Bikkuri Project

This entry is dangerous, because I really want to call “general opinions” on the quality of certain singles, but I have to realize that even if I hate a certain song, and believe that there are many others that share my opinion, there are also many others out there who loved that song. I want to say things like “most would agree” but I realize I don’t really have the authority to do so. Damn it if having to phrase everything as purely my opinion doesn’t undercut my argument though. Oh well. Nothing for it.

What I want to comment on what I believe is an unfortunate trend/strategy within h!p. I’ll elaborate by saying that the announcement of “Lalala Shiawase no Uta” as C-ute’s next single was not a shock to me in any way. It was a disappointment, and after watching the PV I am even more disappointed. So much so in fact, that I’m not going to bother to write about the PV other to say that Kanna looked cute, and that is the one and only good thing about it. The sad thing is, I could see something like this coming from the moment I heard Tokkaiko Junjou. Any idea what I’m hinting at yet?

The pattern that I have noticed is that when a group has a ‘break-out’ single, they will follow up with a sub-par single, banking on the popularity of the previous single helping them sell something that is far inferior. “Love Machine” was followed by “Koi no Dance Site”, a song that was considerably less marketable, but it sold because of “Love Machine”. “Iroppoi Jirettai” which was somewhat of a breakout hit for that time in MM, was followed by “Chokkan2″ which stinks of B-side (because it is!). “Love Namida Iro” was followed by “100kai no kiss”, the first, but certainly not the last of Aya’s boring ballads. PetiteMoni followed up “Chokkotto Love” arguably their most popular song, with “Seishun Jidai”, arguably their least popular song (how often do you see that performed in concerts?). And now, alas, it is C-ute’s turn to fall prey.

Maybe Tsunku just saves up all his less than great songs to be released right after a big hit. It happens too often for me to be able to believe that it’s just a coincidence. The management feels like it’s okay to slack off a bit after a hit single because they know they can get away with it. It makes me mad though. It’s lazy, and it’s a mean strategy. We get all excited about this awesome group that has this awesome song, so we rush to preorder their next single, but rather than moving forward and triumphantly following up with another good song, we end up disappointed. The song sells far more than it deserves to, and the group probably retains most of their fans because everyone still likes and remembers the good single. Everyone’s happy but the fans. All we can do is have hope, I guess, because most likely the next single will be better. I eagerly await, with crossed fingers, whatever C-ute will show us next.

Fondly Yours,

~Celestia~

Have I been updating too much? It’s because the first round of essays/tests has come for my classes this semester, and blogging has become my primary method of procrastination. Anyway…

Word on the street is that Morning Musume will be performing ALL of their singles to date at their next Spring concert. Of course, some of these will have to come in the form of medley, because there are just too many of them, but I’m pretty excited about this. It will give them a chance to kind of lay down who does what part in each song, hopefully allocating some lines to the Pandas, and get the newer members caught up on all of the A-sides. I imagine that it will be difficult for JunLin, and to a lesser extent Aika, to learn all of those lyrics and dances, but once accomplished, they will be in a very good position for future concerts. Well, not everybody will sing every song, but I think it’s safe to assume that the majority of the members will be singing the majority of the songs. In my little dream world, here’s how some of the concert would go. These lists are not meant in order of performance, but rather by catergory.

If everyone gets Solos-

Ai-chan= Roman My Dear Boy. Between her and Miki they pretty much sang the entire song at the Sexy8Beat concert anyway. Everyone else was basically their backup dancers. Ai-chan has enough power to her voice to handle this song, and it certainly doesn’t require a big group to work.

Risa= Egao Yes Nude. She has the range for it. She can do both the sultry lower parts in the verses and the higher parts in the choruses. Also, it’s one of the few singles that she has a lot of lines in.

Eri= Manatsu no Kousen. I really like this song for Eri’s voice. The soft sound of it reminds me of her, so much so that I almost forget that she didn’t actually sing the original version.

Sayu=Aruiteru. Her rendition that she sang while walking down that dock was just adorable, and that one moment made me like Sayumi a lot more than I did before. I know that she loves the song, and if she can sing it in the oh so sweet way she sang it there, she’d do just fine.

Reina= Memory Seishun no Hikari. You’d think I’d pick Shabondama, but I like that better as a group song. Her best shot version of Memory Seishun is my favorite of the best shots. I regret giving up the opportunity to harmonize with the other members by making this a solo, but I know that Reina can do a good job with this song on her own.

Koharu=Hyokkori Hountanjima. If this song must be included in the program, and I guess it must, might as well have Koharu sing it. She can give it all the goofy childishness that it requires. After Konnichi Pa (shudders) it would be a piece of cake. Here’s hoping that she wears a fake mustache for the performance.

Aika= Oosaka koi no Uta. She sang it for her audition and on the Hawaii tour early last year, and she didn’t do a bad job with it then, but I’d love to compare and see how much she’s improved.

JunJun= Furusato. I enjoyed what I heard at the last summer concert, and I think that this song probably has special meaning for Jun since she’s so far from home, so she could portray the emotion well.

LinLin=Namida Tomaranai Houkago. She has the same nasally quality to her voice that Sayumi and KonKon do, but she’s a much better singer, so the song would have the right tone without all of the wrong notes. Bacchiri desu!

For Small Groups-

Morning Cofee= Eri, Risa, LinLin. I believe that the song requir
es at least three voices to work properly? Risa can take the lead part, Eri can do the echo, and LinLin can back them up when the song goes to three parts and in the verses.

Summer Night Town= Ai, Reina. These two have been doing well singing together recently, so I’ll give them one of the older MM songs that requires a fair amount of vocal control. I’m sure they could more than handle it, and Reina would be good at the “Daisuki, ahhh” sexy parts.

Koi no Dance Site= Koharu, Aika, LinLin, Risa. We’ll get the most hyper and ridiculous people on the most hyper and ridiculous song. Koharu can provide the sound effects, much like she did during the 10^th anniversary group concert. Risa will handle the sexy beam. LinLin will dance like the spaz that she is, and I really just want to see Aika doing the “ooh ha!” part because I think it’d be adorable. Just take a moment now to imagine Aika singing this song. Adorable right?

Daite Hold Me= Sayumi, Ai, Koharu, Reina, Eri. Ai and Reina will do the lead parts (mou ichido suki dakishimete hoshi, etc) with Sayu, Koha and Eri handling the “daite daite daite” bits. I’m sure Sayu looks very cute doing the “ahhh” parts.

Onna ni Sachi Are= JunJun, LinLin. They can sing their debut song! The choruses are only sung by two at a time, and the rest is mostly solo lines, so I think it could be done with only two people. They should already have this song down, so they wouldn’t have to worry about learning a bunch of lyrics, and I want a pandas group!

Chokkan2= Aika, Sayumi, JunJun, Risa. Another song that I don’t really like. It doesn’t require intensive singing, so Sayumi should be fine. It does require a lot of cuteness to pull it off since it’s so weird, and if anyone can do it, these four can.

I know that Risa and LinLin got into 3 songs while everyone else got two, but that’s just how it worked out. The rest of the singles will all just have to be full group songs, because I don’t like the idea of them done any other way. I especially wonder what’s going to happen with Mr.Moonlight though. I’d imagine that Ai and Risa would take two of the lead parts, but what about the 3^rd? Maybe JunJun because she’s tall… but I don’t know if she has the right kind of attitude for it. Hmm. I’m really interested to see how that one turns out.

I think I should start signing my blog entries for a more personal touch. I might have to experiment a bit before I find a good sign-off though.

Regards,
~Celestia~

I, like many of you, am interested in the topic of JPop in America, but perhaps on a much smaller and more personal level than the debates that fill the h!p blogs now-a-days. I’m not trying to bring the entire h!p troupe to America. I just want some of my friends and family to give Jpop a chance. I want someone who I can talk with about the music I’m interested in, or, failing that, for people not to freak out and get annoyed at me if I try to play it in my own car when I’m driving with them. How to go about this though? My attempts so far have been met with very little success.

My friends know that I like Japanese music. It’s somewhat of a joke among them though. I’ve tried various strategies, from intentionally asking them to listen to something to “accidentally” happening to have a song playing when they come to visit, to even showing pictures of some idols and asking if they think they’re cute. Any serious attempt to get them to listen to something is met with laughter and fond shakes of the head. “Accidentally” playing things is largely ignored. Usually, my friends will admit that the people in the pictures are attractive, but upon learning that they are Jpop singers they immediately lose interest.

My boyfriend despises Japanese music, though he has heard almost none of it. If I try to play a song when he’s around, he will leave the room. If I so much as sing a line from a Japanese song he’ll get angry and say something like, “You know I hate that Japanese crap!” He’s definitely a lost cause as far as making a fan of him, so my goal really is to get him to tolerate at least the most normal-sounding songs in my collection. Since he’s the person I’m with the most, it really bothers me that I can’t listen to the music I like when I’m around him. His main complaints are that ‘it all sounds the same’ and ‘the singing is whiney’. It’s sooo frustrating, because of course we know that it does NOT all sound the same, but it’s hard to get a feel for that when all you’ve heard is a few seconds of a couple of songs that you’ve already made up your mind to hate, right?

My family isn’t much better. My Mom often asks, “are you still listening to that Chinese anime music?” Yes mom, if you mean real, non-animated people singing in Japanese, then yes. Sigh.

Why is it so hard to get people to even give JPop a serious chance? I’ve tried a wide variety of songs on a wide variety of audiences, but no one will take me seriously. All I can think of is to blame the anime. A lot of the Jpop that gets introduced to the US comes via theme songs to animes. Unfortunately, anime holds a major stigma here, with the anime nerds being akin to slime mold on the social hierarchy. I’m not trying to insult people who like anime, and I think It’s a shame they are looked at like that, but please spare the Jpop! It’s really something entirely different. People who are obsessed with anime are looked on as kind of weird in Japan too, but everyone listens to some sort of music, including the cool people. I’m a big believer in trying new things, and to see people blowing off an entire country worth of music due to the negative social connotations of its cartoons kind of infuriates me. I really do believe that if people would give Jpop an honest chance that many of them would find something that they like.

That right there is really the heart of the problem with bringing Jpop to America. It has been labeled ‘uncool’ before it even had a chance here due to the anime that has come before. It’s such a shame, but I’m in the camp that doesn’t believe that h!p or Jpop in general could become popular in America any time soon. It’s not that the actual music would not be appealing to people, or even that the language barrier would stop people from listening (Latin music). Much like your average Japanese person won’t take Morning Musume seriously because they think their fans are weird/gross, the average American won’t take Jpop seriously because they also think its fans are weird/gross. If admitting that you like Morning Musume is going to lump you in with the otaku and you’re not someone who wants to embrace that label, you’re going to be damn sure to steer clear of Morning Musume, right? I’m not an anthropologist or a sociologist, or whatever ologist that this problem would be contemplated by, so I don’t really know how such trends can be turned around or how to change the way one entire culture looks at something. It must be possible. Things do go in and out of style, but what is the driving force behind such change, and how may it be applied to Jpop?

Coming back to my personal dilemma, if I can’t sway the view of an entire culture, do any of you have any tips on how to change the mind of a single person? How can I get my friends/family to give h!p, and Jpop in general, an honest chance? Have any of you had any success in that?

Well, I’ve given in and started a KAT-TUN blog. I don’t want to continue to pollute this, my h!p blog, with Johnnys stuff, but writing about them once has made me want to write more. It’s not going to be a good blog because it’s really just an occasional outlet for my fangirling, so don’t expect to see anything as deep or work-intensive as you might see here. Bikkuri Project is definitely my main focus. Here’s a link in case you’re interested. The first entry is up.

http://celestia-424.livejournal.com/

With God as my witness, I do solemnly swear that there will never be another reference to KAT-TUN in this blog ever again. Thank you for your patience. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled h!p articles tomorrow. I actually already have one written up, but I don’t want to post twice in a day. Also I’m grumpy because today I locked my keys in my car and had to spend an hour out in the dark freezing my ass off until triple A got there, so you’ll just have to wait. Nya!

If I was a Japanese studies major I would write my thesis about the ‘idol’ concept. It’s just so fascinating really. Thinking about all of the good things about being a fan of idols has made me also consider one of its major perils: idol disillusionment.

We know that idols strive to portray themselves as the ‘ideal’ girl/guy that you so often see in romantic comedies or TV shows. They have their own individual personalities because ‘ideal’ means different things to different people, but their negative points are only shown just enough to add interest and charm. Like “Aww… she’s so clumsy, how cute!” or “Ooh. She’s kind of shy, how sweet!” The difference between idols and those movie characters is that the movie is upfront about being a fantasy, but we’re encouraged to believe that the idol really is that person we see on TV. Deep down, I think even the most diehard fans suspect that it can’t be totally true, but they want it to be true, so suspicions are suppressed. Others of us simply enjoy the game of pretend, so we enjoy the illusion until they give us reason not to. I’m not saying that all idols are really horrible people or even that their entire personality is a lie. It’d be nearly impossible to spend that much time constantly acting like someone they’re not. However, I do realize that the sides of their personality we are allowed to see is something that’s carefully controlled both by the idol and his or her agency. We see all of the good things about them, but anything that the public might find distasteful is carefully hidden away, allowing us to believe that there really isn’t anything distasteful about them at all.

Idols want you to accept the fantasy, but doing so puts the fans and even the idols themselves in a potentially dangerous position. We, the fans, may allow ourselves to become emotionally invested in our idols, and if that illusion of perfection is ever shattered or even cracked, the results can be devastating for both sides. Unfortunately, since the idols are only human, this is something that’s bound to happen eventually in most cases.

It doesn’t take much to damage that dream of perfection. It could be something as small as the idol who you thought was the world’s most wonderful singer hitting a bad note during a concert. It could be a picture of the girl who you thought possessed unworldly beauty looking tired and bloated. It could be a rumor that two members of a group that you enjoy don’t really get along very well in real life or a sharp comment an idol makes about overzealous fans. It’s not too hard to move past these little dings in an otherwise flawless image, but you can tell from the emotional reaction these events draw that they do bother the fans on a deeper level than they ought to. It can be very disappointing when something like that happens, because you trusted that idol and she has let you down. Some fans will react by becoming extremely defensive and proclaim that there was no bad note, she’s looking as lovely as ever in that picture, those girls are best friends because two people who are both so nice couldn’t not get along, and of course that idol loves and adores each and every one of her fans. Despite the squadrons of knights in shining armor rushing to protect their idol’s honor, every single one of these small slights does damage his or her image in some way. Even if you choose not to believe it, you can’t unhear that rumor or un-see that performance. Bit by bit the fantasy becomes tainted.. The most devoted fans will continue to deny that these flaws exist, but the rest of us have to sigh and accept them. It’s too bad, but not entirely unexpected, and she’s still pretty darn great even if she’s not perfect, right? We certainly prefer to see them as perfection personified, but almost perfect is usually good enough. An idol’s image can take a certain amount of damage without their idol status being lost. The idol and fan relationship will persist until one black day when blurry grey pictures splashed with headlines appear on your computer screen.

A major scandal is the worst case scenario. What happened with Aibon, for example, resulted in MASSIVE disillusionment for her fans. If, to a fan, one of the small flaws mentioned above stings a bit, a major scandal is like a shotgun blast to the gut. There was indeed much weeping, gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair over Miss Kago. Aibon’s scandal evoked a strong emotional reaction in all of her fans. Though you didn’t know it at the time, by becoming your fan, you were setting yourself up for heartbreak. When you think about it, it’s strange that it should be that way. We don’t know this girl. She doesn’t owe us anything, so why did we feel so betrayed, lied to even?

The truth is, we were, and are, being lied to all along about our idols, but we just don’t want to hear it. We like our happy illusions that there are perfect humans among us. In an often pessimistic world they reflect the most optimistic sort of view on humanity. If people like that are really out there, the world can’t be that bad a place, I think. There is a sort of unspoken promise between an idol and their fans. If you support them they will provide you with that sort of escape from the harsher realities of the world. That’s why we feel so betrayed when our angels fall. You may know full well that the girl is just a normal human who happens to have a pretty face, but she has agreed to allow you to dream and pretend that she is something much much more than that, and if she has a scandal that suspension of disbelief is no longer possible.

Perhaps eventually we can come to accept that he/she was only human after all, direct our anger at the ‘unfair’ idol system or the heartless tabloids, and wish them happiness in their life. Once that illusion is gone though, even if he/she should return to show business, the virtual relationship you had with them can never be the same again because they have broken your trust.

To draw in another metaphor, logically I know that what goes on behind the scenes at Disney Land is not all peaches and cream and magic and wonder, but I can still get immense enjoyment out of visiting the park and pretending otherwise. If someone tried to show me all of the bad stuff, I would be quite upset, because I’d never enjoy going there the same way again. I’d have irrevocably lost something that used to bring me joy. Patronizing idols is similar to patronizing Disney Land. I know that the bad stuff is out there, but as long as I can’t see it I can successfully pretend that it doesn’t exist. There is a lot of fun to be gained from a visit to Disney Land or following a favorite idol, but disillusionment is a very painful process, so those who engage in idol worship (or Disney fanaticism) best be aware that they may be setting themselves up for a fall.

The Japanese are known for having a deep appreciation for their four unique seasons. They express this appreciation through two time honored methods: haiku and ugly h!p costumes. You may find one of those to be an unusual method to commemorate the seasons, but you’ll just have to trust me and my extensive knowledge of Japanese culture on this one. Haiku really are supposed to have a seasonal theme.

When Autumn (aki) rolls around, things start to get a bit chilly, but that won’t stop C-ute! They don’t even let the fact that mustard yellow looks good on absolutely no one slow them down. While Maimi’s plaid short-shorts may be fashionable, they do nothing to protect her rear from the brisk breezes of fall, so she has attached a fuzzy green butt-warmer. It is practical as well as fashionable; doubling as protective padding should she slip on some fallen leaves and land on her ass. From what I hear, it was quite cheap too. She said she found it in a garbage can in a nice little neighborhood called Sesame Street. Say Maimi, next time you’re there can you ask about my friend Oscar? I haven’t heard from him for a while, and I’m starting to get worried.

Next up, Rika Ishikawa is looking festive for the holiday season, Winter (fuyu). According to a recent interview, her motto is, “if less is more, then more is even more than that, and that’s better, right?” She explained that she started with a nice beaded evening gown, but it just wasn’t enough. It needed something. It needed to be festooned with gigantic poofy bows, taffeta flounces of alternating colors, and a couple of leftover tartan kilts from her latest photobook “Alo Hello Rika Ishikawa in Scotland.” To finish off, she looked for a necklace, but they were all tangled together in a clumpy mess. “More is more” she thought, humming to herself and fastening the whole thing around her neck.

Ah Spring (haru). Here Ayaya demonstrates that nothing says ‘Spring’ quite like a gigantic butterfly perched on your head (for best results butterfly should be larger than head). How nice to see that she’s been taking fashion tips from Rika and has chosen to festoon one of the legs of her pants in floppy multicolored bows which doesn’t look ridiculous at all. It looks so not ridiculous that I almost didn’t notice that her shiny silver leather pants (there’s four words that should never appear together in a sentence) seem to have been violently sprayed with blood recently. You know, between the gore and the butterfly, the ruffly almost-vest isn’t even worth commenting on.

On a hot Summer (natsu) day, there’s nothing better than a nice dip in the pool. How very clever of Maki to wear what is clearly a bikini directly over her old T-shirt. Throw on a few belts and some red streamers and the whole audience is fooled into thinking that she’s wearing a concert costume. The protruding fringe of her bloomers making it look like she’s one of those little kids who wears a diaper under her swimsuit is a small price to pay to be able to hit the pool immediately after the concert. Sure, most people in this situation would wear the swimsuit under their clothes, but Maki is being a non-conformist, and you’ve got to respect her for that.

I’ll end with my own haiku.

Is Rika crazy?

I think she wants to eat me

I’m afraid. Send help!