Single V: Madayade

Yet another great dance video from Berryz Kobo, "Madayade" offers two versions of the video, plus a solid 16 minutes of "Making of" footage. The main video shows the girls all decked out in full OL (Office Lady) garb and actually sitting at desks and supposedly working, with white supervisors, both male and female, hovering over them. They read the English-language Japan Times (Maasa), carry water trays (Chinami), answer phones (Yurina), and sit at the computer intently typing (Saki). Risako sits there doing her makeup and Momoko munches on snacks. At some point, they all basically stop working. Miyabi throws her papers up in the air and Yurina sits basking in the fall of U.S. dollar bills around her. This is all intercut with the dance routine, with them dressed in very cute color-coded dresses (yellow, orange, pink and red) with matching satin neck scarves, doing the main dance number. And it's a good one. The song is fun, too, with a nice surf guitar riff in it. The Dance Shot version leaves out the office footage and shows them in their attractive dance costumes doing the dance routine only, well-lit in medium long-shot, photographed from different angles, but all well chosen. They've become very good at this kind of video, just as C-ute has (check out "Forever Love," which has a very similar structure). Both groups have gotten far better at these kinds of numbers than the current lineup of Morning Musume (which has been working together for much less time than the lineups of Berryz and C-ute have). One of the great things about this video is the way every one of the Berryz girls gets bits of business in the office part, solo lines in the song, and solo moves in the dance part. They're a true ensemble unit and no one's spotlighted more than the others. Risako's more often at the head of the group than I'd like, but not enough to overshadow any of the others. And they all look awesome in their Office Lady outfits. At 16 minutes, the "Making of" footage runs longer than usual for these Single-V's, which is fine with me. The more the merrier. In fact, I was upset with C-ute's otherwise wonderful "Forever Love" Single-V because it had only five minutes of Making of footage.