Juice=Juice - Bitansan MV Review

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Juice=Juice’s Bitansan MV is part of their 11th triple A-side single (Bitansan / Potsurito / Good bye & Good luck!) releasing on February 13, 2019 in Japan. It will also be Yanagawa Nanami’s last single before graduating from the group in March 2019 after joining the group since June 2017. It is also the first single to include Inaba Manaka, who joined the group in June 2018. Juice=Juice currently consists of Miyazaki Yuka, Kanazawa Tomoko, Takagi Sayuki, Miyamoto Karin, Uemura Akari, Yanagawa Nanami, Dambara Ruru, and Inaba Manaka. 

Bitansan was written by Yamazaki Aoi, with the composition and arrangement done by KOUGA, and the music video was directed by Sugiyama Hiroki. The MV [Which can be seen below.] has several different featured shots. There are the individual close-up shots of each of the members, a dance shot which was shot inside an almost all-glass room located on top of a tall building with their blue costumes, solo shots of the members with a fish eye lens effect, and outdoor drama shots with Miyamoto Karin and Inaba Manaka in normal clothes. In particular for the drama shots, it has a very retro look with a 4:3 aspect ratio in contrast to the wider aspect ratio seen in the rest of the MV. It makes it look like it came from a TV drama back in the 90s. I really enjoyed those scenes as it adds to the lyrics, and what they mean. Karin and Manaka have really good expressions for the outdoor scenes. It showed more effort was put into the production of this music video, which helps with the overall presentation. In the past, Hello! Project has been known to often produce simple music videos with just close-up shots and a dance shot in a studio. I really like how all of the members look in the MV with the blue outfits, and they all look really beautiful. There was one surprise I had when I first watch the music video and that was seeing Sayuki with short hair as I don’t recall seeing her cut her hair so short before. It is a different look for her, but it can be a nice change to experiment with her style.

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For the music, I like that it's upbeat but at certain parts of the song, the tempo slows down with the piano and other lighter instruments. The melody and beat are really catchy. The other audio effects in the arrangement adds a nice touch in the background. It looks like everyone in the group gets time to shine in the music video either with solo lines, sharing some lines among 2-4 members or solo close-up shots. There doesn’t seem to be a moment where I thought that a member seemed to not appear in the music video as often as others. The song featured Karin and Manaka with a lot more shots than the other members; however, they did a really good job being a double center for the music video. Since this will be Nanami’s last single, it’s a bit obvious that “Good bye & Good luck!” will be her graduation song which makes me wonder who will get the attention in “Potsurito”. Sayuki, and perhaps Yuka, Akari and Tomoko didn’t really get as much attention so I wonder if the second song in the single will feature them more. Since debuting last year Ruru has grown a lot in her vocal ability and she adds a lot of talent to the group line-up both visually and vocally.

With this song being the first release from Hello! Project in 2019, I can’t wait to listen to the other two songs in Juice=Juice’s 11th single when it gets released.

-Winfield

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Juice=Juice - Bitansan (Promotion Edit)