The only reason I am ever excited for more Hello! Project auditions is because there is a 50% chance that someone will get through those auditions who isn’t under fifteen years old, who isn’t fucking kawaii or moé, and who has some realism in the content of their character. After much brainstorming and the announcement of the upcoming three-month Taiwanese Hello! Pro Egg audition which “[will be] seeking new members from 6-24 years old”, I’ve realized this. It’s amazing because it makes up 80% of the basis of why the original Morning Musume lineup is my ideal image of the group.

Think about it. What kinds of girls — what kind of women embodied the first generation? There was my shining example of a good H!P member, Nakazawa Yuko. The best damn leader for a lameshit Japanese pop group that there will ever be. This woman had style, class, confidence, maturity, and a voice that wasn’t tossed into a proverbial vocal meat grinder just to sound like a chipmunk on the finished product. Everyone else followed suit.

Except, possibly, Fukuda Asuka. Asuka was a younger teenager than Abe or Kaori, sure. But did she accentuate her age to appeal to audiences who loved that shit? No! Yet she was still cute. Why can’t we have someone like this in Morning Musume now? Why can’t we have cuteness that arises naturally rather than be forced down our throats with gaudy kawaii clothes and loli hairstyles, with a voice that grates on everyone’s nerves and mannerisms that are expected to stay even as the girl goes on her 20th birthday (therefore becoming a legal adult in Japan)? It’s creepy and can even potentially be developmentally harmful to the idol in question.

Imagine being told, “Your public persona is kawaii. You need to act this way, sing this way, dress this way, and portray this image to people the best you can or you will probably not go far in your career.” Usually (from what I gather), idols will work with their agencies to create an image that is comfortable for them to portray, i.e. close to their actual personality. I’m sure that this was done initially for both Kago Ai and Tsuji Nozomi as they probably were fairly childlike when they first joined Momusu (I’m not asking for every 12-13 year old to be as mature and intelligent as a regular adult). But as time went by?

I think at age 17 I wasn’t mature enough and lacked common sense a proper society member would have.

The former Hello! roject star turned to cigarettes because of her desire to be a grown up and she felt smoking relaxed her.

The above quotes are taken from this synopsis of the comeback interview conducted between Kago and Nishimoto Masaru. How should we take “grown up”, in this context? Many teenagers are immature in that regard and it isn’t uncommon for them to do things that are as ’stupid’ as what Kago did. But given Kago’s history as an idol who got her fortune off playing the childish cute card on an endless loop, I think that perhaps being infantilized throughout much of her developing years only exacerbated the desire to feel grown up.

She explained that when she first joined the popular J-pop all-girl group Morning Musume people often commented that she looked older than her age. As years went by it should’ve been natural for Aibon to “grow up”, but instead she became more childish. And it didn’t help that her work surroundings reinforced such image. Even though she was getting older, the majority of her fans’ demographic remained young so she was required to put on the “Kago-chan” act. The grown ups around her all asked that she maintain such kiddish image for the viewers.

I see the exact same thing happening to one Tsugunaga Momoko from Berryz Koubou. Keep in mind that I have nothing against either Momoko, Kago, or any of the idols I’ll mention in this post, but Momoko is sixteen years old and she neither sounds, looks, nor acts any differently than how she did when she was twelve at the time of her debut. Perhaps Momoko is just a good actress? Who knows. I’m inclined to wonder if there’s another Kago in the making, and a disaster to a beloved idol’s career in the imminent future.

Another person I see this happening to is Tanaka Reina. How has this girl matured whatsoever in the past 4-5 years she’s been an idol? Her image has been the same; the only thing different in her at all is that she’s gone from “simple, pretty, and badass” to ghetto chic. In the meantime, the burikko idol a lot of people hate for the reason that she does exaggerate her cuteness to her advantage, Michishige Sayumi, has made a measurable amount of progress by steadily shifting her public persona from the childish girl who conceived of Usa-chan peace, to one of more respectability as an adult.

It’s weird how the ones stuck in a time loop are (or were) the frontrunners of their individual groups, whereas idols left to occupy space in the background developed their confidence and personalities more gradually. Yaguchi Mari was by no means a lead in the heyday of Morning Musume; by the time she became a decent lead, she was everything you could ask for or need in one. But if you need an Insta-Lead™, opt for the older auditionees who come across more strongly, despite that idoling is about growth, and ignore that desperate twelve year old who can’t carry a tune and glances at the floor shyly while she sings.

So I ask you… Which would you prefer? A six year old idol, or one that is twenty-four years old?