TheAnna18

I'm glad to see that even though Mifu wasn't at the Hinafes shuffle unit drawing, they at least drew one for her, which gives me more hope that she will come back soon. 

I saw on twitter that she was previously part of some public idol audition last year and had social media accounts that are still up. There are several videos of her dancing on her instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/I3p_gumy

https://twitter.com/I3P_gumy

Almost all of the clips that I’ve seen of her performing live with JJ, I get the impression that she is absolutely terrified. I wonder if her problems are in part being caused by anxiety…

I suppose my idea of a good singer, while the "professional" singer would be very good at many things, I find appreciation in various strong points. So long as someone is doing some aspect well enough, I would consider them good. Rather, I hesitate to call them bad, even if some (or many) things need improvement. Tsunku's comments were interesting, in some ways he is praising her but also being critical. At some times her timing is really great and satisfying, other times she loses it a bit, personally I chalked it up to nerves/excitement, but overall I enjoyed it and out of all of the aspects of her singing, she seems to put more effort into her timing and energy. I figure that consistency will come with more practice. She has also been a KSS for a shorter time than all of the other girls that are joining the new KSS Unit. I wonder if he writes critically about her rhythm because he sees potential and has faith that she can become really amazing? It's interesting to me that he didn't make any comments on Hasumi's rhythm in her C/C when there were several problems. But the more that I look into his comments, I start to overthink everything LOL so I'll stop with that.

 

I suppose the way that I see her fitting into the group, not as an utahime or given flashy parts, but someone who can reliably sing group or smaller lines. To me, this is good. I also think that she will improve immensely over the next few years and be even better as a member who keeps a solid core. 

 

Truthfully when juice was formed, I didn't have an image of them as being strong vocalists. I felt like Kanatomo was really strong, Karin pretty good, and everyone else was average. Then over time they worked their butts off to be seen as the "powerhouse" group. I also might have been too hard on them around the time they formed, but I remember being really surprised some years later watching performances, that I didn't expect everyone to get THAT good. 

 

Overall, I'm the kind of person that is more interested in lively performances even with many mistakes, than highly polished performances that lack a unique flair. So long as they are entertaining me with their voice and not other aspects (such as dance or facial expressions), I would still consider both types to be good singers just in different ways. I think it's unfair to call one singer better than another, just because they happen to excel at certain aspects of singing that you (or I) place more value in while listening. To a person who values pitch accuracy and range in singing, they would (probably) say Oda is the best singer in MM. To someone who values rhythm feeling and stylistic enunciation but doesn't care about pitch, they would probably say Maachan (was) the best in MM. Maybe someone just really likes the tone of Yokoyan's voice, so they think she is the best singer in MM. They are all valid answers imo. There is no master list that ranks which aspects of music or singing are the most important in order to determine which singer is better or who is "good". Individual cultures usually place importance on certain traits, but I don't think there is much validity to any one way of ranking singers, especially when you consider how much preferences change over time and across cultures. There are just too many ways to listen to and enjoy music, that realistically no one can excel at everything. If I am going to make the distinction of a good performer vs a good singer, then I would only do that if I felt that their singing was not at all enjoyable to listen to, but that their dancing/mannerisms/non-singing elements made the performance fun to watch. 

Personally I am very happy with the new additions and I have no complaints.

 

As for Sakura in JJ, I disagree with the comments about her not being a good singer. She definitely lacks control with her tone/voice cracking, but there is a lot more to singing than just that. Her rhythm and timing is very good, you can see by how she moves too that she has a strong command of it. It's not a secret that H!P management favors girls with strong rhythmic singing, after all that is the kind of singer that Tsunku was and how they have primarily trained h!p girls to sing since the foundation of h!p. Also, most songs in the h!p library are lifeless or completely fall apart unless the rhythm is executed well.

 

Edit: I would like to clarify after watching her performances more closely, that the thing that originally struck me as her having a good sense of timing/rhythm, is how some of her movements and and singing is extremely precise in how it aligns with the track. She doesn't keep that precision the whole time, but I think it's something that's on her mind because it takes a lot of concentration to learn to do it right even sometimes. This is of course, only one facet of rhythm, and I think that her accuracy would be more consistent if she practiced really *feeling* the groove more to take command in her performance. It's my theory that this sort of thing is like a light switch, either you get it or you don't, and once you get it and that switch is turned on, everything starts to click and there is a huge sudden improvement. (For example, Ayana who at her first shindan test didn't seem to get it much, to suddenly being able to perform tsugitsugi zokuzoku quite well at her next one - to me the light switch went off between this time, and then to her even more polished performance of jealousyx2 this year) I think when Sakura finally has that aha moment, she will be really really impressive.

 

On the other end of the spectrum from Sakura there is someone like Runo, who many people consider to be a good singer because she has a strong voice/more stable tone, but butchered the rhythm of songs during her KSS time. Honestly I find the debut of Runo to be more surprising than Sakura for this reason. If Tsunku were still picking the girls, I don't think she would have had a chance. Think about all of the times during MM auditions that girls with powerful voices were passed up for someone like Sayumi or Koharu. Watching Sayumi's audition it's comical how she can sing so horribly out of tune, while keeping with the rhythm so well comparatively. It's as if she didn't realize that there was more to music than timing and just made up pitches as she went along. 

 

Again, the one thing h!p music has in common across all genres/styles is that almost all are "rhythm heavy" songs, lots of 16 beat songs with a strong groove/syncopation. There are also many small rhythmic details that give the songs energy that might be missed unless listening carefully (esp. tsunku era h!p), and it takes a lot of concentration on rhythm to be able to pull those off during performance. This is why it's important that there are girls that are able to do this. Someone like Runo (at least as of her KSS days, not sure what she's up to lately) would be swallowed alive if she tried to perform a JJ song like Hakada no x3 Kiss. Meanwhile, I have faith that Sakura would do it well. This is exactly why she is a great asset for a "high level performance" group like JJ. If JJ was filled with a bunch of girls great at belting high notes but not these rhythmic details, they wouldn't be able to perform most of their library anymore. This is also likely why she was given Makoto's choice award at this year's shindan test, because he is a drummer and more inclined to be particular about rhythm in performance. 

 

 

As for the other girls, I don't have so much to say other than I am glad they're not adding too many members, and I'm excited to see how the new girls will grow. I like Rio's old school h!p face and deeper voice.