Wow guys, I found a rant I wrote in May 2013 (whaaat) about Momusu OG members. While I'm not sure I still 100% agree with it, it looks like I put some effort into typing it all down, so I kind of want to post it.
Basically
this shit is old and based on random tidbits picked from convos rather than direct translations, so some of it may be BS, but hey.
"For most of my Morning Musume fandom I've had considerable respect towards the older, founding generations of Morning Musume. In the early years, when asked for my favourite Morning Musume generation, I would answer the first generation simply because they had started it all. I thought people like Yuko Nakazawa should eventually grow to have creative power in the company because I had the image that as the leader of Hello! Project, she really knew what was going on and appeared mature and wise to me. I generally had tremendous respect towards all more senior members because, I suppose, I wanted to be appreciative of the past and thought it was the work and genius of these girls that made the popularity of the group explode back in the day. There is also cultural tradition of respecting seniority in Japan that apparently affected my thinking as well, even if I'm all the way on the other side of the world. (Mental note: The brainwashing effect of being a part of Jpop or Kpop fandom would be an interesting topic to discuss...)
Now that some years have passed, my image of the members has been changing. It's been a slow process, but what really pushed it forward was the somewhat recent event of bringing the OG members in to give advice to then Aichan-lead Morning Musume. First of all, at least two of them – Tsuji and Fujimoto – couldn't even name any of the new members. You could argue that they are now busy being part-time working mothers, so it's only understandable that they don't keep up with the current Morning Musume. And I agree that in their private lives, there's no reason for them to do so.
However, this was a work meeting. This was their job for the day. I'm going to do a possibly silly comparison, but here we go. Imagine being a past worker for Nokia, invited to discuss what Nokia could do now to improve its sales. Would you go to such a meeting without doing any research on the current state and qualities of Nokia, and only talk about how your Nokia phone in 2002 was awesome? I certainly wouldn't. So I'm asking you, how is this situation different? Them not being interested in MM in their free time is slightly disappointing. Them not having the work ethic to even learn the names of the girls they are giving advice to is more disappointing. Just like a former employee wouldn't be able to give advice to current Nokia developers without doing research, how can you expect these ex-MM members be able to give advice not knowing anything about the current Morning Musume?
So one of the things that has bothered me about OG members is unprofessionalism. It's the last thing I would have expected from them, thinking of them as the senior members that the youngins should look up to. They should look up to people who show up to work unprepared? They should look up to people who don't take meetings like this seriously? The 9th, 10th, 11th, and future generation members are better off looking up to Sayumi who actually does research on people that are going to appear on the same show as her prior to the recording.
Then there was the emphasis of rivalry as the reason for MM's past success, and why MM's popularity dropped as the friendly atmosphere lead by Aichan grew in the group. Now, rivalry is something that, for many years in the fandom, I also thought the group was sorely missing, and was the reason why they weren't doing as well. However, the addition of 9th and then 10th generation revealed to me that a lack of rivalry had not been the problem. There were problems with having little promotion for the group and whatever other explanations people could come up with, but in the end, I think what the group simply needed was some fresh, cute, silly blood. And indeed, the current Morning Musume has been able to increase its sales, as well as its female fanbase, without giving in to the rivalrous atmosphere that the seniors praise so highly. What the OG were after wasn't a simple friendly rivalry; Fujimoto said she would like to see two girls that hate each other. What they actually wanted was for the members to not be real friends with each other because they weren't friends in the past. Nacchi enjoyed scaring the younger members and is known for having cold relations with other members, despite this false image of being a warm face of the group. I don't think true fans of the group want this for the current Morning Musume.
It doesn't really require cold-blooded rivalry to improve on one's skills. Eripon, for instance, has recently been receiving a lot of praise from fans for improving her dancing. While we can't know for sure what has been driving force behind it, to me, it has simply seemed like this girl wants to be the best idol she can be. Not in relation to x, y or z, but from within herself comes the ambition to be cute, funny, a better singer and dancer, regardless of what talent she was born with. My point is, if you love being an idol and if you love Morning Musume, as a member of the group you will strive to do your best regardless of rivalries. The older generations didn't have the love for Morning Musume that 5th generation and latter ones had (with some exceptions of course; Koharu, for one, has talked about how she just wanted to use MM as a stepping stone to other things). The older generations needed rivalry to inspire them to fight for themselves and for the group. People like Fukuchan who love H!P above all won't need this type of inspiration. They naturally want to live up to the standard of what they perceive Morning Musume deserves and requires, and will encourage other members to do so, as well.
I'd like to point out something else, too. There's something that has changed in the fandom from the time that I started till now: pairings. Sure, Tsuji and Kago were ”twins”, Ishiyoshi have been a thing since forever and fans may have had a crack pairing or two in the past (mine was Nacchi and Goto). But it has grown to the point where even my humble little home H!P forum has a section dedicated to pairing threads. Fans actually love the fact that the girls appear to be close with each other. Any two girls can be combined into a pairing regardless of how much or little it makes sense, but the most satisfying pairings are the ones where fans truly feel that the girls aren't faking their affections. It's cute, it's heart-warming, it's fun to laugh about (”look at those two at it again”), it can even be hot depending on who it is. The pairing phenomenon seems to have grown into a bigger thing in nearly every fandom particularly in the past five to ten years, I would say, thanks to sites like tumblr spreading gifs. And those five years are the period that most senior OG members haven't really cared about. Perhaps they don't understand just how much modern fans appreciate friendliness between the members. As a part of the fandom, pairings have become a wider organized thing now; simply put, the Ishiyoshi phenomenon has spread throughout the entire Hello! Project.
Basically, the OG member's advice concerning rivalry is rather outdated. Sure, friendly rivalry can have a good effect and would be interesting to see. But the problem to the OG is the word ”friendly”. They don't want friendly rivalry. They want cut-throat rivalry. They want these girls to be cold to each other backstage, then live a lie of love and friendship on stage like they did.
Should the current Morning Musume truly look up to OG members? Looking at all the scandals they've been through, who are these people to give advice to young girls? The fact that they've had scandals itself is a sign of poor professionalism because as idols, talents and entertainers, it's their responsibility to not only think of how decisions affect themselves, but also the people around them. And the people who have cast the darkest shadow over the title of ”Morning Musume”... Are the OG members. Not Aichan being too friendly a leader, not 9th, 10th and 11th gen working together. The plagiarism, cheating on a husband, underaged smoking, reckless public dating... It was all OG members' doing. The entertainment skills, singing and dancing from these members can still be a goal for the younger members to strive for, but for a wholesome image of how to live one's life as an idol, there's a shorter list to consider. The people I would love for newer generations to look up to are Rika Ishikawa, Hitomi Yoshizawa, Kei Yasuda (who actually had constructive criticism for the girls regarding their similar hairstyles, not mere ”you must be rivals” bullshit), Asami Konno, Makoto Ogawa, Risa Niigaki, Ai Takahashi, Reina Tanaka, and the current leader Sayumi Michishige. (I would include Kaori Iida, but I'm not sure where her opinions lie.) As people to look up to I mean people who are professional, ambitious, and know how to handle their private lives.
I now understand why someone like Yuko Nakazawa shouldn't gain true power in the company. She may have known how things worked in her time, but she's not able to think past it. It's sad that many OG appear to be the same way. They are stuck in one way of thinking and can't see that not only is Morning Musume changing, but the entire world around them is changing, and MM needs to change along with it to keep up. Whether those changes are the right ones can't always be seen, but at least with the current upward trend in MM's popularity, it can now be said that with proper promotion, leadership, cute new members, hard work and a trendy direction in music (albeit still very Tsunku) new goals can be reached and the spice that's missing from the mix is NOT cut-throat rivalry. There's still a long way to go if MM wants to reach some of its former popularity and become known in more households in its modern state, but outside the context of the past they are doing very well right now.
I suppose what all this is leading to is that the bubble is burst. I no longer automatically respect the older generations of Morning Musume. Some of them have lost a piece of my previous respect for saying or doing specific things, and others that I'm unsure about will have to earn the respect instead of me automatically giving it. What I love is Morning Musume and Morning Musume isn't what it was before. But I actually love the current Morning Musume more because the current Morning Musume loves it just as much as I do, even more. It almost pisses me off that these OG members continue to use the name of Morning Musume to promote their own work when it appears that MM was just another job for them.
I'm still thankful to the older members that they made it possible for Morning Musume to exist today. It's clear that they did work hard during their time in the group. But there's bitterness now and if it's a battle between the old and new, I'm going to support the new. There are enough people stuck living in the past, anyhow."
I think at least since writing this I've heard more about 'cold' or 'awkward' relationships in current MM/H!P, but somehow I still have a feeling it's not as bad as it was in the very (g)olden days.
Topic: The Hello! Project Postwhoring Thread (Read 864225 times)