AQUA5

What would you call a band made of five otokoyaku? A boysband? A girlsband? ... a "Takaband"?

At any rate, call it what you may, it exists! ...or at least, it used to exist, since they have disbanded now.

But you can still find their music and videoclips, and that's what matters!

AQUA5 was a J-Pop group made of five otokoyaku who were in the snow troupe: Mizu Natsuki (top star at that time), Otozuki Kei (current snow troupe top star), Ouki Kaname (next cosmos troupe top star), Ayabuki Mao and Ayana Oto.

They were active from 2007 to 2010, when the lead Mizu Natsuki retired from Takarazuka.

They only released three singles and one album, and they had one live concert in Tokyo.

They also participated in the popular Japanese TV program "Tokyo Friend Park II" - go watch it if you can, you can find the video on tudou.com, it's really funny!

Honestly, I am not really into J-Pop (I prefer rock), but hearing these five great Takarasiennes singing together is still nice.

If you haven't listened to their music yet, then you should give it a go. Takarasiennes are really good singers after all, and it's nice to see them in a different kind of context.

Here are the links to the videoclips for their three singles:

Time to love (absolutely love their look here!)

Aqua Feel, Aqua Soul

Shirayuki (I think it's a really pretty PV)

Hope you'll enjoy this :)

On the Night of the End of the World

If you were a football fan, how would you feel if one of your favourite musicians wrote a song for the world championship?

One of the things I truly love besides musicals is... music. Especially rock, and especially Japanese rock.

So, of course, I am a great fan of X-Japan.

Lately I was looking for some info, so I had a look at Yoshiki's page on wikipedia (which I hadn´t done in a while) and I found out something great!

As one of his many jobs as a composer, Yoshiki has written a song for the 90th anniversary of Takarazuka!

This might not be great news for some of you, as it dates to 2004, but I was thrilled when I found out about it.

The song was performed by Haruno Sumire, flower's troupe top star at that time.

The title is 世界の終りの夜に (Sekai no owari no yoru ni), which means "on the night of the end of the world".

I think it's really beautiful... well, Yoshiki's works usually are.

I have found the videos for two versions of this song, you can find them here and here.

Enjoy!