Aika Mitsui graduated for your sins

Morning Musume’s 8th Generation may go down in history as the “Cursed Generation.” These were the girls who had to preside over the group’s bleakest era, a time of creative bankruptcy when bubbly, energetic charm gave way to boringly “mature” songs and unnecessary glitter and synth-strings and 3 1/2 years straight of minor-keyed singles. THREE AND A HALF YEARS. I counted. If you wanted to find anything more musically monotonous than that, you’d have to go to that organ piece that’s supposed to last 600 years and the last time they changed a note was in 2009 or something.

The curse began with the selection of Aika Mitsui, who was nobody’s (okay, hardly anybody’s) favorite in the Happy 8 Auditions, who had to deal with mean-spirited jokes about her weird face and weird voice, who could only watch as sales continued to decline and a bunch of nobodies called AKB48 began their long climb up, who had to watch as other former 8th Gen auditionees would go on to be gravure queens (Yuki Kashiwagi) and multi-genre soloists (Yuu Kikkawa) and adorable potato-faced hamsters (Sumire Sat0rrrr). She would never live up to the single-member generation that came before her; Koharu became an anime icon and a morning show co-host and left the group as an aspiring fashion model, while Aika is leaving the group limping on her bad foot.

Building a Better Momusu (With AKB Members)

Here's the story ... of 9 lovely ladies ... who had grown up from 9 very lovely girls ...

Mitsui joined. Yoshizawa graduated. The pandas showed up. Fujimoto slunk out the back door.

And just like that, we were left with the longest-running, most stable lineup in Morning Musume history (years after most normal people had given up on the group because it was too confusing trying to keep up with all the changes). But now, with Koharu Kusumi packing her bags and getting ready to go, we look back and ponder the mysteries of the era from “Onna ni Sachi Are” to “Kimagure Princess.” Why didn’t they audition for any new generations? (Part of the INBOU theorist in me believes that after all H!P programming on TV got canned, there was no longer an outlet through which auditions could be held and publicized.) Why didn’t anyone graduate?* (Probably because all the current members realized that there was no hope for them elsewhere in the entertainment industry.) Was this truly the best chemistry that MM ever had, or had fans just come to believe that because they’d gotten used to the same lineup for so long?

*Supplementary research tells me that this is because management was trying to keep the lineup stable so that Japan could re-learn who the girls are. Yeah, how’s that working for you guys?

And what if you tried to recreate the Nine Smile Morning Musume with members of AKB48?

Angels and Devil Girls: Cracking the INBOU48 Code

What does the reshuffling of AKB48′s Teams portend for the rest of humankind? Will the seas run red with blood, will the great Leviathan rise from the depths, will the awful horror reign for 1290 days? (For comparison purposes, remember that George W. Bush was President of the United States for 2922 days.) Has the downfall of Japanese civilization, marked by declining population growth and two decades of economic malaise, entered its final stages?

Wow, it's like Excel is finally useful for something.

If there is one thing I have learned from working at a major Japanese corporation (albeit its US division), it is that they love to make managerial moves for the sake of making managerial moves. Not that this accomplishes anything, but it sure looks like you’re “doing something” when people get shuffled around. Of course, plenty of other corporations around the world also do this, but it is Japan that has raised these corporate shenanigans to the level of art, where you can be Product Manager one month and then suddenly be moved to Engineering Manager (even if the last time you “engineered” something was for a senior year college project) and if they really don’t like you, you get exiled to Sales.

What I see right now is a lot of idols being exiled to Sales.

Who put them there? Yasushi Akimoto, you think? Of course not! When a paradigm shift of this magnitude occurs, it can only be the invisible blue hand of INBOU.

INBOU