Small Fish, Big Pond

Sorry I’m diverting to the Japanese Idol Pop music world for a bit.

As is popular in Japan among celebrities Erika Miyoshi has her own blog now. Mostly odd “currently doing” type posts right now, I guess she’s learning sign language. Surprisingly she’s not on Ameblog like Yaguchi or Star Blog (oricon) like Satoda. Instead she’s on Gree with Kago Ai , who knows what that means.

80% of the people reading this probably have no idea what I’m talking about. It’s ok, the 4 of you probably came in through one of the tech links I have you can skip to the next post if you want.

For the other person who came in from one of the Japanese links, yes, I admit I like music by Hello! Project. Well some of it, mostly the older stuff. Back in its heyday Hello Project was an immense money making machine and everything about it fascinated me.

There’s not really an American comparison to make for people who don’t know. 5 losers of an American Idol style competition were given the chance to sell 50,000 singles on their own to become a real group. After selling the CDs (I have one! ) they quickly rose up the charts and made a habit of bringing in new members, splitting off side groups, and diversifying to every other type of media they could. Eventually it was a conglomerate that was pulling in billions of dollars(est), had ~50 members, and even had their own football (soccer) team.

Imagine Britney spears, and Beyonce teaming up against Christina Aguilera and Rihanna. It’s about that crazy.

Without going into too much detail and rehashing the arguments the makeup 90% of idol group forums, I don’t really see any appeal of the Project now; about 3 years ago all the life and spirit that made it so fun and interesting left. Back in the day it produced good music, had interesting members, and used them in a way that made for some hilarious entertainment; clips from one of their TV shows made it onto The Colbert Report multiple times, even SMAP hasn’t done that.

Porkchop Hats!

Anyway near the end Biyuuden was the only group left that had any interest to them. Out of all the Hello!Project groups it was probably the one I liked most, and out of the three girls Erika was probably my favorite. She seemed to have a real personality when the rest of the Project was starting to all look like cloned stereotypical idols. She was actually discovered in one of the H!P auditions looking for new members and was going to be a solo artist (similar to Miki Fujimoto before her) but after a year of nothing she was folded into Biyyuden.

Erika was definitely the best actual singer but was in as support for Ishikawa Rika who had plenty of training being an idol from her time in Morning Musume. Okada Yui was also supporting, although her biggest contribution seemed to consist of her… “pair” of talents.

Being made up of actual women (20+) and not the usual pre-teen girls that make up idol groups you could watch them without feeling like a perv. Most of the songs were on the Pop side of normal idol music so they could almost hold their own as a real group and not a manufactured group designed to take money from their fans like Musume and Berryz had evolved into.

Ok, there were some “fan service” songs too but watching hot 20 year olds in bunny costumes is alot better than watching 15 year olds in bunny costumes like AKB48.

Anyway while they were still putting out great music Up Front Agency (their owners) cut the strings and the last good H!P group died. I was actually in Japan at the time and was able to goto the farewell concert in Osaka and actually had a really good time.

Since then Ishikawa has popped up in the occasional TV program, including a recent odd vegetable promotion where it looked like she’d been punched in the eye (maybe the above Rihanna reference was too accurate). And she will be in France playing in Hangry&Angry. Yui does the occasional guest TV host for local TV stations. And Erika was in a few plays but has basically been off the radar.

Here’s hoping that this means her manager has recognized that she actually has some talent and can do something again.

Final Compilation album (yesasia)

Thanks for the heads up.