gachibaka ガチバカ! [series]

male teacher who was a boxer, mixed gender school, but aside from that it is essentially gokusen.

Tegomass! That should be all I need to say really. Tegoshi has to walk around like someone urinated on his favourite teddy bear, Massu jumps over gates and fences, runs everywhere, and grins a lot, they even have a little scrap with each other at one point, I couldn’t care what else goes on really. I’d be happy with that. To be fair, I could watch Massu running and jumping over gates for days without getting bored. He’d die of exhaustion long before.

For those few who weren’t in gokusen and wouldn’t be in tumbling, we have gachibaka. Just an excuse to have Tegomass scrapping over a girl and getting beaten up quite a lot. All good fun. It actually is a recycling of Gok though, you may think I’m exaggerating. It has pretty much the same story lines and the premise is almost identical apart from the yakuza stuff. But that is ok. It is fine by me. I’m happy any day of the week you wanna put Tegomass in a stupid drama together. I think it’s about time you did it again. who am i talking to here?

There is a bit about teenage pregnancy, sexual harassment, a stabbing, and even a sexual assault attempt in there too, so it is quite harsh compared to Gok in a way. But it is the same old sh*t where his class gets the blame for everything that goes wrong or gets stolen or vandalized etc, then teacher has to save the day by not giving up – always always resulting in lots of running like a mad man down the street. Sounding like Gok yet?

Tegomass’s characters are in love with the same girl, so that is fun. Tegoshi doesn’t crack a smile for practically the whole damn show, and Massu is – well he’s pretty much just Massu, you know how he is. All smiles and hug to deathable.

This guy Takahashi Katsunori who plays the teacher is great. I think it must be hard to cast these main roles because it has to carry the whole show, and on this overly tried and tested premise how do you keep your audience from losing interest if your lead actor is not perfect? Well I rarely see a badly cast drama and this is no exception.

There is a lot more to say about this program I’m sure. When I watch it I do become involved in the story and other characters, but when I think back on it I only end up ranting about Tegomass. But that is my own issue. So, sorry about that. Can’t be helped. If there was a Tegomassaddicts anonymous to help me through then I may make better reviews or at least watch something that doesn’t have at least one member of News in it this month. Let me see, Ashita no joe, Gachibaka again, Zenkai girl, Hanawake, Waraeru koi, Rescue, - seriously that is a lot of News for September. I hate that I have to post these way after I write them too because I have no f*cking internet!!! It is doing my head in. I miss dramawiki. I am having to remember all this sh*t myself without double checking names and stuff. And I have watched a hell of a lot of things this September and they will all be posted in October November now damn it. It shouldn’t bug me but it does.

So more to the point, I wonder how long it will be before I watch Gachibaka again. If Tegomass don’t do something else soon I guess I will end up watching it yet again. I would love to see News in a drama all together but it is pretty damn impossible. Tegomass and Koyashige could do a drama – god that would be brilliant. They could be the heads of rival gangs, or all be in the police force as two rookie cops and two old hand detectives, tracking down evil mastermind baka Sato Jiro heh that would be brilliant.

Hmmm let me see, Koyama could be a guy would has been roped into marrying the crazy scary posh *this fish is not fresh!* lady from the fish market who turns out to some rich banker’s daughter, in order to help his friend (played of course by cheeky Shige) who got into a dai pinchi when he lost all his money to a female sagishi who conned him with a insane story about a dead grandmother, a buried treasure and a roman emperor.  (Cameo flash back to him getting swindled by Bakanishi Jinifer. - Rolling on the floor laughing right now.) Tegoshi could be the eccentric wedding planner employed by the banker’s family to use all means necessary to make sure no-one escapes or backs out, and Massu could be working under Tegoshi and has to carry out his plans to keep poor Koyama stuck in his position, but ultimately Massu tries to help him out of his predicament while also trying to save Shige from his own constant moronic actions. There would be lots of Massu’s worried face (oh how I love that) and as much of stupid Shige faces as he can handle to pull. Tegoshi would of course have to be some kind of evil genius when it comes to keeping things on their terrifying track, and Koyama could run around like a blue assed fly trying to appease posh woman and keep Shige out of trouble. This is sounding epic. In the end I think Tegoshi and scary woman should elope together. They should write this f*cking show.

Oh dear lord I’ve not said anything about gachibaka. Well, it is Gokusen with Tegomass. Ok? That is pretty much it.

Wow I totally fell of track with that one didn’t I.

 

good god, massu's face just couldnt get any better really could it? what a sh*t review this was.

~

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.

~