Musume Overview: Kusumi Koharu Edition

Oh, boy. This is the person everyone has a tough opinion of. I’ve seen my fair share of people who totally, undeniably support her and love listening to her music, and more than enough people who can’t stand the sight of her/hearing her voice. I have to say, although I am sort of the latter, I’ll try to extol the virtues of Kusumi Koharu to the best of my ability — but I don’t exactly agree with them.

Let’s tackle the subject of her horrible singing ability above all else. Everyone recognizes Koharu as a crappy singer. Some wonder why Tsunku chose her (I’ll get into the whole “miracle” business here in a second). I happen to be of the mind that Tsunku chose Koharu because her name is cool and he felt Morning Musume was lacking a special-ed girl.

…well, not precisely. I can’t say why he specifically chose her on her own to be the seventh generation. Tsunku’s reasoning is frequently mysterious and also bullshit, but he probably understands the “biz” better than all of us, so maybe we should stop questioning him all the time. In my case, I think he chose Koharu because she would prove useful in the anime field only a short time later, and that, although listening to her sing is the equivalent of stepping on a cat and placing a microphone next to its mouth as it shrieks in pain and I heavily enjoy visualing a red laser dot on her forehead in this performance of “Furusato”, her music is a guilty pleasure for me. It’s so bad, it’s good. And that’s special.

Musume Overview: Tanaka Reina Edition

This was a rather interesting post to write. Not because I loathe this girl or anything, but because I have a fairly balanced opinion on her that could end up accidentally leaning either too favorable or too negative and leaves people with the wrong idea. She’s got quite a lot of support from both Japanese and international fans. In fact, out of the Rokkies, I can almost say Tanaka Reina has the biggest fanbase — but even that is debatable.

Sometimes I wonder if exaggeration is a natural side-effect of this girl’s insanely strong persona, or she’s purposefully trying to put herself out there by winking uncontrollably during performances, or making her voice so insufferably annoying that I can barely stand to listen to her. Someone like Koharu, for instance, there’s not a doubt in my mind that she acts fucktarded of her own free will. But Reina? The girl who was already such a “character” that I imagine she wasn’t instructed to change anything about herself at all when she joined Momusu? It’s a little difficult to grasp.

Hi, Minnasan – The Princess Is In This Castle

I just kinda wanna have a tea party with her, y’know?

Musume Overview: Michishige Sayumi Edition

It’s been a few days since the last overview. I had a bit of trouble trying to figure out how I was going to write down my thoughts about this girl, or what I was going to say that was negative enough to counter the positive notes on her. She is really a terrific idol, one of Hello! Project’s best, but for different reasons than, say, Goto Maki or Abe Natsumi. Many of you will ultimately not agree with me on that — so be it.

Ladies and gentlemen, Michishige Sayumi.

Hi, Minnasan – She’s A Traditional Girl

I do believe that nothing more…needs to be said.

*guh*

Musume Overview: Kamei Eri Edition

*brushes self off* Well, now that all that nastiness is out and in the open, I suppose we can move on with the more thoughtful posts again. I’m not counting on ever writing another entry like that, as it (likely) slaughtered the positive opinions some of my readers had of me, but if you’re still with me right now, I swear I will only deliver to you the highest quality of intellectual debate and writing I can muster. ANYWAY.

So far in this series, we’ve covered Takahashi Ai and Niigaki Risa. That’s basically all that’s left of the fifth generation, so guess who we’re going to cover now… Rokkies! And as Kamei Eri is the oldest Rokkie, she’ll have the honor of being the first one I write about. Shall we?

Confessions of Fountain Square

Disclaimer: If you love Sugaya Risako as an idol, don’t read this. If you enjoy ejaculating on Sugaya Risako’s pictures, don’t read this and GTFO. This is my most negative post yet, in all likelihood. I’m sorry if this “offends” anyone, but I have to get this out once and for all. If you still read this even though I’ve warned you, if you still got mad at me and left a comment telling me off, the joke’s not on me. It’s on you.

Alright, out with it: I can’t fucking stand this girl.

…I know, that’s a very strong statement, especially coming from one human being about another. I’ve never even known her personally. So maybe we should say that I can’t stand what Up-Front Agency has made her? That theory would sit quite well with me, in retrospect, since the adorable little Risako from the days of the Minimoni movie and 4KIDS as well as earlier Berryz singles doesn’t give me the urge to KILL every time I look at her/hear her voice/watch her in “Anata Nashi de wa Ikite Yukenai”. No, I’m afraid it’s the Risako of today, the one who never misses a chance to stare coyingly at the camera, whose voice is so epically annoying that I rarely listen to Berryz songs (which she is pretty much featured prominently in 24/7; thanks, assholes!), whose presence ruins virtually every Berryz PV and group picture because she is always pushed to the front instead of letting other girls have a chance, but someone in UFA must fancy her or otherwise her name and face wouldn’t be plastered all over Berryz’s.

Yep, Risako just fucking sucks.

Musume Overview: Niigaki Risa Edition

The feature point of this “episode” in my Musume Overview series (which has the most uninspired title ever) is everyone’s favorite, the easily comparable yet still fairly loveable Niigaki Risa! To be honest, though, uh… There’s not a whole lot I can say about this girl. Then again, the same could be applied to Ai, and my writing tends to morph as I go along, so in the early stages (i.e., this opening paragraph) I might expect that this post will get to 700 words at best, and will turn into some sort of 2,000-word post. Either way, you can expect some babbling about her latest photobook entitled Isshun, and maybe one or two images from it!

… *lame*

Musume Overview: Introduction & Takahashi Ai Edition

So Morning Musume is about personality, right? I mean, on the whole, you can either make or break this group depending on how many diverse personas are involved in it. Seeing as this group has such a heinously long track record, however, a lot of the personalities have “already been done”. We’ve seen the narcissistic girl, the tomboy, the outgoing girl, the motherly nuturing type, the sexy girl, the hyperactive girl, the girl-next-door, the rebel girl, etc. To have new idols in Morning Musume who reflect basically their predecessors would make a pretty redundant Morning Musume, no?

Sure as shit, though… I think I would prefer that kind of Momusu to the Momusu we have now.

Morning Musume

I perceive this Morning Musume to be a ’safe’ one. Everyone is awfully stale these days, aren’t they? I don’t want to blame Ai for that one, because they’ve been stale since, like… Kaori was the leader. And I’m not blaming Kaori for that, either. Leaders only project so much onto the rest of the group, and Ai is doing her damnedest, despite having virtually no personality to her name and not being an especially “leader”-type girl, at her core. The group has plenty of energy, honestly, so this is not a problem. Vocally, they aren’t too shabby — they’re better than Berryz Koubou, and that’s good, and their weakest singers (whoever those are; I will let you make that decision for yourself) aren’t even extraordinarily weak. Sayumi has improved a hell of a lot. She might not cut the mustard the way Maki did, but she’s got a truckload of personality to back herself up and make it so she is on the same level as the other girls, just not quite in the same way. In fact, I’m tempted to say she’s the least ‘blah’ out of everyone, for me. Maybe I’m biased because Sayu basically incorporates everything I love in an idol (she’s not short as all-get out, she’s got naturally black hair, she’s a fantastic balance of maturity and immaturity, etc).

One Is a Macaroni

I have to confess, this PV touched me deeply.

I was going to wait until I had this single sitting on my computer desk beside my monitor to write anything about it, but since the PVs are out (and have been out for quite some time), I’ll blog about it while it’s still a topic that is fresh in the minds of what I tentatively refer to as the ‘Jpop blogosphere’. Specifically, I’m going to tackle the PV for “Macaroni” and its lyrics, because I just waited an hour for it to load on YouTube and I am not doing the same for “Baby cruising Love” just yet.

As you can probably already tell, this is where Yoshimi starts waxing poetic about a trio of girls who sing entirely in Japanese, live in a foreign land, have no idea there’s a teeny-tiny fanbase waiting for them in America, etc. This is the point where she starts trash-talking Morning Musume a little bit, exploring things she has half a clue about. I am a blogger who relies on what I feel inside, and although my writing isn’t nearly as qualified or as confident as the next person’s, I try. And I think that’s also what Perfume does. They may not possess the street cred Momusu has to ensure them a spot on Kouhaku each year (whether lumped into a medley or not), they may not be extraordinarily talented, but if there’s anything to be gained from these two arguably “negative” points, it’s something good. Genuine. And that’s what I love about Perfume. That’s what I want to incorporate into my writing, even if this is just a leisurely past-time.