Congratulations to Oda Sakura, the ONLY winner of Momusu’s 11th Gen Auditions!

Well! This news came as a TOTAL shock this morning as they JUST released the names of the finalists YESTERDAY!

Out of the 6 finalists announced, Oda Sakura, an H!P EGG, was revealed today to be the sole winner of the Morning Musume 11th Generation auditions. A rising star in H!P it seems, she had only joined the EGGs less than a year ago in November 2011. She’s already a strong vocal and dance talent so I’m sure she’ll go far in Momusu! I can’t wait to see and hear her with the other girls.

A video of her audition footage and acceptance announcement was uploaded on youtube, you can check it out here:

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13 Colorful Character now available on iTunes!

Morning Musume’s 13th album, 13 Colorful Character, is now available on iTunes for the low, low price of $12.99!

Support Momusu and buy their music!

Find it here!

New Official Blogs!

H!P has finally opened blogs for the ninth and tenth gens of Momusu! This is fantastic news! It gives the public an even better glimpse into the daily lives of our favorite idols and will only serve to make us feel more connected with them and to get to know their personalities better.

As of this post, the blogs contain only greetings from each individual member, along with a cell phone photo. It’s not certain how often they’ll update, or if there’ll be a rotating schedule of who posts when, or if it will be first come, first posted. I’m sure management will be keeping a close eye on what goes through, especially with the younger members. Not that I suspect they’d post anything inappropriate, but we don’t want a repeat of the Uncle Hitler incident. (Seriously, where was management on THAT?!)

9kies Official Blog
10kies Official Blog

Congratulations to Non-chan and the Sugiura family!

Non-chan announced on her blog today that she is currently 3 months pregnant with her third child! What wonderful news for herself, Taiyo, and the children! I’m very excited and happy for her, Non-chan is a wonderful Mom.

She stated she is due sometime in the spring after the new year.

Congratulations Non-chan!

Momusu 2013 calendar cover revealed!

So the covers to the 2013 H!P calendars have been revealed! This year we’re getting Momusu, Berryz, C-ute, S/mileage and Mano, as to be expected. You can check out the other covers here.

Every year for the past several  years I have gotten the Momusu calendar, and I have never been disappointed, but I think I might be this year. It’s that ugly pixel art! It looks like someone drew all over a nice group shot of the girls in Microsoft Paint. I’m going to assume that it’s meant to resemble purikura, and that I have no problem with, but it looks sloppy. I guess I’ll have to wait to see what the interior photos look like, but I’m really kind of disappointed with the cover, especially when the past couple years have been really classy looking.

As for the other covers, I think Berryz looks nice, although a couple of them are wearing WAY too much blush (what is that trend lately to be wearing so much blush you look like you’re running a fever?) and Risako’s uneven lavender dye job is distracting. I actually think Momoko looks the best and not like she’s trying too hard.

C-ute’s cover is nice, though a bit generic. I’m interested in seeing the interior shots.

S/mileage’s cover I love! It’s very classy and just well shot. There’s something about it I can’t quite put my finger on, I love that yellow contrasting background against their uniforms, it just really pops at you.

Mano’s is nice, I guess. I’m not really a big fan of head shots like that and I definitely wouldn’t want one 24×36 on my wall.

So there you have it! I would have loved a Dream Momusu calendar at some point, but I guess it wasn’t meant to be and that’s a shame. As for these, I can’t wait to see some of the interior pages, it looks like another interesting year for H!P calendars!

Fairies – Beat Generation

God, you have no idea how badly I want to correct that to Faeries, but that isn’t important.

Fairies debuted in 2011 under the Avex label, consisting of 7 members. I remember briefly reading about their formation and being interested in an Avex idol group, but didn’t really follow up on it until I recently heard their third single Beat Generation. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to it. I’m listening to it right now in fact. It’s such an awesome pop song! Great beat, great harmonies, a great hook. I love idol groups because most of the time they’re harmonizing and it just comes across as so more powerful vocally than listening to a solo singer.

The PV is simple but fun to watch, with lots of wardrobe changes and a few interesting camera shots. I’ll be on the lookout for a dance version so I can get a better look at the cool choreography – there a more than a few talented dancers in Fairies and the song is definitely danceable. Looking around I see there were auditions several months ago looking for a new member, but it doesn’t seem like anything has come of that yet. As for the group as it stands, I think Rikako, Sora and Momoko stand out the most to me, though honestly, all the girls stand out. I actually hope they don’t add new members as I want to see more from these girls and that they’ll all have a chance to shine.

Unfortunately their output doesn’t seem to be available on U.S. iTunes (hopefully) yet. I wish more companies would realize they have followings outside Asia who would gladly pay for their product if it was made available to them. As it is I’ll be waiting for them to put out an album so I can buy all their singles in one fell swoop. In the meantime I’ll be checking out their other PVs and learning more about the group!

Momusu 51st single and more!

Recently Momusu have announced that they are in production for their 51st single. There has yet to be a release date, title, or theme announced, but expectations are high after the stellar sales of their 50th single. I expect this single to do slightly better than their previous sales of the past few years, but doubt they can keep the momentum of One・Two・Three as those sales were probably due to it being the 50th single and people buying several editions for collection’s sake.

In other news, Iikubo Haruna’s official image color has been changed from Chocolate Brown to Honey in an official announcement released this afternoon Japan Time. Speculation is this was to make it easier for people to find glow sticks to represent her at concerts. I tried doing a search myself but they don’t seem to exist. It’s a shame since I think the color suited her well. Whatever the case, I look forward to seeing her in her new color come the next single release!

Cleaning up the act

I recently cleaned up the links on the sidebar, taking down blogs that haven’t updated in months and/or years, updating the sites I now go to daily for news and such, cleaning up Momusu blog links, but also removing links to websites that shall remain nameless that shamelessly refer to the size of the breasts of a 15 year old girl. This is not an association I want to have. You’re disgusting and promoting pedophilia. 

I understand that a good portion of idol appeal is the fan service, it’s part of the business model. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it, or condone it, especially if it’s with young teenagers or children, as a large part of the new generations to Momusu are. It’s different if say Sayu or Reina or any of the OGs release a sexy photobook, that’s fine, they’re of the age to do what they want. But bikini shots of 13 year old girls is a little sickening, you know that they took those pictures to pander to a certain type of fan, the kind of fan I want nothing to do with.

Sooo… this blog has been largely defunct for a couple of years. It’s not that I’m no longer interested in Jpop, it’s that my interest in blogging about it waned quite a bit. A LOT of stuff has happened in the Momusu world since last I posted; Aika and Risa have graduated and 4 new members joined. Kago-chan had a baby, Miki had a baby, Yuko got married and is currently pregnant. Morning Musume released their 50th single, auditions are being held for 11th Gen, Reina’s holding auditions for her own rock band, etc. etc. etc.

While I haven’t been posting here I have been posting over on my lj, so I will be backdating those posts shortly. I’m not promising anything, but I’d like to try and become a bit of a regular poster again.

That being said, I love the sound of DIY♡’s first single.

Another Momusu dream

I had a dream last night I was back in high school except members of Morning Musume were my classmates; namely Sayumi, Aika, Reina and Ai-chan. There may have been a few others, but those are the girls I remember specifically. We were sitting at a big table collaborating on some big project, but really just kind of goofing around instead.