Mano Erina - My Days for You!

[rob]

For me, Listening to Koharu was like inserting barbed wire in my ears, through my brain out the other side and then yanking the wire back and forth in my head.



Mano however, is actually quite pleasant to listen to.



So no, I would disagree 100% that she is a "slightly better Koharu"



The problem I think Mano has is a breathing one, she seems to struggle quite badly when the dances involve a lot of moving, personally if she can't do high energy dancing and sing at the same time, just don't bother.



I think we all know by now that Mano's solo career will never take off, I still enjoy listening to her songs and I hope she does more acting because she genuinely seems quite good at it.

[Madara]

[quote name='Em-El' timestamp='1307575625' post='101089']

[quote name='Madara' timestamp='1307546777' post='101039']

I liked Mano's early at-the-piano pieces, but I found her really below par in the two winter concerts. She's getting worse. I don't plan on getting any more of her albums/concerts.[/quote]



Normally I don't bother defending Mano since opinions are irrational; but, since you're someone who I know has bought (and enjoyed, I thought) several of her albums and DVDs, I figured I'd ask. Your sentence sounds strange. Like you're giving up on her because of the winter concert. I know that live singing just isn't something she can do, but I hope you're giving up on her because you don't like her recent songs, not because of the bad performance of some three songs from the H!P concert.



In any case, I hope you at least watch her most recent concert on YouTube or something when it comes out in three months or whatever. It was far better than the sparse setlists of her previous 2.5 concerts. (And I would say the performance was far more even than her winter performance, although she still can't and probably won't ever be able to properly sing "Lucky Aura" live.)

[/quote]





Truth to tell, Mano's just drifted off my radar. I guess I'm really attached to her "at-the-piano" phase and lost interest once she stopped. I will admit I didn't like the songs she sang in the winter concert either. The poor delivery just made it worse. I enjoyed her first two concerts, but the last one--with S/mileage as a co-act--didn't impress me much. I even did a post in a thread about it here, asserting that I needed to watch it and evaluate it and then I found an earlier post in the same thread giving my opinion on it. I'd completely forgotten that I'd seen it! (So of course I deleted the new post.) Don't recall what I thought about her most recent CD, though. Need to listen again.



But I guess everything she's done since her hauntingly sweet "Hajimete no Kei Ken" has been anticlimactic for me.



Maybe I should give the new concert a chance, though. Thanks for the heads-up on it.

[EmEl]

After looking through Mano's new photobook, I can say definitively that the reason there are actually different looking covers this time for each version is that they just took some extra shots from the photobook shoot and cropped them to CD cover size (well, they didn't even do that for Limited A). Some would call this cheating, but they covered themselves by making it a sort of theme:



photobook: "Mano Days"

single: "My Days for You"

concert name: "801 Days"

Idol DVD: "From Days"



Now that's artistic.



Speaking of artistic, they showed us the "Bus Ver." of the PV today. It's like the Riverside version, except it's on a bus.

[rob]

On a bus??!! shit's getting real.



I still LOVE my barbed wire analogy

[EmEl]

94% of Mano's songs are lyriced by Miura Yoshiko. The other 2 songs were written by KAN. Even the songs that Tsunku composed for her were written by Miura. This is the first major single to not be written by Miura, and the first song to not be written by either Miura or KAN. It's some dude named NOBE. It's okay though. It seems Miura wasn't sacked since she wrote the b-side.



But more important of course is the composer. As has been noted, Pass-the-Mano has ended up in the hands of Takui. He also wrote the b-side. This is a fairly angry song considering it's Mano. I wish it were the a-side. Not that it matters for her sales since nothing would help that, but it matters because Hello! Project continues to use their special brand of 15-minute CDs for their singles that are, of course, technically and physically impossible to fit a second instrumental on.



This is the sort of song I was expecting when I heard Takui was gonna be composing. But I admit I don't know all of his songs like I should. Perhaps either the French or Japanese PetitPucchi can say whether "10 Carat" is more his style.



(Edited to add an important fact. Despite the change in lyricist, this is the seventh Mano single that includes the words "kono mune".)

[Melon]

My incredibly simple impressions ahead! Also, if anyone wants to check out Takui's other stuff I (and I'm fairly certain Pucchi would too) would be glad to give you some recs.



01: I ended up liking this song! As for it being Takui's style, he's written several in this style. It's like a typical album closer for him. He probably thought that would be better for an idol than his style of late. <img src='http://mm-bbs.org/public/style_emoticon ... /laugh.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':lol:' /> It's also not a type of song I normally enjoy from him, but Mano's thin sweet voice works well with it. The beginning reminds me of old anime closing themes. It's a nice summer ballad for me, I think I'll put it on my playlist of summer songs. Yes, good song B+



02. 10 karat is really good! I like the repeating word parts. My only complaint is there's not much variation in her vocals. Especially when she says "kore de sayonara ne/yame ni shite oku wa" in the same tone as it before, when it had been building to that line. A little louder or rougher would've been nice. I don't know if that's what he wanted or her voice hasn't matured enough to do something like that. (fake edit- Now that I've heard it several times, I can hear her trying, maybe she's too sweet to be angry d'aww hahaha.) It will be fun to see if she ever does this live. She could really have fun with it. The b-side is sort of the vein into some of his stuff (he does several different styles), but the acoustic guitar is a rare treat! B+



Overall: It's a different Mano and I think she did a great job with stepping outside her zone.

[eri]

I am ambivalent about this single. The A side would have worked better, imo, without the generic instruments and synth. It is a nice melody for her voice but it just sounds so "clogged" (??) which makes it generic. I miss her piano music - those melodies felt very "clean" and classic. I can't explain myself well.



The B side doesn't hold up for me after multiple listenings...all I hear is "LA LA LA LA LA" in my head over and over.