zenkai girl 全開ガール [series]

another chance to see roro just d*cking about with cakes and kids.

Nishikido Ryo (last friends, orthros no inu, inu o kau to iu, 8uppers need I go on?) was the most adorable I’ve seen him yet, and Aragaki Yui (My boss my hero, code blue, dragon zakura) well, I’m so impressed with Gaki, as is most of the dorama watching public.

The best thing about this series though has to be the kids, where the hell did they get these kids from?! They are amazing! I’m even using exclamation marks. Take notice.

I wanted to watch this because of Roro but ended up loving everyone – with the exception of one character but we won’t rant about that until a little later. Baka Sato Jiro had me in fits, I laugh before he even says anything, I think I could happily watch him ramble on about sh*t for hours. Joy of Joys when I then saw him just days later in not only waraeru koi wa shitakunai but also in rescue, he should actually cameo in everything. Every single program.

I find these reviews hard to do now as I am way out of my comfort zone. I have no internet and I am no longer in my cabin that I know inside out, where I can find my lamp in pitch black and all that. I am sat in my new flat with another two weeks to go before they hook up my phone line for the internet – I am dying without at least dramawiki.

It is lovely here, but I’m totally not used to it yet. At least my drama watching has picked up. Since leaving the cabin I have thrown myself into another bunch of great dramas, but now I am trying to remember the feelings and thoughts conjured up by zenkai girl. It feels like a long time since it finished it but in reality it has only been a short while. So much has kanjanied in between.

So thinking back to zenkai girl, my overriding memory has to be the endless stream of frustrated comments on twitter from myself and various people I know, all crying at the stupidity of these characters. It is bordering on proposal daisakusen frustrating – not quite but almost.

Gaki plays lawyer watanabe, yankumi style jersey wearing hardworking determined woman, visions of being a high flying top ranking name in the law world. Having pull herself up from her poor boot straps and been raised by her backwater, debt ridden, slightly mentally retarded and completely naïve father, she is now fighting to make a name for herself and shed any trace of poverty she once had.

Roro plays a man whom watanabe refers to as the pill bug, a single father working in a tiny cheapo café restaurant-ish place living together happily with his freaking brilliantly adorable son pitaro. Oh how we all love pitaro. Best character in the whole series. Watanabe and the pill bug are bound together by pitaro and his friend at day care school. In her aspirations to work for a certain highly respected female lawyer, watanabe becomes childminder to her small daughter (best friends with pitaro) tangling her up straight away with the pill bug and his life.

The children talk like adults and the adults act like spoilt selfish children. The banter between all of them is great.

The only one we don’t like is soyoko. Man she was so f*cking annoying – downright stalking the pill bug.

I wanted to punch her in the face many many many many times. They could not have made that character any more irritating. Gah, I must resist the urge to just whinge about her. F*ck, she is so annoying though. 

Watanabe was endearing, but my god did she need to get a clue. She had so little love experience as she had devoted her life to becoming this great lawyer chickie, that she is a total oblivious mess when it comes to dealing with emotions. She tries to ignore the fact that she is completely in love with this poor man, but equally he is such an idiot that he doesn’t really help the situation either. A good smacking of their two heads together repeatedly wouldn’t have gone a miss.

It is a very fun but often sad and heartbreaking series. The kids were too much for me at times and when they cried I just lost the plot. They were too good, and I think I literally broke when pitaro sobbed at one point.

Well, it fulfilled a spot in my life that can only be filled by watching Roro being all fun-dad-like, I could hear hundreds of wombs exploding in the distance every time an episode aired.

I think he wins hands down for who you want to father your kids right? I don’t really need to worry about my womb exploding, as it runs away down the street to go get drunk on sake in some bar until after I’ve finished with papa Roro on tv, comes stumbling back in at 3 in the morning mumbling some incoherent b*llocks about Tegoshilocks, an otter, and a giant cock. I don’t think it wants to be a part of this on masse papa Roro fixation the world seems to have at the moment. It’s waaaaay too dangerous.

So aside from Roro being absolutely sh*ttingly adorable, the kids being fantastic, and Gaki being unquestionably awesome, what more can I be bothered to say?

Actually I think that will do.

**update**

I wrote this a while after zenkai finished but also quite a long time before I finally posted it here – moving house has meant no internet for a couple of months now. At the time of writing this update we’re now into the second week of October and I’ve just found out that Yamapi and Roro have left News. My thoughts are that Roro waited until Yamapi was ready to go as it causes less disruption for them to go both together than have one leave then another, so there is a small blessing in that. And also, that the band haven’t completely disbanded – a huge blessing there too. Yamapi has big projects he wants to sink his teeth into and it has been no secret – on the cards for a long time. For them to both leave together is a bit of a shock but when you think about it, it is less destructive overall for it to happen in one go. Now it is time for Roro to get into the stream of drama offers that are no doubt flooding his way after zenkai, and for the remaining News members to get back on track with how they will now present themselves as a four member group. I do hope people aren’t stupid about this for long, I know they will be but I can hope. Let’s not be idiots about this ok? Lets just support them all in what they do; it is their lives after all. I hope they all succeed in everything they wish to do.

I am sure Yamapi will make me cringe with his solo music and awe inspire me with his acting in the future as he takes on the kind of challenging roles he now has the time to accept. I am sure Roro will continue to do what he does flawlessly, be it romping with Kanjani or making women’s biological clocks practically explode with the films and dramas he stars in.

Now with News containing the four members Kato Shigeaki, Koyama Keiichiro, Masuda Takahisa, and Tegoshi Yuya, I pray people will accept their efforts and support them over, through, around, or at the very least under, their latest obstacle. And for god sake guys, release a single already. It has been an age.

All six of these guys will have my support.

Hey! Pssst! News! Now is totally the time to do that show I was ranting about in my gachibaka post. 








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NEWS, PACIFIC tour @ TOKYO DOME 2008

No it isn’t gay pride, although I can see why you might be confused…

News pacific tour, Tokyo dome show, a year after their reuniting as a six member group on the 2006/07 countdown. Demand for tickets for this tour was so high they added in extra dates, this is the first of the two Tokyo dome shows that weren’t originally planned.

Explodes into life with Week on the scaffolding. news looking like the spangliest builders that ever lived or a really new interpretation of rent. (I actually want massu’s yellow tracksuit.)

Lots of running from one end of the stage to the other and jumping up and down - The usual - for the next few songs then up on the scaffolding again for Cinderella boy, the scaffolding by the way is sailing through the audience and has a massive tv screen in it - how cool is that?

Now they are suddenly all blue-pirate-cosplay for kibou. Army combats and electric blue shiny pirate coats… hmm. Ok. How is it that it actually works? Only those guys could pull it off I guess.

This is gonna turn out to be a review of their wardrobe isn’t it? It is the first thing you notice about news no matter what they’re doing. I have to say that their singing during the pacific tour is great, it has brilliant production anyway (overlaying vocals is a great way to still be able to sing live but not sound sh*t) but also they do know how to work a stage. And make a lot of noise. Really a lot.

Up on the scaffolding again for stand up and change the world, and it is moving about all over the place – Tokyo dome is f*cking huuuuuuuuuuuge. Good god it really is massive.

Hard not to have stage presence when you’re dressed like you fell out of a fancy dress shop backwards with pyrotechnics and 30 young Japanese dancing minions in tow.

Yamapi is suddenly all white suited and showing off his version of  'dancing' with his solo Gomen ne, Juliet  and then takes a little scooter platform out through the audience. I only take the p*ss out of his dancing because it makes me cringe so much. Not because it is bad. It isnt bad, i just feel like i should hide when he does it.

But anyway, for his bit here he does all manner of Yamapi things like getting slightly undressed, not looking out of breath at all even though he is thrashing around like he's on heat, and having a fountain erupt around his podium - that is not just an appropriate euphemism - it is very gay stage show types of brilliance in all its glory. Im sure he has had a few fountains errupt around his podium in his life time. *ew serious rei, you d*ck, was there any need?*

Everyone is red for ai no matador (as you would expect) and koyama looks like he’s auditioning to be a table dancer or something (I try to ignore the pervy lyrics but theyre making it every bit  more cringetastic by wriggling around like that) mind you singing about one night stands and passion etc is never as creepy coming from news as, like, if akanishi was there or something. I’d have gone and made coffee I think.

This is the dance bit where you get to take full advantage of tegoshi and massu being actually fantastically good at what they do. One on each scaffolding thing doing devil or angel – then we cut to koyama looking like some weirdo with his aviators on for like 30 seconds then suddenly theyre gone again, and shige and yamapi taking it all very seriously, then roro just being awesome.

The mash up of that and shock me is pretty damn good – it really really f*cking is cracking. But when the camera pans back a bit it does look a bit like the rent stage show again (I giggled when I imagine tegoshi dressed up like mimi singing take me ouuuuut tonight flingin his high heels about)

But there’s not much time to catch your breath and laugh at that cos koyama does his private parts *ahem* I mean -  private hearts solo (still dressed in the shiny red stuff) dancing like your brother’s mate that you never realised was hot until you saw him in a club one night, then just as that ends I die completely as the pace changes drastically for nantoka naru sa because massu actually looks phenomenally adorable and I miss half of the song searching around the floor trying to find heart cos it totally just jumped out of me and threw itself at the tv – when the fuck did koyama get changed?! Ehh? Jeeze. Man, massu can smile for Japan.

Shige gets his Les Paul out (plus a funky crown ??) for his solo happy music. He is one cheesy mother f*cker. No words can explain. really all i can do is attempt screen shots. But he never stays still for more than half a second, it is always hard to get non blurry shots of him.

Then the rest of them come out all white like yamapi was ealier (plus a few feathers and spanglies) for dreams.

Theyre out on the podium scooters and congregate in the middle for hoshi o mezashite – standing on these great f*cking crazy high Eifel tower bits of the floor with a big ass fountain kicking off around them. Genius staging for a song where their choreography is just a bit of odd sign language and nothing else.

Fiesta is fun though they don’t do much even though theyre back on terra firma – I guess they never know when that crazy floor is gonna go sky high on em again. Nande dame is spent floating around the crowd and wandering about with half of arashi (why??  … It looked like they just broke in. someone tell nino to get off the stage and go sit out in the snow)

Sayaendou – silver and shiny. Love this. Truly. And they sounded fully great. (I still think they shouldn’t let anyone but tegomass dance tho) I was impressed with their singing and sayaendou shows it off as it should.

Of course they perform News Nippon. Still silver and shiny. And for the next song shige and massu cant even be bothered to stand up any more. They do bits of songs so they can cram a load together, I forget which ones at this part. They do snow express in full tho. While they are still appropriately silver and shiny.

Yay, then tegomass are up again while the others just sit about watching their two friends cute each other out and send boy love looks to each other. Those two generally always look like they’re singing to each other pretty much all the time. Its even funnier still being silver and shiny.

Randomly everyone is suddenly in crazy ass coats for yamapi’s daite senorita, a song which the whole band clearly adore,

then yamapi and roro do seishin amigo (which kinda works more than with kamenashi but then ryopi have been singing together for an age)

then kanjani’s zukkoke otoko michi these are all chopped up tunes slammed together to fit em all in. I have to say yamapi looks at home dancing to this YMCA reminiscent tune.

(and I don’t know why massu was suddenly on the floor!!!)

Koyashige get their perv on and ryopi do their backing dancer bit (ryo looking way too happy to be singing such stupid lyrics – its all that time in kanjani that’s done it)

and I don’t know why they follow that with tegoshi’s solo ai nante – very slow and soppy, but who cares – shut up, tegoshi’s singing!! It is a gorgeous song and what a voice that guy has. And yep he gets three pics in a row for being so great.

Seriously dont know where that voice comes from. I'm starting to think he may well be the evil genius or devilish god like creature that everyone suspects him to be.

Purple and shiny now for kimi omou yoru, these guys know how to be serious about their clothing. Mabushii. I’m going f*ckin blind from this show though.

Ah, but then roro changes pace with code, which you CANNOT not love. I feel sorry for his throat – I think shige shouldve come and done some back up shouting with him. I always think roro looks most at home with a guitar in his hands. Considering how shagged his voice was by this point he sings beautifully. Makes me sick.

Vibration sees the introduction of the ALMIGHTY checked coats. God I love those. Love them just singing about each other – hang on – singing? That’s a bit strong a word for this tune. But it is a great excuse for those coats. I f*cking want one. I think I want tegoshi’s.

still in the coats for akaku moyuru taiyou, which is in fact an Ibiza anthem – so it doesn’t really go with the wardrobe – but nevermind. Rather those epic masterpieces than whatever Ibiza clubbers wear – beach shorts and vomit?  I definitely saw tegoshi and shige tickling each other and run off giggling – don’t really get that in Ibiza. It would have been more like tego-nyan getting vomited on by some weirdo in a cow costume while shige was passed out on top of him baring the new tattoo on his arse that reads ‘party herd’. I think my image of ibiza clubbing is kinda warped but never mind.

kirameki no Kanata e is still making me want tegoshi’s epic coat – ive kinda stopped listening to the music at this point, I think sparkles (of the tune and the clothing) have hypnotised me. That is actually one of the draw backs to watching news live – you end up so mesmerised you lose track and don’t eat for three days and forget what normal attire is supposed to look like. You get one hell of a sugokku shokku when you go outside for the first time afterwards. Everything looks so f*cking boring.

I see it is almost the end, then koyama comes out to say goodbye looking like he killed a swan prince and stole his identity. Cherish brings the rest of them out and yep, they all have the swan issue as well. Right now, I don’t have neighbours, but I move in a few days, then this will be slightly inappropriate to have at this volume. I’ve just thought of it because oyaji is putting pond weed in the pond right outside my door and can obviously hear this -though he’s used to the weird stuff I like, but what are my neighbours gonna think of me?

There are soooo many fountains in that studio! They all say their thanks and do all the “scream for news” bit while the pyro fountains go huge and that’s your lot.

All in all, it was fairly epic, any fool could see that.

(Mwah ha ha - But not a patch on things to come! If they hadn’t had their first tours as such huge shows they might not have had to resort to elephants and such, later down the line. (^_^) Aish I f*cking love tegomass.)

Bam and that is your lot. Epic and genius amounts of cheese but also skillful and all the other things that make lowly untalented people want to die. Fun fun. It took bloody ages to load all these f*cking shots in one by one. damn it. Still, maybe it was my fault for taking over 45 of the f*cking things. carried away much? Well, yes. but it was impossible not to. Have one more.

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