"Linda, Linda, Linda" DVD Review

Off camera, an all girl band is formed to play for the annual autumn festival, which in Japan is a very big deal. Literally the school drops everything so students can do performances, set up food stalls, compete in athletics, declare love and display exhibits. Think every big and important event in an American high school condensed into a few days, double so for seniors as this is their last hurrah.

Still off camera, the lead guitarist Moe has injures her finger while playing basketball and lead singer Rinko jettisons her from the band. Keyboardist Kei (Yu Kashii) takes great exception to this and breaks up the band. The passive aggressive similarities between Kai and Rinko play out through the movie, but their differences are also stark. As Kei has a drive that Rinko does not possess. Kei takes drummer Kyoko (Aki Meada) and Nozomi (Shiori Sekine) and begins to cobble a band together… but Kei has to shift from keyboards to guitar and she cannot play and sing.



Kei needs a singer and new song selections and she has three days to pull it all together. That it the film right there. My wife was amused and dejected that this was the entire plot. To me a well told simple story is better than a complex story that is poorly told. The plot is air tight. Nobuhiro Yamashita’s direction of scenes are primarily static shots and they are very well executed and often emotively stirring… which gets us back into the film.

Linda^3 is set sometime around 2005, Kei, Kyoko and Nozomi are discussing music options while flipping through minidiscs in the school’s music practice room. Many options are rattled off by the pair, some get a pause for consideration others not so much. Kyoko offers up Puffy for consideration and Kei quickly tells her to be serious. As Kei is a keyboardist that surprised me, but then again maybe she knew Puffy’s arrangements are usually complicated and driven by guitar work she could not handle and the keyboards she had to abandon. They find an old cassette containing songs by The Blue Hearts (a band which Puffy has covered on several occasions) which proves to be the musical spark Kei was looking for.

The trio needs a singer and this leads to my favorite scene in Linda^3. Kei, Kyoko and Nozomi are sitting in the school’s grounds wondering who to pick as a lead singer. Kei decides that the first person who walks past will be the one. First person to walk by is a dorky, chubby and disheveled male student looking to buy something from a vending machine. Kyoko asks if they should pick a girl, Kei quickly answers yes. Next to walk by is Rinko… they decide to ask her but she and Kei passive aggressively dance around each other. One needs, the other does not want and questions the new direction, yet probably needs it too. Kei’s drive wins out and she makes a decision.

Walking down the stairs at the far end of the school and carrying a box is Son (Doona Bae), a Korean exchange student who is set up earlier as more than a bit isolated and lonely in her Japanese school (given the long standing disagreements and mores between Korea and Japan this is not a surprise).

Kei yells to Son, asking if she wants to sing in a band. Son yells back, yes. Kyoko rushes across the school to explain what Kei really asked. All we really hear is abject shock from Son, whose Japanese is rough around the edges. Whatever misgivings she has seem to boil away at the chance of making friends. What comes around is that Son needs the band too. Maybe more than Kei. Son who had tremendous trepidation winds up wanting this more than the rest as evident when Nozomi forgets her bass and she insists they retrieve it regardless if they are late, regardless of the monsoon rains at the end of the film. Son also dubs the band Paranmaum, which in Korean translates to Blue Hearts.



For a Japanese film, Bae Do Na (who is Korean) steals the show and runs away with it. She is given most of the funny lines and there are a couple of scenes that are priceless and she delivers a very soulful performance as a fish out of water. Her scene at the karaoke bar is another part of the film she knocks out of the park.

Kei Tachibana the former keyboardist and untried guitarist is played by Yu Kashii . Her character is, as Son describes, scary but sweet and is more worldly and has a life outside of secondary school. She has older boyfriends and performs music in local venues and like many young Japanese artists she has dreams of Tokyo… as the film takes place in the Japanese equivalent of Kansas. Kei also learned guitar specifically for this role.

Aki Meada plays the drummer Kyoko. At this point of all the principle actors on the set in Linda^3 she is the most experienced and accomplished. Her career has certainly had some ups and downs. Kyoko comes from a reasonably well off family and is the emotional glue of the group. Like Yu, Aki learned to play drums specifically for Linda^3.

Shiori Sekine plays Nozomi who is a Japanese every girl character. She slightly belittles Son’s Japanese, scolds the other girls for spending too much on a group dinner and demure. Shiori’s performance on the surface is wooden, but I think there are some subtlties therein. She does have a few gems of scenes of her own. What many viewers many not realize is she is not an actress per se as this is Shiori's first film. She is the bassist for Base Ball Bear. In the music the band plays, it becomes apparent, she is the most talented musician of the bunch. The sad part is she does not sing, which from her work in Base Ball Bear it is apparent she is a good singer. Also her band Base Ball Bear was formed for a secondary school festival… they liked it so much they continued as a band. The rest is history…



I will not discuss any more of Linda^3 until the end scenes… which are what I saw first. I was skimming YouTube for videos. As it turns out Puffy’s cover of Oranai Uta is also covered by the band that Son coins the name Paranmaum, which is Korean for Blue Heart ala The Blue Hearts. They play two songs at the festival the previous and Linda Linda. Both are superbly played and completely listenable outside of the context of the film.

The performance scene uses a lot of angles and reaction shots. These make more sense after the movie particularly when it comes to a wistful teacher, dejected boys, an excited girl and a very relaxed Moe.

As the performance is about to start Nozomi and Kyoko are ready, Kei then looks to Son who appears to be scared beyond belief. Kei delivers a stare than were it to physically manifest would push Son off the stage… but in that Kei gives a reassuring nod. And. They. Are. Off. First with Linda Linda then Owaranai Uta.

Linda^3 cuts to black before the second song is over. Like the abrupt start of the film, whose circumstances are filled in as it goes along it ends in the perfect spot. The movie wasn’t about these girls’ dreams, friendships or finishing their senior year. Linda^3 was about getting to this spot in time.

The music in Linda^3 is a combination of an original score by American-Japanese musician James Iha (formerly of Smashing Pumpkins), songs by the cast and Japanese rock-pop. Songs by Base Ball Bear are also included, so you hear Shiori Sekine play in two bands… It is all great and well worth acquiring for your music library.

Linda Linda Linda is not burdened by an expansive plot, but it is executed well and the payoff in the end is satisfying and deeply touching like few movies I have watched. This isn’t just a movie that I like, it is a movie that likes me.

R.G.W. Bonus Concert Footage Review

Bundled with the deluxe version of the R.G.W. single were six songs from Puffy’s 2010 Gekidan Asesu tour. I am really enjoying that this single is jam packed with six concert clips, which is about double what previous singles had. From reading Puffy’s blog , this might be a function of Puffy being between albums and serving as a way to fire up fans. For me it works, but I am somewhat qualified in that assessment.

This concert footage is from Puffy’s July 11, 2010 show at Showa Women’s University Hitomi Memorial Hall.* The quality of the footage is on par with the clips from the Bring it! singles, though to me it looks like they are fewer cameras and some of the shots are not as well composed. Hitomi Memorial Hall looks to be a step down from Shibuya-AX (which is relatively close by) and my impression is mainly that it is not as loud of a venue. The audio is crisp and very well engineered.


My overall impression is if you like the slower and poppy Puffy songs you will be very happy with the Gekidan Asesu concert selections. I did like that guitars were the usual driving instrument but this is not nearly as pronounced as the past. Both lead and rhythm seem to be a little less aggressive and seem to default to a surf revival sound. Keyboards felt more subdued than the last set of concert selections. Drums and bass remained good, but the bass volume could have been turned up a notch. It could be the rest of the concert was electrifying. It might be the venue was not optimal for recording. For me there was something lacking with the songs selected, but I cannot exactly put my finger upon it.

A big plus on these selections is that Ami seems more engaged this go around. Yumi seems a little detached. That is just an impression based upon past selections. I could very well be wrong as this is a fraction of the concert. Both Ami and Yumi look great, but a totally different make-up style than previous tours. Think more like their Lavuschka adverts than Tour 10. Yumi is back to short hair, Ami’s just past halfway down her back. They are not trying to look older or younger than they are, which I find to be nice.

Continuing to drift in Cosmopolitan Magazine territory… I will note Ami and Yumi are dressed up as color blind sailors. While I appreciate they do their own thing when it comes to appearance, the fine line between eccentric and ridiculous has been crossed. I now miss the plaid overalls from Fever*Fever and I never thought I would hear myself say that. However the dancer’s costumes totally take the sting from a wardrobe selection I do not like.

The overall track selection is hit and miss for me and it goes as follows:
1. Nice Buddy
2. Ai no Shirushi
3. Circuit No Musume
4. complaint
5. Boogie Woogie No 5
6. Youkai Puffy

Nice Buddy is one of my favorite Sturmer songs of Puffy’s and this rendition is a bit slower and mellow. I like the dueling bass and electric guitars near the end. It is pretty rare (if at all) Puffy’s bassist ever goes front and center and I thought that was nifty. One of the nice things about Puffy is that they give room for their backing band to contribute. Over all I liked Nice Buddy.

Ai no Shirushi is song that plays tug of war with me. I enjoy the studio version and (going against my usual preferences) the remix on An Illustrated History / PRMX also. As a concert selection it rarely works for me, it is too little of a song in a big room. That combined with a more subdued performance it becomes a performance that doesn’t work for me.

Circuit no Musume was not a selection I was looking forward to… similar reasons to the above. But for whatever reason the tone of the concert made this one fun. It always cracks me up when Ami and Yumi mug to the camera and break the glass barrier as-it-were. Backing vocals were fun and different making Circuit no Musume is an unexpectedly great track. I like it very much when Ami and Yumi surprise me.

The studio version of complaint via honeycreeper is a track I have always liked, so I was looking forward to hearing a live version. Of the concert footage for the RGW single, it is the fastest paced and comes together nicely. The guitarists are slightly out of synch with their backing vocals, but that is a minor quibble. I could listen to live songs like this all day and be perfectly happy.

Ska without horns? It feels weird to not have Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra supporting Boogie Woogie No 5, I am feeling spoiled from the Tour 10 Final live version. With a flip to the more electrified verison, I found myself not missing the horn support at all. That came as a surprise.

Also lots and lots of backup dancers… which is an understatement for Boogie Woogie No 5. So far as a visual performance I can take or leave dancing, but as it is in the show, it was good. The dancers costumes are ridiculously awful however. Good synchronization with all involved and Ami and Yumi do more dancing than as they say, a drunk person could handle… This was very cool to see. Boogie Woogie No 5 fit the tone and tenor of the show well and at times was kicked up a notch.

Youkai Puffy… of the six songs I was most looking forward to this one. As some might recall from my review of honeycreeper that this was one of my favorite songs from that album. Or I paraphrase it was a barn burner of a Skooby Do episode on meth. This version is something of a missed opportunity and while I still liked it… there were things I did not. The aforementioned dancers are en masse on stage then peel off to a pair. Then about a third of the way through the selection Ami and Yumi go off stage and their dance choreographer comes on stage.

There are a couple of funny tidbits to be had, but end result is she goes through a Youkai Puffy dance for the crowd. However you know something is padded when the producers of the DVD literally fast forward through the grindingly slow bits. I won’t say this killed it for me, but Youkai Puffy is a song built for speed not pit stops.

Ami and Yumi come back on stage and with a slow lead in Youkai Puffy gets back on the rails. The only benefit to the padded dance instruction is the crowd is now moving in synch with everyone on stage. I wish this selection has been more cohesive because the two parts were both great it was that middle part that put me off.

The bonus concert clips from R.G.W. were good fun. I would not categorize it as my favorite live footage as it felt slightly toned down. After watching the selections a half dozen times I was still thrilled to see Ami and Yumi's live performance. Their stage presence and ability to sing live are things I have greatly appreciated over the years and here is not exception.

Overall grades:
Music: B
Performance: B+
Production: B-


*say that five times fast…

h/t to the great Peace. Pop. Puffy for some of the concert details

DVD Review - CLIPS

2000 was a busy year for PUFFY - they practically packed an average band's career into the span of twelve months. Three (count 'em) DVD's in support of JET, one concert DVD in support of FEVER FEVER, a greatest hits collection (The Very Best of Puffy/amiyumi jet fever), two new singles, and an all-new album release (Spike). Oh, and this: Clips, a DVD compiling their promotional videos from the JET, FEVER FEVER and pre-Spike era. Whew!

As you can guess by how early some of these videos are, this DVD is fun. It's pretty short - only seven videos total, interspersed with footage from PUFFY's live introduction to American audiences at SXSW2000 - but these are some of the funniest, strangest, and most endearing videos they've made to date. Well, right up until "Umi Eto", anyway - when you can almost sense a change in attitude (or at least a change in image).

Here's the track list:

1. PRMX - a remix compilation video
2. Tararan
3. Puffy de Rumba
4. Nichiyobi no Musume
5. Yume no Tameni
6. Ai de Tsuon Min
7. Umi Eto

All of those romanizations were taken directly from the DVD menu, so I'm not being pretentious for spelling "Tararan" that way or stupid for leaving the "u" out of "Nichiyobi". Oh, and what is track 6? Why, it's the Mandarin Chinese version of "Ai no Shirushi", of course. They not only sang it in Chinese, they made the video in Chinese too - with Japanese subtitles. I confess I'd never seen most of these PV's - or even knew they existed! - before buying Clips. Hey, gimme a break; I'm an American. We're a little slow when it comes to PUFFY.

To be honest, it's almost criminal how much Sony charged for this DVD when it launched. ¥4,305, or about $40 US - for about 30 minutes worth of footage. That's $1.25 per minute! Only a record label with a band as popular as PUFFY at that time could get away with this. All of PUFFY's other 2000 releases were priced similarly, and even with one major release about every two months, people still bought them.

Nowadays, if you can find it on the used market, Clips is one of the cheaper PUFFY discs out there. I paid around $15 for mine on Yahoo Auctions, and that was probably too much. You can get it for less (if you're in Japan). You can also very, very occasionally find it on Ebay. Of course, you can also just go and watch all the videos on YouTube, but then where's the satisfaction in that? Ok, be my guest, I know you want to look - but if you're like me, you enjoy actually owning these collections, and even more, you enjoy the much better picture quality of a DVD.

Because there's no real way to cohesively review a clip collection, I'm gonna do what I did with Fun Clips Fun Club and just go track by track.

PRMX

Well, that's a disturbing image to lead off with, isn't it! This video can see the future, and it ain't pretty. (No offense to those two actresses, whoever they are.)

Most of this video is stuff we've seen before, remixed just like the music. It's a compilation of songs from PUFFY's past designed to evoke nostalgia (or to milk a few bucks out of the same songs a second time around) while being updated just enough to sound new. The visuals are taken straight out of the videos for the songs being remixed, with new effects added and new editing. Remixed songs include "Kore ga Watashi no Ikirumichi", "Electric Beach Fever", "Ajia no Junshin" and one other that I'm forgetting right now. It's actually all kinda forgettable, really.

Tararan

This song has always been one of my guilty pleasures - it's a little too cutesy for me to play in public, but I've always loved Andy Sturmer's melodies in this, and I love the way the girls sing it. The video is almost syrupy sweet, but it's irresistible. It's definitely girly. There's a whole lot of choreography. There are Rodney Alan Greenblat animated caricatures dancing along with Ami and Yumi. No, I would not put this on during halftime of a football game I was watching with my friends. I don't liked to get laughed at. But I love this video.

Puffy de Rumba

This video, even as strange and funny as it is, was kind of a new direction. It features Ami and Yumi singing in the middle of a forest, complete with backup dancers and... Jimi Hendrix?! Or at least, an actor playing him (convincingly, I might add - Olympic White left-handed stratocaster and all).

At one point, Hendrix somehow falls unconscious in a stream in the forest, only to be revived by Ami and Yumi's feeding him an honest-to-god magic mushroom. This obvious bit of illicit drug peddling is not even disguised - he immediately begins hallucinating.

And look at the girls. They look noticeably more mature than they did in "Tararan" - they look like girls in their twenties, not like the teenagers they had intentionally been evoking earlier on. In fact, they look pretty similar here to how they look now. This was probably the first "adult themed" video that they made, and they'd sort of alternate back and forth between styles from then on.

Nichiyobi no Musume

PUFFY play petty criminals in this one, and it's hilarious. One problem: the video kind of blows its load in the first shot, which is the funniest of all. It's pictured above - Ami and Yumi steal this little kid's big-wheel. That's funny enough, but his reaction - which seems to be genuine - is priceless. He runs towards the camera, screaming in anguish at the top of his lungs (or so I imagine).

The rest of the video sees PUFFY get chased by the cops for stealing their bicycles and other random harmless little crimes. I have to mention the afro's being sported by Ami and Yumi - this was probably the start of their hairstyle experimentation. And it's the only time I've ever seen them with this one.

Yume no Tameni

This is one of my favorite songs from Fever Fever, and I never even realized it was a single before buying this DVD. (Hell, I probably own it - I've never listened to half my early CD singles, and don't even remember what I have.) You really get two videos in one with this song, as it's split half and half between clips from an outdoor performance of the song and stylized, choreographed and neon-lit pseudo-nightclub scenes. The performance clips are very high-energy, especially considering that the song is actually pretty laid-back and early Beatles-esque. But I guess the Beatles had their fair share of wild crowds too, especially in the early years with their kinda mellow brand of boy-band rock.

The other half of the video features Ami and Yumi dancing around, along with a couple of "guests" that include some western chick dressed up like a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader (ok, maybe I'm not remember this quite right) and the same dude who played Jimi Hendrix in "Puffy de Rumba". I guess they liked him.

Ai de Tsuon Min

Not real sure of the backstory behind this one - feel free to chime in with a comment if there's some nugget of info that I'm missing. Basically, this is "Ai no Shirushi" in Chinese. Seems most likely that Puffy are, or would like to be, popular in China and were throwing their fans there a bone with this song. They've always wanted to be a global band, and they're no stranger to singing in a foreign language. I wonder how they managed to get the pronunciations down without actually knowing Mandarin - though for all I know, their Chinese is unintelligible.

The video itself is intended to give a little taste of their Fever Fever tour. It features some strategically interspliced clips from actual live shows combined with shots of Ami and Yumi replicating the live experience on a studio stage. There's a lot of handclapping to the beat going on. This has never been one of my favorite PUFFY songs - it's got too much of a "George of the Jungle" feel to it. But the girls are cute, in the way they were in those early days.

Umi Eto

This video's a brand new bag. The song itself is one of their harder and punkier songs, and it's off the album I've always considered their transition into a more adult sound. The visuals are split in half between clips of their performance of this song at SXSW 2000 and shots of Ami and Yumi looking positively dour as they wander around Tokyo in pant suits that were obviously inspired by 1970's London punk fashion. I don't think they crack a smile once in these sequences. A definite sign of what was to come over the next few years as they remade themselves into a grown-up band. Hey, when you're approaching 30, it's tough to keep up the teeny-bopper act... though they'd resurrect it later for "Hi Hi".

Like with Fun Clips Fun Club, it's pretty interesting to see the progression from the start of this compilation to the end. Whereas that DVD had them moving from indie rock into a more corporate pop punk look and sound, Clips shows their progression from a couple of cutesy girls in a pop act to a serious hard rock band. Even the clips before "Umi Eto" include scenes and themes that show the direction they were quickly moving in.

There's also just a huge amount of choreography here - I gotta say that while I've seen them dance plenty of times before, I never realized how pervasive it was in their act in those early days. Literally every early single had its own dance, most of them pretty damn complex, and they're all in that sort of goofy style that may or may not be ironic. It's fun to watch, but maybe a little overdone. I think I actually prefer their modern incarnation, where they pull out the choreography sparingly, and where it's definitely at least half-ironic when they do.

As for the SXSW footage, it's interspersed in between each video and is purposely cut short so you never get a full song - until "Umi Eto". I'm not sure if they were a little shy about this performance (it was their first in the United States, and they look understandably nervous), or if they weren't too happy with the cramped, close-in footage or what, but the clips of this show cut in and out seemingly at random. They're still some nice little extras.

Like all PUFFY DVD's, this DVD is region 2 and will not work on unmodified US players. It's also a 4:3, non-widescreen DVD. The picture quality is good, considering the original standard-def source material.

Ah, who am I kidding? Here's one video, have fun searching for the rest.

Rolling Debut Revue DVD... er, Review

Seems hard to believe now, but yes, there was a time not so long ago when Puffy was virtually unknown in North America - no different than current Japanese chart-toppers like Yui, Ayaka or Kimura Kaela. Nowadays, of course, they've still got residual recognition from the "Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi" show, and they've built up a small but rabid nationwide fan base through their music. Most of those fans know the story of their debut here - the 2000 SXSW appearance, the subsequent continent-wide tour two years later.

Not many of those people have probably had the chance to see anything of those shows, though, considering that Puffy only released the DVD chronicling their US/Canada "Rolling Debut Revue" tour in Japan. I've always thought that this was pretty strange - if we were gonna get any DVD released here, it should have been this one. That's compounded by the puzzling title screen labeled "Puffy AmiYumi" (their North American name) and the western nicknames given to the entire band. It almost seems like this was meant for a US release, but for whatever reason, it didn't happen.

In 2002, Puffy was gearing up for the release of Nice (releasing cover album The Hit Parade in the interim) as they prepared to head full steam into the Andy Sturmer era. It was definitely the beginning of an all-new, retooled Puffy, and one that probably seemed pretty unfamiliar to their Japanese fans. Completely gone were the cute, bubbly, innocent girls that Japan had come to know and love - in their place were two indie rock chicks, all grown up and with an edge that they'd never had before. Gone also were the matching outfits, the complicated hairstyles, the overt poppiness and commercialism (for now).

Even the cover of the disc (pictured at the top) is about as out there as it gets. Yes, that's the real cover - coffee stains and all.

Whether this was Puffy intentionally trying to appeal to a western crowd or just them finally being themselves is anyone's guess - it may have been a bit of both. What seems clear from this DVD, though, is that it took them a little time to figure out North American audiences. The disc opens with their performance at Irving Plaza in New York City (where I'd see them three years later), and they seem outright nervous. Not only has their image changed from Spike Daisakusen a year and a half earlier, but so has their carefree attitude - they rarely so much as crack a smile while on stage.

The disc hops around from city to city, covering at least a few of the 13 dates on the tour, though most of the actual concert footage is from Irving Plaza.


Here's the full track listing:

1. Umi Eto
2. Ajia no Junshin (English version)
3. Kore ga Watashi no Ikirumichi
4. Boogie Woogie No. 5
5. Atarashi Hibi
6. Your Love is a Drug
7. Akai Buranko
8. Puffy's Rule
9. Wild Girls on Circuit

You'll probably notice that the track listing is quite short compared to, say, Tour! Puffy! Tour! 10 Final. But wait! This is not strictly a live DVD - this is a tour chronicle. Unlike most Puffy live DVD's, it has a large amount of candid backstage and tour bus footage.

See! Ami eating both Dunkin Donuts and McDonald's. She's a fast food junkie.


See! Yumi complain about a sign at one venue that reads "Pufy Amyum".


See! Drummer Furuta's (aka "Rick") "sexy" birthday cake.


See! Ami and Yumi do Q&A and autograph signing at a dinky little record store. (I know, it's the vitally important indie music shop Amoeba Music; I've been there.)


Puffy's pre-"HiHi" US fans had a little different look to them!

See! The entire band posing in front of Niagara Falls.


See! Ami and Yumi getting used to sleeping on a tour bus.


See! The band jam in an informal backstage session.


See! Yumi ride a roller coaster (by herself?!)


And much, much more. Favorite moment of the disc for me: one of their American fans enthusiastically telling the camera that meeting Puffy was the "best day of her life". This was in 2002! Talk about otaku.

The Dunkin Donuts scene is actually kind of funny, because somebody (probably special guest Bleu) apparently chose a Dunkin' Donut for Ami to eat as one of Boston's representative foods, as if she's never had a donut before and as if Boston doesn't have anything better to offer. She of course forces out a fake-sounding "it's good!" even though she probably eats superior Japanese Mister Donut (or Doughnut Plant) donuts every day of her life. (Hey, if there's one thing I'm an expert on, it's donuts.) I wonder if somebody offered her a cup of Starbucks coffee when they went to Seattle.

In fact, it's these scenes that make this DVD worth owning. You're not going to see many of them turn up online (some of the concert footage has), and while a few individual live videos from this DVD were thrown onto the US release of Nice, none of the candid stuff made the cut. Puffy also look a lot more comfortable and relaxed in these scenes than they do in the concert footage, where they never really come out of their shell - in fact, through much of these shows, both Ami and Yumi are staring at the floor like a couple of early 90's British shoegazers.


These were not their best-ever performances. In fact, it was seeing some of this footage on the Nice album that set my expectations so low for my first Puffy concert in 2005 - expectations that they completely blew away. I know firsthand that they're capable of so much more than this. And I also know it from their other concert DVD's, all of which are more energetic and fun.

But the backstage stuff is fun, and it's the Puffy we all know. There, they seem to feel free to be themselves, and they're among friends. On stage, they're in an unfamiliar situation - playing small arenas to crowds that may or may not know their music. I will say that it's surprising to see how packed some of the venues are, given their name recognition here at the time. Who knows - maybe that scared them a little bit.

This kind of setup had to be intimidating to a couple of girls who are used to playing large arenas with raised stages and a ten foot buffer zone between the stage and the crowd.

No doubt they were also emotionally and physically drained by the tour, which Ami makes pretty clear in her goodbye speech on the last date in Toronto. A 5,000 mile bus tour is not something most Japanese acts ever have to deal with. The geography of Japan is such that, given a few days in between tour dates, a band can play a show and be home the same night for a couple days of R&R - almost regardless of where they're playing. Worst case, a Hyatt's never more than a dozen miles away.

It may not have been the best choice to feature one of the last performances of the tour (Irving Plaza) so heavily on the DVD.

I will say that there are a couple of tracks here that aren't often repeated on other live Puffy DVD's, so there's another good reason to seek this out. "Ajia no Junshin" in English? Don't think that even exists live anywhere else. "Your Love is a Drug" has similarly not been repeated to my knowledge. "Atarashi Hibi" is rare.

With everything taken together, this is a pretty interesting DVD - though uneven, rough around the edges, and definitely not their best pure live concert DVD. It works really well as a snapshot in a time of renewal - their metamorphosis from the vestiges of their old personas in Spike was now complete, but they didn't seem quite comfortable with where they were headed just yet. They did settle in nicely by the time I'd see them in 2005, so viewing this now only shows the promise of what's to come (it could have easily gone the other way, depending on what the future brought).

Watching it also helps explain their current habit of doing "mini-tours" in the United States, covering only one coast or the other. They were clearly worn down by the end of the Rolling Debut Revue tour - you can almost watch it as it happens here. They obviously learned a lot on this tour, and that's only helped their future performances here get better.

As usual, the DVD is locked to region 2, and it is 4:3, though my screen grabs came out at an odd 720x536 resolution, so it seems like it may actually be using the full horizontal and vertical resolution of the format. The picture quality is not bad, but it doesn't approach the level of the anamorphic and all-around excellent Tour! Puffy! Tour! 10 Final DVD.

Final grades:
Performance: C+
Disc Content: B
Production: B+


As I mentioned, there is some streaming video from this disc floating around the net. Unfortunately, it's divx video - I'll embed it here, but it won't work unless you have divx installed. (On the plus side, the quality is very good!) As always, I highly recommend buying the DVD, though this one is long out of print and was never an easy one to find.

Umi Eto


Akai Buranko


Atarashi Hibi

Run! Puffy! Run! Video! And! Book! Review!

Going waaaaaaaaaay back now to Puffy's first-ever long-form video release. The year is 1996, and AmiYumi (both the girls and the album of the same name) have only just taken Japan by storm. As part of a massive media blitz, Sony released the 39 minute Run! Puffy! Run! as a marketing vehicle for the girls, obviously seeing the chemistry that had already developed between them. It marked the first-ever trip to the United States for Puffy, as they transport themselves across the country through various vehicular methods. Along the way, they experience all that this great nation has to offer for the first time, along with many of its pitfalls.

I'm going to do a little something new with this review and assign some letter grades at the end. I'm not a big believer in boiling down reviews to single scores, but other people seem to like it and I'm all about giving you guys what you want. Read on...

I actually have the laserdisc version of this release, if you can believe it. Now that's hardcore! So if the screenshots you see here aren't the best, it's because the analog video's been digitized/captured and compressed once, then re-compressed to make it smaller, then compressed again into a jpg screenshot. I'm sure the DVD looks better, and of course these days, pretty much the entire thing is available on YouTube if you just want to go and watch it.


But laserdiscs are what all the old-school cool kids play. They're the vinyl records of video.

As part of the all-out push to crown Puffy the reigning queens of all media, a companion book was released in early 1997, going by the same title but with an expanded focus. It's got a lot more detail on their trip, including bios of various people they meet, whole scenes that didn't make the cut on the video, and a huge number of great photos. It's also got a few scenes of Puffy in other countries (not just the USA) as well as a few sort of collector extras in the back of the book. I'll talk a bit more about it further down the post.

The Video
The video begins with Puffy in New York City, where they visit the Statue of Liberty, ride the NYC Subway (my "1" train!), go to the top of the Empire State Building and take the Roosevelt Island Tram - no doubt annoying a whole bunch of New Yorkers with their rowdiness in the process.


I gotta just mention that there's a shot of the World Trade Center right at the beginning of the video, and I only bring it up because it's kind of strange how things eventually always seem to come full circle. In 2006, almost exactly 10 years after this video was shot, they played live (for free) just a block away from the World Trade Center as part of the River to River Festival, which was set up to help bring people back to lower Manhattan after 9/11/01. I'm sure when they made this video, they'd never in their wildest dreams have thought they'd be playing live there at all (and attracting huge crowds!)... much less for that reason.

While in New York, they also visit the home and office of Rodney Alan Greenblat, the talented US-based artist who used to paint all of their album, video and CD single covers and who's responsible for all the iconic little caricatures of Puffy that you used to see everywhere. (Side note: I contacted Rodney and asked him why he no longer does Puffy's stuff, and he explained it was Puffy's manager Kaz's decision.) While they're there, they launch into the music video for "Asia no Junshin", their first single and still one of their most popular songs.

After visiting New York, Ami and Yumi head into the depths of the hell that is Penn Station for a trip west on Amtrak.

After riding high speed shinkansen trains all their lives, I wonder what that must have been like for them, especially being greeted by a surly cafe car attendant whose first words are a barked "what kinda pizza?!" aimed at Ami. Throughout the video, Ami acts as translator for Yumi - it's pretty obvious that Ami spoke at least some English prior to joining Puffy. Yumi, probably not.

Puffy make what seem to be a quick run through Philadelphia before heading to Chicago and Cleveland, stopping at the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame along the way and staying in some super-cheap motels. It's pretty hilarious how bad some of the hotels they stay at are, and while I'm not fluent in Japanese, it's obvious that Ami spends a good amount of time complaining about their living arrangements.

They ditch Amtrak after Philadelphia and pick up an old Cadillac convertible to continue west. Bet you never thought you'd see Puffy pumping their own gas! Well, you do here, and this is one reason why they're popular. Think you'll ever see Ayumi Hamasaki pumping gas? Utada Hikaru? Doubt it. But Puffy are regular girls, and they want you to know it. Though it's still pretty funny watching Ami pick up the gas pump and ask, "soshite?" ("Now what?")

They don't have much luck with their transportation, either. I personally think this was all set up to make the American auto industry look bad, but two separate classic cars break down on them. The Cadillac I can believe, as it literally goes up in smoke - though the camera was obviously in a pretty fortunate position to capture it. Ami makes probably the cutest comment on the video when she tells a passerby in English, "our car is broken."

Later, in the Mojave Desert (who the hell drives directly across the Mojave Desert?), their Corvette seemingly runs out of gas.

There's a scene of them supposedly hitchhiking (yeah, right) and actually getting picked up! Somehow I doubt the authenticity of all this. :)

As if that weren't enough, Ami gets pulled over by a cop while on a motorcycle for looking too young to ride.

Along the way, we're treated to a couple more music videos (including the excellent "Tokusuru Karada" and "Yuki ga Furumachi", a b-side that I'm actually not otherwise familiar with) and pretty much the rest of the AmiYumi album played in the background. While walking through the desert, Ami and Yumi apparently feel the time is right to decorate probably the worst Christmas tree that I've ever seen.

And once they finally reach the west coast, they sit down for what looks like a nice meal in a restaurant, only to have the camera pull back and reveal that it's all a set. Finally, the grand finale - the "Kore ga Watashi no Ikirumichi" video, which was shot all throughout their trip, as they found time to mouth the words to little bits of the song here and there.

It's kind of a strange experience watching this video for the first time as an American fan, especially so long after it was made. They were very, very different then than they are now, in both look and attitude. This was obviously intended as an introduction, so it's almost like looking back into a time capsule seeing it now, and also from the perspective of a westerner. I don't think a video like this could really exist in this country.

The Japanese music industry is obviously a lot different than ours. Pop acts like Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson can be pre-packaged, supported by a team of songwriters and producers and overtly marketed here, but rock bands generally can't - with a few big exceptions (e.g. the Sex Pistols). Rock bands need street cred. And as popular as they are (especially back then), Puffy are a rock band. But it apparently is done pretty often there - rock bands can be just as manufactured as pop bands, and no apologies are made for it. Everybody knows Puffy was basically Tamio Okuda's music with two young girl singers in front of it, and that was just fine as far as the Japanese public was concerned.

This video is an intro to the girls personally, not really their songs. The whole point is just to show how cute and funny they are. Apparently, this helps sell albums in Japan.

But hey, I'm convinced!

Final Grades (video)
Content: B-
Performance: A
Production: B-

The Book
Just a few additional words about the book and some photos to illustrate. This is really a great book to have if you're a fan of early Puffy... though the same caveats apply as they do to the video. This is not the Puffy we know today, at least in superficial terms. But as its own production, the book is really packed with some great content, and while there are some dense sections of Japanese text, most of the book is just filled with photos and graphics (along with some pretty bad English).

The book, like the video, begins by chronicling Puffy's trip across the USA, with many of the same scenes represented, but a few extra areas that aren't seen on the video:

Near the back of the book, there are some extra sections shot in Asia:

Probably my favorite part of the book is a funny section of several pages showing how apparently difficult it is for Yumi to keep her eyes open during photo shoots:

No, this is not the polished, professional, mature Puffy that they've grown into over the years. This is Puffy at their most raw, more like a couple of goofy kids that won a contest than anything else (and that's not far from the truth). It's a Puffy that probably pre-dates most of their western fans' knowledge of them, seeing how we weren't introduced to them at all until 2000, and not really nationally until 2002. Some western fans probably wouldn't see the early appeal - I didn't back then, and I probably still wouldn't if not for all that came later. I can enjoy this now in the context of their full career, but I'm not sure how I would have felt about it in 1996-97.

Final Grades (book)
Content: B+
Performance: N/A
Production: A-

DVD/Movie Review - The Neighbor No. 13 (Rinjin 13-go) starring Yumi Yoshimura

And now for something completely different. While PUFFY's obviously known for their music and maybe their cartoon "Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi", two years ago Yumi took a bit of a break from the group in order to test the waters of film, starring alongside Shido Nakamura, Shun Oguri, Hirofumi Arai as the principal actors in The Neighbor No. 13 (Rinjin 13-go). Available on DVD in the US, it's definitely a release I felt compelled to cover here for western fans.

The Neighbor No. 13 is part of a new wave of Asian horror films that combine elements of the thriller genre, splatter films, Hitchcockian suspense and a Kubrick-esque visual sensibility and deliberateness in pacing. These films and their filmmakers have formed a bonafide movement often labeled "new Asian horror" and led by the likes of directors Takashi Miike (who makes a cameo in this film), the Pang brothers, Takashi Shimizu, Hideo Nakata and Chan-wook Park. While these filmmakers all have their own unique style, what they have in common is a fresh new vision of the horror genre. Together, they're doing things with horror not seen before in the west.

This film is directed by first-timer Yasuo Inoue, previously known only for commercial work and music videos but chosen for his visual sensibility. It's based on a well-known Japanese manga by Santa Inoue (no relation), who personally vetted the director and approved of the final film. On the surface, it's a modern-day Jekyll and Hyde story about the long-term negative effects of grade-school bullying on the victims' psyche, and a quest for revenge. The climax, however, throws all that into doubt, and forces a different interpretation.

Yumi plays Nozomi Akai, wife of former school bully Toru Akai (Hirofumi Arai), who many years ago had literally scarred classmate Juzo Murasaki for life by throwing a vial of acid in his face. Nozomi and Toru are both former bōsōzoku (biker gang) members who have given up the life of hooliganism in favor of quiet family normality. They have a young son named Yuki, who they're raising in a small apartment that they've just moved into. Unbeknownst to them, Juzo Murasaki has also just moved into the apartment below theirs - and he's taken a construction job working under Toru.

What follows is a series of grizzly murders as Juzo's alter ego, inhabiting him since the acid incident many years ago, prepares for the main event: revenge on Toru. Meanwhile, Nozomi befriends Juzo, not realizing the history between him and her husband. She leaves their son in his care as she and her husband go out on their first date in years, with predictably tragic results. This in turn leads to the climactic confrontation between Juzo and Toru.

Since you're on a Puffy AmiYumi blog, you're probably most interested in whether or not Yumi's got any acting chops. She admits in the DVD special features that she is not an actor and that she can't compete with the other leads. I honestly think she's selling herself short. For the most part, her performance is naturalistic and believable. There is one exception - a scene in which Juzo's alter ego, played by Minoru Matsumoto, licks Nozomi's face as she stands unaware that he's there. In this scene, she never quite gets into character and almost seems on the verge of laughter - she even flinches a tiny bit when Matsumoto licks her face. This scene really could have used another take.

In other scenes, though, she completely inhabits Nozomi, and even manages to do what a lot of professional actors can't: cry on cue. If you didn't know she was a rock star, you'd never guess she was anything but an actress. Reading about this film on other English-language sites, it seems a lot of western critics don't realize she's not. Part of it may be that she is, by her own admission, playing a character pretty similar to herself. But it's in the scenes near the climax where her character starts to lose it a bit that she displays some real range. (She also does some things that pretty firmly remind her fans that she's not a kid anymore; I'll just leave it at that.)

The other actors have been alternatively either praised or criticized for under-acting. But I think the critics miss the point. The overall style of the film is hyper-realistic - it's not a Hollywood-style horror thriller where everything is over-dramatized, over-stylized and where booming music cues you in to when to pay attention. Everything about this film was purposely shot as you'd expect to see it in real life. That means the actors don't overtly emote (with the exception of a hysterical Nozomi) and it means the murder scenes are shot in a matter-of-fact style that's disturbing in its routine. We see the murders happen as a witness might, confused and without a clear view as regular life goes on in the background, and that somehow makes it scarier.

The climactic scene is shot in the same way. It's awkward - even a little funny - as the protagonist and antagonist chase each other around a science classroom. But again, the scene progresses into deadly seriousness that's made even moreso by the contrasting route that it took to get there. The actual ending of the film throws into doubt much of what's happened up to that point. But don't get it wrong - this is not unsatisfying, it's more of a Mulholland Dr. kinda thing.

The sense of realism extends to the cinematography as well. The visual style of the film captures "real" Japan in a way that I haven't seen many films manage. Even most Japanese films and TV shows are over-dramatized, with too-bright and too-even lighting, clean, big houses and rich-looking accessories. (Or alternatively, they go too far in the other direction and overdo a sense of squalor.) In The Neighbor No. 13, the lighting is fluorescent and harsh, tending towards green - as it is in most of Japan.

The apartment building that serves as the main setting is old and worn, with tiny apartments that are crammed with belongings.

One oddity that the actors actually bring up in the DVD special features is that all of them are covered in baby oil through most of the film. Director Yasuo Inoue explained that this was to prevent the actors' skin from absorbing the light, but the effect is that everybody just looks sweaty - even though the film is set during winter. Probably a first-time director's mistake.

Speaking of extras, there are a huge number of them on the two-disc US DVD release, many of which feature the principal actors in various ways. The extras include a Japanese "making of" documentary, an MTV Japan feature on the film, a documentary on the original manga, a series of interviews from the Japanese premiere, and more. These are really fantastic for Yumi fans - it's not often that we see interviews with her of any kind that include subtitles. It's nice to finally know what she's actually saying! (The film itself is obviously subtitled, but she didn't write her lines - it's not her speaking.) She comes across as humble and funny.


On its overall merits, this is an effective example of new Asian horror, although maybe an acquired taste due to its style and pace. It is quite creepy and disturbing, but slow and shot in a hyper-realistic visual style. For Yumi fans, though, it's really a must-have - there is a ton of her in this DVD set, and in ways you've never seen before. Yumi's been in other films, but only in bit parts, never as the leading lady. And never on a DVD with such an impressive amount of extras.

One caveat about the DVD is that, while it looks good for the most part, the picture is bordered on all sides. This probably seemed like a good idea to deal with the overscan problem on some TV's, but it is incredibly annoying for anyone using a digital set (like an LCD or plasma display). We're just losing resolution, and having to watch a movie inside a black box in the middle of our TV's. Keep that in mind - there's nothing wrong with your DVD player or TV.