Merry Christmas!

Even though Christmas was yesterday, I just want to wish everyone a belated Christmas. :] I hope everyone managed to pig out on as much fatty foods as I did.

If anyone cares about how I spent my Christmas you can read about it on my personal blog here. Or you can look at my pictures I uploaded to facebook here.

Happy belated Holidays everyone! I'll see you in 2010 when I start blogging again.

I'm not dead

I haven't posted in JM in over a month. Which is pretty much an eternity in blog years. And shockingly I am in fact still alive.
In all honestly I just haven't felt like blogging lately. Not because I'm getting tired of idol music or my fandoms. Just mostly because I've been too lazy to write everything down lately. I know that's a pretty lame reason. XD
So much has happened since I last blogged I'm not going to even try to back track and blog about all the news that has gone on, which I've done a few times before. But when I did that a maximum of 2 weeks had passed, having it been over a month makes all my opinions redundant and tired. However, I do intend to go back and review all the PVs that have been released because I love doing PV reviews. I'll most likely start with the NEWS Winter Live DVD PVs. I know they seem pretty irrelevant now.

So I intend to come back in 2010 and ideally blog everyday like I usually do. I say 2010 for two reasons. 1.) Christmas Eve is 2 days from now. So I have the whole holiday things to do with my family. 2.) My headphones have officially died. Which means I have zero sound currently. And since I don't have any money I have to wait until my mom decides to buy a new pair sometime after Christmas. So it kind of ruins any plans to blog now. Do you know how much it sucks to not be able to watch the new C-ute PV? Or hear Hey! Say! JUMP'S newest song Romeo and Juliet or the theme for Ryosuke's drama, Hitomi no Screen? It sucks a lot! :/

So yeah this was pretty much just a random update for anyone out there in blog land that by chance missed my blog. I'll have to do my 2009 countdown after the new year, when I wanted it done already.

Yamapi is Loveless in New York

I really love Yamapi. He easily has one of the best voices in NEWS. But does that mean he should get a solo single and concert instead of NEWS? Not so much. However, that doesn't stop me from loving his song Loveless. Now for the most part I'm not really into ballad type songs. But all of Yamapi's solo songs seem to have the same format. Sad lyrics and soft music mixed with just enough upbeat music that it's not completely boring. Well Gomen ne Juliet was like that anyway.
The overall way he is singing is great. It's soft, sweet, and fits it perfectly. But as great as it sounds, I really wish there was at least one high note thrown in there. Heck Tegoshi's Ai Nante is full of them. And we all know Yamapi can hit them. I don't know without it, it seems like it's missing something. The lyrics are pretty good. Johnny's always does have great heartbreaking lyrics. The lyrics are also a lot better and more mature then any song he'd sing within NEWS. But since I'm paranoid, this makes me think Yamapi is getting ready to leave NEWS. I mean whenever Yamapi releasing a single outside of NEWS it's for a drama. But he doesn't have a drama to plug.

The PV is ok. It's not bad, but not great. It's pretty much what you'd expect from a song entitled Loveless. Lots of sulking and feeling heartbroken. He always flashes a Crybaby single tear in the begining. And despite his hideous hair he does manage to look cute at times. Just not the scenes were he's wearing a beanie hat. He just looks ridiculously ugly. Designer or not it's ugly. I really hate that this PV was filmed in NYC. I was so close to Yamapi and didn't even know.


At least his tear looks real.

Nice outfit, too bad your hair ruins it.

You can barely even notice it here.

This hat makes him look like a tool. :/

Hot.

Nothing is hotter than you're hair looking like a wet dog.

Momusu finally makes an interesting dance shot

Some one out there in H!P must have been listening to me, because Morning Musume released a green dance version for Kimagure Princess. And I gotta say, I'm completely in love with it. The members switching/mashed up dance sequences were probably my favorite part of the entire Kimagure Princess PV. I'm so impressed by this edit that if they decided to pull a Resonant Blue, and just released this as the official version I'd be happy.

It really does take very little to impress me. But come on, can anyone really argue that this isn't the most creative dance shot Morning Musume has ever had? I hardly ever watch H!P dance shot versions because much like the regular Kimagure Princess dance shot version, they're boring. There's never much reason to watch dance shots anyway. Unless you want to seriously learn the dance, or the dance is spectacular. And since neither is true in my case, Kimagure's green dance version is probably the first H!P dance shot I've watched from beginning to end. There's finally something going on to keep my attention on a dance shot for more than minute and a half.

It might seem pointless to go on this much about a dance shot, but tell me this isn't full of win.

Changes to Janakya Mottainai

As you can clearly see changes have been made to this blog. I got a snazzy new layout. Which isn't exactly new, I use the same exact layout for my Jrock blog. I just tweaked the colors a little bit. Mostly because I wanted my blog to look simple, and this is the simplest pre made layout I could find.
Not only have I changed the overall appearance of my blog, I changed what I'm going to be blogging about. For the past Janakya Mottainai has solely been a H!P blog. And even though I still love H!P, I'm been getting into more and more other idol music. I mean, when I started this blog I didn't really know what Johnny's or AKB4B were. And since most of my posts were H!P related I felt restricted to only post H!P news. And once in a blue moon I'd make random posts about NEWS, but that was it.
So now I'd like to make this blog not just about H!P, but a 100% Japanese idol blog. Since I was making a fairly big chance to my blog, I considered changing the name too. But I don't really see the point in that, since it will always be JanakyaMottainai.blogspot anyway. XD

In honor of me covering more idol music I made new banners. The new banners rotate, which took my days to find a code that actually worked. So I hope people like them.
Each of the banners I made are for the artists I'll now be covering. I made 10 in total and you can see them below.

Morning Musume:

Buono:

Berryz Koubou:

Hey Say Jump:

KAT-TUN:

NEWS:

Perfume:

Scandal:

AKB48:

AAA:

My Johnny's ones suck, because it was hard to find a big enough picture for all of them. And this is apparently not all the groups I'll be blogging about, it's just the ones I like. I eventually make C-ute and Arashi ones. Possibly. XD


I still haven't completely finished this blog yet. I'll probably make new banners, and I still have to work on getting a new contact section. But for now you can contact me by going to the links section. Also, this layout makes commenting really weird. So if you want to comment on this post, or any other one, you have to go to the top of the post and hit 0 comments. :]

What does Morning Musume's future look like?

It seems like every Morning Musume member is the same. No matter when it is, everyone wants to know who the next member to graduate is going to be. With graduations being completely random, and 1/9 odds that your favorite will leave is too risky for most fans. It seems like every fan has underline feelings of fear and hope that their idol isn't next.
Because just like Ice Ages, we're somewhere in between graduations. We're just in the short calm period before another one happens. And even though Koharu is graduating in December you'd think I'd stop worrying about graduation for now. But, the truth is I'm more curious about who's going to leave next and what's next for Momusu more than ever.
With Koharu leaving, and shaking up the current line up for the first time in 2 years, that gives Morning Musume new options. And of course by new options I mean new members. A lot of people have been buzzing lately about new members joining, because it has to happen sooner or later, and now is the perfect time. Koharu is graduating in December, so I'm hoping Tsunku announces the 9th gen auditions by the end of February the latest. Then we could have new members in the begining of April the earliest. But whenever the auditions actually happen, the biggest question to me is what kind of members would we actually be getting.

Lately Morning Musume has been having more mature and adult songs. With Koharu leaving, and the exception of Aika, Morning Musume will be filled with girls from the ages of 18-23. Which is the perfect age range to sing current Morning Musume. Morning Musume is also getting its popularity back singing these kinds of songs. Which makes me think Tsunku will opt to get older members, 17-18 years old, to keep the popularity alive.

But what I'm actually hoping will happen is, Morning Musume will add a couple of younger members. Nothing will change the pace of current Momusu like adding 13-15 year olds. The same thing happened when the 4th and 5th gen joined. Little by little they went from more mature sounding songs to cuter sounding songs. It also caused Yuko to leave the group.


But with new members also means new members leaving. Which brings me to the actual point of this post, who I think will graduate after Koharu. And if you go by past graduations in correlation to members being added, the next member to leave could be sooner than you think. Yuko left 3 singles after the 4th gen joined, Nacchi left 3 singles after the 6th gen joined, Mako and KonKon left 3 singles after the 7th gen joined, and Yossie left after one single with Aika.

Now at first I thought I knew for a fact was going to leave. I thought she would leave even before Koharu, but I was wrong. And the more I think about it there are 3 members I think could be the next to go. You can never be 100% these things, but these 3 seem to have legit reasons to leave.

Michishige Sayumi:


I know Sayumi is a popular member and that she sells well, but lets be honest the girl can't sing. She has improved greatly since she first joined, but how her voice sounds now is as good as it's ever going to be. And frankly it's not good enough to be a big part of the group. And right now she's just floating awkwardly. Her personality is even pushing the limit. How long can she be the cutesy, childish, slightly ditzy one, who is endearingly full of herself? She's 20 years old already, it just seems silly now. In all honesty she's gone as far as she can within the group. Sure, she got a solo song, but that's only because everyone who wasn't a main singer got one. (LinLin got hers on the Chanpuru, but I'm not sure why JunJun got nothing.)


Takahashi Ai:

I know it's almost blasphemy to even mention Ai-chan actually leaving, but it's time for her to go. She's been in Morning Musume for 8 years. In those 8 years she's had plenty of time to shine and plenty of time in the spotlight. I think it's finally time for everyone else to get attention. I mean, she basically sings half of every single. She'll probably stay to train the new members, but beyond that I see her leaving immediately, like Yossie did. And for people who think Momusu can't afford to lose her vocals, they can and eventually they'll have to. Beside Morning Musume has a vocal powerhouse in the making, her name is LinLin.


Niigaki Risa:

It seems kind of odd to add Risa here, but only because she has the least legit reason to leave. But be that as it may, I can still see it happening. So why is it I think Risa will leave? It's simple, Reina. They've been pushing Reina up front ahead of Risa for a while, basically preparing her to be the next leader. But she can't exactly do that if the current sub leader is Risa. If Risa leaves Reina will be all that closer to becoming the next leader. And yes they could make Risa the leader and Reina the sub leader, sort of like they did with Miki and Ai, in hopes of having some aces in the group. On the other hand, Risa has also been there for 8 years. And in all honesty if they were going to hold onto any 5th gen member as long as possible it would be Ai, not Risa. But even if she doesn't leave next, whenever she leaves it won't be a shocker.


Sorry to everyone reading for the extremely long post. But as you can tell I put way too much though into Morning Musume. And if none of this actually happens, I'm sorry but I'm no Mayan Calendar.

Morning Musume's Tsumaranai Princess

As most of you already know by now Morning Musume's Kimagure Princess PV was released. So, my PV review of this is late. But not really by that much, it's more fashionably late. XD

Anyway, if I haven't made it clear before I absolutely adore this song. It's cute, it's danceable, and it sounds like they had another drink helium to see who gets to be the new character on Kirarin Revolution contest. The squeaky auto tuned vocals, made me expect an equally amazing PV. But it seems everything I feared from the 10 second preview was true.

I wish Morning Musume would stop with the close up and dance format. I like a PV that actually has something going on. H!P really needs to wake up. They must think this format is working. That's the only explanation for the repeats.

And most of all the song is called Kimagure Princess and it's filmed in a castle. But, they didn't even utilize the setting they were in! V-U-DEN's Kacchoii Ze Japan PV was filmed in a castle, the song had nothing to do with princesses, but V-U-DEN actually made a decent PV. Let's look at where Kimagure Princess went wrong.

Kacchoii Ze Japan had a castle setting.

Kimagure Princess had a castle setting.

Kacchoii Ze Japan filmed scenes off of a balcony.

Kimagure Princess has a fence. Well that's much better,

right?

Kaccohii Ze Japan used the giant castle doors.

Kimagure Princess has a black floral wall. How awesome

would it have been to end Kimagure Princess by

walking out of the doors or something?

Kachoii Ze Japan even had a better dance floor!

Kimagure Princess's is lame in comparison.


But don't get me wrong there were still a few aspects of the PV I liked. There weren't that many but, there were still a few good parts.

I love the wannabe Balalaika Russian dance.

Is there anyone out there that didn't appreciate the random

butt grab?

There's a lot of mixed feelings on the fire scenes.

But I personally think they're epic. They're the most

unique part of the video.

Sayumi always has been great at beckoning gestures.

I also think the dance changing scenes are pretty cooling

looking too.

God, I'm gonna miss Koharu!

However the real star of this PV is LinLin.

She

looks

so

good!

Morning Musume can't catch a break

CDTV releases a short preview of Morning Musume's Kimagure Princess PV. It's only about 10 seconds, but it's still disappointing.

I was expecting a lot from this video. The song is arranged by Dance*Man, it's cute and squeaky instead of soft and sorrowful. And yet none of that could help it get a good PV. I guess it was just doomed from the beginning.

Slap some black dresses on them and it's Nancahtte Renai. Everything about this makes it look like Nanchatte Renai part 2. The similar dance room. Almost identical close up shots. But instead of plain concrete walls they switched it up with some floral patterned ones. They're filming it in a building that looks like a castle, you'd think they would play off that more since it fits with the song. But apparently not. I guess all of H!P's good directors work exclusively for Buono.

I know it's only 10 seconds of the PV, but I kind of doubt they're keeping all the really spectacular PV scenes hidden until the video is realesed.

Bravo Bravo preview

Just like Shugo Chara gives us the new Guradians 4 song and PV, we get the new Buono song and PV. It's Buono's 9th single, Bravo Bravo, being released

Coming back from my disappointment with Take it Easy, Bravo Bravo is amazing! It's got the sweet and rockish beat we love about Buono. Airi completely kill her solo line. I would actually be happy if she was the only one to get solo lines. That would never happen, but she still sounds amazing. In the beginning and end of the preview they chant B-A-T-I. I can't figure out what that's even supposed to me.

I have one word for the PV and that's YES! The PV shows both the sweet and rock sides of Buono, and even Buono cheerleaders. Buono looks amazing in it, the outfits are both really pretty. Especially the rock outfits. It also kind of reminds me of Tommy february6's Strawberry Cream Soda Pop PV. Where it featured both of Tomoko Kawase's alter egos. The video just looks like utter win to me. I want to watch the full PV right now!

Party Time preview

The new Shugo Chara opening gives us a song and PV preview of Guardians 4's 3rd single, Party Time. Which is being released on November 18th.

I actually really love the song. It's the most anime sounding out of any of the Shugo Chara themes. It's really happy sounding, but I could still see Buono doing this song. Maybe not as a sinlge, but an album song at least. I think this is probably my favorite Guardians 4 single yet. It's really fun and light sounding. All the other songs seem bland compared to this one. Especially School Days. The only time I actually wanted to hear a Shugo Chara Eggs version, they give them their own song, Watashi no Tamago.

I was expecting more of a PV preview, they just sow a few stills from the video. I was hoping for something like Kirarin Revolution where the video is playing along the anime version of it. But I guess it's better than nothing. The video does look really fun. It has a birthday themed, so that means there's going to be a lot going on it in. Which I prefer in a PV. I'm really looking forward to the bubble and confetti scenes, they most likely be the cutest.
I also love the outfits. I think green plaid is easily the best one yet. And since they've done all the colors we can expect their next single's outfit to be yellow. I'm not really looking forward to that though. I hate yellow.

Ryusei Boy preview

I stop blogging for a week and I miss so much news. Most of my next few posts will be old news, so forgive me for not being constantly glued to the computer. ;]

Berryz Koubu's double A-side21st single, Watashi no Mirai no Danna-sama/Ryuusei Boy, is being released November 11th. About a week ago the first song preview for Ryusei Boy came out. It's being used as the new ending theme for the anime Inazuma Eleven.

When I first heard the song I immediately though it sounded like something Ongaku Gatas would have as their single. I really does remind me of a faster paced Aisaretai Aisaretai. I do like the disco type music, but it's not really something I was expecting or wanted Berryz to have. Especially since I loved Seishun Bus Guide and Rival.

I'm really loving the line distribution though. There's a good chunk of Maasa in the song. She not leading it, but it definitely sounds like she's taking Yurina's fourth lead spot. Which makes me think the song will be a lot like Madayade, where everyone got a fair amount of solo lines. Chinami better have at least two solo lines. She totally got shafted in Seishun Bus Guide. I'm also sad that I don't really hear that much Momoko. If you're going to cut a lead singer lines, make it Miyabi. She sings enough.

S/mileage's 2nd single preview

We have a preview of S/mileage's new song, Asu wa DEETO na no ni Ima Sugu Koe ga Kikitai, or the song song with the obnoxiously long title, from the Egg's concert. It only sounds like it's a preview for half the song. But it's better than the 10 second preview of it we got a few weeks back.

I think the song sounds really cute. But I'm not instantly sold on it like I was with aMa no Jaku. I'll probably like it more once I listen to it a few more times. But as for right now it just sounds ok. I also hate the parts where the hold out the kikitai and de. It just sounds weird cause the whole tempo changes at that part.
And the line distribution is exactly the same. Yuuka and Saki lead it, while Kanon and Ayaka sing the least. Which kind of annoys me because Kanon and Yuuka sang lead Shugo Chara Egg. It makes me feel jipped out of Kanon.

Goodbye would never be enough Koharu

Morning Musume's 7th generation member Koharu Kusumi will be graduating from Morning Musume and Hello!Project. Her graduation concert will be held on December 6th. You can read Tsunku's comment here or Koha's comment here. She will also be graduation to pursue a modeling career.


Someone please tell me I'm in some sort of H!P related nightmare. That I'll wake up and all the groups will be back to 7 nin and 9 nin. Sadly that's never going to happen. One of my favorite, if not my favorite, member of Hello!Project is leaving. Koharu is the reason I even like Morning Musume or H!P. If it wasn't for her I probably wouldn't be a H!P fangirl at all.

If I was crying when Kanna left, I'm bawling now. When I first heard this news I thought it was some rumor of joke by a Koharu hater. But after I saw the official announcement it sunk in. But even now I can't really fathom her leaving. Morning Musume is going to be so empty now. Everyone else seems boring compared to her. You got Reina who's arrogant, Sayumi who's narcissistic, Ai and Mittsi who are boring most of the time. At least LinLin has that weird and fun personality.

And I can't be the only one who didn't expect this to happen. And not because graduations are always unexpected, but because she shouldn't be the member leaving. I've thought for a while about who should leave, and I came to the conclusion that it should be Sayumi. She's been there a while and contributes nothing vocally to the group. So she was the perfect choice. I never thought in a million years it would be Koha. Especially since she's really popular, and she's releasing her new photobook Sugar Doll.

But on to happier thoughts. I loved Koharu for her hyperactive and always entertaining personality. Out of all of the girls she seemed to have the most fun with everything, and never really took things too seriously. She always showed her own personality no matter what.

Over the years the years there has been a lot of Koharu hate out there, mostly because she's not the best singer in the entire world. I think Koharu got a lot more hate then she deserved. I actually really love her singing voice, her Morning Musume voice and her "Kirarin Revolution voice." Which by the way, I never thought there was a difference. She might have lip synched, but she did work to get better.

It is very bittersweet for Koharu to leave. But it's even worse to stop supporting her just because she's leaving. I hope she does great as a model. Maybe she'll become famous over here. Hopefully she'll open her own blog at least. Who knows. But no matter what happens Koharu will always be Miracle-chan to me.



This is the first video I ever watched about Koharu Kusumi. I watched this clip before I even knew she was in Morning Musume. I just wanted to know everything about her. I was happy that the first thing I knew about her was she liked dried apricots.

A cute clip with Koharu's limited English.

I love this performance of Odore Morning Curry. Koha sings her solo line weird.

And in honor of Koharu here are some Koharu songs I covered. I suck at singing so you're being warned.

Chance:

Sansan GOGO: