Waterdrop
We have a new contender for the worst gravure DVD of 2005. Waterdrop is a disorganized, uninteresting affair which does almost nothing right. It's a telling sign how wrong things have gone when you have a woman as cute and busty as Natsume Rio onscreen and the entire disc pretty much makes you want to go read a good book. With really disjointed direction, a soundtrack that abruptly cuts in and out, and content which would have been better left on the cutting room floor, there is almost nothing positive to be said about this DVD.
With that being said, let's try and take a look at a few of the positives: the makeup artist did their job really well, and Rio looks great. As well, the wardrobe department should be generally given high marks for their constantly attractive and well fitting clothes. There you have the good stuff: Rio looks beautiful. Huge news flash there.
Everything else, however, is a mess. The opening scene has Rio descending a rocky staircase to the shore on a rocky beach, with a thin, transparent white sheet wrapped around her. She unveils herself and is shown to be wearing a white bikini. The camera then proceeds to show her in the same pose for at lease two minutes while new age-ish music plays in the background. The title comes up, and then we come back to the same scene, but this time with Rio posing on the rocks for photographs with some pseudo-rock music playing in the background. Very little motion here and Rio is mostly looking towards the photographer's camera, not the video camera. Then, everything just cuts abruptly to a different scene. It's extremely abrupt, as the song just cuts out in the middle, leaving the viewer with a feeling of, "Was that finished?"
Following that, we get Rio on a beach riding a horse. A little more motion here as Rio bounces up to the horse in a very tight bikini top, then some shots of Rio actually riding on the said animal. You get some bouncing boobs here, but overall this comes off as really boring. Another issue here is the scenery and background: a lot of the scenery is just plain ugly and really detracts from the experience. This is an issue with a lot of the scenes. I suppose, you might say that the fact that I even noticed the backgrounds as opposed to just paying attention to Rio tells you exactly how bad the direction is. After this, we get Rio chatting with the crew and then having to climb up a really ugly sand dune, and then slide down to the rocky beach on a small plastic board. This is more of a behind the scenes track than anything else.
Rio is then shown in a yellow, flower-print yukata with an umbrella walking along a bridge in the rain. This is actually quite a beautiful visual and surprisingly well shot - not sexy or energetic, but classy. Then things take a turn for the surreal as Rio wanders into a shop, then tries some target shooting for prizes and plays some really old pachinko machines all the while talking to the camera - it's as if the scene can't decide if it wants to be making of or glamour segment. At the end of the scene, Rio is then shown in the yukata and umbrella walking in the rain, this time in a bamboo forest. While this is undoubtedly pretty, most of her fans might like to actually see some... oh, I don't know... gravure scenes, considering Rio's a gravure idol! Rio stops to wash her legs in a stream, which gives us a little view of her cleavage and some nice cheesecake leg shots.
Next up is the waterfall scene: Rio starts out fully clothed (relatively speaking) and comes across a waterfall. The first minute or two of this is just Rio watching the waterfall. Let me repeat that. Two minutes of your time is taken up by Rio looking at the waterfall. Oy. She then process to take off her top and bottom to reveal a (what else?) bikini, then goes for a dip in a near by bathing pool. I'll say this: that bikini top really struggles not to burst here and you do get the nice occasional shot of Rio here, but the energy level of the direction is so slow and muted, that the entire scene comes off as quite mundane. Rio than hops into a different poll with a small waterfall and does the bathing thing again. This was actually quite watchable (a few really good glamout poses) in parts, but the camera has a tendency to get too close to Rio. Then it's back to more photography where Rio poses and pouts. The music changes completely four or five times in this scene and it gets a little annoying.
Rio's in a kimono in the next part, posing in front of a swimming pool. The kimono slides down her shoulders pretty quickly and soon she's left in nothing but a patterned bikini. That in and of itself sounds pretty good, but the director seems more intent on seeming how many different kinds of fading transitions he can use from shot to shot. Then, abruptly, we're back to more photography of Rio in the pool, and then back to a gravure scene where Rio just jumps up and down on a rope bridge. Of course, the point of this is to have her breasts bounce, and bounce they do! As quickly as that started, we cut yet another scene where Rio gets in yet another body of water, in this case a small tub, and we get several minutes of Rio just relaxing the tub, then some more posing for photographs in and out of the tub, most of which are more still shots.
After this, we come to the liveliest scene on the disc (but given the contents so farm, that's not saying much). Rio is in a room wearing a tank top and multi-coloured shorts which see immediately strips out of the reveal a rather flattering bikini. She then poses against the wall, clutching her bikini top to her impressive bosom as she loosens the straps. Then we get Rio in the bath room, same bikini, and we watch as she puts up her hair. Seriously... what the hell is wrong with the director?!? Rio-chan does look rather cute with her hair up though.
Finally, Rio gets in another bath!!! Which has the same slow pace and downbeat music as all the other bath scenes! She eventually gets out of the bath, then (seemingly) wearing only a towel, sits on the balcony in her room and fans herself. Some nice hints of cleavage here, but this was really pointless.
You also get the required making of track, but it's totally redundant here - the main parts of the DVD were essentially a one extended "behind-the-scene" feature. You also get a short feature with the manga character Sanagi-san. Not that exciting.
Waterdrop never really settles on what it wants to be, and tries to do too many things at once, which leads it to be a very frustrating mess of a gravure idol DVD. Although Rio always looks outstanding, with the lack of any type of extended motion and the quick cuts from scene-to-scene, there is never any chance for the viewer to become engrossed in the scenes. Waterdrop is a total waste of time even for the most diehard Rio fan.
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