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.

I must say, I’m pretty okay with who Koharu is right now. I don’t really need her to change, just to GTFO of Morning Musume. She’s at that ripe “miracle” age of graduation — follow in Maki’s footsteps, Koharu! Mankind will thank you later when you stop weighing down Momusu’s music with your subpar vocals as you get lead positions and gobs of solo lines on each single release!

She doesn’t have much of personality. She’s just a crackhead. I love her when I watch old things like a Musume DOKYU! episode featuring her playing games and bumbling like an idiot because it was genuine and almost sort of endearing. Nowadays, she’s made a personality out of being hyperactive and annoying as fuck and, to be honest, that isn’t really much of a personality. At least, not much of a good one. It’s a bit unfortunate that I’ve come to see her as Morning Musume’s special little sister instead of a real idol who can be taken seriously — but then again, Koharu’s persona right now isn’t much about “seriousness”. Therefore, I don’t feel as bad. When she’s seventeen and we start seeing more normalcy out of her (again, this is theoretical)… Yeah, that’d be good, but where will her personality go? It’s as if she’s entirely dependant on her youth, and when that runs out, what should we expect, a Miki clone?

And as for her solo career… I must confess, it’s extremely difficult for me to take any anime music career seriously. I only recently (read: a few hours ago) began to accept Buono as something long-term, all thanks to the fact that there’s a track on their upcoming album titled “Rock no Kamisama”, or in English, “God of Rock”. Koharu hasn’t earned my respect yet, and as long as Hello! Project continues to influence Kirarin☆Revolution beyond all recognition and Koharu continues to fail musically, I can’t see this changing. I still enjoy some of her music because of the aforementioned guilty pleasure note, but that’s just what it is and just what Koharu as an idol is to me: Fun, yet never serious. I was rather surprised to find this picture from her photobook POP, and that doesn’t even look like Koharu. In the “Furusato” performance, she is all smiles (though, to be fair, so is Lin), she can’t stop striking a pose or two, etc. I would have loved an eighth generation-specific “Furusato”, or maybe even a Junjun and Linlin duet (they get their duet, “Suki na Senpai”, in Momusu’s 2007 fall tour, the DVD of which is supposed to be released on the 13th of next month) of the damn song, but somehow, Koharu manages to invade that wonderful concept. And it’s sad that I view her as “invading” anyway.

This girl is an excellent card. She’s an ace, like Maki was, but for different reasons. She’s useful. Koharu’s ties to that anime are deeply embedded at this point, thus ensuring her some very, very nice sales and also generates interest in Morning Musume, as her singing roles as Tsukishima Kirari are credited as “Tsukishima Kirari starring Kusumi Koharu (Morning Musume)”. It’s not because she was billed as a miracle or an ace that she’s in the front of the covers of “Mikan” or gets more solo lines than other members even with her terrible vocals, but so that little girls who watch Kirarin☆Revolution will look at the CD, go “IT’S TSUKISHIMA KIRARI OMFG MOMMY BUY IT FOR ME”, and thus help bolster Momusu’s sales as well. Momusu isn’t doing good on the Oricon. They haven’t been since 2004. Unfortunately, little girls are probably only interested in the Kirariharu factor and view the other Musume as excess baggage, which explains why “Mikan” did so miserably, and why pushing Koharu to the forefront probably isn’t gonna work out so well.

We’ll see.