Kago Ai's 1st single "no hesitAtIon"

The PV for Kago Ai's debut solo single "no hesitAtIon" has been released. The single will be released on June 24. BUY IT!



Lord have mercy, this girl is too fabulous to exist. I just need to keep listening to and watching this a couple of times.

10 minutes later

Okay, seriously, this is good. When I first heard about this, my thought was that I would buy it no matter how bad it was, because I love Kago. When I heard the preview I thought, this might not be too bad.

But this PV has turned that all around.

I want to just sit and a room and watch and listen to this for a day. No eating, drinking, sleeping, blinking. Just Kago.

The song
I didn't know what to expect from the song itself. I've been of the opinion that while Tsuji's voice never really grew beyond her little girl "Nono" sound, Kago was really becoming quite the singer before she was fired.

This song just shows how well she can sing. The backup vocals are doing just that: backing her up. They add a little audio interest to the song without overpowering her beautiful voice during every chorus. The instrumentals are actually really nice, too. Very flowing, and with proper use of dynamics.

I won't begin to act like I can translate the lyrics, which she wrote herself, beyond the obvious "no hesitation" and some references to the sky and other simple nouns like that. It will be so nice to see what the lyrics mean.

Hearing this song makes me excited to hear the b-side!

The video
Okay, my main beef with it is "did we really need to see your panties, Kago?" But let's put that aside for now.

Is it just me or does she look somehow timeless in everything she's wearing? I feel like this video could have been release any time within the last 40 years or so and look fresh. I'm really impressed at how they managed to make her look her age. She really looks like a 21 year old woman, not a teenager trying to dress like an adult. And her hair looks terrific! If there's one thing Hello! Project stylists consistently got wrong it's Kago's hair outside of pig tails.

The camera work is so clean and bright, too. There's not a ton of bloom or lens flair, which are both very popular right now. They might have overused the unfocused lens thing a bit much, but other than that it's just perfect.

The lip syncing is a bit off and she occasionally looked at a loss for what to do with her hands. But other than that she just showed such beautiful spirit throughout the whole thing. She looks really genuinely happy in the whole thing, and when Kago's happy, I'm happy.

Also, way to be sustainable with your glass water bottle!

I might have to do a second review of this once I've heard the b-side. Also, because I love Kago two much.