Bikkuri Project

Someone…a while ago, and I’m truly sorry that I don’t remember who, posted a couple of videos of an adorable little girl doing h!p dances and, at one point, shoving her little brother out of her spotlight.

I happened to come across some of her latest efforts, and I’ve got to say, I’m actually starting to take cute little h!p dance girl seriously. Reasons:

1. She’s steadily improving, both her dancing and her singing. For realsies.

2. She has a good sense of rhythm. That’s something that’s a hell of a lot harder to teach than technique.

3. She has shown some real commitment to this idol thing. The girl is only 6, and look at all the dances and songs she’s learned (17 I think). That had to take A LOT of practice and commitment, and shows unusual maturity for a 6 year old (reminds me of MaiMai, who also seemed unusually mature for a 6 year old, and look at her now)

4. She’s started to gain an actual fan base on the internet. I might be included.

Here are some examples. Of course, she’s not perfect by any means, but she’s only 6. Imagine what she could do in another few years if she sticks with it.

Namida no Iro. Pretty good singing here.

Meguru Koi no Kisetsu. The reappearance of little brother! Like a true professional, she totally ignores him. Death by cuteness. We’re talking pile of kittens level cuteness here.

KissKissKiss. Another favorite of mine. She’s really got this dance down, even the hard part at the instrumental break.

My verdict is that this girl has real idol potential, the kind of thing that Tsunku’s always looking for. I’d say she’s really got another couple of years before she could be ready to be in the h!p eggs or anything, and she may well lose interest in this before that point, but just imagine if she did become a successful idol someday. It’d make a nice story, wouldn’t it?

One parting question I have though. Who is teaching her these dances? I kind of doubt it’s her Dad (who I’m pretty sure is running the video camera). Could she actually be figuring these out on her own by just copying the video? That’d be a whole ‘nother degree of impressive.

I’m not stalking a little girl am I?

~Celestia~

Last part!

Yowza!

What a moment to show on the screen *shakes head*. That’s Sayumi…ah…massaging Aika, btw

Gaki-san was definitely the best choice to do “The face”

~Celestia~

JunJun might also have the cutest “Happy Summer Wedding” face ever.

Rockin’ dance feature.

A very enthusiastic “Usa-chan peace”

Did they really have to put the two youngest members in the group that did this particular move?

~Celestia~

Time to wrap up all these animated GIFs, so here are the last three installments all within minutes of each other!

JunJun has the cutest “Sexy boy” face ever.

I wanted to see if I could make it look like they’re just doing this forever. Oh god, what have I done??

Jya naiiiiiii!!!!!

Cute Sayu/Eri moment

~Celestia~

Just a sec. Gotta pat myself on the back for that clever title.

Okay. So a recent entry by CK (HERE) made mention of the relatively new all girl idol group “Idoling!!!”, noting a particularly weak performance. Since they could potentially be Morning Musume’s and the rest of H!P’s direct competition, I decided to check them out a bit more. I mean, with that many exclamation points, they’ve got to be good, right? The performance CK embedded was ear-damaging, but there was still hope that they may be better when singing their own songs.

Sorry, but no dice. Here’s a live performance of their most recent single, Kokuhaku, on their own TV show. They have absolutely no excuse for this level of vocal failure, and the dancing is nothing to write home about either. It’s really really simple, and they’re out of sync all over the place. Don’t give up if you think the very beginning’s not so bad. It gets worse as it goes along.

Even with all of them singing at once, it still sounds terrible. Just wait until they get to the chorus, and you’ll see what I mean. It reminds me of summer camp, when about a hundred little kids would gather around the campfire, and they’d all half-sing half-shout some songs with as much enthusiasm and as little musicality as possible. Close your eyes, and you’d probably picture a group of 3rd graders singing, not a “professional” singing group. The 4-person parts are no better, and the duet lines (especially those two girls during the introduction) are probably the worst of all.
There is, perhaps, a spark of hope for Idoling!!!. The last girl to sing during the introduction seems to have a good voice. Looking at their pictures, I think maybe her name is Yokoyama Rurika? I really hope she has the sense to get out of Idoling!!! and defect to Avex or something soon, because this is a musical trainwreck of Koharu-like scale.

And now to wait for the “how dare you bash Idoling!!! they’re like the best group ever and you’re just jealous because they’re totally going to kick h!p’s ass” comments to roll in.

~Celestia~

I was so caught up with the guy’s ranking on the latest CDTV “Most Wanted as Your Lover” poll that I almost forgot to notice the girls. Two of our h!p girls made the top 10: Takahashi Ai in 6th and (I was a bit surprised by this) Yajima Maimi in 9th. I mean sure, she’s gorgeous, but I didn’t think she was well known enough to make the top 10 in this kind of poll. Congrats to both of them!

~Celestia~

Aika wins the “sexy gasp” contest. Just watch this a few times and tell me it doesn’t look like she’s saying, “Oh, yesss”

Risa wins the “just being damn sexy” contest

Crazy LinLin is not quite as frightening as Maniacal Koharu, but should still be approached with caution

Even though Koharu is singing, all I can see is JunJun rocking out back there

Reina doing the Reina thing

Ai-chan demonstrates the fine art of the smoldering stare.

Sayu is as pink as cotton candy and twice as sweet.

Cute pose contest…go!

Praise the Lord, I have internet again!!!!!!! After calling number after number trying to get assistance from the internet company, I finally got someone to come to my apartment and take a look at it today. Turns out that I wasn’t just failing at reading the Japanese instruction manual. There was actually something wrong with my modem, but it’s been replaced, and all is well now.

In order to celebrate, a small slew (is there such a thing?) of animated gifs from Morning Musume’s latest concert DVD (Haru Single Daizenshuu). I think that with gif files, less is more on a page, so I’m going to break this up into a bunch of entries with just 4 .gifs each. I’m hoping this will prevent anyone from having seizures while watching all of them do their thing at once.

Maniacal Koharu. Please keep away from animals and small children.

Gaki-san is fierce

yessss

Where does the loop start and end? I’m not telling.

Back in action,

~Celestia~

My internet at my apartment is STILL not working, and I`m about ready to throw my computer across the room, but I can`t stand to stay away from my blogs for this long, so I`m here updating from the internet cafe again.

Since I`m paying by the minute to write from here, I`m afraid that I`m not going to do the usual full review of this concert. Instead, since I was feeling curious, I decided to count how many solo lines each girl got. Only solo lines in group songs count, and spoken interjections (Hai!, Ah!, Yeah!, etc) don`t count either. I did count full spoken monologues as one solo line.

Ai-chan 105

Reina 79

Gaki-san 56

Eri 35

Koharu 32

Sayumi 20

Aika 17

JunJun 5

LinLin 5

Interesting maybe?

Owari,

~Celestia~