I’ve seen Akishibu Project mentioned a decent amount on Twitter lately, but I’ve never heard of them. It turns out this is their first single, so I’m not too late to the party. Some quick research reveals that this group was formed by former BiS member Rinahamu, and that their theme is to bridge Shibuya and Akihabara cultures? That’s a pretty eclectic mix there for sure. In any case, this is a pretty damn cool PV.
Learning their theme, I guess it makes sense that the first thing that stands out about this PV is how great everyone looks. We get glimpses of the girls in civilian wear that is very stylish looking. Most notably, we see a lot of Arakawa Yuuna at the start, who has ended up being my first impression favorite. She looks like a much younger version of Shiraishi Mai, but is actually only a year younger than her. What a pleasant surprise. Ahem.
As the video goes on we see other members wearing clothes that are equally as trendy. Most of these shots are kinda quick and it would have been nice to see a little more of the stylish clothing. For the most part, we see the girls in the dance shot wearing intricately decorated kimonos. Half of them get a pink one, the others get a dark purple-ish color. Both look really good. They’re decorated in flowers and they look pretty expensive. Just like Shibuya! Some girls also have quite the amount of make-up on. It’s not quite excessive, but I guess it fits in with the Shibuya culture they want to represent.
In any case, this PV is definitely eye candy. The outfits are very nice and the girls are all pretty attractive to boot. Yuuna especially. In a nice turn of events, the youngest members of this group are 19, so no trap with this group. As an older fan it’s nice to have a group or two that I don’t have to feel (as) creepy watching.
The backdrop for this video is a shrine building. Unfortunately I don’t have a good enough understanding of Japanese religious culture to be a little less vague, but the backdrop feels very natural when coupled with the kimonos. Some light post-production also adds to the feel of the video with a tolerable amount of color dulling. The PV mostly sticks to these shrine dance shot scenes, with a few solo shots here and there. Like I said before, it would have been cool to see more of their civilian wears since what is visible looks quite nice, but kimonos are nice to look at too.
There’s really not much else to the PV. No story, no wild effects, no dialogue or attempted plot twist. The production behind it is reasonably good, camera work is fine, and scene selection while dance shot biased is good. It’s a good PV overall.
The song itself is pretty fun. It’s pretty standard pop-rock fare, but has enough energy to be memorable. It does have a very, very faint tint of BiS flavor to it now that I know about the connection, and it’s a nice spice added into the mix for sure. Going on this video alone, it’s hard to tell if they have any powerful solo vocalists, but I really enjoy how they sound as a chorus: youthful, but not amateurish. Good stuff overall. I can definitely hang with this group. I’ll surely be checking out their other stuff soon!
Akishibu Project’s 1st single dropped August 9th.
Watch: YouTube (Official)
Buy on Amazon JP: Type A [Regular Edition]
| Type B [Regular Edition]
| Type C [Regular Edition]
| Type D [Regular Edition]
| Type E [Regular Edition]
Buy on CDJapan: Type A [Regular Edition] | Type B [Regular Edition] | Type C [Regular Edition] | Type D [Regular Edition] | Type E [Regular Edition]
