The Twilight of Hello! Project

Time to panic?

You must remember this, (a kiss is still a kiss), when the 2008 Kouhaku lineup was announced and everyone started pissing their pants because OMIGAWD MORNING MUSUME GOT KICKED OUT OF KOUHAKU. And who the hell is Nozomi Ohashi? Well the thing is, Ohashi was there to sing a selection from a freakin’ Miyazaki movie (as well as set the record for youngest performer on the show), and if there is one thing to know about Japan, it is that you get the hell out of the way when anything Ghibli or Miyazaki-related comes to town. Like, you know how the entire country of the Philippines comes to a stop when Manny Pacquiao has a boxing match? That’s Japan whenever a new Miyazaki movie comes out.

So maybe, you figure, this was just a one-year aberration. They’re doing this whole epic Miyazaki tribute, so they just didn’t have room to schedule Momusu this time. After all, 2007′s big-ass medley was the “idol special” with AKB48 and Shokotan and Leah Dizon, and you didn’t see any of them in 2008, amirite?

Morning Musume’s just taking a year off, right?

Well, CRAP.

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

The Disappearance of Minami Minegishi

Whither Summit Beach South?

Something is rotten in the state of AKBland. Where once I had gone willingly for regular servings of delicious cake, I find that one of my favorite lovelies is fading into obscurity right before my eyes.

How can you not fall in love with that face?

I thought, maybe, that it might have just been some kind of natural phenomenon. Maybe Minegishi’s loli good looks had started to fade at the age of 16, maybe they were just trying to rotate other girls onto AKBingo!, maybe a health condition had forced her to slow down a bit*. But what has transpired in the past few months has gone beyond the realm of natural. What we are witnessing right now is something of a much more sinister nature.

*We all know that Manami Oku went on hiatus for “knee problems,” which really means Erena Ono took a lead pipe to Manami’s kneecaps when she wasn’t looking because there’s room for only one U15 pedobait in this town. BITCH.