Hello!Project & Me

The obligatory entry where my conversion to all things H!P is explained and how much it has effected me and my wallet.
It seems only natural to start off a new blog, especially an H!P blog, discussing how one came upon H!P.  To admit fully, I actually despised Morning Musume to begin with.  I was far more concerned with other big H!P acts at the time and didn't fully grasp the big deal of a group of 10+ girls singing around on a stage.  In truth, I found it very...processed, commercialized and uninteresting.  Artists I was into then (and still hold a large part of my heart) are the singer/songwrtiers, the people who inched their way to stardom through hard work and discovery.  I was hesitant to listen to a band where girls tried out to be included, a fast ticket to stardom.  And it was unfortunate that the first song I had ever heard from the group was in face "Love MACHINE" a song that I still struggle on a balance of like and dislike to come to a decision.  But then, something happened I completely didn't expect.  I found a song I liked a lot, if not loved.

"Mr. Moonlight ~Ai no Big Band~" is a swing song with the vocals dominated by Goto Maki, Abe Natsumi and Yoshizawa Hitomi respectively.  I can admit that I like some swing, but never found any to stand out to me.  However while at an anime convention, the same one where in previous years I had seen their video for "Love MACHINE", the video was airing with subtitles.  As soon as I saw it was Morning Musume, I had to make a decision.  Stay and stick it through or leave and come back when it felt like it was an appropriate time for the song to end.  My decision was to stay and as the song started and the video went into full swing, I could hardly believe my eyes.  This was not the same Morning Musume that I had seen in previous years and the song was nothing like anything I had heard before from a Japanese group at that time.  After the convention I went in search of the song itself and ended up coming across communities, websites, and full forums dedicated to something called Hello!Project.  It took me awhile to figure out that all these smaller groups I had been seeing on JpopSukiTV were in fact the shuffle groups and the reason that there were so many familiar faces was because it was all part of the same label.  For someone who jumped in the deep end of the H!P world, it's a tad overwhelming and downright confusing.  With the discovery of Morning Musume, it was brought to my attention of their Menudo like process, adding girls and removing the older ones.  However it seemed evident that girls were not removed because of age, rather because of their own desire to move onto bigger (sometimes) or better things.  A relief to me since I was finding excuse after excuse to start down the path of evil.

Evil you say? Well, becoming an H!P fan has done quite a number on my wallet, so a bank account that is far lower than it would be normally would of course find the world of H!P and their multiple single versions, photobooks, concert DVD's, and other merchandise to be a very big and expensive evil.  However it's an evil I am willing to buy into.  Over the past few years it's become evident that the more I listened to H!P, the more I found I enjoyed the generic bubble gum pop sound the group could have, or the rock/pop style that some of their songs had picked up.  But like all labels, there are artists you don't like, and therefore, being shoved in a label where there are so many artists, I found that many fans were divided.  The Ishikawa Rika fans and the Goto Maki fans, the Berryz fans versus the C-ute ones.  The reason it took me so long to finally get a blog up was the fact that such a divide often annoyed me or deterred me from expressing my opinion.  Nobody wants to argue with people who don't want to listen.

So here I stand.  An H!P fan that reluctantly found a love for a group and a label I initially wanted nothing to do with.  It's difficult to say when I became a full blown fan since it all seemed to happen so very quickly. It's actually bizarre even to think about it now since one moment I was despising them and the next I couldn't stop singing their praises.  As an introduction to this blog, I found it only appropriate to discuss how I came to know H!P and how this blog will probably be centered mostly on it.  However, other musical artists may sneak their way in, if I feel it necessary to discuss them, so this isn't just a general H!P blog.

I hope some will return to this site and find my articles interesting or of note.  I may not write here often seeing that most times when writing an article, I like to make it detailed or expansive on the subject itself.  Thank you.