Review: Roaring All Stars + Tweedia

Following up on last week's unboxing, this week I do a review of the recently released Japanese Pokemon singles. Do these songs from the 18th movie measure up favorably?

Transcript:

Hi, folks. Steven here with a review of Roaring All Stars and Tweedia, the two new Japanese Pokémon music singles. In case you don’t know, last weekend I put up a video of an unboxing, which I recommend you definitely take a look at. I’ll put a card in here. But, the thing is, they come with some really interesting stuff, you know. The Pokémon editions of those singles. And, really, do want you to take a look at that. Here, we’ll be just doing a review. And, just so you know, I’m not claiming to be a professional music reviewer. I don’t have any training or anything like that. But, give it my best shot here. And, I should also point out, in case you didn’t know, I have very limited Japanese knowledge. So, I’m not really appreciating these songs on a lyrical level, so much as just listening to them as music and sort of judging things there. So, with that said, let’s go on to the review.

Let’s start off with Roaring All Stars. In case you didn’t know, this is the current ending theme to the Pokémon TV show in Japan. It’s also associated with the short from the 18th movie. The first time I listened to it, I really didn’t like it all that much. It just seemed a little dizzy and loud. It really just did not strike my fancy, I guess you could say. But, I thought about, what is it about this song that makes me not really like it? And, what I did is I thought, maybe it’s too loud. It might be percussion and instruments. So, what I did is I went into Audacity and I took the regular version, instrumental version, lined them up and made it so that the instrumental version would cancel out the regular version. And, I just sort of played with the volume and stuff like that to get some of the instruments removed. And, it actually struck me a lot better there. I’m not sure exactly what it was. Maybe the vocals started to come out more and that’s what I like. Because, I think Little Glee Monster did a good job singing it. That may have been just enough to make me appreciate it a little bit more. It was kind of interesting. And, as a result-this is not currently on the station, yet-but, I am experimenting with releveling it and seeing what I can do there to make it, maybe, a little bit more radio friendly. At least, in my opinion.

The only other real criticism I have of this song-I think it’s good overall, especially, like I said, with the releveling to bring up the vocals a little bit more-is that there’s this speed up sequence towards the end, where it sort of repeats and then gets faster and faster. The song’s kind of over at that point. I think we could cut out maybe one or two of those and the song might be a little bit structurally better for it. Otherwise, like I said, first impression wasn’t that great, but I think it’s a little bit better in my mind now. So, definitely glad to hear some of that.

Let’s move over to Tweedia, which is the ending song to the 18th Pokémon movie in Japan. It actually kind of reminds me, now that I’ve listened to it a couple times, of ONE from movie 12. You may remember, that was the Shaymin movie, in case you’re forgetting. But, that was the Japanese ending song. And, they have kind of similar, I guess you could say, space with instruments sound. Where they have the vocals, of course, and then there’s sort of this ambient— ONE uses more strings, whereas Tweedia uses strings, but also there’s a piano part, and they both have drums and all that stuff.

Overall, I would say I like ONE better. I think it has better flow and a more interesting melody, and it’s more catchy. Definitely more energetic. And, at the same time though, I don’t feel like Tweedia is redundant or not needed, or something you don’t need to really care about. I think it’s still worth listening to. Tweedia is on the station right now. We’ll see what folks think of it. In any case, I don’t have a whole lot else to say about Tweedia. That’s sort of the main point of comparison I could come up with. Not too much that really stands out, not much that really detracts from it either. I think that it’s an overall good song.

But, of course, part of the point of putting this video up, I want to know what you think. Do you like both songs? Do you have similar criticisms? Do you have different criticisms? Please, let me know. Post a comment. Or, give us an email. And, like I said, if you listen to this station, go ahead and rate the tracks that are on there. It really helps me determine which tracks stay around and get promoted, and stuff like that. Alright, folks. Thanks.