Girl's Box LOVERS HIGH Review, Part Four

Why, oh why, did Hoshii Nanase have to play the 'bitch' character, save for the last five minutes of this film?  She plays it WELL, mind you, but if this were your first exposure to the actress, you'd probably wonder what the hell she'd ever done before this and why she showed up for filming if she was just going to be a crab about the whole thing.  Nacchan was one of the cast members that I was really excited about seeing and unfortunately, in my opinion, the writers left her out in the cold.

You WISH you were this prolific at age 19;  trust me, you do.  

She started out in music with the single "Glass no Kutsu ~Nacchan~".  The song is about being discovered;  she, the 'everygirl', somehow the song is also about the whirlwind of exposure she got from being the star of a popular orange juice commercial in real life.  So the video for this song, THE BEST CHEAP VIDEO EVER MADE, is this:  Nacchan walks down a dirt path in a school uniform with a bunch of other school kids in the background, as if she's late for something.  She's not too hurried at the start, but as the song goes on, she picks up the pace, and is almost in a full sprint three minutes later, leaving the other kids in the dust behind her.  It's all done in one shot, and the song plays, but she doesn't 'sing' it, she just keeps hurrying to some important encounter somewhere behind us.  An analogy for something, probably 'heading towards fame', but still very open to interpretation.  

It's a religious experience for we viewers at the very least.  We never find out what she is running to, she never gets there, and it doesn't seem to matter.  This song is the perfect pep-talk for those times when we know we have to keep going despite all, but just can't seem to face the world.  

Sometimes when the mood is right I'll sing along with this song, and choke back tears when she gets to the bridge: "watashi wa Nacchan/utatte odoru/jyu go byo dake no Cinderella" and I realize that I'm crying over a f**kin' orange juice commercial, one that refers to 'becoming Cinderella in fifteen seconds', and I don't care, because it's really about something more, dammit!  The next bridge is even more perfect for the occasion, "watashi wa Nacchan/itsu itsu made mo/kagayaki tsuzukeru Cinderella", (forever, a Cinderella shining endlessly), and it's you versus the WORLD!  So if this twiggy little girl can face a seemingly insurmountable challenge, what's stopping you, eh?

Quickly bucking the orange juice image, she then released "Renai 15 Simulation", which is a five-minute rap song.  On first listen I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard.  Every listen after that I've been transfixed, bobbing my head like I'm Dr. Dre all of a sudden, and listenin' to her droppin' a flow over that slammin' beat.  

I've memorized this song, for godsakes, and once joked that I'd still listen to it "if it had been recorded with a boombox from a mile away".  The song and the rap image (complete with Lakers jersey) that Nacchan conveyed gained her even more fame, and she had appearances on Hey Hey Hey and Utaban to promote the single, and the hosts were agape at her flow and gang-sign-flashing stage presence.  A couple of years later, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that she's a little embarrassed about having recorded this song, maybe she's not, but had this been the only song she ever recorded, it would still be one of many high water marks.

I'll skip the next few singles and just say that each one was again very different from the predecessor.  If you've never heard Perm Pavilion, quit reading this and find it and listen to it and watch the video!  Same with Nana Navigation, which was the first Nacchan video I fell in love with, least of all for the building-licking dragon, an alien abduction thwarted by a magical wheeled suitcase, and, get this:  Nacchan breaking into an already-soaring jet with a jackhammer!  All while singing about a 'heart that runs on gasoline'.

She then turned a huge corner and is now in a punk/electronica band called Seventh Tarz Armstrong, my current weapon of choice when trying to blow out my pesky ol' eardrums (who needs em?).

Search her whole musical catalog, front to back, and find nothing but nails being hit on the head, from sentimental (Suki Desu) to cool urban kiddie-life (Famiresu Kousaten) to dance-pop (Nanapreme no Renai SO! DANCE! RADIO-7700), and all points in between.

Search her acting résumé, which I don't know very well, and find out that she's had more than a few gigs, and should be well up to the task at hand, the Girl's Box Movie.

And what does her character 'Nana' do here?  Mostly she says, "Go away, I'm a bitch!"  It can't be her fault... she's the real-life 'total producer' of Kingyo (propers!), a charming celebrity of her own merits, and as an idol she scores consistently higher than Ms. Kayo Aiko (in a different age category, but still) so it's doubtful that in real life she's some alienated youth seeking refuge from stardom.

In subsequent viewings of LOVERS HIGH it's still unclear why she lives at the Girl's Box bar with everyone else, maybe she's related to someone, but she clearly doesn't work there and calls it "Garbage Box".  So?  Go find a bridge to live under, then, jeez...  While she gets the pivotal role of handing a tape of the "Lover's High" song to Kingyo, and starts the sequencer at the end of the film to get the group a'going, I just wish they'd chosen a more upbeat and rounded personality for her character.  Again, though, she plays it well.   I'd been so stoked to write about Nacchan, as she just represents all that is hip and holy, and musically has been in every corner and still refuses to be pinned down to any one image, or any one genre.  If there IS OR EVER WAS a more tuned-in 19-year-old Japanese girl, please let me know, and if so, she still couldn't have been this damned cute.  This is fact, not opinion.

Her character's quirks (for me) lie mostly in her guitar-playing abilities.  I'm a guitar player so I watched closely and have determined that she is NOT playing here, but only from one (1) cut of film can this be determined.  I'd guess that in real life she is learning to play or knows some basics already, because it's believable, just not if you're watching very closely.  Still, it's the little things... for instance, if you had written a song and were just banging it out for the first time on your acoustic guitar, you'd get to the end of the lyrics and stop right there to think 'should I add something here? did these words really flow? etc.' and instead, as I touched on earlier, she gets mad when Yua claps after having eavesdropped on the song.  But again, if you were writing a song, you wouldn't end the verse, play for a few more bars, and then play the final resolving chord really strong as if it were a recording session (if you're just playing it to yourself).  This isn't an 'error' as such, just a curiosity, because she seems to be playing the song for someone else.  But Nana is CLEARLY loathing the fact that Yua had heard any of it.  Later, when Yua sings the song to break up a bar brawl (and in the midst of this brawl, Nami is bustin' heads left and right), all the girls are impressed with Nana's 'secret' songwriting ability.  But she didn't write it, really, she just belted it out to the fish in the river for no reason, and Yua picked up on it.

Next, we see Nana later putting a new string on her guitar, the fifth 'A' string.  So I have too many questions, like:  "are you going to do the last one, too?" because she puts the guitar in the case when she's done with that one, and if you restring the whole guitar, you usually go from one side to the other (basically, the middle strings are not the last ones you put on the guitar).  

Another question is:  "Did she just break the 'A' string?" as (a.) it happens, but usually it's the low 'E' or the high 'E', (b.) if it's been more than a week, you'll want to replace them all anyway (bronze acoustic strings oxidize (rust) very quickly, and you've got five rusted strings and one really twangy string in the middle), and (c.) if you break a string and your playing session ceases, you usually take the old string off and save putting on the new one for the next time you play.  Maybe she's more in tune to the 'rusted string' theory than I am and will pick the guitar up again in a few days, nullifying the one-new-string's twang.

On the upside, she uses a capo on the fourth fret, and for all you aspiring -- or ol' pro -- guitar players, this is correct, I've checked.

(Image derived from Aiko's blog.  Sorry I cut you out, Ms. Kayo, but you're up next, I promise.)