Pretty much sums up the high point of the “Yattarouze!” PV for me.

I’ve heard several outcries that the PV sucks a whole hell of a lot, but the song was good. Well, of course it’s good. DANCE☆MAN arranged it, for god’s sake, and with DANCE☆MAN, magical things occur within Hello! Project. My favorite song of all-time, for example. Morning Musume’s highest-selling single on the Oricon.

But this isn’t Morning Musume. This is Yossie, Rika, Konkon, Kecchan (as I refer to Satoda Mai as), and a few nobodies tossed into a group based on futsal, for god’s sake, which is right up Yossie’s alley, but as for everyone else… How long can a group like this survive for? UFA seems to be making plans for Ongatas to become a permanent part of H!P: there’s an upcoming album scheduled for release on February 6th of next year as well as the group’s first tour. And while I’m all for groups promoting the much-ignored Eggs (hopefully making them less boring, at that) and Kecchan finally having something interesting to do (but what about Ayaka? I want her and Kecchan to become, like, the Great Ayaka & Mai; they’ve got way better gams than Aya or Miki) and Rika breaking away from v-u-den for a little while to put some clothes on, the finished product is just…overwhelmingly lame for me. And that’s even with my ridiculous girlcrush on Yossie, and the fact that Konkon actually returned to H!P to do this (though then again, I wonder if she just wanted to rejoin the Gatas team and never anticipated this crazy “LOL LET’S TURN A SPORTS TEAM INTO AN IDOL GROUP!!!!” endeavor).

Yeah. Big paragraph.

Ongaku Gataaaaaaaaayossie’shead

Thing is, the PV is terrible. This is, like, maybe one notch above “Kanashimi Twilight” in terms of quality. The sole bit of creativity in the entire damn thing is the part where Yossie kicks the ball, screams, everyone runs up all “yaaay”, then they fall into an abyss (IMO would’ve been more awesome if Yossie had kicked someone else into the abyss all 300-style; “THIS. IS. GATAAAAAAAAAAS!!!”, etc). We get a cutscreen to the title, then the title fades and we’re brought to the four girls who fell through into Wonderland and who are joined by four other girls and then everyone starts dancing, Rika has horrible cornrows in addition to her hair being pulled back in what looks like an uncomfortably tight manner, Yossie got poodle hair for some inexplicable reason (come on, stylists, just chop it all off like you usually do!), the Eggs are boring for me (ManoEri included)…

But me being me, I somehow found this really funny. Which why they’re all both the highs and lows of the PV. I’m being too pessimistic about this, so let’s talk about some neutral points…

Konkon looked weird and was too stiff. In fact, she’s so thin, I don’t know what compelled her to rejoin the H!P futsal team in the first place. Though the jobs these girls do are probably far too stressful than we think and I’ve heard of them actually gaining weight due to the stress, so maybe she joined so she could stop looking so anorexic. (I know, I’m horrible.)

Kecchan was…Kecchan, I guess. Nothing too spectacular here. Her singing voice, per usual, really distinguishes her from the rest with its uniquely nasally quality, which can be either a pro or a con depending on the person’s outlook. I’m tremendously glad she’s not doing anymore silly duets with comedy duos anymore (see: “Oyaji no Kokoro ni Tomotta Chiisana hii”) or getting too seriously involved in that crappy three-person unit based on a gaming show that could’ve been potentially good since it involves three very lovely ladies but instead got dubbed Pabo (I’ve heard this was a popular name voted on by viewers of the Quiz Hexagon show, and if you consider they might’ve actually known what it meant and thought the group was stupid) and the girls involved were made out to look like creepy old women trying to be “young” again in their first single…you get the point.

But this doesn’t stifle the lameness of Ongatas. I just look at the group and think “meh”. Why can’t H!P units be, you know, actually decent anymore? The only worthwhile ones I can think of off the top of my head are Morning Musume, Berryz工房, ℃-ute (btw Berryz fans ℃-ute is kicking your group’s ass majorly), v-u-den, and Melon Kinenbi (which nobody really cares about but I’m including here for the hell of it). I could care less for “Buono!” (which is actually “Bono” in the katakana, so I have no idea where UFA pulled this shit with a ‘U’ out of their asses), Kira☆Pika, Athena & Robikerottsu, basically any of their anime-based units. But Ongatas reaches a new, special level of lame because they aren’t anime-based and they still fail to capture my attention completely.

On another note… What is up with H!P soloists anymore? Aya and Abe are losing the game, Miki was pushed off a cliff by some UFA executives, Gocchin’s quit the team, there’s a bunch of people on the bench and one of them is going to give birth soon… For god’s sake, the star player is a girl who isn’t even singing her own music!

I don’t care how well everyone is thriving sales-wise, whether it’s on the Oricon or in Internet sales. I think the coach either needs to bring in some new talent pronto, or start taking people off the bench. Just…wait until the one that’s pregnant has had her kid already.

(Congratulations, by the way, to Non.)