Albums I Adore (and why You Should Too!): Puffy Amiyumi - Nice.

Ever since May, I have been on a roll reviewing albums for the Circle of Friendz project, taking a look at an album from almost every single Gorillaz collaborator. Another common thread between those album is not just the animated band that they worked with on a track, but also the fact that I am very new to the vast majority of these records. When I see what album I review next, it's one that I have never heard in full or at all before I started the project. As I was working on one of these reviews, I had the idea to do another album review series, but with works I'm a lot more familiar with. While Circle of Friendz focuses on a great Unown of sorts, going into albums and even genres I wouldn't have looked much into otherwise, I wanted to do a series that focused more on charted territory. This series takes a look at the albums most near and dear to me, ones I have recognized from front to back and have become very familiarized with ever since I started taking a dive into the world of music. While I will be covering some albums that people who like Circle of Friendz may already love very soon, this time I want to go completely in another direction, not getting myself involved in any of Damon Albarn's shenanigans for a minute.

I want to talk about J-pop, more specifically Puffy Amiyumi. I had already covered them in a past article, talking about their three-season animated series on Cartoon Network from back in the mid-2000's. I had started rewatching the show last year, and after getting some ways into the series I had already grown fond of what music from the band's discography was being used. Soon enough, I had tried out their two-disc compilation album 15 and absolutely adored it. The album was close to two hours, but I didn't feel that at all. Right after that, I dove straight in to the albums themselves, first diving into a compliation album made to tie into the TV series. My next stop was Nice, the 2003 album that had come out not long before the show went into production, using a handful of tracks from this in the show itself. While the two compliation albums I had heard before were fun, light pieces of J-pop that I really got into, Nice was when I knew I had stumbled upon one of my favorite bands as the album absolutely floored me in ways japanese music hadn't before. 

On a side note before i begin, the ways reviews will be handled is a little different than from the Circle of Friendz posts. While in those reviews, albums are talked about in a more general sense, as I dive into what makes the album listenable as a whole as opposed to dissecting each individual track, Albums I Adore will go a little more in-depth. These will be handled as track-by-track looks into just how great these records are, focusing in more on every track's strengths. The numerical scores will be ditched as well for these. Now with all the intro stuff out of the way, let's dive into why Nice is one of the nicest albums I've heard.

1. Planet Tokyo/Akai Buranko - This album goes on a powerful start, and I definitely see why this got an English version. This song of any of Puffy's tracks that weren't used as theme songs seems to be the one people remember, although I think Cartoon Network using the song constantly when advertising the show helps out with this. It also helps that this song gets you SO PUMPED UP! It's got a catchy hook and there's some of my favorite guitar work on the album. I don't think there could've been a better opener choice than this!

2. Tokyo Nights - I keep getting the I'M IN LOVE part stuck in my head and try to keep myself from yelling out the hook whenever it comes on. It's a very nice piece of electropop that won't leave your head for weeks. You'll notice that lots of tracks all across this record have some pretty infectious hooks, and this could be one of the best examples.

3. Angel of Love - The weirdest thing about this track is that sometimes I honestly forget this one was on here. Usually when people say that, that's for tracks that are super boring or forgettable. This one isn't boring at all though! It's one of the slower tracks on here, something you turn on just to chill out. It's very relaxing in that way! I love the horns during the instrumental break too, they really make this song feel like something off a Round Table ft. Nino record.

4. Sayonara - This was in the top 3 tracks on the record for me when I first discovered the record, until I listened to the final tracks of the Japanese release some time later. It still stands as an album highlight for me, however. This is a great piece of guitar pop about leaving behind a friend you love as you set off on a new path for yourself. The marimba really adds to the song too.

5. Invisible Tomorrow - Now the album steers towards more energetic pop rock again like on the first track. This has to be one of the best tracks to sing (or scream) along to on this entire album. There's also three different versions of the track for different releases. The one on Nice, no matter what country you got the album from is the original Japanese. Then there's an English version that's on the Scooby Doo 2 (of all things!) soundtrack and on the Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi album tying into the TV show. There's another english version of the track on the mini-album 59 that came out the year after this. All three of these tracks go in very different directions lyrically. Invisible Tomorrow is about heading out towards an uncertain tomorrow, never looking back. Friends Forever is basically what the title says, a song about friends staying together no matter how tough things get. So Long Zero describes a breakup and leaving someone you didn't love anymore. Of these, So Long Zero is DEFINITELY the weakest of the three, the vocals feel unusually weak compared to the rest of the discography. It felt very unsure and kinda uneven. Invisible Tomorrow and Friends Forever are on equal footing in vocal delivery, but I like Invisible Tomorrow the best. It's got the strongest message of the three.

6. Thank You - Yumi wrote and sings solo on this charming little piece. This track is about having boys and girls coming together to talk with each other and connect as people and it's so charming and adorable and I really like it. I had been watching through the series when I heard this one and it was really funny to think that Yumi had made this one when what I had in mind was less her real-life personality and musical style, which I hadn't done much research into then, and more the Yumi of the animated series, who I expected to be behind more rock focused tracks like Planet Tokyo.

7. Long Beach Nightmare - Right after a Yumi-driven track comes an Ami driven one. This one is a pretty fun summer jam (and I will be talking lots about summer jams in my next post!) It feels so breezy and like I'm hearing this playing out from a portable radio on the beach (you know, if I was a beach person...) This is another fun sing along of the several on this album.

8. Your Love is a Drug -  Love is an addicting thing for sure, and I can certainly attest to this. This song feels so damn accurate and close to home describing the way I felt the first time I fell in love back in middle school. When I did, I felt like I was on cloud nine whenever I saw her, and just how much i felt like my life turned around after I started talking to her. This song totally captured that special time in my life in the form of a fun rock song, and one of the duo's most relatable tracks in my eyes. I also see this track alongside Planet Tokyo as being an attempt to get on pop radio and it honestly wouldn't stick out too much I think.

9. K2G - My second favorite song on the album. For the readers who remember Teen Titans, this song played in Mad Mod's introduction episode during season 1. When I watched that season a few years ago, I thought the episode itself was terrible and almost none of the jokes landing. What I did like though was the montage that used this as background music. I loved the music in that sequence and I really appreciated having this track on here, really gave the episode a bright spot. It's a fast, upbeat and super catchy ska track (First my kablam post, then the selecter and now this? I seem to be attracted to ska lately.) A great track to bounce around the house to.

10. Shiawase (Happiness) - My third favorite song on the album. This is a soothing, lowkey acoustic track. It feels like I'm hearing Ami and Yumi gathered around a campfire singing this to each other late at night before heading off to bed. It's a good way to settle things down after K2G and honestly would've been a great comforting way to end off this great album. Everything about the track, from the guitar to the harmonies, feel very comforting to me. It's happiness in song form!

Here's where things diverge. I alluded to earlier about different versions of this album. There's one track listing for the Japanese release and a different one for the North American version. The Japanese version starts with a Japanese language version of the opening track, with an English version for the NA release. The tracks afterward carry on just the same until after track 10, Shiawase. The NA version may have had different tracks because the last two tracks of the Japan release were tracks that had been released on the U.S. exclusive compilation album An Illustrated History just a year before. Let's dive right into the NA version before doing the Japan version.

11a. Urei - This track feels like this should've been a background song during one of the fights in Teen Titans. Heck, this song actually went along great with the fights whenever I read the comics based on the original cartoon. It's got a powerful hook and could go great with whatever fight it gets paired with. This one is a NA exclusive, but is only in Japanese, for some odd reason.

12a. Teen Titans Theme - T-E-E-N T-I-T-A-N-S TEEN TITANS LET'S GO!! ANYONE born after the early 90's who watched Cartoon Network could probably recite this bad boy from heart. This one honestly took a bit to grow on me but damn if this isn't one of the best cartoon theme songs out there. It's catchy as hell and that chant is damn near hypnotizing!  I totally get why this song was on Nice, the series had just started around that time, and it was a perfect opportunity to advertise.

Now let's move onto the softer Japanese tracks

11b. Atarashii Hibi - This is a sweet little track about a woman buried in stress from relationships and works, never able to have much fun with her life. She dreams of escaping this life just for a little while, wanting to go on a trip without anyone knowing or going on a treasure hunt. This one doesn't go for a radio-friendly chorus in the way that the other tracks do, a little odd but it's so fun that it works.

12b. Tomodachi (Friends) - I'M HERE, I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS! Not only is this my favorite song off this album, it's also my favorite Puffy Amiyumi track and one of my absolute favorite Japanese songs in general. First off, just the name makes it feel like this would've been a great ending song for the cartoon. Second, This song is the definition of comfy. It's so calming and I will admit that I teared up just a little when I saw the live performance. God, this song is not just a great little summary of this album's strengths, but also just what I love about this group. It's the ultimate feel good song for the ultimate feel-good album.

Nice is a charming little album that's packed with great moments. It's also extremely consistent in ways even other Puffy albums weren't, it's all super good! This is a pinnacle of 2000's J-Pop in my eyes, and I can't thank Ami Onuki and Yumi Yoshimura enough for this gem of a record. Here's to hoping that a new album is down the pipeline soon, but I'd be just fine with the single-focused angle that they have gone in the last six years. Anything to keep them making music.

Next on the Albums I Adore, it's gonna be a surprise! Let's just say that it's a great summer album...

Bye Bye Boo~

Talking Too Much About Cartoons: Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi

Welcome back to the next installment of Talking Too Much About Cartoons, where I... well you get the idea from the title I think, so let's get to it! I promise this won't be as long as the last one of these I did.

In 2004, Cartoon Network was going through a major transformation. The most noticeable one was in its advertising. The channel went through its second major rebrand in the 12 years since the channel launched. Gone were the days of the "powerhouse" bumpers, for something more elaborate. Cartoon Network started the "CN City" era, having every commercial and coming up next bumper be intertwined within an experimental new concept. In these, all of the original shows on the network all crossed over and seemed to live within the same city, with Miguzi happening underwater and Toonami in space as it always had been. Characters from completely different series interact with each other inbetween shows in an attempt to bring all of the channel's shows together and have more unified advertising and marketing compared to the competitors. Even the logo had changed after 12 years!

Another, maybe less obvious change was in its schedule. By this time, older Hanna Barbara cartoons had been pushed to the wayside, off the channel entirely and off to the spin-off channel Boomerang. Even the first of the original shows, the "Cartoon Cartoons," had been pushed to early mornings. Instead, CN had looked towards newer originals alongside acquired works, mostly anime. Anime had dominated the channel during the early 2000's, playing every afternoon on Toonami, alongside early Saturday mornings and late on Saturday nights. This transitioned to Miguzi as well, which played anime alongside cartoons that took lots of inspiration from anime, like Teen Titans and Code Lyoko. So to say the least, Cartoon Network, for a time was infatuated with Japanese culture at the time in the midst of the ongoing anime boom. In some ways, it only felt natural that the subject of today's post would happen the way the network was moving.

I mentioned Teen Titans a few sentences ago, and for good reason. When Teen Titans started in 2003, the show had blown up in the ratings and did very well for Cartoon Network. But one popular aspect of the series in particular was its theme song. Since Teen Titans tried differentiating itself from the rest of the DC Animated Universe by taking animation cues from anime, they also tried keeping up its "anime-ness" by actually getting a Japanese pop group for its theme song. This is where many American viewers had first heard of Puffy Amiyumi. Ami and Yumi had been popular in Japan since the mid 90's, and Teen Titans having them sing the opening may have been what swayed Cartoon Network to pick up a series based around them. Around the same time as the first season of Teen Titans was ready to release, Sam Register, then Vice President of the channel, pitched a show about the J-Pop duo. Renegade Animation, coming off of two failed pilots for CN and having only worked on commercials and shorts beforehand, had a stroke of luck when the network picked up the pilot for what would be Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi. The pilot itself definitely felt different from the final product in a few ways.

The main girls themselves got some different designs, Ami's look especially. The different artstyle certainly gave off more of a UPA vibe than the final designs did, a look similar to Gerald McBoingBoing (which also happened to get on Cartoon Network two years later.) Instead of nabbing dedicated cartoon voice actors like the final product did, this pilot got two Japanese women to voice them instead. The culture shock element of the show ended up being scrapped too. Honestly, the animation is somewhat smoother than in the final product, and my favorite part of the pilot overall (other than that brief use of Tomodachi off of An Illustrated History at the end of the pilot, although I'll be talking more about how good that song is very soon.) Comedywise, the pilot doesn't seem that different from the main show itself, I enjoyed it about as much as the series.

The final product is about animated versions of Ami Onuki and Yumi Yoshimura and the different adventures they go on inbetween gigs on a seemingly endless world tour taking them to practically every part of the world with a stage, alongside their penny pinching manager Kaz along for the ride. The dynamic duo face off against insane fans, talent sucking vampires, former band members wanting to take over and just about whatever else the writing staff has in mind. Pink-haired Ami is the typical optimistic girly girl, loving shopping and pink things and seems to fluctuate between drums and guitar in addition to vocals, just depending on the episode. Yumi is more of a sarcastic punk rock type, dressed up in purple. As you might expect, the two contrasting personalities clash pretty often in the show. So about the show itself? It's pretty ok. The comedy can be kinda hit or miss earlier on, as the staff is figuring out what they can do with this show. The dialogue can get hampered at points by some kinda weird voice direction, making them miss their mark. More often than not, thankfully, the direction works! The voice actors they got for Ami and Yumi are great. Ami was voiced by Janice Kawaye, who voiced Jenny-XJ9 in My Life as a Teenage Robot. Yumi has the voice talent of Grey DeLisle, who did Frankie Foster in Foster's Home and TONS of other characters for cartoons. Good on this show for getting them, because they really play a big part in making these characters feel memorable and endearing. They both do great jobs despite the occasional slip-up, and really fit the characters well.

Although I can't deny there are two more parts in the equation that make this show stand on its own as a pretty alright entry in Cartoon Network's original lineup. It's cute as hell and there's J-Pop involved. As you readers will soon find out and what friends I've had already know is that I'm a simple man. You don't need a ton to win me over. A show that combined two of the cutest character designs in western animation mixed with a genre I love and some great voice acting and decent comedy to go alongside it and I was totally sold. There are many moments in the show that use Puffy Amiyumi's music, mostly during montages. It runs the gambit of the group's career, from their debut AmiYumi to the then latest album at the time of the pilot, Nice. They also played songs in small music videos occasionally in the first two seasons. I really liked this aspect because it got me to dive into the discography of the real band, and it was some of the most fun I had listening to music this year!

Season 3 had downscaled two elements I really liked about the show. The music had showed up much less, as the short videos disappeared and less episodes used tracks. Another aspect that seemed to disappear later on were the live action segments. For much of the show, the real life Ami and Yumi showed up to do skits at the beginning (and in season 1, at the end) of each episode. They felt a little awkward at first, especially with how disconnected they were with the segments, but they really began to grow on me, kinda like the show itself did in a way. It helps that the real band were super cute like their animated counterparts were. After Cartoon Network stopped broadcasting the show, the latter half of season 3 dropped these segments entirely. At first, I had thought that it was a mistake on the part of the network that the last five or so english episodes got captured from, but that got proven wrong because the final episode had a live action bit in the upload which was a montage of Ami and Yumi having fun on the set over the seasons. Maybe they thought that the videos and live action were too distracting and got in the way of the show? The tradeoff seemed to be that season 3 was all in all the funniest of the seasons. The writers seemed to realize that the show wasn't gonna last long and reveled in that by doing more fourth wall breaking gags and bringing back characters as opposed to just whatever the new setting of the week was, even if there was lots of that in season 3. My biggest wish was that Julie from the final episode had been used more than once, her design is just as cute as Ami and Yumi's and the idea of her constantly trying to destroy the band sounds like it could've been pretty funny to see in new ways.

I saw this show a little bit when I was younger, mainly on Cartoon Network Fridays, as it didn't have tons of reruns compared to the other originals on the channel. I was ok with it, but it didn't leave much of a lasting impression on me. On a rewatch, Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi was fun. A lot of fun. Like, more than I was expecting going in. The songs are great, the plots are fun if maybe generic at times with almost sickeningly sweet endings, the comedy works and Ami and Yumi are a great pair. Cartoon Network seemed to like it for a while as well, as it became a mini marketing machine at the time. Several online and console games, an complilation album, a decent bit of advertising and even a thanksgiving day parade float! Maybe it was not the best Cartoon Network had at the time, in an era of modern classics like Megas XLR or 80% of the Toonami lineup at the time, but I certainly had a good time with it. This could've only happened at the exact time in the exact place on the exact channel it was on. So maybe it's a good time capsule into what was happening with animation during the mid 2000's. I'm a sucker for time capsules, anyway.

Thanks for reading this word vomit all the way through. This didn't have the sort of personal narrative that my last cartoon review did, but I just finished a rewatch of the show and I just had to talk about it. I wanna bring up the music one last time, because the first post of a new segment I'm calling Albums I Adore (and Why You Should Too!) will be covering the antics of the real band behind these colorful characters, covering my personal favorite album of theirs, Nice. This will be after the next Circle of Friendz. Hope you read it.


BYE BYE BOO~!!! sorry i couldn't help myself.