RenaiDestiny。

I completely understand why they don't show audition footage, though. Even though it was fun to watch the process of it all, they can avoid fans protesting about who should've made it/who should've gotten cut (which was a recurring theme in a lot of the publicized auditions). It's essentially a PR nightmare for the girls who do actually get in, especially if there were other finalists that were better on a skill level that got cut in the end. Even the finalists who did get cut from publicized auditions (i.e Minami from 9th gen audition) ended up getting a butt load of hate, and considering her age at the time that was really hard to witness.

Nowadays, even if failed finalists do end up joining H!P in the end, it's usually well after the winners have been established within their groups so it's a lot easier to navigate.

Okay so, I don't know how a conversation about choreography spiraled into a "And these are all the reasons why Morning Musume sucks" conversation, but I'd actually love to weigh in here because I'm not too satisfied with how Morning Musume has been managed these past 4 years either.

Morning Musume's choreography has never been great, and I've always believed that UFP should branch out to other choreographers to highlight the strengths of their stronger dancers (Ayumi, Maria, Homatan, etc.), but I think it's important to note that what brought Morning Musume into their resurgence in the first place wasn't necessarily the quality of the choreography overall. Momusu's thing as of the past five years has been more so about the amount of *sheer stamina* that's required to perform a lot of their songs and at concerts, hence why their shtick at Rock in Japan for a while was seeing how long they could go without an MC break. The formation dancesmade them stand out as unique because of how clean they were and nobody else in the industry at the time was using such a thing as a selling point. It's really never been about the quality of the actual dance steps overall -- which does suck for girls like Riho, Ayumi and Chisaki who have had professional training to some extent -- but more rather their ability to do a bunch of high energy dances while maintaining a strong performance for longer periods of time. Yuukan na Dance could've had a better dance for sure, but I don't think the mediocre choreography is representative of some major failing of the group: It's still a very fitting song for Ayumi regardless, both lyrically and sonically -- It's a love letter to her time in the group, with a sound that she's most associated with.

But I don't think Morning Musume's issue has ever been that they lacked "star power": Yokoyan, 15ki, Rairii and 17ki are all girls that probably would've been in the higher tier of popularity had they been older and debuted around Momusu's Golden Era.The problem is more so that as of late, UFP doesn't know what to do with their star power -- While Goto Hana, Hirayama Yuki, Yofuu Runo and Kasai Yuumi are all great examples of idols with a lot of potential outside of Morning Musume, the only one who is being pushed to have some sort of relevance outside of H!P is arguably Yuumi. Either way, their popularity doesn't match up to the idols that are actually trending in Japan right now, and that still isn't a fault of their own. Because that's unfortunately been H!P's whole thing these past five years -- Girls who have the potential and raw skills to make it big in Japan, but become relegated to only being big in specific Hello! Project fan circles. And I say this as someone who adores Tsubaki Factory, but claiming that they should be the ones to take MM's flagship title is kind of crazy considering that there's an unspoken reason behind them being the only senior group that *didn't* have a Budokan concert this fall, and it's largely due to how much they struggled sales wise with the last two.

A large piece of this issue is accessibility (even in Japan) -- Morning Musume have no streaming presence in a day and age where most artists' streaming numbers far surpass their physical sales. I'm 90% sure Momusu aren't on Line Music, and they definitely aren't on Apple Music Japan or Spotify Japan. Even though they're available for streaming on Apple Music internationally, something I've noticed is that most Jpop and even Kpop fans who would be willing to get into them *only* use Spotify: And most people aren't willing to jump through holes and hoops to find music of an artist they're not that invested in. Even their social media presence still isn't the greatest -- They have a lot of TikToks that have over 20k+ likes, the vast majority of them: 1. Are from 2021-2022, 2. Feature members who are no longer in the group, and 3. Are music from different artists. While new people might come across a TikTok and think "Wow this Yokoyama Reina girl is really cute!", a video of her dancing to somebody else's trending song isn't going to actually make them want to invest in Momusu and their own music. Something that could potentially help them is promoting their songs on TikTok a lot more than they actually do, because Yoshi Yoshi Shite Hoshii and Wake Up Call had great potential for TikTok dance challenges. They don't even have the sounds for their two most recent singles uploaded to their official Tiktok account: Another error in marketing. UFP has made some good steps in the right direction between the new Hulu variety show, individual ig accs, uploading dance practices, getting the girls on THE FIRST TAKE, getting the girls to perform at sporting events and festivals, etc. but it's all about consistency. Considering that Renai Revolution is the most viewed video on THE FIRST TAKE in the past month (3.3M views) and Wake Up Call (a lesser known song for Momusu standards) already broke 1.2M views, it's clear that the interest is there, but UFP has to actually build on that.

But unfortunately, it all boils down to Morning Musume (and H!P by extension) really just being a legacy act: There aren't many artists who can say that they're still as popular as they were in their peak 25 years ago. While they still might be a household name or their hit songs still go viral every year (i.e Mariah Carey), typically their newer projects don't do as well with the general public. Morning Musume's case is an even more unique one to most because of their rotational lineup. Most girls don't really join Hello! Project nowadays because they aspire to have a higher level of fame, but moreso because of their love of the already existing groups. 90% of the time, most of the girls who become Kenshuusei or get added as new additions to the other sister groups, initially auditioned for Morning Musume at some point in time.

I don't really like that Momusu has stagnated and that UFP refuses to expand out of the fandom, but I'd honestly take that over the other alternative of having yet another Platinum era (or worse, considering that Platinum era at least had several members that were well known to the GP).

I have a discord server where I post some of my album reviews, so I thought I could share my thoughts on the album overall here:

Okay so here's my feelings on this:

While I agree that Biyo has the perfect formula for a rotational group (and honestly I could see this audition either resulting in no winners or two winners just to replace Yuha and Icchan's empty parts), that's definitely something that should've been established early on in the group. Seeing this reminds me of Juice=Juice: While Ruru, Yanamin and Manakan were amazing additions to the group and added a new flavor to them, them having the staple 5 member lineup for so long has hindered them in terms of their group image for quite a while (honestly I would argue that it took up until 2023 for most fans to kinda stop harping over what once was). It worked with Tsubaki Factory because despite the amazing music, the 9-member lineup struggled a lot with their image especially with being seen as the "least talented performance group" at the time (especially in comparison to their fallen sisters), and the Little Camellias really helped turn that image around -- Not to mention that huge scandal that led to the lineup becoming more rotational in the first place. I really wanted UFP to have Biyo, Ocha Norma and Rosy Chronicle to become the stable lineup til disbandment groups, because honestly the whole "more members = more money" is really a flawed mindset when you stabilize a group for so long and build a strong image based around the cohesiveness of those specific members. Hello! Project is really getting overcrowded, and the amount of graduations to additions ratio honestly isn't making it any better.

How long until they find new victims? --'

Not too long, Seiko still a ton of young female fans who are kinda in denial about her behavior since her music resonates with them. Considering we still have three members left behind, there will definitely be a "rebrand" by the end of the year.

That being said, I'm so proud of Maro for finally putting her foot down and getting out of that hellish group. It seems like Seiko had a lot of influence and control over all of the members, so it definitely took some guts and perseverance to get to this conclusion. The only heartbreaking thing to me is while Maro did state she'd stay in the industry, she did say that as for now ZOC will be the end of her idol journey. It's understandable of course, but the one good thing ZOC really gave me was proving to me that Maro was really born to be an idol.