Hello! Project 2007 Summer 10th Anniversary Dai Kanshasai - Hello Pro Natsu Matsuri

The Hello! Project Summer 2007 concert ranks as one of the very best H!P productions I've ever seen. Every aspect of it is as close to perfection as we can get in one of these. The giant Saitama Super Arena with its long runway to bring the show out into the audience is used to maximum effect (and a far cry from the tiny venues the last few H!P concerts have been held in). The 46 featured performers, plus 23 Hello! Pro Eggs, represent a perfect mix of ages. The 36 songs are wonderfully chosen--a mix of then-new singles with favorites from the H!P songbook and lesser known songs ripe for replay. And many dazzling costume changes. The performers don't all come out in the opening number. Guest performers first appear in later numbers and the second disc in the two-disc set, starting at the 125-minute mark, opens with some real surprise OG guests. The opening number has the various groups come out in beautiful color-coded outfits with flowing trains: Morning Musume in red, V-u-den in yellow, Melon Kinenbi in green, Berryz Kobo in pink and C-ute in blue. As they enter and make their way around the stage and runway joining the Hello! Pro Eggs, already in the midst of "Hello to You," they create a ravishing spectacle, an artist's dream of color, delightful music and beautiful women. This may be the first concert in which Berryz and C-ute fully came into their own as important and integral units in H!P's entertainment machine, on a par with MM. All 14 of their members had much more solid performing experience than four of the then-nine-member MM lineup, which was still breaking in the three new 8th Gen members (Aika, JunJun and LinLin). In any event, every featured performer gets a lot to do here in various re-groupings and re-dos of shuffle unit songs and the like. No one gets short shrift, not even the Eggs. It's great to see Yossi, newly graduated from MM, join Ayaka Kimura and Mai Satoda in recreating Pucchimoni. MK and V-u-den show us how mature and sexy women should look and move, while the younger girls rush out onto the runway in exuberant displays of youthful energy and agility. It's quite a show. The whole thing is 150 min., followed by a mere 21 min. of precious backstage footage. It's a long one and packed with great stuff, maybe too much to take in one sitting, but if you don't you'll lessen the big surprise at the beginning of the second disc.