Small Fish, Big Pond

The band US Metal band “Steel Panther” created a stir on the Japanese NHK program West Wind for all the wrong reasons. I saw the post on Japan Probe and thought, “Here we go again…”

You see, alot of Morning Musume fans are mad that somebody touched one of their precious idols. It’s absurd but their fans are that obsessive.
But I just watched the show (overseas “torrent delay”) and apparently I’m the only one because nobody has mentioned the real fun of that clip.

During the Q&A one of the questions was “At your house, what family rules do you have?”
Steel Panther response:

Seriously. This is a screen cap from the broadcast show.
Update: A foreign friend of mine isn’t up with US slang. For people still in the dark here (slightly disturbing wikipedia page).

Nobody in the guests panel, the crowd, or the hosts seems fazed; they didn’t ever react that much at all. Probably because the (rough) translation at the bottom is “If you dirty the sofa clean it up.” It’s hilarious when they pan back to the panel and you see all the “clean, pure, virginal” Musume members smiling or nodding their heads as if they’re saying “Yeah, that is a problem.”

The follow up rule given by Michael Starr, “Always flush the toilet after you go poop” got lots of laughs and comments. Chalk the first one up to being completely lost in translation.

Thumbs up to Steel Panther for getting this on TV, or thumbs up to the translator trying to figure out how to keep this from being an issue for the broadcasters. Or maybe the translators just thought it was a slang term for getting a sofa dirty and though the goofy gajin were really obsessed with living room cleanliness.

But Kamei Eri likes the gajin and gives them a big thumbs up. Or maybe that was for the Jizz comment, we’ll never know.

Update:
The girl that got rubbed up against, Kusumi Koharu, just announced she’s leaving the group AND the whole project. I told you they take this shit seriously.

Apparently there aren’t any hard plans on what she’ll do but she want’s “to be a model”. Yeah, good luck with that. Who’d leave a project that is built around selling modeling books to a brainwashed fanbase to be a model.
No, “leaving to be a model” means either she was sick of their crap, or they were sick of her’s.

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.

A while ago I thought if Morning Musume ever came to America I’d drive to where they were playing and go to see them to show support even if I only really like about 20% of the songs. Driving around the city today A href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUmcalXzoB8>Shanimuni Paradise came up in the random playlist (From the “happy” playlist) and reminded me that they’re in the US this weekend.

Funny how things change over 5 years, although not too surprising with a musical group whose roster is constantly rotating. All I could think was, “Too bad they waited till their popularity was waning before they tried to get more overseas fans”. It seems all big label bands wait until they’re in dire straits until they start reaching out to larger audiences to try to stabilize sales. Not surprising MM has painted themselves into a corner in Japan by appealing to only whacked out idol fans. Too bad too, they have the ablility to broaden their fans there if they didn’t keep sticking to the whole idol image.

So good luck in the US, but I won’t be there. They killed or cut off all their groups they have an appeal beyond giggly prepubescent girls, unless they grow up their fans overseas will be the same narrow genre they have in Japan, and there are even fewer idol otaku here.

Now bring back Biyuuden, bring over Melon Kinenbi, or create a group with the maturity closer to what Morning Musume had during Daite Hold on Me, and I might be bothered to take notice.

Besides it seems like UFA is keeping a tight leash on their products on a tight leash even over here where 0.00001% of the people know who they are.

Update: Hmm… I bad mouth the Cutsie ,idols path that Hello Project takes but I was just listening to some blacklog of my music and “My Boy” by Buono is pretty good (PV is a little absurd though)… I guess I’ll shut up now.