Hello!Spam :: 2017 ~Dancing Mode~

[TicTacAnyone]

Here is Nomura Minami's BANZAI! ~Jinsei wa Meccha Wonderful!~ (Mano Erina) that she performed as her solo corner reward.
 
Love Minamina <3

[Purin-chama]

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Anderei" data-cid="206706" data-time="1490835973">
Oda Sakura 18th Birthday at Differ Ariake 3/29/2017


1. Aozora ga Itsumade mo Tsuzuku You na Mirai de Are! (Morning Musume)

2. Haru no Uta (Morning Musume)

3. Yowamushi (Morning Musume)

4. Suki de x5 (Morning Musume)

5. Sousou Shuukyoku "Stigma" (Lillium)

6. Tsumetai Kaze to Kataomoi (Morning Musume)

7. Hikkosenai Kimochi (Matsuura Aya)

8. Kioku no Meiro (High King)

9. Nanni mo Iwazu ni I LOVE YOU (Morning Musume)

</blockquote>Sakura is great at picking songs. I always love her setlists. Don't care about the Lilium song but everything else is great... but where is that Ayaya song from?


Edit: Answered my own question... From the album Double Rainbow.

[Derby]

I just saw this.

Some Korean person wrote an article about Haruka's jicchan 'scandal' but did an awful job at writting down the actual story lol

 

[Meikochi]

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Anderei" data-cid="206706" data-time="1490835973">
Oda Sakura 18th Birthday at Differ Ariake 3/29/2017


6. Tsumetai Kaze to Kataomoi (Morning Musume)

8. Kioku no Meiro (High King)</blockquote>


Now I'm waiting for the DVD for these performances.

[Anderei]

It'll most likely be packaged with Akane's event and be released in a couple months.

[Anderei]

You can buy those crappy ramen cups MM did in 6 packs for less than 10 bucks on Amazon Japan!

[JoshuaJSlone]

I was just randomly searching for H!P stuff at Amazon and was amused to run across this short Kindle book.

Berryz Loss: A Short Story for the Sufferers from the Berryz Kobo Loss Syndrome (Japanese Edition)
by The Ikebukuro Society for the Study of Berryz Kobo




EDIT: Oh wow, more from the same author. An Introductory Study of Berryz Kobo (Japanese Edition), Berryz Loss 2: A Short Story for the Sufferers from the Berryz Kobo Loss Syndrome (Japanese Edition).

[Shoujo Q]

I'll probably throw this into it's own thread later but, omg!

C-ute's compass tour looks amazing if this video is anything to go by. All H!P concerts should be like this.

<a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='https://youtu.be/1T6xkE2pT8E' class="bbc_url" title="External link">Mugen Climax</a>

[yuzuriha]

LOL I discovered that book a while ago and it's been on my amazon wishlist.  For some reason I can't bring myself to buy it for myself.....

[DonJuan]

[quote="Anderei"]
You can buy those crappy ramen cups MM did in 6 packs for less than 10 bucks on Amazon Japan!
[/quote]
 
Well shit, now I want to buy some.

[JPope]

[quote="Shoujo Q"]
I'll probably throw this into it's own thread later but, omg!

C-ute's compass tour looks amazing if this video is anything to go by. All H!P concerts should be like this.

<a class="bbc_url" href="https://youtu.be/1T6xkE2pT8E" title="External link">Mugen Climax</a>
[/quote]
 
Pretty sweet. This is the best live of Mugan I've seen yet, probably because it was performed at the requisite high volume the song demands. Even with that, I'd still have mixed the vocals a touch lower into the mix. 

[MejraThea]

It really does look great! I've been looking at some of the other videos from it and I love these outfits.

[TicTacAnyone]

C-ute's concerts were really good in 2016. Even their spring tour was a good watch.... Which is a lot to me. Lol.
 
But they obviously had a different film director or company for this tour, it's a completely different style. A lot more pans and slow zooms... the camera is much more fluid. Not to mention a different editor.

[moralar]

Sayu's revival summoned me back to check out Morning Musume after a long absence. I now know the faces of the 9th+ gen members! (I'm still shaky on some though.) Eripon is cute enough that I don't care how useless she is.
 
That is all.

[zlilzlilzlil]

Some thing I didn't know:
Around 2002 or so, 2 albums with english covers of H!P were released. 
The first was mainly MM, but the second was more about H!P and many others groups in it.
 
I can't seem to find the full audio, but here is a sample of the 2nd album songs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AiK61kFLyY
 
 
And so that you know, some of them actually were quite famous, the singer of Shiawase Desu Ka was one of the most succsesfull female singers in the 80's according to wikipedia.
 
Any ideas where to find it?

[JoshuaJSlone]

The two albums are Cover Morning Musume! ~Various Artist Covers "MORNING MUSUME"!~ and Cover Morning Musume Hello! Project!, and all the tracks (+1 bonus) were compiled into Hip Hits! Morning Musume Hello! Project International Collection. I think all three can be found relatively affordably from third-party sellers places like Amazon. For no pay, I know at least JPopsuki has it.

[Madara]

Those two albums were among my earliest H!P album purchases. And it took a long time before I finally heard all the originals to match the covers. Sheena Easton sang "If You're Happy," the cover of "Shiawase desu Ka," and she was indeed a major singing star once upon a time. She sang the theme song in the 1981 James Bond movie, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. Other name stars on those albums are Irene Cara ("Fame"), Vanessa Williams (actress and one-time Miss America whose reign was cut short by a scandal) and Tiffany (don't recall any hits of hers). My favorite song on those albums is "Do It Now" by someone named Mylin.

[Purin-chama]

Those things were hard to find back in the day.

[JPope]

Tiffany's big hit was a cover of "I Think We're Alone Now". Didn't Deniece Williams ("Let's Hear It For The Boy") also have a song on one of those H!P cover albums?

[JoshuaJSlone]

My favorites are probably the Vanessa Williams version of I Wish and Maysa Leak's Dangerous Summer Night!. Quite different arrangements, but not in a weird way like some of them.
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="JPope" data-cid="206792" data-time="1491073376">Didn't Deniece Williams ("Let's Hear It For The Boy") also have a song on one of those H!P cover albums?</blockquote>Dance Site, their version of Koi no Dance Site.

[DonJuan]

Henkka's (the person behind Wota in Translation) new translation project is Tsunku's book Love Theory. So far it reads as his opinion on girls and women, the way they are perceived and maybe a look behind why he has chosen certain girls. I liked especially this part in the foreword:

"I realize that I’m no genius, and so I continue to be fond of other people who put in the effort to better themselves. I’m drawn to girls like that. To me, it’s been one of the most crucial things I’ve looked for when choosing the members of Morning Musume and Taiyou to Ciscomoon. Rather than going for girls with the good looks, the singing, the figures — girls who are just slightly above average in all areas — I want girls who have at least one thing that really sticks out about them. If only they have that, and if I sense from them the attitude that they believe they can make it by making use of that one thing about them, I don’t think anything of it if their singing at the audition is a little lacking, or if they’re a bit chubby or whatever."
 
Come to think of it, for a certain period it has always been the project girls(*) that ended up being the most popular members. Tsuji, Rika (if you consider her a "project" girl), Konno, Sayumi... it took them some time (Tsuji aside), but around the time of their graduations they were (among, in Tsuji's case) the most popular members. 
 
(*) "Project girls" are (to me) the girls that are chosen as surprises, maybe even seen as mistakes in the beginning. Typical project girls to me are Tsuji, Konno and Sayumi. However, they're added for a reason. Tsuji was the perfect partner in crime for Aibon, Konno apparently gave it her all in the training camp and probably impressed Tsunku with her determination, Sayumi was really cute and they might have seen the chances for her character back then.
 
After these there are a few where I could see becoming something like that, but more as "failed" attempts. Ikuta isn't that popular and Haruna and Akane are even less popular. They've also been added for good reasons (at least two of them); Ikuta was determined to develop a character and Haruna brought in fashion... okay let's be honest she was chosen because she closed the gap in age between Mizuki and Aika. And maybe because she was a good talker. Akane is cute and not as boring as people make her out to be but in 2 years she hasn't broken out of her shell yet, being left behind even by Miki. However, it's very likely that around the time of 7th and 8th gen the audition and choosing process has changed a lot. Tsunku has said that he had given up some power long before that but that period seems to be very striking.
 
The next step was, of course, 12th gen, where all members feel rather un-Tsunkuish. Aside from Haruna at least. They are average. Miki is an average performer, Maria is an average wota bait, Akane... I won't write her off just yet but there's nothing special around her (and that's what I'm saying, having her as my 2nd favourite in the group). They don't have anything that is incredibly striking about them. Haruna is bad at both singing and dancing, but she's entertaining. Not as a persona like Sayumi was but at least more than the "lol random" thing that's going on in H!P. 
 
13th gen - I don't know. They're pushing Reina, after watching Hinafes it felt very obvious, and she does have a special aura around her - she's adorable, she's funny, she catches the eye. Kaede on the other hand... is, once again, average. But with a good backstory. 
 
But if we go back some generations I think there is one certain point where Tsunku's preferences were still what drove the audition process - 8th gen auditions. In retrospect Kikkawa Yuu seems like a much better addition than Aika, but she's basically - you guessed it - average. In a group with Fujimoto Miki, Takahashi Ai and even Tanaka Reina she would've been an average singer (side to side with Kamei and Gaki), compared to Sayumi and Eri (and, depending on your own taste, other girls) she would've been an average beauty, compared to Sayumi, Gaki, hell, even Koharu she would have been averagely interesting. Granted, she still beats Aika in all of these three aspects. Why was Aika chosen? 
Because she was a hard worker. In the same foreword Tsunku says something along the lines of that with enough effort everybody could beat a lazy genius. Unfortunately Aika did not really beat anyone (aside from Junjun at a silly tv game) but it's basically been confirmed that she was working really hard behind the scenes. In the end it would have been better to just choose both girls for the new generation but I can kind of see why Tsunku thought Aika would be the more interesting member. 
 
And after that there's the big cut with Riho getting in. Alright, Riho wasn't average, she probably did beat everyone at dancing and at least everybody in her generation and after her at stage presence, but she was a calculated win. Mizuki might have been chosen as the princess, but maybe it's just me but Mizuki is more or less the definition of average. Granted, not in the current line-up, but in general. Ikuta and Kanon on the other hand... pretty sure these two were Tsunku's picks. Among 10th gen Haruka, of all people, seems like someone who Tsunku wouldn't pick. In the beginning wota fodder, nowadays average in nearly every aspect in the group (aside from popularity) - don't get me wrong, she ranks high in my list too, but she feels un-Tsunku-ish. Then again the other three have this little something - Ayumi with her fighting spirit, Haruna as mentioned, and Masaki as the secret weapon that has finally been launched (and hey, it worked?). Sakura, however... definitely in for her singing, not for anything else. 
 
This post has already gotten too long and I'm just rambling, but that's what the thread is named "spam" for, right? 

[Anderei]

I've been under the impression that Ikuta is pretty popular. 9th gen all have a category they're super average/mediocre in.

[TicTacAnyone]

I've never considered Ikuta particularly popular. Imo she only got more popular than before as 9th gen came into seniority/Sayashi and Kanon left. It felt more like people who had a 9ki oshi moved on to support other 9ki more than anything else.
 
But maybe I'm all wet.

[DonJuan]

I was under the same impression. And even nowadays she's not anywhere close to the most popular members, she's still... eh... average. 
 
Personally I think it's Mizuki = Haruka > Masaki >> Maria > Ayumi > Ogata = Ikuta > Sakura > Miki > Haruna > Akane. But to be honest, I don't think there are big popularity gaps behind Masaki and before Miki. 

[TicTacAnyone]

Actually I'd put Miki a bit higher... I always, without a doubt, see "Chellll!" or "Chel's singing is seriously too good" on Youtube videos all the time. MVs, H!S, concert vids, etc. They act like she's the second coming of Oda, lolol. Idk how her goods sell, but I see lots and lots of comments about her on videos by the Japanese fanbase.
 
Here's personally my viewpoint based on the comments n such I see:
 
Miuzki
Ayumi
Masaki
Haruka
Oda
Ikuta
Miki
Yokoyama
Maria
Kaede
Ogata
Haruna
Akane

[DonJuan]

It's pretty hard to rank these 5-6 mid-popularity girls. Something tells me Sakura has gotten a lot more popular because everytime the group is on TV she's trending on twitter, but then I compare her to the ones in front of her and I wonder if she's really that popular haha. It feels like Ogata/Ikuta/Sakura/Miki are rather close. Ogata doesn't get much to do during concerts but wota still seem to love her.


/edit: I'd definitely put Maria higher. At least when it comes to wota popularity.

[Meikochi]

From what I gathered last summer from wotas : Ogata is really nice to everyone during handshakes, beautiful and likeable character so she is really liked among wotas, Maria and Sakura are popular (Maria's goods often sold out and Sakura became more and more popular since last year) and Miki is in the middle.

[nimrahwt]

I'm working on a few emoji's for the H!P discord 
the first ones: 
<div>  </div>
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[TicTacAnyone]

 
Somehow this one has Thea's name written all over it =w=
 

[MejraThea]

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="nimrahwt" data-cid="206832" data-time="1491179426"></blockquote>
Yes.

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="TicTacAnyone" data-cid="206833" data-time="1491179708">
 
Somehow this one has Thea's name written all over it =w=
 
</blockquote> 
TicTac, I love you.