I usually don't like groups of elitist people and/or forums.
And I'm still here. I guess this tells a lot.

But on an elitist tone, I remember when I was quite active at Utada-Online forums, you could count with your fingers the number of decent posts. And you needed to have a super-computer to count every single post that *only* said "Hikki rocks!" "Hikki is the best" "Hikki-sama, yet again you outsold every other artist. You're the best!".
Do we really need that kind of posts?

I like this community how it is, and if someone's not "strong" enough to be here, it's not like we're missing a great deal.
(but seriously, does anyone need to be strong to be here anyway?)

I mostly agree with that. It's why I don't spend time at other fan communities. It isn't that there's nothing to say, but that for other artists, more often the fans tend to say the same things.

I've been reluctant to give reviews, not because I'm afraid of my opinions being challenged, but because I don't have a consistent perspective of each song. What I think of a song when I first hear it, versus what I think of it in a year, can often be quite different, as you start to get a sense of which songs are overplayable, and which ones take more time to absorb. Then to make reviews even more obsolete, a new version of an old song could refresh the way you think of the old version.

These are concerns I've had for years, that I suspect a lot of other people have felt, but haven't consciously thought about. This could be a more influential posting factor than whether or not your opinion is the same as someone else's. I think we can escape this if we embrace the reality that our opinion could change, rather than fear the implications of having already said something that's no longer 'true'. We should get comfortable with the idea of reviewing the same thing more than once, since, after all, "haters" already attack the same thing more than once anyhow. You could have a hasty post of "This is what I think of the album upon my first listening". Then you revisit it in a year, whether or not it is established to hate all over that product, and you say "This is what I think now, versus what I thought back then". You could even revisit more than once, since a small handful of songs may even take multiple years to absorb.

That seems to be a more realistic goal than "I'm going to wait until I can post my super-thought-out review, once and for all". If we have realistic goals, then we can actually follow through on them, rather than procrastinate. I'm not placing myself on a pedestal here, and pretending I haven't been extremely guilty about it myself, ever since this community started. Most of the review threads are lonely, because people spend so much time arguing in a small handful of them. I'm not seeing a lot of song-by-song reviews in EMF - something that people were making a common effort to post in the later days of RJ, so I'm going to practice what I preach, and hopefully set an example here.

This is one of my problems. Most people here hate uki, but I have no idea why. If I knew why maybe I would hate him too. But as of right now I do not mind the guy... I can not defend uki because I do not know his weak points. But anyways it is not important. Could anyone give me a crash course in the various sucky attributes of good ole uki? Or point me to an old thread that discusses it? (I read a lot of the old threads before making my first post in here anyways, so I do not think any are here)

I'm having a bit of trouble finding that myself, but I can sum most of it up.

The notion is that how you hit a note, is at least as important what notes you're hitting. The problem people mostly have, isn't so much on the what, but instead focusing particularly strongly on the how. He's not a smooth operator like David Gilmore (from Pink Floyd), or an animal like Jimi Hendrix. Ukigumo has a very uniquely twitchy stacatto approach in most of his playing. Some people favor that automatically because it's different, and some people automatically hate it because it's different. As time goes on and we hear more performances, we're getting a more accurate sense of Ukigumo's 'flexibility' (or lack thereof) to truly project an array of variable attitudes that you would expect different songs to "call for".

Arguably if Hirama had stayed around all this time, then that's "the only fair means" we could truly measure whether or not he was the more appropriate guitarist for Tokyo Jihen, so there's "inequal opportunity criticism". But the Hirama supporters consider it a legitimate practice to include Hirama's solo-career albums into the comparisons, of "These are all the different things he can do, and if that isn't what you thought you were getting from his involvement with Tokyo Jihen, then it isn't what Shiina Ringo was asking him to deliver at the time". Electric Mole (the DVD) is also a very little-acknowledged example of Hirama doing most/all the things that strong Ukigumo supporters don't believe Hirama can do, but most of the "haters" are very late on paying particularly close attention to the nuances of everyone's performances in that DVD.

Killer Tune is considered at least somewhat refreshing, because Ukigumo finally used a different electric guitar (even if Ukigumo haters would argue that the solo in the middle was rather 'obtrusive'). Ukigumo has a particularly edgy and sterile sound that he usually likes to get out of his guitar/amplifer/effects combinations. The intro of Kaban no Nakami is another nice (and all-too-rare) example of a resonating performance, which arguably gets ruined by the ending of the song, where Ukigumo gets back to his usual edgy self. Arguably he was twitchy even at the intro, but that's alright because the tone/effects worked with that rather well. Normally everytime Ukigumo hits a note, it's like he's fencing... and the more fluidly he tries to sustain a passage, the more serrated his unique tone often sounds. Between that, and the occasions when Ukigumo is doing country-style twang - he's rarely exhibiting a more sensitive tone anywhere inbetween. There is the growing implication that the style of songs are being bent Ukigumo's way, rather than Ukigumo's playing is being individually flexed for different songs, so he is perceived as "an influence that holds the band back". Sometimes his style really works for a song, but for at least a third of the songs, the haters are in unison that Ukigumo's habits don't 'belong' there. However, Ukigumo's performances are universally well-received among Tokyo Jihen fans when he plays acoustic or when he's not the sole guitarist, but for other performances, Tokyo Jihen fans are more divided.

A common counter-offensive among Ukigumo supporters toward Hirama supporters is "You just want an overbearing rocker!", and... amongst a significant portion of Hirama supporters, that might very well be true. Yet there's a small (but growing) sect among Hirama supporters, who don't care so much about whether the guitar playing "rocks" or not - they just want someone "groovy", and that's what most people (Ukigumo haters included) think they're getting from Izawa's piano/organ playing, so most of the "haters" are not totally against Phase 2. The problem is that on a "grooviness" scale, Phase 1 fans feel like they lost more from Hirama than they gained with Izawa, and that's where a lot of the general Phase 2 hating comes from.

Shiina Ringo releasing Saito Neko arrangements of some of the same solo-career songs two or three times, doesn't exactly quell the fire either. The main deal that the "haters" take solace in nowadays, is "Well, at least Adult was mostly (previously unheard) Shiina Ringo compositions, plus Adult included some extra sounds or instruments instead of stuck to the same old band template".

I just don't like how motionless he is onstage, and how boring his personality seems. I'm not super musically inclined, so I honestly don't notice too much of a difference between his guitar playing and Hirama's and whoever else's, so that's not really part of my criticism of him. I just wish he was more interesting.

Wow, I really do not listen to tokyo jihen like that... I would not have noticed something like that. To me I can not tell a difference. But I only really started listening to "rock" when I listened to shiina. I am not a guitar kinda guy, so I do not pay attention. To me the jazz trio (piano, drums, and bass) are the only instruments I can really tell a diiference between playing. It just happens that guitar is the only one in jihen I am not used to listening to. I went back and listened to some phase 2 stuff, I kinda heard what you were talking about, but it does not annoy me, I guess because I know so little of guitars and their sounds. Well as of now, I do not mind uki, I will not stick my head out to defend him, but I do not dislike his music. I can not comment on his abilities as a composer, as I do not know which songs he composed. But the arguements of why uki is bad.. I do not know enough about them, but to address frecklegirls comment, I think that is a great reason to hate him, lol. Although I do not care if he sits there like a lawn gnome. I would not really care.
But it sucks uki is so boring... He raps, isn't that good enough? C'mon C'mon.. okay jigen vanish:ph43r:

Yeah, the main thing that bothers me about him is his terrible stage presence. He's just so awkward to watch.

Ugh, my sentiments exactly. Not trying to be a prick, but it seems that other forums never really engage in interesting thoughtful conversations. Most of our topics are actually interesting and add to the quality of the forum, not like other forums where people just create topics to ask for stuff or make inane and obvious statements.

Me thinks that Shiina's music just attracts the best elements of society :D

Actually there are different standards of Romaji so there really isn't a "correct" form. Most people use the Hepburn system, but there are two other systems that are widely used. But quite honestly, I think all Romaji is incorrect to some degree. There are certain characters that just have different sounds and it's almost impossible to use a practical form of translation. The best way to learn the language itself is to learn the characters of Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji and what sounds each characters make without using any romanization at all for reference. The only people that could possibly use Romaji and fully understand what sound is supposed to be made are fluent speakers (or people familiar with the language) because they can kind of link what characters are trying to be represented. Because mentally they are referencing back to the original language. This applies also when other countries learn English. But English is more confusing because there really isn't a proper set-up of sound. Some letters will make more than one sound, which to a Japanese person is confusing because each character in their own language makes a specific sound. And for some words in English, there really isn't a rule as to why it makes that sound, it just kind of does. I hear Japanese/Koreans mess up words all the time because they are simply following a "rule" of the English language which happens to not apply to the word they are using.

I do understand that for people new to a language, certain sounds are hard to duplicate because those sounds are simply not used in a person's native language. And I understand why Romaji is used, everyone is not going to learn Japanese. But if you really want to learn the language and learn it properly without butchering it in usage. Learning to write is pretty essential. Even if you just learned one of the three Japanese writing systems, it would help you to really understand Romaji and will greatly help speaking it too.

But to kind of get off my rant, technically there are several "correct" forms of Romaji.

When I'm listening to Uki play on any release that doesn't rhyme with Schmariety, I can tolerate him. But watching him play is just unbearable. He looks like an antisocial rooster with Downs Syndrome trying to scratch his crotch.