Commentary on 57th Kouhaku Utagassen 2006~!

[greggerz189]

Wow! So this year’s 57th edition of Kouhaku Utagassen was absolutely amazing!! It was much better than last year’s, in my opinion. My favorite enka singers (even though I don’t really like enka music all that much…) were Sakamoto Fuyumi from Akagumi, and Hikawa Kiyoshi-san from Shirogumi. I was a little disappointed because the Shirogumi team won – Akagumi was winning during the half-way point, but then the guys ended up winning in the end. I really thought that the ladies had it in the bag—I thought that their performances were absolutely amazing. I guess the guys had a lot of help due to performances from SMAP and DJ OZMA…they’re really popular and DJ OZMA’s performance was really elaborate. I still liked the ladies better, though. I was slightly disappointed by Hamasaki Ayumi-san’s performance…her vocals weren’t exactly the best. Hirahara Ayaka-san was, as usual, unbelievable! I loved the song she performed, “chikai.” Ayaka ("I believe" ayaka XD) sang “Mikazuki” and she really blew me away with her vocals. Hm…oh, yes! Akiko Wada-san was great, too! She performed her song, “Mother” – I think she wrote it about her mom after she died, and it was so sad to see her perform…there was such passion in her voice, I think she cried a bit, too. Hm…I missed BoA’s performance, Koda Kumi was okay…she looked like a mermaid in her dress O_O and Nakashima Mika’s performance of “Hitoiro” was nothing less than what I expect of her live performances—vocally superb. I guess that leaves my two favorite performances of the whole night:

Angela Aki-san and her performance of “Home” was truly splendid. I could really feel her passion when she was singing that song, there was such emotion in her voice. I thought I’d cry watching it! She was really AMAZING! For the guys, my favorite performance was KOBUKURO and their performance of “Kaze.” They sang it acapella and it was really powerful. It’s hard to do something like that, and they really pulled it off, so my hat’s off to them. Those two performances were really the highlight of the whole event for me.

Overall, I thought that the 57th Kouhaku Utagassen was one of the best, yet. Definitely better than last year’s – I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing! ^__^