Kis-My-BUSAIKU 2013.08.04 Review

I haven’t been able to review Kis-My-BUSAIKU (キスマイ　ブサイク) in a while because of the availability of the videos – this is the first episode I’ve been able to see since July 14th – so apologies to those who have been following these reviews.

The guest for this episode was singer and DJ SILVA-san. I don’t know anything about her, or whether she was the guest on the previous episode or not . . .

. . . but she’s a particularly appropriate guest for this episode, because the scenario is delivering a message (I think it’s supposed to be their first anniversary together) to a girlfriend during karaoke, and who better to comment on that than a singer and DJ?

This continues a method they adopted in the July 21st episode – selecting guests who might not be as famous as the guests in earlier episodes, but who would be able to give more constructive criticism so that there wouldn’t be a need for a VTR critique from a specialist.

As usual, I’ll go through the contenders in alphabetical order to obscure who got which place. You won’t have any trouble figuring out what song each of the members chooses, by the way – get a load of the font they used here:

Kis-My-BUSAIKU 2013.07.14 Review

In the May 27th episode of Kis-My-BUSAIKU (キスマイ　ブサイク), the members of the idol group Kis-My-Ft2 had to purchase underwear for a pretend girlfriend and have their approach and choice critiqued by a panel of 100 female judges around their age. That was a pretty good episode, though I couldn’t assess their efforts independently and I griped about what amounted to two underwear advertisements during the show.

The reason I mention that episode is because this one is very similar – except this time they have to pick out swimsuits for their pretend girlfriends. Is it perhaps too soon to try such a similar situation? Well, I’ll let that one pass for now in favor of a different question – will their experiences with the underwear lead them to better results with the swimsuits?

We once again get the same sort of icon in the bottom left corner as we had in the underwear iteration:

The guest was Nanao-san (菜々緒). She’s the least familiar/famous guest who has been on so far, but there’s a good reason for her to be on for this episode in particular. You see, she’s a fashion model who would certainly be up on the latest trends and be able to critique their approaches. And I’ll just say up front that she was very good about talking about how they did, commenting avidly during the videos.

As usual, they revealed the rankings in 3-2-4-5-6-1-7 order, but I’ll go through the members in alphabetical order to avoid giving the results away.

Kis-My-BUSAIKU 2013.07.07 Review

This episode of Kis-My-BUSAIKU (キスマイ　ブサイク) was what they called a high-level deciding match – a playoff, if you will. As such, only the top three over the course of the series contended in two scenarios. Conveniently (I’m being a bit sarcastic here), the top three were the same three who are usually set forward ahead of the other four – Fujigaya-kun, Tamamori-kun, and Kitayama-kun. While the records of Fujigaya-kun and Tamamori-kun are clearly far ahead of the rest, Kitayama-kun could have easily been surpassed by Senga-kun after just one more episode, or Yokoo-kun in two. Perhaps we can hope for a less obvious top three next time we get this playoff episode (presumably after another season). For now . . . .

The guest was Ookubo Kayoko-san, who did the June 9th episode, but didn’t get a second episode. The guests usually do two episodes in a row because both episodes are recorded at the same time, as evidenced by the fact that they’re wearing the same thing in both episodes. Does that mean this episode was recorded with the June 9th episode and just shown later? Probably not, because Ookubo Kayoko-san is wearing something different. Of course, if they told her ahead of time that the two halves of her appearance was going to be separated by a month, she might have opted for a clothing change in the middle, but I doubt that’s what happened.

So, most of the guys get to kick back for this episode . . .

. . . as all of the burden rests on the top three. The first situation was the smart way to deal with a girlfriend’s upturned skirt at a cafe after she just returned from the restroom. As with the fart situation in a previous episode, they went with a less embarrassing variation on this theme, since the girlfriend is well-clothed with tights underneath.

Kis-My-BUSAIKU 2013.06.23 Review

What’s the right way to show a person you love that you’re angry? How should you show that something is unacceptable to you while not endangering the relationship? The members of Kis-My-Ft2 will attempt to answer these questions in this episode of Kis-My-BUSAIKU (キスマイ　ブサイク) in their own unique ways. Of course, there are no absolute right answers, but through this episode we’ll see which answers are better, which are worse, and why.

As in last week’s episode, the guest is Sekine Tsutomu-san, one Japanese TV personality I’m always happy to see because has a very well-rounded manner about him – being able to be serious with gravity and funny without stock gags.

Nikaido-kun didn’t do too badly in the last episode – that is, he wasn’t in one of the two bottom spots – so can he continue his improvement here, or will we see the return of the fail-prone Nikaido?

The situation leading to the argument between the members and their girlfriend requires some explaining, and I’ll try my best but my translation skills are . . . iffy at best. Anyway: because their cell phone got totally soaked, they weren’t able to get in contact with her (I guess no one has a land line anymore?). The next day, she’s suspicious that they were fooling around. As far as I can tell, their goal is to be offended by the accusation in such a way as to convey the fact that they still love her (as opposed to a way that would only reinforce her suspicions that there’s no love anymore). This is one heck of a tricky situation – how will they do?

Kis-My-BUSAIKU 2013.06.16 Review

In this Kis-My-BUSAIKU (キスマイ　ブサイク), the members of Kis-My-Ft2 had to show how they’d react when they heard their girlfriend fart for the first time. With the girlfriend understandably embarrassed, this situation calls for tact and any attempt at humor will have to be carefully crafted to avoid making the embarrassment worse.

They had the perfect guest for this one – Sekine Tsutomu-san. He’s a classy comedian who’ll be able to tell where any ill-fated attempts at humor went wrong.

As the scenario is introduced, the guys immediately started talking about how difficult it was. It doesn’t sound like any of them was especially confident.