jiangshi girl

I feel I'm following 50+ series but I don't love mangas as much as before. My current favorite is Mori Kaoru's A Bride's Story, her talent and patience is incredible. Also like Shirahama Kamome's Tongari Boushi no Atelier, Ookubo Kei's Arte, because I'm in a warm-shoujo-mangas-without-too-much-romace mood And Shimizu Aki's manga version of Kyogoku Natsuhiko's Hyakkiyakou series. Too bad only one novel in this series has been translated into English.

I bought a VIP on a local music APP besides that, I bought MUCC's new album and a magazine yesterday, they would take a while to arrive.

Thank you for the review, it's very nice and beautifully written. And I want to thank Yasu for letting some young people know the old classics. Personally I have some different feeling towards Cloudy Heart and Flying Get. Maybe I'm biased towards Himuro, the feeling in his singing is often not very obvious, but the sorrow and loneliness is deep within. I think Himuro's voice is one of the most important things which have made Boowy much more than just a pop band. And Flying Get, I don't know whether Yasu chose this song himself... Of course he is a better singer than anyone from AKB, but I think the only good thing about this song is it somehow sounds like an old pop Kayokyoku, so not entirely cheesy and boring, giving it a heavy rock arrangement has made it more insufferable to me. Sorry that I tend to judge songs by personal interest.

Just began reading Robin Hobb's The Liveship Traders, it's an old series I always wanted to read, finally borrowed them yesterday. I hope it's a good story.

Need to give it a few more listens, I have enjoyed it so far. I can't say I liked Classic and Killer when they came out, but I began to like them this time due to mysterious reasons. Chorus of Myakuhaku is beautiful, EMP is good. I thought I heard that paragraph of lyric in Billy very wrong on my first listen, but it turned out to be just that, lol.

hide's ROCKET DIVE, certainly it's not a bad song, but I can't listen to it again. For BT, I choose Symphonic Buck-Tick In Berlin. Rouage's Mune ni Furu Ame Mune ni Saku Hana, the title is beautiful, however I can't make myself like the melodies.

RIAJ's certification is for the number of shipments, not the sales. For example, one of my old favs, Sound Horizon's 2010 album Maerchen was certified as Gold when it was still on Oricon, the Oricon number for it was 85k when it finally dropped from the weekly top 300. Same condition with many many other CDs. As for magazines, writers write whatever they want, especially when the internet was not very developed or no internet at all! I have another example, I don't like to say it, but a famous critic named Ichikawa Tetsushi (nicknamed "father of Visual Kei" by some Japanese VK fans) said Buck-Tick's Aku no Hana had sold 570k in Rockin'on Japan Dec 1990, with no source mentioned, the Oricon number is something like 430 to 440k. Scan here: http://s46.photobucket.com/user/tigerpal/media/Scans4/ROJ9012_p66.jpg.html Ichikawa was also in charge of the promotion for X-Japan in that magazine. I also vaguely remember someone in a Japanese magazine said BLUE BLOOD had reached 600k in 1989 or 1990. Of course you can say Oricon is so so so terribly wrong, X have sold triple what Oricon says. But just one thing, if what you believe is true, do you think Yoshiki and all his fanatical Japanese fans would be okay with Music Station, the NO.1 television music program in Japan saying things like what I listed before?

If you google "オリコン アルバム 1989”, then 1900, then 1991, you will find that BLUE BLOOD sold 188 thousand copies + in 1989, 378 thousand + in 1990, not in the top 100 since 1991 1.5m is highly unrealistic. Although I don't know how Billboard Japan works, Oricon numbers are not cryptic, nothing but physical CDs they have sold, only a bit lower than the actual numbers if we're talking about albums or singles which have dropped out from the weekly top 100 (top 300 since 2002), or if we're talking about the likes of AKB48 whose core fans could buy 100+ copies of a single (It seems even if you buy 1000 copies, Oricon would only count them as something like 50 or lower, but I'm not familiar with idol groups, so can't be certain)

If AKB keeps going like this, they will eventually become the best-selling musician of all time in Japan, but I'm not sure they will. Personally I think AKB's music is okay, most members are not good singers, but they have nice melodies composed by famous composers, Yasushi Akimoto writes fabulous lyrics for them occasionally.

Actually, in that Wikipedia page, only Ayumi Hamasaki, L'arc, Hotei and X-Japan's numbers are significantly different with the numbers from all those charts I listed. So even if their numbers include digital sales, it's very unfair. Plus while talking about sales of Japanese musicians, people usually mean physical sales. Also for example, according to RIAJ, AKB48 has a certification of about 16 million downloads, since digital music did not exist in X's glorious days, and I think it's safe to say X haven't released one single hit song since the digital era, I don't know what could make X-Japan 30 million except something like counting 5 youtube watching as one CD sold.

The English Wikipedia says, X-Japan has sold more than 30 million copies, it seems many people believe the wikipedia numbers, do you think it's really possible? If you add every number from this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Japan_discography It will turn out to be just over 10 million. Also, let's look at Glay. Glay is a miracle, they have 11 sold-more-than-1-million releases, six singles and five albums, their best album REVIEW is the NO.1 best selling albun in 1997, sold more than 4 million, their single Yuuwaku is the NO.1 best-selling single in 1998. they have sold 38 million + in total. Then X-Japan, they have only one release which has nodoubtly reached a million, that's Jealousy, also their highest ranking in Oricon yearly album chart is of Jealousy, NO.12 best selling album in 1991, if I didn't remember it wrong, none of their singles have ranked higher. And X is 30 million? This is the Visual Kei ranking from Nikkei Entertainment, around 2012: http://bakusai.com/thr_res/acode=6/ctgid=116/bid=643/tid=2688314/ It says 11.88 million (bands which may not be real VK are not included in this ranking) This is a ranking I don't know where it is from, therefore might not be very accurate, but I have seen it many times in 2ch and other sites: http://nammyblog.seesaa.net/article/323401673.html 11.74 This is a ranking from Music Staion sometime around 2013. This is a ranking from Music Station, comparing sales of artists in Showa and Heisei era, the sales of each one is divided into the two eras, so it's not a complete ranking of best-selling artists in Japan, for example Southern All Stars ranked low here because they have been active in both Showa and Heisei. But Heisei started in 1989, so every major X-Japan release is in Heisei era. The 25th in Heisei, Spitz is just a bit above 20 million. By the way, Laruku is clearly not something like 40 million. Someone in my country's J-pop fandom calculate Hotei Tomoyasu's sales from Oricon, it's not 40 million, only 12 or 13 million. The Oricon numbers are generally lower than the true numbers, becuase Oricon can't calculate every purchase in Japan, but it can never, ever be 10 or 20 million lower, in which case Oricon would be completely useless. Also I remember Ayumi Hamasaki is much lower than Wikipedia's 83 million, maybe 50 to 55 million, here is the oricon news: http://www.oricon.co.jp/news/2015631/full/ Here is a site for some Visual Kei Oricon numbers: http://oriconv.seesaa.net/

One advantage of living in Asia is that the plane ticket to Japan is cheap. I really need to see her before she retires, plus I always want to see places like Minami-Aoyama MANDALA. I want a Yapoos reunion, too, but I don't know if it's possible. It makes me sad that she is not as good as she was in the 80s and early 90s, her voice has changed so much. But I'm still willing to pre-order a new album made by her.

I don't like one ok rock because it's not my type of music, but I don't hate it. About X-japan, I like most songs in Vanishing Vision, Blue Blood and half of Jealousy, also like hide, heath and sugizo, but I absolutely hate all those yoshiki sad ballads, I would rather listening to Nagizaka46. And I wiil never forgive yoshiki for calling kyo (D'erlanger) a bad singer. Oh I hate almost every boy idol groups from Korea, and a few Korean or Chinese boy idols I really can't tell if they are Korean or Chinese. Is it ok here to share other people's hatred? My mother hates Hisashi Imai ("He looks like your grandma") Jun Togawa ("Who is this horrible old woman? She makes your Acchan sound like an angel.") Kiryu ("f*cking awful") Sugizo's solo instrument tracks ("THESE are called music?") Kyosuke Himuro in b. blue Toshi in Joker She is totally ok with most Black Metal and Death Metal, very strange.

Perhaps, it's hard to choose. Japanese people are generally richer, the air is cleaner there, the subway stations are better designed, but if I'm Japanese, I would grow up listening to all those horrible cheerful Jpop songs which made my head ache during my trip to Japan last year, and my English is likely to be even worse than it is now.

Thank you! I plan to see Jun Togawa's concert in Japan this year. I feel grateful that she is still active, really wish I knew her earlier.