Snow Mania S1 Release!

Snow Mania S1 is released today, 29 September 2021. It was a long-awaited album which is truly a “treasure box”! Congrats to Snow Man for crossing the half-million mark today!

According to Billboard Japan, Snow Mania S1 sold a record of 618,277 copies between 27-28 September which is even before the release date. This has renewed the record from BTS “BTS, THE BEST” which sold 589,000 copies on the day before the release date. Fingers crossed they can reach the millionth mark for their 1st album!

While Sakurai Sho and Aiba Masaki dropped their marriage bombs, I received my package on 28 September. It was much bigger than I thought, especially with the clear poster. Everyone is looking really posh and pretty with their clean look and Tiffany & Co. accessories.

CD Album

From the tracklist, EVOLUTION is the album lead song that they have already performed on Shonen Club as well as Music Station. The choreography is done by none other than our reliable leader of the group. He incorporated lots of movements from previous songs too, so it’s interesting to spot all these familiarities.

Sugar

Out of all the new album songs, my favourite is Sugar! It’s a pity that I didn’t win any ticket ballot for the live tour, so I’ll be waiting for concert reports from those who can attend the concert. It’s very exciting that Hikaru will be choreographing the dance for this performance. Fingers crossed they do a TV performance sometime soon because I cannot wait to see the performance!

Super Sexy

This is another song that I really enjoy as well. Basically, the boys also mentioned that they were debating between this song and Sugar to include in the album. I’m glad they decided to include both songs in the end.

Other songs

I seriously think that either Avex Trax or YouTube is very generous to share full videos with us before the release of the album. They also ran this radio week campaign where radio stations in nationwide Japan can get to play some songs from the album since last week. Fans are really spoiled because even before the album release, I can say we almost sample all the songs in the full version.

Unit songs

Datesama, Koji and Fukka basically did this catchy song that includes all these famous gags. It’s supposed to be a fun song that they can do “call and response” with the fans during the concert. I am not sure how they will do this in times of COVID-19 rules where we are asked not to cheer or make any noise at the concerts. This is one of the songs that seems really geeky at first but the catchy melody kinds of grow on me.

Sakuma, Raul and Hikaru did an all-English song in the 80’s pop tune with some Michael Jackson feels. I really think Raul catches all the English tones really well. Hikaru revealed that he also choreographed the dance for this song. This should be very exciting to watch because you have 3 really good dance performers here! FYI, Hikaru is also choreographing the dance for Infighter. How productive is this guy?

Last but not least, we have the unit song from Meme, Shoppi and Abe-chan. It’s a medium ballad that really showcases their good voices. It’s a perfect song to listen to when you need some kind of comfort before sleep. Shoppi has always been the main vocal for Snow Man songs, but I’m surprised that Meme has a really stable voice with great range, while Abe-chan does really good harmonising for the other 2 boys.

Before I forget, please put on your earphones for the voice drama.

Highlights from the Blu-ray contents

I haven’t been able to watch everything yet simply because there is too much content to watch. Running through the “Behind the scenes” in Limited Edition A, we get more than 90 minutes of goodness of the history of Snow Man, covering glimpses of the making of the PVs of previous singles, photoshoot of the album covers, the Japan Expo 2020 scenes from Bangkok, the making of Snow World PV in Bangkok, the making of EVOLUTION PV. You can see how the boys are very close to one another, and all the funny moments/jokes they make in the midst of this crazy schedule.

Limited Edition B features the multi-angle shot of each boy for EVOLUTION PV. I was looking out for Abe-chan since every member was always saying how he likes to appeal to the camera. But it seems like this time, it’s Koji who was making eye contact with various members. The variety corner where they did the billiard game was so funny too. There was this unexpected “Iwameme” moment that sent many fans dropping jaws because it’s rare to see Hikaru making moves, and Meme responding in a shy manner.

Special website

There is a special website set up just to celebrate the album release. It comes with lots of interesting content, like the most recent one to test your “maniac level” for Snow Man. There were some trick questions and I could only get all 13 questions correct after a few tries. Guess my maniac level is still low. There is also another page to highlight maniac points about the album and also between the members. I thought the animated avatars were so cute too! Thumbs up for Hikaru’s hairstyle and hair colour for this album! But he already went back to blue-black hair colour!

Advertisements around Shibuya

I haven’t got a chance to drop by Shibuya these days but had a chance to visit last weekend. There’s a huge advertisement put up at one of the buildings.

From the other fans’ report, it seems like they have something put at the underpass for Shibuya station too. I assume Tsutaya and Tower Records will also have some decorations put up as well. Hopefully I can still spot some this weekend!