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Now in Japan
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Written by maehara
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Friday, 17 March 2006 00:00 |
 If I said Lemon Angel Project was about a young girl who finds herself drawn into joining a pop group, you'd possibly conjure up images of "Beck for girls". Put those to one side - from even the first episode, LAP has little rumblings in the background of some possibly far-fetched plotlines that the story will revolve around. At its core, though, it's girl-finds-pop-fame...
1 - The Angel Who Awakened from a Dream
In 2017, the
hugely popular singing group Lemon Angel broke up. It's now a year
later, and a Pop Idol-type event is being held to form a new Lemon
Angel group. Tomo Minaguchi is one of the contestants - quite a ditzy
person by nature, it's not something she'd normally do, but when record
company rep Ryuuta Kogure asked her to take part she found she couldn't
say no. Kogure-san was a colleague of Tomo's sempai Yui Kohno, a
songwriter for the original Lemon Angel, and Yui had told him how she'd
always wanted Tomo to sing her songs - good enough reason for Tomo to
agree to audition. The only problem is, former member of the original
Lemon Angel Miki Suwa, another friend of Yui's, is heavily involved in
the new project - and she really doesn't like Tomo. Meanwhile, down in
the depths of Nouvelle Music's basement, strange things are afoot...
So. The original Lemon Angel disbanded for reasons as-yet unknown,
Yui appears to be missing, but life in the record industry continues as
usual - Lemon Angel were hugely popular, so there's a natural desire
there to create a follow-on. So far, so normal - but if that was all
there was to it, there'd be no need for the show to be set in 2018.
Enter the conspiracy theory. Yui had developed a music-writing
program, which she'd put to good use creating songs for the original
Lemon Angel. Does this have something do to with her disappearance?
Who knows - but down in the basement of Nouvelle Music, some unsavoury
types are trying to hack the program and use it for themselves. Yui's
programming skills seem to have been as good as her musical skills, so
they're not having much luck, but it's fairly clear there's a major
plot point developing there.
The main focus of this first episode is around how Tomo came to be at
the auditions for the new Lemon Angel - the other members of the core
cast only get fleeting appearances here, so it's hard to get a real
feel for how the characters will interact, but the basic setting and
how the ideas look like they're going to develop didn't really grab me,
and neither did Tomo's ditzy-girl personality & rather annoying
voice. The end result is a series that hasn't really given me any
reason to keep watching. Pass...
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