I’m not very emotionally hit by the graduations of Gaki/Aika, so please don’t mind this too much. But seriously…
This is the best styling I have ever seen for Aika’s hair. She looks extremely cute with this style. And you guys pull it out now?
MEMO wa sukoshi nagai kedo…
This is probably one of the first MM songs I’ve heard and was struck by, and it was because of Reina’s cover. And then I listened to Aya and Goto’s cover, which was also as good but didn’t sound as pathos-infused as Reina’s version. But anyway, I’ll cover the original version first:
First impressions: I don’t like the harmonies. Just listening to them makes my throat sore. The desaturated video is…nice, the rapping is actually really nice (and men rapping!), and where can I get make-up done like that? I almost want to completely grey myself out so that I could get that lovely muted sparkle effect.
Looks like: I finally figured out why Daite HOLD ON ME! and this MV have such fast cuts and blurred-out shots and other such annoying effects that make it hard to enjoy how pretty the girls are – it’s artistic. …though I wonder if this is any more ‘artistic’ than the sparkle-curtain/blur effects/somewhat-meta magazines that Renai Hunter has.
Sounds like: Pop/rock ballad with slightly annoying harmonization and cool rap bits.
Line distribution: Mostly Nacchi with some Fukuda.
Lyrics:
The memo’s a bit long//But please read all the way to the end
I think the lyrics are pretty good at conveying the regret and grief at the end of a relationship. Makes me sad…when was the last time Tsunku wrote an honestly sad song for MM? Maybe we should blame his happily married status. *sigh*
Costumes/styling: I honestly think the black stomach-baring tank top that Iida is wearing is so awkward, especially next to the black suit that
Replay factor: I like it, but I like Reina’s version better, sort of.
Relationship to current MM/Other Thoughts:
I think Tsunku at some point burned out and stopped being able to write songs like this. I really wish someone could point out a recent MM single with an earnestly sad song.
Also, I vastly prefer Reina’s cover. Somehow singing it solo in her nasally whine manner adds a layer of earnestness that the original didn’t have. Reina’s voice might be nasally and whiny, but I think it’s pretty well-suited for…well, whining songs.
I kind of enjoy watching the video better with its start lighting and background. Add some shots of empty streets at night in Tokyo coming in and out of focus and you’ve got yourself a proper music video.
Maki Goto and Matsuura Aya also covered this, and it was nice, especially with the live band, but I still kind of feel biased against it because they made Aya take the harmony lines. I’ve also inexplicably never liked Goto’s voice.
Also notable was that this was Fukuda Asuka’s last single, who graduated from MM at the tender age of 14.
I honestly don’t think Fukuda had that big an impact on early MM, though she’s an interesting part of the early history. I mean, I really can’t see the producers picking a girl like her to join MM anymore…but it’s kind of cool, seeing an ordinary-looking girl be part of a big group.
…and I’m actually shocked, because I thought she probably would’ve hung on for another year or two. It’s funny how just as I’m starting to warm up to Aika she goes. I’m going to be honest; I never really liked her, and I continue to do so for entirely shallow reasons. It’s because of her mouth. At some point I read a blog somewhere where somebody was wondering how they’d be judged by people who hate Aika for her small mouth, and having some wonderful people with small mouths in my life, I have to say I really don’t notice/care much what a person looks like when I can see their personality. Sometimes I think fans forget that the idol world is this strange place all based on appearances and the well-liked girls are unusually genetically blessed, incredibly photogenic compared to the population at large, and magnetically charismatic or at least very very extroverted in an unannoying fasion. And real life is like that too, sort of – but at least in real life you get to talk to people and do things and show how awesome of a person you are. In real time. And make jokes. And personally talk to these people. And make connections based on shared interests and so on. So appearances don’t matter nearly as much, though it helps to wear cloths neatly and not smell. Idols can only say things that get put out in fairly canned quantities and hope for the best. So there you are. A small mouth is kind of awkward to see, but we’ve all got our awkward body parts so move on. (And back to the moral of my soapbox-post: I got used to Aika despite her small mouth. For an idol. ’cause she stopped sounding so scratchy and worked really, really hard, and I deemed that kind of idol-worthy. But I still don’t like her much. But if you had a small mouth and I met you in real life I might like you better than I like Aika, ’cause there are limits to liking people you never meet whom you can’t have real interactions with.)
I also had a long rant about Zukki built up, but at this point I think the idol world is so saturated with girls that you really can’t look anything less than absolutely outstanding, because I live in a part of the world with a lot of East Asians, and even the ones who are so stunningly pretty who I can’t look away from, might just make it as an idol now. Maybe. If they were super talented. And ‘had a personality’ (whatever that means).
Sometimes I feel like I should venture out of H!P for idols, but sometimes I find that the vast amount of idols out there are just so dizzyingly large I don’t know how to choose. And I can’t choose based on appearances, because I’m tired of doing that and finding girls who make my ears bleed. (And I guess I have a strange preference for Tsunku’s idol music.) I think it’s kind of great that there are so many new idol groups – I mean, we even have performance art (Kyary) and metal (Babymetal) now, and Korean idol groups, and…it’s great. But seriously it’s also terrible in another way, because it makes the idol world that much more competitive and it seems like the competition’s just focused more on looks, because with so much media coming at you, how are you supposed to choose? Looks are the fastest way, really. I’m tired of it because I’m tired of listening to pretty girls who I eventually find out can’t sing, or finding a group of 12 girls with only 2 who could really sing. I want charming and interesting girls who can sing, and early MM was full of these girls so I’m starting to wonder why aren’t there more girls like this. Except, of course, I know that the answer to that is because they’re all in C-ute now. 
On an exciting and graduation-related note, after May 18th 80% of MM would’ve been added in the last year or so, under Sayu-Reina leadership, which I am really, really looking forward to. They seem to be the older members who’ve taken to the new members the most, and cutting down the senior members to just Sayu/Reina means that they’ll have to start using the new members, and the new members really will have to step up to bat. It’s really a new group now! I am excited.
It feels really quiet in H!P land…the 10th gen joined MM and it feels like MM hasn’t changed at all since last year, when things were radically changed with the addition of 9th gen and graduation of Aichan; C-ute has just released their highest-selling single ever because they’re just a really strong group at the moment*, Berryz is being Berryz, and S/mileage’s new girls are settling in just fine and changed it to feel like every other H!P group.
*can you imagine half of MM trying to do the solo versions of kimi wa jitensha right now? I can’t.
It almost makes me want to jump ship to AKB except the large number of girls still confuses/bothers me, and Maeda Atsuko still hasn’t set her graduation date yet.
I kind of can’t wait until 6th gen takes the leadership reins, but judging by how things are going I’m afraid that nothing’s really going to change. Though, in a group that has a 15-odd year history of change, it’s going to be hard to come up with new concepts for the new girls to try out.
Speaking of which…
In continuation of my series, I’m going to review this PV like it came out yesterday. ’cause I’m not actually familiar with most of MM’s PVs, or discography, really. Presenting: Daite HOLD ON ME!, released September 9, 1998, aka yesterday.
OMG!! They finally got a budget and built an awesome set that looks like it belongs to a genetic cloning experiment headquarters in anime and it looks like one giant henshin sequence! The line distribution is terrible and Yuko totally would’ve pulled off sultry better than Asuka who’s too young for this anyway! (And I hate Nacchi’s vocals they’re so…something I don’t like!) The sales are way higher for this single (~800k) than the last single (~400k) so obviously putting more money into PVs totally makes for higher sales! Ever since the new generation came in the line distribution’s gotten so much worse! MM is obviously selling out and way less awesome since Ishiguro Aya got rid of her nosering! Etc.
Anyway, my personal theory is that the PV director’s inspiration came directly from anime openings and henshin sequences, which is pretty awesome. Proof of the henshin sequence:
Establishing shot
MOMOIRO SUPAKURINGU!
Transformation...complete! MM Office Ladies Will Punish You!
Thus establishing Idols As Superheroes as a video trope way early in MM history.
More shots of the girls looking awesome and ready to rescue you by holding onto you! :
I once had an office job and it DID feel THAT badass to wear suits! Honestly!
They're just waiting to transform into the MM Office Ladies!
Backlit by the great glorious light in the tunnel to our home planet, in the name of Tsunku's awesome lyrics we will accuse you of being a guy who has no love! And then we will offer to hold you!
Halfway through there is an awesome rap bit with nice city-scapes, and I thought it was all Tokyo until…
Is that you, New York???
No wonder they went past the cityscapes so fast. Must’ve all been yanked footage from other reels. Still, no fantasy anime’s going to really appeal to your sense of reality if it ain’t set in a big city called Tokyo. And no idol group sellin’ a girl-group story’s going to do the same either. (Just kidding).
Anyway, I was thinking, wouldn’t it be awesome if one of those girl-groups decided to do Office Ladies as a concept? They’ve exhausted airplane stewardesses and students, and I just can’t see what other options in life there are to 20-something year old females in Japan for idol groups to celebrate. </snark>
Awesome Tsunku lyrics:
I’m scrolling mindlessly
through my handphone’s memory
It’s a such a sense of crisis that I don’t even have the courage to dial
(Translations yanked from projecthello.com, which is an awesome site.)
I think I’ve discovered Tsunku’s secret, which is that he’s a great modernist poet, of the confessional blogging variety. Actually, truth be told I’ve never really looked at MM lyrics before, and looking at them is actually kind of difficult because…Tsunku is really…writing like a confessional teenage girl. It blows my mind.
Anyway, this PV is pretty great to watch, because it’s got that dramatic anime-opening esque backing, the beautiful colours, awesome shots of of the girls dancing on top of a giant glowing donut. The song gets progressively catchier as you listen to it, and the rap sequence is…all right. (Actually it’s pretty weak, but they’re magical girls who transform into office ladies, so I’mma give them some slack.) While the dance is mostly just moving their hips, I think that it looks pretty much like a dance.
Snark about office ladies aside, I do think that girl groups should do suits-as-costumes more. I kind of really wish the current girls could do a PV like this, mostly because it’d be hilarious for the 12-year-olds to wear suits and the older girls would probably look very awesome in them. MM used to be so real. *sigh*
On an aside, I actually really like the b-side to this single.
It’s mellower than the A-side, and…I just really like the instrumentals and the vocals. There’s a bit of flute, and the vocals aren’t hard or soft.
Up next: one of my favourite singles in MM history.
I’m baaack! This time with a few screencaps, because screencaps make everything better. (Actually, I just discovered the command + shift + 4 option on a mac. I can’t believe that it has taken me so long.)
Presenting Summer Night Town, released on May 27, 1998, AKA debut single of 2nd gen! (Warning: video contains a lot of strobe-light effects.)
First impressions: Nacchi, Nacchi, suddenly fuller member formation, bright lights, blue, and lots of film editing effects.
Looks like: Someone went crazy with filter effects in a film editing program of a 90s dance club…and interpreted the title to feature a series of images that literally depict Summer. Night. Town.
A+ for depicting Summer. Night. Town in the opening sequence.
The video randomly cuts (very very briefly) to a lot of random images of the girls (ladies?) out and about during the day as well as night-time. I feel like the video’s trying to get us to construct a story of a group of young women who went out and got high on something, hence the constant blurs and bright flashes and fast time jumps in the video. It feels oddly gritty and realistic for a song about a girl being indecisive about expressing her feelings to her lover, and how it’s the first time, or something.
The first time I sat through this PV it felt like half the video was like this. At least current MM is (somewhat) more moderate with the flashing.
And here is the part where the young lady is standing outside looking at you with a thousand-yard stare, while two men from behind glass are placed strategically to emphasize the emptiness and disconnect of modern life…
…because she knows that the dance-shot and close-up PV formulas for the next decade are being established right now in 1998, and there is no escape.
Sounds like: Croony…90s…kind of R&Bish…pop music? SMILE SMILE SMILE was catchy. There was a bit of something that sounded kind of industrial in there, but MM’s always had funny instrumentals.
Line distribution: Mostly Abe with a dash of Fukuda Asuka and Ishiguro Aya, even though Yuko was so fine in this video.
Lyrics:
Where am I in you?
Click on it quick
Like a southern bird flying in the sky
I want to float up to you
(translations from projecthello.com)
Early MM doesn’t need reading into for the gritty.
Costumes/styling: Primary blue and white, very crisp. I love Ishiguro Aya’s leopard print, because nothing says a cool cat like blue leopard print. I don’t know why, but I feel like this was when H!P hired their current costume designer.
Replay factor: Mildly catchy, but wouldn’t play often.
Relationship to current MM/Other Thoughts:
I’d really give this PV a rating of Hot Mess and leave it at that. It’s also funny how there’s approximately two seconds where you can see Mari and Kei’s faces, despite this being their debut single. Sayaka gets more screentime, and in my highly biased opinion it’s because she looks so pretty.
However, this PV doesn’t really hold my interest that much, because the b-side strikes me as…just, much better.
The B-side, A MEMORY OF SUMMER ’98 (released before summer had even started), was …very moody, featured lovely cellos in the background, and I kind of wished that this was the A-side. The chorus is soft, Yuko sounds amazing, Asuka sounds older than everyone else in the group, and I wish that the current groups would release more ballads like this. It’d quickly become boring if MM did nothing but release singles like this, but it’d be nice if they rested the singing style from belting-every-line to something softer like this once in a while.
And that’s that! Up next: another post (in maybe less than a week!)
So MM’s 50th single is coming up in two or three months or so, and I figured that I might as well try looking through all of the older MM singles, because why the heck not? I actually only got into MM about a year ago, and figured that it might be interesting to look into MM’s past and see if there’s any continuity from past to present. Besides, I’m sure there are a lot of new fans like me, so maybe this would make it easier for people to have a vague idea of what people are talking about when they talk ’bout early MM.
So let’s start with Ai no Tane, or Single #0, released November 3, 1997. (…which is almost 15 years ago, or older than the age of close to half of current MM.)
First impressions: Beautiful blue sky! Real outdoors in a cheap (??) PV! Wholesome 90s outfits! Nary a uniform in sight!
Looks like: if you could distill Essence of 90s Karaoke Pop Music Video into one music video, it’d be this, only with a few more beach scenes and random panning from the male to female lead(s). Mountains! Blue skies! Flowers! BUTTERFLIES! Saturated colours and gratuitous lens flare! I don’t think I’ve seen this much nature in a PV since…well…ever.
Sounds like: smooth singing, hardly any belting, mellow yet upbeat instrumentals, and…oddly enough, I do think most of the current MM could pull this song off.
Line distribution: Even then Nacchi and Iida got more lines, though yes, everyone had a fair amount of solo/group lines.
Lyrics: something about how they’ll go on enjoying life even if it’s tough. Nothing crazy about bananas or hunters though, since this wasn’t even written by Tsunku.
Costumes/styling: normal, everyday Asian girl wear from the 90s! Normal, slightly dressy hairstyles! Nothing to see here but attractively presented (normal) girls here! …though, is that green eyeshadow on Asuka?
Replay factor: quietly catchy, though I don’t think I will play this one much at all, not even for 90s night.
Relationship to current MM: I can’t even begin to think how this is like current MM at all. I don’t think this was even like most of MM, which makes sense, as Ai no Tane was the song that happened before MM became the MM that we know as it was today. The first striking thing, I think, is the mood and the sound – it’s so…mellow. And…emotive, I think. The latest single that sounds anything like this might’ve been Aruiteru (which sold a lot Secondly, this…this song strikes me as featuring such normal girls. While I appreciate the showmanship that MM’s developed over the years, I think this sense of MM being full of normal girls with personalities and such gets a bit lost in them becoming performers, later on. This PV shows MM as normal girls going about in nature doing normal girl things, and while the later PVs cut this down somewhat, it does show how far MM has come. And of course, all of the girls from this single have graduated, but these were the founding members of MM (aka 1st generation MM): Yuko Nakazawa (24), Aya Ishiguro (19), Kaori Iida (16), Natsumi Abe (16), and Asuka Fukuda (13), which just shows that older and younger girls have been in MM since the start, and the current age-span is nothing unusual.
Next up is Morning Coffee, or Official Single #1, released on January 23, 1998 (aka 14 years ago):
First impressions: they’ve got uniforms on, and thus are an Idol Group now! Iida Kaori’s eyebags would’ve been blasted into oblivion with make-up in this day and age, though I kind of like Ishiguro Aya’s blurred video effects. Reminds me of a sense of having drunk too much coffee. And is that a nose ring I see on Ishiguro Aya? That’s so…cool. (And kind of 90s cool, too.)
Looks like: A cross between Essence of 90s and Current Indie Music Video* Yet Featuring Idols Because Here Are Girls Dressed In Plaid Skirts and White Dresses. *for all the blurry effects – are those stills in an MV?. Has the girls in oddly realistic street scenes – when was the last time you saw a street that looked grey in an idol MV with a crowd of people, instead of tinted blue or something? And holy crap, the girls are in a bedroom that looks like a normal bedroom.
Sounds like: very similiar to Ai no Tane. In fact, I still can’t tell the difference sometimes because it’s just so 90 Asian Pop Song to me at this point. I haven’t studied music in forever, but I could swear both songs have similiar tempo and keys or something. Hey, there’s harmonizing.
Line distribution: Definitely a Nacchi-Iida lead, yet again, though the other girls do get solo lines (where Yuko and Aya only get one each, aka the Older Ladies Got Shafted).
Lyrics: Aah, the infamous Morning After song (lyrics from Project!Hello):
Hey, I’m embarrassed (My heart is)
Hey, I’m so happy (pounding)
Because you said “Let’s drink morning coffee together”
It’s…oddly idealistically girlish and realistic at the same time. I guess even then, idols were ‘girly’.
Costumes/styling: Here is where we see the girls start to dress as a group – first in a black shirt and plaid skirt, then in the Idol White Dresses together, as well as individual shots in normal (but dressy) clothes.
Replay factor: I think I prefer Ai no Tane – there’s something a bit gratingly 90s pop and not in a good way.
Relationship to current MM/Other Thoughts:
It’s odd, but I find Ishiguro Aya utterly beautiful in the solo shot where she’s on a bed, and I love her tiny nose ring. I noticed that they established Nacchi as the face of the group early on, and I think it’s partly because she was the most symmetrically baby-faced, and her voice was also the most teenaged sounding. I kind of wonder what MM would be like had they focused on Yuko and Aya instead – what would an older, grittier, more realistic female group look like? Spice Girls? It’s hard to imagine.
In some ways you can see the seeds of current MM in this PV: the emphasis on youth, the uniforms, the girlishness, the stronger instrumental as compared with Ai no Tane (which isn’t coincidental, as Tsunku helms this song and pretty much every one after). But in a lot of ways – the bedroom scenes, the street scenes, the normal clothes, the nose ring, this PV might as well have been from a different world.
Man, I miss the 90s, a bit. I miss the emphasis on the outdoors (hey guys, remember when it was cool to hang out outside???), the saturated blue skies, the emphasis on cool instead of…quirky and interesting (even if the 90s did feel a bit bland because of the coolness at the time). I wonder what happened.
Even though I’ve been away from blogging for a while, I’ve still been keeping an eye on H!P. I think there’s something to be said for taking a break from the idol world when things seem stagnant, or when things aren’t keeping your attention. The 10th gen didn’t catch my attention the way that 9th gen did at first, but now I find myself quite smitten with 3/4 of them – and I think it’s good that I let my attention wander for a while so that they had time to get their act together. It’s also been good not wondering what MM would be like without Gaki san – because now I can see it’ll be just fine. Reina will teach the girls how to perform, Sayumi will teach the girls how to express themselves, and Aika will teach them professionalism.
After going away for a while, I even found a way to appreciate Aika. I think I finally get why H!P chose her in the first place over conventionally prettier auditioners and seemingly more talented material (I’m really just thinking Yuu) – it’s because she’s a very hardworking and persistent girl. And I think this is probably what really separates true, working idols from your neighbourhood girls who are pretty and can sing and dance – a persistence and dedication to their craft far above and beyond the norm. Because being an idol is a full-time career, and not many girls can handle that at the tender age of 12 or 13. So oddly enough, I think I finally appreciate Aika for what she is. She wasn’t the prettiest or had the best voice, but she was probably the most professional.
When I first entered the idol fandom, I kept up with every release by Berryz and C-ute, and I often became frustrated when they released songs that I thought were stupid or whatever – but now I think it’s easier to appreciate what they do now that I’ve stopped expecting idols to be whatever it was that I wanted them to be.
Also, apparently, the new MM play is about zombies. It’s called Stacy’s Maiden Repeated Killing Opera, or so says H!O. The story is about the girls becoming zombies, who are called ‘Stacies’, and thus commences a humans vs. zombie fest. (Surpriiiise!!!) The opera part has me excited, though I have no idea how this is going to play out at all. Apparently the original story is a sad, tragic story about the conflict between yourself and your desire to kill your loved ones, or so the author says, and that is why he wanted MM to play the girls. I do hope that they insert meta-commentary on idols in the play.
I don’t know how to express how pleased I am with all of this, but – HA! I knew idols and zombies were related! I KNEW IT. It was just a matter of time before H!P became upfront about wanting your brains…
(Actually, I am completely baffled because when I started this blog the title was something that I thought was entirely unrelated to idols (because zombies seem kind of the exact opposite of idols in my mind), but this is the second time that H!P’s taken up a zombie-themed project, so …what gives? Is it because they want to tell us it is entirely fine to be beautiful and dead on the inside? Will it express H!P’s deep existential desire to be both beautiful and dead consumers and human at the same time? Will it express all of the girls yearnings to kill the other girls now that they are idols zombies? H!P I am so confused please tell me whyyy.)
