VS Arashi 2013.08.22 Review

I always look forward to athlete appearances on VS Arashi (VS 嵐), and athlete teams rarely get more fun than Japan’s national women’s volleyball team – the guests on this episode. Unless the Arashi guys do a lot better than they have been the past few five months or so, they’re not going to pull out a victory this time. Will they rise to the occasion?

The representatives of the Volleyball team were Kimura Saori-san (木村 沙織), Ebata Yukiko-san (江畑 幸子), Shinnabe Risa-san (新鍋 理沙), Iwasaka Nana-san (岩坂名奈), Miyashita Haruka-san, coach Masayoshi Manabe-san (真鍋 政義), and veteran Obayashi Motoko-san (大林 素子). Unfortunately, that means we’re missing the member who really injected humor in the previous appearances from the team – Araki Erika-san. Except for Obayashi-san, the team looks like a quieter bunch, so while they’ll put on a good show in the games, they’re not going to provide any side entertainment.

So, we turn to the plus one guests for the humor and, while at first glance I thought most of the hilarity would be provided by Bibiru Oki-san, since he’s worked with Arashi with before, it would turn out that the other plus one guest – Kikuchi Ami-san – would steal the show. By the way, both Bibiru-san and Kikuchi-san were in the volleyball club in grade school.

VS Arashi 2013.02.21 Review

VS Arashi (VS 嵐 ） is a game show hosted by the idol group Arashi, who compete against a different team of entertainers every week. Every so often (and a lot more often since the start of 2013), though, those entertainers are actually athletes, as they are in this episode. Before we get to them, though, Sakurai-san mentions that they’ll be doing MMDA on March 7th – that’s Most Most Dame (Useless) Arashi. They’re going to punish the member who was the most counterproductive through the past year. Last year, it was Sakurai-san himself, so perhaps he’s mentioning it with confidence – or hope – that they won’t pick him again.

Matsumoto-kun thinks that Ohno-san is the most obvious choice, but I didn’t catch the reasoning. Maybe MatsuJun is just trying to deflect blame from himself.

I also didn’t quite understand Ohno’s response, but it had Sakurai-san saying “kakkoii!” (Cool!)