At least this means these are actual Morning Musume auditions and not a fishing expedition for new KSS to waste.   I'm normally cool with them adding KSS to the lineup, but hasn't a huge portion (if not all) of the talent over there gone to BEYOOOOONDS?  I don't want KSS if all that's left is the st...

[quote="JPope"]  But we've been saying this for what seems like a decade now. [/quote]   I feel like Japanese wota "culture" (for lack of a better word) has evolved a little and this is why nothing changes.  Quirky, talented girls were very popular back in the day but now wota on...

[quote="DonJuan"] We need a Sakura situation where a girl can be put at the front simply because she is better than all the others. [/quote]   If anything, we need two or three!  I'm actually in the unpopular camp of "Sakura is overrated" or at least, "Sakura never lived up ...

[quote="Zange"] I really hope this audition isn't just another mask for getting new KSS/debuting KSS. If we actually got some girls for BEYOOOOONDS from last year's auditions, I don't see why we can't get some girls out of this one. Though I do hope at least one front girl (*cough* Masaki ...

Mostly girls who can sing somewhat decently yet they're still determined to stock the group with as many tone deaf tin-ears as possible lol it's so weird to me.

[quote="Saya"] MM is holding auditions again <a class="bbc_url" href="https://youtu.be/f4Nzjs_r5xk" title="External link">https://youtu.be/f4Nzjs_r5xk</a> [/quote]   Jesus fucking Christ.  Unless they have (long overdue) plans of graduating about 1/2 the curre...

Yeah, this really does call back to that europop phase Japan went through in the early 2000's.  BeForU is a solid comparison.  I'm all for it, that was one of my favorite eras of jpop!  I'm not sold on the chorus yet, I feel like it could have more impact, but not bad so far.

I think the asthma likely puts extra strain on her vocal cords, for sure.  But I think the idol singing style is still more to blame than anything else, there are even people on Broadway singing/dancing with asthma or other breathing conditions, so it can be done.  When I listen to Manaka, she has a...

To be fair, it's not like she knew it would happen, LOL.  She's right at home considering we have at least one girl from almost every group who has needed the same surgery.  This is a byproduct of H!P hiring vocal instructors who teach poor technique in order to make girls sound "cute".

[quote="Myst"] Why do I feel like someone else has had it since 2016's last post? Karin maybe? I know she had bells palsy but she had a rough mid 2017- mid 2018. I know there was something else the matter with her. [/quote]   Karin didn't get nodes, but she got a form of vocal fatigue call...

[quote="iDOL1641"] Morning Musume Sakura and Ayaka will graduate. [/quote]   I almost hope this is true if only because of how boring and stagnant the group is right now lmao.  They haven't really lost a key member / front girl since Riho, all of the recent graduations have been members wh...

Oo, cool seeing some older girls!  I get this means wherever they're going, they're going there very soon.  Correct me if I'm wrong (which I very well may be since I haven't been paying much attention), but we've only heard a song in the "theater" style, right?  I'm more interested in the ...

She's genuinely so incredibly lucky she didn't kill or otherwise terrible maim someone.  The line between suspended sentence and throwing her under the jail is basically the fact that no one was horribly injured (so far anyway - I know really weird issues from incidents like this can pop up months o...

Haha, reminds me that my first induction to Hello!Project was someone who recommended Mini Moni to me on DeviantArt when I was like eight or nine years old, maybe 2003?  It was so hard to find Japanese music online back then, especially as a kid with limited technical know-how.  We've really come a ...

I don't want to be overly biased against these girls, I'm trying really hard to welcome them with an open mind... but I can't pretend I don't feel like this is messing with perfection :(  Must be another big graduation coming up, I just hope it's not Akari, because she's probably my favorite member ...

[quote="TheParuProject"] MizuSaku isn't a very charismatic, engaging lead. And they're not even bad, they're definitely on par with the strong girls of other groups. But in a group of 12-14 people, those are the two H!P puts value in, and they're not near enough to carry such a large ensem...

I think video compilations just aren't as profitable or attractive as they once were, so they don't put as much effort into producing them.  Only diehard fans want to buy that type of thing nowadays.  Anyone casual in their fandom is generally content to stream the video on YouTube.

Yep, it suddenly make a ton of sense why this went to Angerme instead of MM.  I don't think they could pull off this vibe or a silly video like this at all.  They take themselves a little too seriously for it right now. Anyway, it ain't no instance earworm like Taiki Bansei imo, but it's still fun a...

Maybe H!P are trying to move back to that vibe of "everyone is replaceable".  I kind of hope so.  The whole trend of giving a girl a big focus in her final single is kind of a new thing and it started right around the time MM became painfully stagnant again...

This group is absolutely charmless to me these days.  

Song isn't very exciting but honestly I like it better than anything on their last single, so there's that LOL.  JPope said further up that it has W vibes and I hear that even more in the full audio.  It's nothing groundbreaking, but at least it's got some elements instrumentally and melodically tha...

Video is low budget, but above all, entertaining and aesthetically pleasing, which is really all I ask for!  Not sold on the song yet - it's okay, just not as memorable as their other recent works imo.  It really does sound like an MM album track or something more than Angerme.

[quote="honey"] Have any idol groups taken advantage of the growing viral interest in the city pop/future funk scene?  [/quote]   They're called Especia and they're fucking awesome, but mostly unknown lol :(   At this point, I'm mostly just excited that we don't have any white outfits for ...

Tiffany just dropped her second American single , "Teach You".   Definitely better than her first one but still not that great imo LOL  I think I'd like this song a lot more if it weren't for the weird accent she's putting on.  But I've always hated her voice so that probably puts a cap on...

This group is the definition of stagnant right now LOL.

Holy fucking shit, that looks gnarly as fuck.  She flew through that red light even with several pedestrians visibly crossing.  There is no way she wasn't shit faced drunk.  I already didn't believe it was only three chu-hai the night before, but looking at this, it's amazing she even tried to claim...

[quote="Myst"]   <blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="DonJuan" data-cid="215256" data-time="1536757206"> Karin doesn't get much more than Sayuki (actually since 2nd gen Karin isn't pushed as much in-your-face anymore; that being said Karin ...

These other details from the Yahoo article add a lot of context, too.   https://image.ibb.co/kHuMAU/screenshot_aramajapan_com_2018_09_13_03_12_14.png   I get why that twitter user thinks it sounds intrusive, but to me it sounds like this information is actually being put out by her team in an effort...

[quote="Anderei"] Actually, if she’s drinking a stronger brand of it it would work out math-wise. It actually takes your body long as hell to digest alcohol. But it’s still not an excuse. Even less so when you don’t work standard hours and have nowhere you HAVE to be. [/quote]   Even more ...

If this chart from Business Insider is to be believed, at her size, it'd probably be around 3 drinks (one drink equals 1.5 ounces of 80 proof liquor (40% alcohol), 12 ounces of beer (4.5% alcohol), or 5 ounces of wine (12% alcohol).  Yeah, she's pretty indefensible in this.  The fact that she was at...