HAROPURO PARTY! 2005 MATSUURA AYA CAPTAIN KOUEN

Ever since Aibon (Ai Kago) was suspended from Hello! Project in February 2006, everything she did with Nono (Nozomi Tsuji) has become more and more valuable to me, especially this concert, which was performed six months before her suspension. The two of them, performing as W, are at their peak here and, even though Aya's the headliner, we get to see a lot of them. They sing only two songs together as W, apart from the others, but they each get solos and they perform a lot with Aya and the members of Melon Kinenbi. All told, one or both of them are in 17 numbers here. I especially liked their performance of "Robokiss" with Aya, where they get to spank her on the butt. (Thankfully, Aya has a great sense of humor and laughs frequently at their antics.) Aibon does a solo of Miki Fujimoto's "Boogie Train" and I think the song is better suited to her than Miki. Nono does a solo of Aya's "Ne~e?" and I have to say she out-Ayas Aya. In addition to the usual Aya numbers (e.g. "Yeah, Meccha Holiday") and some of Melon K's hits, the girls sing a lot of different songs from the H!P catalog. I found "Love Machine" and "All for One and One for All" to be odd choices for a seven-girl lineup, but in the case of "Love Machine," they at least perform the entire song, which usually gets the whole second verse cycle cut out in most live performances of it. Plus, there are specially written new solo lines for each of the girls, making it the longest performance of "Love Machine" I've ever seen. Everyone's in great form here and all seven seem to fuel each other's energy. This is the first time I've seen so much of Aya outside of her own solo concerts and she really seems to enjoy working with the others. Granted, she gets most of the attention and the crowd chants her name most of the time, but it IS her 19th birthday after all (June 25, 2005) and they bring out a cake for her at one point. If I have any complaint, it's that the camera keeps cutting away from Aibon and Nono, even when they get solo lines in some of the ensemble songs. This would have been a perfect opportunity to include an alternate angle feature on the DVD with a camera maintained on those two for the entire concert, just for fans like me.

I really love this concert :) They sing great songs. It's really funny seeing Aya singing Robo Kiss with Aibon & Nono ^_^ And I love to see Melon Kinen Bi in this concert, with their huge amount of positive energy!