BACK-ON features on Oricon’s RANKING Paradise and flyaway reaches Top 10 in the daily Oricon Singles chart!

It’s official: BACK-ON have reached an all time high of #9 #4 in the daily Oricon Singles chart! Sesshy, now one of our new forum moderators on BOO, took a screenshot to record this historical moment (updated 2nd Feb 2009 – now #4!):

This is definitely the first time that BACK-ON has ever reached the Top 10 of any Oricon charts as themselves (they did reach #1 with Ashiato – their collaboration with GReeeeN – as part of BAReeeeeeeeeeN) and it seems that Oricon is finally recognising the achievements of BACK-ON, and have featured them in this week’ s RANKING パラダイス (RANKING Paradise)!

This news comes courtesy of Sesshy, who posted all the details on our fan forums right here, and even included an annotated screenshot of BACK-ON on the frontpage (yes, frontpage) of Oricon.co.jp. The programme, RANKING Paradise, which is hosted by Yui Kanno and Brother TOM also features a group of 5 girls known as Ranpara Girls. You can watch the full video (there are quite a few Pocky ads and random mini-clips) by visiting:

http://tv.oricon.co.jp/ranpara/

Unfortunately we don’t really understand (fully) what is being asked during the Q&A between the hosts and BACK-ON, but there were certainly plenty of laughs and every single member of BACK-ON made a contribution.

Some of the things that did happen:

• Icchan was asked to describe what GReeeeN were like, to which he replied ‘GReeeeN are like kind older brothers’;
• The band were also asked what GReeeeN actually looked like – a very normal question given that they’re still ‘anonymous’ – and in the end, Teeda was asked to draw a picture of their face!
• Gori had to talk about what ‘type’ he liked (a lot of laughter here)

Oh and as Sesshy said… if you are wondering what everyone is holding in the photo above, they are inflatable Pocky. :) Hopefully we can find out what they actually said at some point, but in the meantime, do click on the link above and watch the video!

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Second BACK-ON – YES!!! Review by Sesshy

With all the news flying about regarding BACK-ON’s forthcoming new single “flyaway‘, we have been a little slow in posting the special fan reviews of BACK-ON’s debut full-length album YES!!! so apologies for this delay.

To give new readers a little background: several weeks ago, some Forum members kindly volunteered to share their thoughts about the album with us, and we featured our first fan review by Edward at the end of November, which has been read over 200 times since!

However, we did have more than one volunteer, and I am delighted to present our second ever fan review of YES!!! courtesy of Sesshy! She has picked several songs from the album to write about in her rather detailed review, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did!

About our volunteer reviewer

Nickname: Sesshy Location: California, USA Favourite BACK-ON song(s): NEW WORLD, Chain, Sono Mama De (NEW ver.) Other favourite artists: UVERworld How did you find out about BACK-ON? By my boyfriend Mini Introduction: I’m a graphic designer for many things, even for BACK-ON’s Official street team. I’m a HUGE J-music fan. I believe Japanese makes very unique music, which makes me want to listen to over and over. I has have a big inspiration with Art and Music. Website: Evanescent Studios

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Listen to the preview of “flyaway” on BACK-ON’s official Myspace!

The news flow has really been non-stop these past few days! Just a little earlier, Sesshy posted the breaking news on our dedicated flyaway forum thread (and on the newly revamped Sound Ex!) that BACK-ON have posted preview clips of songs from their forthcoming new single flyaway on their official Myspace!

Featured are 42 second clips of:

• flyaway (Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 OP)
• where is the future? (Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 ED)
• flyaway 『テイルズ オブ』Remix (Special remix of the title track available as an extra in the special [Tales of] edition of the single)

To summarise, flyaway is just as good as we expected from the original 30 second preview of the song; where is the future? seems reminiscent of one of BACK-ON’s previous title songs flower, but the biggest (and best) surprise imho is probably flyaway 『テイルズ オブ』Remix or flyaway [Tales of] Remix!

For fans of dance or game background music, this is a must listen, but the preview is alas so very short! Teeda’s voice is electronically altered, and with thanks to BOO forum member Sok for this information, apparently the singer of the main chorus (at least in this preview clip) is the female seiyuu of Kanonno, the main character in the Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 series!

In addition to clips of the 3 songs (sadly missing Re:Start) BACK-ON have also posted a much longer video clip of the flyaway PV on their official Myspace as well! :) I think it is pretty safe to say that everyone on the Forums who has seen the PV preview so far likes it.

You can watch it after the cut (as usual) at the end of this post, or you can:

watch the PV preview on BACK-ON’s Myspace by clicking here!

Last but not least, for fans and visitors who do not have access to Myspace, you can also listen to the clips of all 3 songs after the cut as well! Either way, please enjoy and let us know what you think! :)

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Watch the 30 second preview of “flyaway” on Youtube!

Following on from our previous post about the new single flyaway, we discovered (via Yuki on the BOO Forums) that BACK-ON had changed the video on the front page of their official website to feature a 30-second preview of the title track “flyaway“!

Brand new BACK-ON.com – flyaway version

It appears to be a TV ’spot’ ad that is currently playing to people across Japan (we hope!) to promote the new single, but the video was quite small, although we were all very excited to hear a clip of the chorus. However, in the meantime, it turns out that AbyssalChronicles has actually uploaded this clip for everyone to watch on Youtube!

Click on the link below to ‘watch it in high quality’ directly on Youtube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRHvCLCaOzs

Alternatively you can still watch the ‘normal’ version at the end of this post. For the sake of better graphics in particular, I would really recommend watching it on Youtube directly!

And on a quick side note, JUICE magazine did a quick preview for the new BACK-ON single, and the author seems to say that the theme of this single was:

Friendship & Courage (友情や勇気)

Hope you all enjoy watching the preview! :) Like some others, I am very excited by how good the songs sounds from the clip, and aside from the surprise that the lyrics for the single might already be available online, I can’t wait till we hear the song in full!

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BACK-ON’s new single “flyaway” CD covers and Tracklisting confirmed!

This major news update comes courtesy of Sesshy who recently became head admin of Sound-Ex and arrives with plenty of images, including brand new group and individual photos on BACK-ON’s official website as well as the tracklistings and new CD covers for both editions of the CD!

The images we have all been waiting since the news hint of the new single, flyaway, were the CD covers for both the standard or normal flyaway single cover (shown first) AND the limited edition ‘Tales‘ version:

As the news update from Sound Ex put it:

“Even though it’s not “Back-On’s style, I REALLY love the covers.“

I would have to agree wholeheartedly with the latter statement, especially as I also love the covers too (why are the images so tantalisingly small!?) and I am sure you feel the same too (especially fans of the PSP series: Tales of the World – if you weren’t already aware of the news, BACK-ON is writing the OP and ED theme music for the brand new game Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2) although if I were to really ‘look’ for any similarities to BACK-ON’s previous CD cover designs, I would say that the cursive writing reminds me of Chain, one of BACK-ON’s earliest singles, which features that nice italic-cursive-style as well.

Anyway, before I digress further, let us move on to the tracklisting. The question we were all (at least several of us?) dying to know was whether the limited/Tales edition of the CD would include anything extra – Chain, for instance, did not – but as the official BACK-ON website confirmed (screenshot), there is an additional track called: flyaway 『テイルズ オブ』Remix or flyaway (Tales of) Remix!

So the official tracklisting is as follows (with the Remix version only available with the limited/Tales edition):

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Sound Ex – Back-on Official Street Team – Website relaunched!

We’ve been meaning to write up the news of the Sound EX website relaunch for weeks now, and so in the gap between (attempted) exam revision, we would like to congratulate Sound EX for their amazing redesign!

The redesign and coding has been the brainchild and work of Sesshy, and is inspired by the cover of Back-on’s latest single Sands of time. I really like this new design, as it looks very sleek and clean, and is extremely easy to navigate, so kudos to Sesshy for doing such a great job! I am very glad she decided to retain the grungy font from the original site as well :)

In addition to this makeover, a new intro flash to the website has also been released, featuring photos of Back-on from their latest photo shoot and Sands of time playing in the background. Unfortunately (as before) we haven’t been able to include screenshots of the flash animation on their front page, and so it is best enjoyed by visiting the Sound EX website yourself!

If you like the relaunch of Sound EX, why not write a comment on their guestbook and let Nao and Sesshy know? :)

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Listen to ‘Sands of time’ online!

This is but a quick update for fans and everyone wanting to listen to Sands of time online! Although we have actually uploaded the songs to the Radio player of the Music page (scroll down to the bottom of the page) with thanks to EJ for the reminder, anyone who can access Myspace is also in for a treat!

Meji, who provided us with the initial review of the new songs from the single – message for kidz and fifty/50, has setup a Myspace profile where you can listen to all the songs. The url is below:

http://www.myspace.com/backonsandsoftime (UPDATE 20/06/2008: Sadly this account is now off-line. With thanks to EJ for the news. You can still listen via the Radio on the Music page!)

So if you haven’t heard the new songs yet, head over to one or both places and listen in! For more opinions of the new single, you can read the reviews posted by Aoi and Sesshy on the BOO forums. At least one of the reviews, and other random ‘Back-on‘ keywords can all be found on the dedicated Back-on dictionary created by ichi!

Let us know what you think of Back-on’s latest musical experiment! :)

p/s: I received my copy of the new CD in the post a few days ago! :) Do I think it was worth the wait? Definitely!

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Watch the ‘Sands of Time’ PV in full on Youtube!

If you’ve been camping out on the BOO Forums for the past few days, you’ll definitely have heard of the breaking news (from Sesshy as well :D) of the release of a clip of the Sands of Time pv on Back-on’s Myspace!

It featured 0:58 minutes of Back-on goodness (splashing water, an hour-glass and slow-motion have never seemed so magical!) but ended so abruptly that the rabid dedicated fans were left wanting more. Our prayers were clearly heard by someone, and who else but the one-and-only gangangan03!

He has uploaded the full Sands of Time PV on to Youtube (thank you!!) and you can watch all 3:21 minutes of it at the link below! (or below the ‘cut’)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYhkmXIRx7o

UPDATE 05/01/09 – We have just updated the link to the fansubbed HQ version of the PV as sadly gangangan03’s video is no longer available. The new video is courtesy of Vanalovas and is subbed by Order of Zeronos.

If you fancy just looking at the screenshots instead, we’ve taken just over 100 stills from the mp4 version of the file. They are now all hosted on our brand new Flickr account! We’ve included some of the pictures below for your convenience, but it’s best to experience the entire ‘PV’ by viewing them all in one go (at the size ’small’ for optimal quality)

What do you think of the PV? I personally think it’s one of the best the band have done so far, and it’s very arty in some parts! :) I do love everyone’s outfits (although I wish Icchan had a more ‘complete’ look!) and can’t wait to see some official photos!

UPDATE: With thanks to gangangan03, it turns out that the director of this spectacular PV is none other than Hideaki Sunaga, who also directed the PV for Chain, and has worked with artists such as Dragon Ash, Ayumi Hamasaki and Koda Kumi!

Only 10 more days until the big day of the single release! ^^

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New affiliate and some site updates, including the Music page!

We have a brand new affiliate! :) With thanks to Sesshy (who most people will know as the designer of one of our cool new forum banners and provider of up-to-the-minute Back-on news) BOO are proud to be affiliated with UVERworld.org, which is what we believe to be the best fansite dedicated to the band UVERworld!

The band hardly needs any introduction, as they are one of the hottest and most famous bands to have come from Japan in recent years (Back-on aside of course!!! :p) and have composed OPs for a number of mainstream animes such as Bleach, D.Gray-man, Hataraki Man and also Blood+.

The fansite is run by Evelyn, Sie and Shinya and was launched in December 2006. Not only does it feature in-depth information on pretty much everything related to UVERworld, but the site also has an eye-watering array of multimedia content! Last but not least, it is frequently updated with news, and is also home to one of the most vibrant UVERworld fan communities online! ^^ You can find the link to UVERworld.org under Affiliates, so you can see for yourself how great it is! :)

You’re probably hopefully wondering what is happening with BOO itself, and I’m happy to be able to give you a quick list of the recent updates we’ve made to the site! :) These include:

• Discography – Added new details of Back-on’s upcoming single Sands of Time.
• Schedule – I hadn’t installed the new version of the plugin (Gigpress) correctly but this has now been fixed and updated.
• Q&A – Newly updated with some brand new questions from Kia Moini.
• Site Staff – Added ichi’s info (she’s one of our Forum Moderators!)
• Gallery – There are new photos there! We just don’t always highlight them.
• Music – We’re updating this at the moment with brand new downloads! Including an extremely rare mp3 of Back-on’s early work to celebrate our first birthday: Fighting Style from one of their demo cds! ^^ Please check back later if you see this post before we finish!

Of course we still have to tell you about all the things that happene for our birthday celebrations, so those news updates will come too! :)

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“Sands of Time” preview on Myspace (and titles of other tracks on the single posted too!)

With thanks to both Sesshy and the Back-on Facebook Group for the news, Back-on have posted a 50-second preview of Sands of Time on their official Myspace! The great thing about this preview is that it seems to be from the start of the song, where as Sesshy put it, Kenji03 sings with an electronic voice :)

We also get to hear the first verse+rap, and I have to say, I love the introduction to the song! If you haven’t heard it already, you really seriously must. I demand kindly request it. :p Incredibly catchy imho!

In addition to the preview, the band have also posted the titles of the other two tracks that will be released along with Sands of Time on May 21st 2008, so the final tracklisting for the single is as follows:

1. Sands of Time (ED for “Keitai Sousakan 7“)
2. message for kidz
3. fifty/50

And before I forget, for those who can’t access their Myspace, we have of course done the usual mp3 rip for you to download which you can find below. Enjoy! And let us know what you think of the preview too! :)

Sands of Time [Myspace Rip] (1.86 MB, Zipped)

p/s: If you’re interested in a mash-up between the Myspace preview + TV Size version of Sands of Time, please take a look at the dedicated “Sands of Time” + Keitai Sousakan 7 discussion thread on the Forums! (Hint: post #102)

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