Single V: Kowarenai Ai ga Hoshiino / Get Up ! Rapper / Be All Right !

2003 gave us the greatest Hello! Project shuffle units ever and two of the three or four greatest shuffle unit songs ("Kowarenai..." and "Get Up! Rapper"). The videos are pretty spectacular too, although I do enjoy the live performances of these songs that we saw at the Hello! Project 2003 Summer "Yosha Bikkuri Summer!" Concert. I love the mix of performers here, with Atsuko Inaba, Mika Todd, Masae Ohtani and Mai Satoda joining Morning Musume's Rika, Ai-chan and Risa in 7Air and the memorable team-up of Nacchi, Aibon, Aya Matsuura, Makoto Ogawa and Yuki Maeda in Salt5 at a time when Nacchi and Aibon were both still in MM. It's a rare opportunity to see Yuki Maeda perform so far out of her Enka comfort zone, especially since it's such a heavily hiphop-infused song and dance number. And then we've got 11Water with eleven delightful performers, including some of H!P's greatest beauties at the time although, being biased, I consider them ALL beautiful. The 11 wear attractive red outfits, some in cute caps and most with black boots. The videos are great but the real thrill of this DVD is the addition of 30 minutes of "Making of" footage, with ten minutes devoted to each unit. Since they all shot their videos on the same day and at the same place, there is some interaction between the different units. So we get to see Aya and Miki together three years before GAM and at one point we see a trio consisting of one girl from each unit, Kaori, Rika and Aibon. Sometimes, the person behind the camera is one of the girls. (We hear Aibon's voice addressing her subjects at one point.) A running gag involves many of them imitating Aya's intro, "Matsuura Aya desu!" We get to see extended glimpses of Yuki, who's never seen much in these segments. We also get to see Aibon and Nono up to their usual mischief, a key reason to seek out "Making of" footage from this era, although the two never appear together here. That would have been awesome if they did. Mika Todd speaks English to the camera and then to Nono at the very start of the "Making of" portion. Most of the girls get to address the camera alone. Rika's speech is peppered with the words, "sexy," "kawaii," "kakkoii," and "7Air saiko!" How true. I wish there had been dance shot versions of these videos. The shots we get of dance rehearsals are quite exciting. And we get to see more glimpses of just how good a dancer Nono was.