Berryz Kobo Concert Tour 2009 Haru - Sono Subete no Ai ni -

I've been watching Berryz Kobo concerts for years now and the girls just keep getting better and better. This one, from Spring 2009, just might be their very best. The girls are in peak form, the songs are delightful, the costumes are beautiful, the pace is fast, the energy level is high and...the best thing about it may simply be the fact that for once the camera crew and video director get it right from start to finish. The camerawork, editing and lighting are as close to flawless as I've ever noted in one of these. You can SEE the girls and the camera keeps them in sight, favoring compositions that allow us to watch them dance together without the extreme closeups and quick cutaways that ruin so many other H!P concert DVDs, esp. the ones featuring C-ute. I nominate this concert DVD as the single most important training tool to give to any and all crew members working on Hello! Project concerts. There are 23 songs in the 113-minute concert and it opens with one of my favorites, "Dakishimete Dakishimete." Even when the songs here aren't among my favorites (e.g. "Yuke Yuke Monkey Dance" and "Rival"), they're solid performance pieces and the girls make them all enjoyable. Just as in the Fall 2009 BK concert, where they did "Dschinghis Khan" a cappella, with Risako singing lead and the other girls providing vocal and "beatbox" back-up, there's a similar number here, with Momoko taking the lead. Risako gets a solo, always a good thing in my book, and Saki and Momo do their album duet of "Ah Merry-go-round." There are also duets featuring Saki and Miyabi; Momo and Yurina; and Maasa and Chinami. So everyone's taken care of. While the two strongest singers, Risako and Miyabi, get a higher proportion of solo lines in many of the songs, everyone else gets a lot of them also. No one's left out. Everyone fully participates. This is in contrast with some of the older C-ute concerts, where Maimi and Airi always dominated, leaving the others to serve as glorified back-up. (Fortunately, this has changed with the Spring 2010 C-ute concert, which I've also reviewed here.) There isn't a weak link in the group nor a weak spot in the show. It all ends on a softer note than usual with the title song, "Sono Subete no Ai ni," but it's the perfect way to close such a high-energy show. There are no extras on the DVD, not even any "Making of" footage. Too bad. I miss it.