Channel-Ai Community Blog - JPop reviews, articles

The album “heavenly” by L’Arc~en~Ciel is oft abandoned by new fans. It doesn’t maintain the importance that “Tierra” had as their debut, nor is it distinguished as being a million seller as with the band’s first #1 junior effort “True”. It’s the middle child of the sakura-era albums that’s lacking much needed attention and needs to be recognized. Let’s see how this much forgotten album fares…

LOVE PUNCH, Ai Otsuka’s debut album, was released on 2004.03.31. This album debuted at #3 on the Oricon album chart, which is an impressive feat considering that she had only been in the industry for 6 months, and was also facing strong competition from more experienced artists such as L’Arc~en~Ciel and Utada Hikaru…

Ayumi Hamasaki’s 37th single “HEAVEN” was recently released on the 14th September 2005. Apart from being Ayumi Hamasaki’s 3rd single for this year, it is also the theme song for the highly anticipated movie “SHINOBI -heart under blade-”.

Rie fu, one the talented singer in Japan who influenced by 70’s American Pops during the 3 years life in Maryland,US. These 3 years also took away her Japanese-slang English, maybe this is one of the reasons she tends to mix the Japanese and English lyrics. Some of the J-Pop fans may took a lots of attention on her songs because of a anime Bleach.

Yazawa Ai’s masterpiece manga “NANA” has been gaining a lot of attention this year: first with its very own tribute album, a dedicated café, and now a movie starring Nakashima Mika herself as the rocker-chick Oosaki Nana. To play with the “realism” of the movie a single has been released entitled “GLAMOROUS SKY” under the psuedonym “NANA starring MIKA NAKASHIMA”. Staying true to the style of Yazawa’s character, the single contains four rock tracks, the title track being composed by the famous rocker HYDE himself…