Cute Concert Tour 2009 Natsu Aki - Cutie JUMP! -

This is an amazing concert and possibly the best thing I've seen C-ute do--ever! It's got a great lineup of songs and dance numbers and it's topped off by Erika Umeda's graduation from C-ute. There's a problem with the DVD that has nothing to do with the concert itself, and I'll address it below, which accounts for the 4-star rating instead of 5, but the concert is nearly two hours of solid entertainment value. The girls are at their peak and do 27 songs, all of them enjoyable, a mix of old favorites, recent singles and a few I've never heard before. The camera keeps the girls in view and lets us see them dance--for the most part. There are six costume changes--all beautiful. I particularly liked when they came out in cute maid outfits and did a tap dance number and a bit involving synchronized broom-tossing. Maimi and Airi get one solo each. Erika and Saki do a duet and Chisato and Mai do one also. During the medley, there's a musical break between songs so the girls can each do an individual dance bit. Unfortunately, the director botches the cuts and we don't see each dance properly. We do at least get to see Mai and Chisato do a split together. And we get a better shot of it all in rehearsal in the "Making of" segment. Erika's graduation takes up the last 25 min. of a 119-min. concert. I'd never seen the C-ute girls cry before. And they all cry. Chisato just about broke my heart. They even all say goodbye at one point and leave the stage as if for good, but the crowd's chants keep up and they all soon come back for a second set of goodbyes. It's quite an emotional spectacle. The big problem I had was with the 39-min. "Making of" portion of the DVD. For some strange reason, all the shots are either out-of-focus (closeups) or just soft (long shots). On my big flatscreen set, all the shots were definitely out of focus; on my old 13-inch set, they looked a little better but were still very soft. I'm a TV professional, but I couldn't tell whether it was a camera problem (my first guess) or a DVD mastering issue. Either way, it's unacceptable and indicates a breakdown in quality control on the part of Zetima. Besides, the "Making of" segments were padded with a lot of unnecessary stuff. Why show us concert footage taken by the Making of crew when we'd already seen it in the concert itself? But at least they give us rehearsal footage of the broom-tossing.