Bikkuri Project

What h!p fan hasn’t watched a Summer or Winter all project concert with all the shuffled members and songs and thought, “Well, that was great, but I really wish so-and-so and so-and-so would sing such-and-such a song”? Today, Bikkuri Project continues the time honored tradition of creating dream shuffle performances.

Love, Namida Iro- Ai-chan, Risa, Konkon
Akai Fresia-Sayu, Reina, Eri
I want to see both of these for the same reason, because they were the audition songs for 5^th and 6^th gen respectively. When they are performed, I think they should start by showing some clips of their audition footage. The idea is that we can directly see how they’ve improved. Now, wouldn’t that be cool?

Genki+- All of OG
I’d love to see this song in the hands of the OG members. Many of them have very powerful voices, and I think they could make this song even more awesome than MM already has. Plus, I love the song, and I really hope we haven’t seen the last of it.

Okashi Tsukutte Okassui- Momoko, Maimai, Aika, LinLin
I picked the song because it’s one of my favorites of minimoni when Mari was still around, and it’s not done very often. This is my vision for the “New Minimoni”. Aika because her performace in the “Shouri no Big Wave” pv showed that she was really suited to that kind of style, LinLin because she’s full of goofy energy and can fill the ‘foreigner’ role left by Mika, Mai and Momoko both because they’re tiny and have high pitched cutesy little voices. It’s perfect. You know what, forget singing old minimoni songs. Let’s reform Minimoni with these girls right now! I really think they would be great at it. Maybe shoot some footage of Mari giving them advice on what Minimoni is all about or something, and they’re good to go!

Crazy about You- Sayu, Eri, Reina
Speaking of Minimoni, here’s another of their songs I’m really fond of. This one isn’t for my “New Minimoni” group though, because it’s more mature, and I want them to reflect the childish side of things. I love it when generations sing all together, I think this song is within the range that Sayu is capable of, I think it would work well with 6^th gen’s image, and I want to see it because I really like this song’s dance.

Be Happy Koi no Yajirobee- All h!p kids
Another song we don’t see much of. It’s a little too simple melodically for the older h!p groups, but I think it would be well suited to the kids. It’s nice and light and bouncy, and the weaker singers of the group can be put on the rap parts.

Iroppoi Jirettai- All of VUDen, Reina, Ai-chan, JunJun, Mari, Risa, Ayaka (Maki were she still around)
The idea here is simple. Take one of the sexiest songs in the Hello Project arsenal, and have its sexiest members sing it. It would be HOT. Plus, isn’t it about time this song was performed again?

Ai araba It’s All Right- current MM
So this isn’t actually a shuffle, but it reflects the fact that Ai Araba seems to have become a song that only h!p kids can sing, and I want to see it return home. This is one of my favorite, if not my very favorite song from MM, and I want to see the current group perform it. They seem to have eased up on the super mature image a bit with Mikan, so I see know reason why they couldn’t sing this again.

That’s all for now! There are more things I’d like to see, but this is getting pretty long. In fact, let’s go ahead and make this a running feature! Yay new features!!!

This post isn’t about Maki. Like people are saying, she had been going a different direction from H!P for a while now, and I don’t have any problem with this decision. As another side note,there are Mikan cover pictures floating around, and they look awesome, but they’re sooo small. That’s majorly frustrating since i’m such an impatient person. Moving on.

This blog is a Hello Project blog for a reason. I’ve listened to a fair amount of other music from Japan, but I am not nearly as familiar with it as I am with h!p. Chances are that if you showed me a picture of a popular Jpop group outside of h!p I wouldn’t be able to recognize the members. Heck, I might not even be able to recognize the group. Even though I am by no means an expert, I still thought that maybe my non-h!p music interests warranted at least one entry. I’m going to keep it simple: the songs I like best, and why I like them. In no particular order:

Jupiter- Hirahara Ayaka, The vocals in this are really impressive. I like the way it starts off really slowly and simply and gradually builds up more and more energy in the melodic line as the song goes on. Also, I’m a sucker for perfect super-high notes.

Glamorous Sky- Nana staring Mika Nakashima, This song is really energizing, and it has lots of fun engrish in it. Love the rockin’ guitar. “Tobidasu GO!!!”

Life is Like a Boat- Rie Fu, I don’t actually like Bleach, but I do like this song a lot. When I first heard it, I was having a really hard time deciding whether the girl singing it was American or Japanese because her English pronunciation was so perfect. This song is really soothing and relaxing, and I like the lyrics and the message a lot.

Sekai ni hitotsu dake no hana- SMAP, The ‘I want it that way-Backstreet Boys’ of Japan. For a while its super-catchy refrain was on everyone’s lips, and even now that the song is old, if it comes on the radio, you can’t help but jump right in and sing along, complete with hand gestures. I also like this song because it reminds me of my wonderful trip to Japan after high school graduation, the last night of which was spent at karaoke where I attempted to sing this song.

First Love- Utada Hikaru, What a lovely heartfelt song. I love a well sung ballad that’s dripping with emotion. It doesn’t hurt that it reminds me of Aibon’s audition footage too.

The World- Nightmare, Scream if you’re a Death Note fangirl! KYAAAAAAAAAA!!

Tada aita kute- Exile, This song is simply beautiful. Beautifully orchestrated, beautifully sung, just beautiful. Somehow it almost makes me tear up to listen to it, but not in a bad way.

I was looking at the 10th anniversary pictures, and I must say, I really really like all of them. I saved them to my computer, but I wish I could figure out how to buy the set for real. I especially like JunJun’s message Morning Musume Dai~Dai~Dai~Daisuki!!! (roughtly translated: I really really really love Morning Musume).

I wonder if the members even look at what they’re signing when they write those messages. It must get very tediouis for them because they all basically say the same thing. LinLin has the hang of the “stock” message, but JunJun doesn’t quite yet. I like that about her.

Random thoughts that don’t deserve their own entry time!

*When, other than right now, would be a good use of this smiley? Seriously! Does anyone know?!

*With the addition of LinLin and JunJun, the Morning Musume ages now span from 14-20. I don’t just mean that that’s the oldest and youngest member’s ages, I mean that there is now someone of each age 14-20! 14-Aika 15-Koharu 16-LinLin 17-Reina 18-Sayu, Eri, and Risa 19-JunJun 20-Ai. Yay! Too bad it won’t last though…

*I am getting frustrated with the lack of morning musume stuff floating around right now. I want the announcement of another single, or the setlist for their next concert, or footage of the winter H!P concert released or something! Everytime I turn around, someone’s getting a new single announced, and it’s never MM. Ah well, I guess quality over quantity is important. I don’t know what it is, but I really have a feeling that this next single is going to be a good one.

*On an entirely unrelated note, there are 4 racoons living in the tree outside my window: three babies and the mom. They’re super cute, but they also kind of scare me.

*I think LinLin and Koharu should be friends. I’m not sure why.

*I almost made this the Reina entry, and I wanted to title it “Don’t Reinan my Parade” but I stopped myself just in time. Lesson: I probably shouldn’t write journal entries at 6:48 in the morning.

*Painting by number is fun for artistically challenged biology majors like me. You should try it!

Here are a few minor sorts of musings that have been crossing my mind…

I wonder how long it would take if you were to listen to every Hello Project song ever released, including coupling tracks, album tracks, fan-club releases, etc., every different song that exists on a CD, back to back

I wonder how little AKB48 members get paid. I mean, there are over 50 of them, their CD’s sell decently, but not fantastically, and they have expensive looking PVs. My guess is that they get paid next to nothing, especially the members who don’t really do the CDs.

I wonder how long until Ai graduates, and whether or not Risa will at the same time

Finially, I wonder if I should stop writing in my blog and get ready for class.

Yesterday I was looking at the number of photobooks each H!P member has done, and then I also looked at the number per year in H!P. I rounded the year numbers because I didn’t feel like calculating it down to the month, but I thought the results were kind of interesting. I was wondering if there was a connection between how popular/attractive a member is and how many solo photobooks they get. Well, duh, of course there is. What I mean is, would it fall neatly into order with my perception of a member’s popularity. Sadly, no. It seems that more photobooks have been produced in the later years than the earlier years, giving newer members a distinct advantage. Also, Tsuji and Aibon having so many photo books together really hurt them when it comes to individual photobooks. I also find it interesting that Ai-chan holds the distinction of being the only one to have more photobooks than actual years in H!P Here is the ordered list, if you were interested (note: no one who hasn’t actually had a solo book is included in the list)

1.2 Ai-chan
1.0 Reina, Eri, Charmy, Koha, Mikitty, Kon-Kon
0.9 Maki
0.8 Sayu
0.7 Nacchi
0.4 Makoto
0.3 Yossie, Mari, Tsuji
0.2 Yuko
0.1 Kaori, Kei, Aibon