Shiina Ringo – Watashi to Houden Review + Wallpaper

Today I received my copy of Shiina Ringo’s 10th year anniversary B-sides and rarities compilation Watashi to Houden. I had ordered the limited edition version and it comes in awesome packaging. The whole thing is a thick sort of cardboard, very solid feeling. There is no jewel case here. The cover  has the picture of Ringo without any words so it looks really cool. This is the cover:

Love the tazer~

Here is the album tracklist:

Tracklist (Disc 1)

1. Suberidai
2. Unconditional Love
3. Remote Controller
4. Memai
5. Rinne Highlight
6. Aozora
7. Toki ga Bousou Suru
8. Sigma (Σ)
9. Tokyo no Hito
10. 17
11. Kimi no Hitomi ni Koi Shiteru

Tracklist (Disc 2)

1. Mellow
2. Fukou Jiman
3. So Cold
4. Aisaika no Choushoku
5. Sid to Hakuchuumu
6. Ishiki ~Sengo Saidaikyuu no Boufuuu Kennai Kashou~
7. Meisai ~Sengo Saidaikyuu no Boufuuu Kennai Kashou~
8. la salle de bain
9. Karisome Otome (HITOKUCHIZAKA ver.)
10. Sakuran (ONKIO ver.)
11. Ichijiku no Hana

When you open it up, you are greeted with another picture of Ringo and you find that the booklet is glued onto the case.  This is what you see:

I like the picture of her but I don’t like that it’s much like the picture on the cover except that she doesn’t have her weapon. As you can see, the booklet doesn’t have anything on the cover, and the inside is all grey but it has several different pseudo-blueprint electric designs all over it that are white. There are no pictures of Ringo in the booklet which equals =(.

the electric designs are comical, though =)

The back cover of the case is pretty interesting. It shows a blueprint of a tazer and has the album, copyright, and publisher information pointing to different pieces of the tazer as if they are what make it up. It got a little laugh out of this bit. They also show a hand holding what looks like a pair of lips (weird). Here it is:

The first press also came with some concert information and a pretty cool sticker. It was cut out in the triangle shape that it is, but you can hardly see the shape in this scan of it:

The CDs were slipped into the sides of the package, one on the front side and one on the back side. They were in a soft, plastic bag-like sleeve and had nice designs. Here is an image of a sleeved and a naked CD:

(like a Pikachu tail!)

As for the music, all the tracks have been released before in one shape or another. I was a little disappointed because the Ishiki and Meisai tracks had different subtitles for them so I thought they might be new arrangements but they are not. If there are any changes, they are subtle (I haven’t compared the versions yet but nothing sounds too new). However, there was one surprise. Disc two is listed as having 11 songs on the back of the album, but when you pop it in, there are actually 14! I was surprised when I saw it and was expecting new songs or something but they weren’t =(. They are just the three songs on the 3rd disc of Ze-chyou Syuu. Still, a nice surprise, I guess.  So if you haven’t bought any of her singles, this is a great chance to get them all in one, great package. Although, I think first press might be sold out in most places so I don’t know how nice the regular packaging is but at least is has a great collection of songs on them which is the most important part!

Doing my part in this 10th anniversary of the great musician, I made this wallpaper using the album cover. There is a widescreen and a regular screen version:

widescreen version

regular-screen version

Now let’s just all pray that she releases a new solo album this year!