Something a bit different this time. Today I noticed that a subber calling himself Lone!Wolf had done soft-subs for a load of Berryz & C-ute solo performances. He’s even soft-subbed the bonus portion of the dvd they came from. The soft-subs are available from the tracker at Hello!Online. The bonus dvd is here. Suzuki, Kanna & Chisato subs are here. Saki, Maimi and Risako’s are here. Awesome Maasa, Miyabi, Saki & Yurina’s are here. Finally Momoko, Chinami, Umeda and Mai’s are here. Anyway those links also have links to the solo performances themselves. If you don’t know how soft-subs work you need something like the Combined Community Codec Pack and something like the VS Filter. Basically you download the video file and then download the soft-sub file (which is only very small). You make sure the soft-sub file has the same name as the video file (only with “.ass” at the end) and is in the same folder. When you play the video through the Media Player Classic it automatically picks up the subtitles from the .ass file and adds them into the video file. Confused? You will be after the next episode of…SOAP. Jessica has been having an affair with Chester and…wait…sorry that’s irrelevant.

If you don’t want to download the main video files from the tracker you can just download the soft-subs and then download the video files from Veoh instead. They all seem to be there. Or rather here. Remember that the filenames will be different to the soft-subs so you’d have to change one to match the other. So with apologies for the fact that these subs were all done last September and yet I’ve only just noticed the majority of them, here’s my Kanna, Maimi and Saki spam. First up is Kanna. Basically we get a 16 minute Kanna appearance at a fanclub event from summer 2008 moderated by Makoto Basinhead.

You are certainly cute Kanna yes.

Ah she is though. When she’s about four years older I’ll want to marry her.

That was quick. Wanna get married? Suzuki can come along as a handmaiden. It’s traditional in England for a third person to enter the marriage that way. Honest. She could wait on your every need. Also it’s cold during the winter so you could use her as a body warmer. You know, you can do that thing you do where you hug her and use her bottom to keep your palms warm? So what do you say? Marriage and Suzuki attending your every whim?

Earth to Kanna. Come in Kanna. Your spacing out. Hmm…well I’ll take that as a maybe. Anyway the first song Kanna has chosen to sing is that old Morning Musume classic I Wish. Happily Kanna is wearing nicer clothes than were worn by MM in the pv.

Boots for a happy, warm Morningtime. Wear yours today.

Anyway Kanna sings through I Wish and, perhaps because of the absence of Suzuki, holds her left breast throughout. She just can’t help herself. She must suffer from cold palms.

Somewhat annoyingly we only get to hear about a minute of the song before it cuts forward to the next talk section. It seems a shame to just be getting into something and then to be dragged away. Anyway the next talk section is where Kanna talks about her image and then Basinhead reveals what another member has written in a sketchbook. Kanna’s opinion of herself is that…

Yeah when you’re hugging Airi. I can only imagine what the typical Buono pv would be like if Kanna was there instead of Miyabi. The song starts and Kanna shoves her hand in Momo’s face to get her out the way to get closer to Suzuki. Momo flies backwards and lands on her back. She then spends the whole pv on the floor crying while Kanna slow dances with Suzuki in the way horny high school students do at the end of a school disco. You know, that clinging on for dear life, pressed hard into the other person, dance? That one. Suzuki just spends the whole time withdrawn to the fact that without Maimi or Umeda to drag her off there’s nothing she can do.

Or is that just my idea of the relationship between Kanna & Airi? Moving on and the second song is Berryz Koubou’s Tsukiatteru no ni Kataomoi.

I think Kanna needs two microphones to stop her touching.

After another brief talk session in which Kanna mentions how good it felt joining C-ute we then get another song. It’s Goto Maki’s…

And after a quick message to the fans that’s the end of Kanna’s solo show. She didn’t get back to me about the marriage thing so I guess I’ll just leave her with Suzuki.

Oi! I’m…hurt.

So onto Maimi. It seems all of C-ute were doing these shows in the same clothes they wore for the pv of Namida no Iro. This is great because as well as Kanna in those boots we get hotpants Maimi.

Pretty quickly (or should that be pretty and quickly) Maimi goes to the first song. She sang it at her audition and an all-pervading sense of evil enters the room. Yes it’s the vengeful, haunted spirit of Ayaya…

Brr. It went cold there for a while. So onto the next talk section. Maimi is asked who she respects and says it’s her mother. Basinhead reveals her answer to the same question from four and a half years ago. Then she had given two answers…

Cue lots of laughter from the audience. Her poor father. So easily forgotten.

Onto the second song and banish the memory of that demon as it’s the angelic Nacchi that is being covered. It’s…

Before the third song there’s another brief chat moment. It’s all a bit weird but during it Maimi smiles and her face does that really cute thing. You know the one…that whole eyes-going-all-shut-when-she’s-smiling thing? Like in the pv to Lalala Shiawase no uta?

So cute. Anyway the final song is a Nacchi and Maimi song. No, not that one, it’s…

After that Maimi gives thanks to the audience and her solo show is over. Well sixteen minutes of solo Maimi in shorts is sixteen minutes well spent. She is both really energetic, happy, sweet and yet strangely very arousing.

Yeah sorry about that. I think it’s those shorts. I don’t know what came over me. Although I do know what came over you. So…umm…moving quickly on and the final solo event I’m covering is Lolita’s Nakajima’s.

It’s the worlds cutest tramp. Are you fishing through bins afterwards? She’s the only one who could pull off that hat (and I wish she would pull it off). I joke of course. Even with a binman’s hat on she looks adorable. So onto the first song and it’s a Morning Musume one.

After that her first question is what would she do if she won the lottery. Her answer is really quite sweet in it’s small-scale nature…

I really love that unsure little look at the end. There’s only one possible word that can describe it. Kawaii!

Anyway Saki’s second song is a Melon Kinenbi one. It’s…

After another talk session Saki then shows her extreme coolness by choosing as her third song a Biyuden track.

And that was the end of Saki’s solo show. She came across as very sweet and a little nervous. She also chose some interesting songs to sing. That hat though…wasn’t she hot? Never wear a big wooly hat for a pv. You’re bound to feel hot under the lights and if you have to recreate the look later you’ll be cursing your luck/look. She still looked damn cute though.