gets a job in Tokyo. Misaki has feelings for Tsukasa, but is afraid to tell him. When Misaki goes to the airport to see Tsukasa for the last time, Tsukasa tells Misaki that he wonders what she would look like as a flight attendant. After hearing that, Misaki decides to become a flight attendant.

Review
I wanted to watch Attention Please because Ueto Aya plays the main character and I’ve never seen a drama with Ueto Aya before. After seeing her in Azumi, I had high expectations for a drama with her, but after watching the series, I was disappointed by many things.

In the first three episodes, it was kind of interesting to see what kind of training flight attentions have to go through. However, the series absolutely overdid it with the training. Attention Please become more like a training video for flight attentions than a drama. After episode three, the training just becomes really boring. Every episode just features a class of trainees being trained by an iron-face teacher who is as boring as the training itself. Just to give you an example, the worst training scene was probably the one about how to bow and say “thank you” the proper way. There was about two episodes about this and you can imagine how boring it is watching dozens trainees bowing and saying “thank you”.

The overuse of training was definitely one of the problems with Attention Please, but I thought the most significant problem was the lack of focus on one specific genre. Instead, it attempts to have many genres, but none of them stand out. It tries really hard to be a romance drama, but all of the romance subplots were weak and some were unfinished. It also tries to be a comedy in many scenes, but those scenes just featured some over-the-top passengers and were completely “dry”.


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Pro

• Interesting to see how flight attendants are trained…

Cons

• …but they absolutely overdid it with the training
• Was more of a flight attendant training video than a drama
• Tries to mix a variety of genres but none truly stand out
• Romance subplots were weak and some gone unfinished
• Subplot about Misaki’s roommate = worst subplot EVER
• Ending was terrible, one of the worst I’ve seen

Recommendation
I recommend that everyone stay away from this one, but if you really want to watch this (I’m guessing many female fans will want to watch because of Nishikido Ryo from NEWS), just watch the first episode then watch episodes ten and eleven. You’ll miss some minor stuff here and there, but you’ll get the gist of the story.

Rating: 4/10

Stay Tuned! Believe it or not, they actually made two specials and I plan on reviewing both of them. Hopefully, the specials will finish off some the romance subplots and be more entertaining than the series.