Gallery updates

The galleries have been updated:

• Kitamura Hitomi: 39 images added.
• Matsugane Yôko: 5 images added.
• Takizawa Nonami: 58 images added.

Enjoy!

Dear... (Nonami Takizawa) review

Before getting on to the DVD proper: what the hell happened to Takizawa Nonami's voice?!? Somehow, she went from having a nice, if somewhat stereotypical, Japanese girl's voice to something you'd hear in a typical 'magical girl' anime: a shrill, almost piercing, parody of a feminine vocalizations. I'm going to blame this on the director – let's face it: the gravure idol genre is based on the idea of hyper-femininity which don't exist in reality – this might just be the next step. With that gripe out of the way, Nonami's Dear... is a generally enjoyable although somewhat schizophrenic release: the…

Read the full review →

Nonami Takizawa event report for November 24th

With the release of her new CD, B-Blue, Takizawa Nonami headed into Ōsaka for another promotional tour, and, as usual, I headed out to see the Goddess herself in the flesh.

Unlike the last event I attended, we were seated in order of purchase, so I was up in the first row with a great view of Nonami, and what a view it was - wearing a somewhat chessy yet somehow incredibly sexy costume made of shiny plastic, Nonami charmed the audience for the next sixty minutes. Once the usual banter with the MC was out of the way, Nonami performed the first of two songs from her CD: the titular B-Blue, a cover of an 80s J-pop tune. Not to my tastes, but she put on a good performance and the crowded seemed to like it. After that, a little more banter, then she performed My Revolution, another cover. As was the norm, people clapped along as best they could, but I thought it was a little strange considering the second song was a little on the slow side for clapping.

After that, we got to meet Nonami, get an autographed cover from her and some of us got polaroids taken with her as well. This one was pretty quiet and things moved quickly - one fan was nice enough to bring her a small Hello Kitty-themed gift which she accepted gracefully. After that, the photo session took place - as usual, they brought us up in rows and we had a minute to snap pics. I won't go into details, but my camera had some kind of seizure during the shoot, so I only managed to get about eight snaps. Sad.

It's always a pleasure to see Nonami when she stop by, but I found this event to be a little on the subdued side, even for the Japanese - there was no real crowd interaction like a question period or any games for prizes. Plus, I must admit, the MC got on my nerves after a while - he was really hawking Nonami's upcoming events and DVDs. Listen dude - those of us geeky enough to shell out for three of her CDs just for the chance to see her for a short time don't need to be sold on buying for of her stuff or going to her events.

I think I've seen Nonami everytime she's visited Ōsaka this year, and it never gets old to bask in her presence.

Gravure idol gamers

Kind of pointless info, but might be interesting for any gamers out there. While perusing Hanai Miri's blog, I came across a link to this site: beside games, a gaming site. The gimmick here is that they have gaming blogs (glogs, perhaps?) of various Japanese celebrities, including quite a few idols, including Miri and Takizawa Nonami.

Random facts from the site as of this writing:

• Miri owns a DS and a PS2, but PS2 is broken at the moment. A Sony product having troubles? Surely you jest!
• Nonami just has a DS.
• Neither lady is currently playing anything. Nonami is going away on a photoshoot for a week. Miri is apparently dabbling with one of those English training games, Eigo Zuge.
• The first game Nonami ever played was Super Mario. Miri's inaugeral game was Hi No Tori. The first is widely known, but I've never heard of the latter - maybe based on Tezuka's comic?

There a quite a few other notable idols on the site, including Aizawa Hitomi, (the seriously hot but sadly small chested) Kawamura Yukie, Matsumoto Sayuki, Aikawa Yuzuki, Yamamoto Ayano, Lyrian and Fukunaga China. Unsurprisingly, the DS is insanely popular with the girls. A few of them seem to be a little more into video games beyond the recent domination of Nintendo: I saw one idol with a Dreamcast, and as true gamers know, you're can't consider yourself hardcore unless you own a Dreamcast.

Nonami Takizawa event report for September 8th

Like clockwork, the release of new idol DVDs (in this case Rakuen and Tōbō) comes the promotional tour and being the pop-culture lemming that I am, I took it upon myself to see the angelic Takizawa Nonami again. Granted, I had already been to two of her events in January and July, but I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to see her again. Yes, I'm like a school boy with crush. Shut up and leave me alone - I had fun.

Ahem... in any case, this took place at the same store as her previous event, Disc-Pier. I'm generally not a fan of this place for idol events... I find the lighting to be a little odd for snapping pics and it's first come, first serve for the seating - I was a few minutes late too because my camera's battery died, so I was stuck at the back of a crowd of about 70 people.

After some banter with the MC, there was a slightly uncomfortable pause at the beginning when the crowd was asked to ask Nonami some questions about sports or fitness (it came up during the conversation) and no one asked anything. I almost said something but then they quickly moved on. After some small talk about the DVDs, the second Q&A session went smoother as the crowd got into it.

After that, Nonami gave away four signed t-shirts by playing rock-paper-scissors with the crown. My lucky streak for January didn't hold as I went out really quickly - such is life in the cut-throat world of idol events. After that, the photo session took place. As usual, they brought people up in their rows to snap pics of a bikini-clad Nonami for one minute. I guess simply for expediency, Nonami only wore a huge over-sized, black t-shirt for most of the event, and obviously had her bikini underneath. Call me crazy, but this was almost as sexy as the bikini itself. Once everyone snapped their picture, they had the meet and greet portion.

If you bought one of the DVDs, you got an autographed cover when you met Nonami. Purchasing both also entitled you to have a polaroid taken with her. When I got up there, I must admit that you could have knocked my over with a feather when she said "Long time, no see" to me when I got up there... it was pretty cool that she actually remembered me. After our snap shot, we chatted a little and she was pretty amused that my keitai's wallpaper was the picture I took with her at her last event.

One thing that did amuse me is one of the guys brought up a bewildering array of stuff when he met her, including both DVDs, some huge 8x10s he had taken at previous events, and some kind of drawing - I guess it was meant to be Nonami from the pose, but it was a generic anime thing, and since 90% of anime is pretty much indistinguishable, it was hard to tell, Nonami looked a little dumbfounded when he got up there, until he explained he just wanted her to hold some of the stuff up when he got his picture taken with her.

All-in-all, I had a good time there - the only downside for me was that the polaroid of us didn't develop well and the colours are really faded, but no big deal. Nonami knew who I was, she looked absolutely stunning, was very charming and I got some pretty good photos of her.