H!P’s Wild Rides of March

Whew! That was a crazy March, huh? A new single, an unexpected tear-jerking remake and multiple graduation and new release announcements is a lot to pack into a single month — and we still have 11 days to go.

It’s a lot to cover in one post, so I’ll try to be brief, but holy shit this is a lot to cover.

Chapter 1: THE GOOD

The month started with the release of Beyooooonds’s third single, although both videos had been posted to YouTube by the first week of February. The lead track, “Eiyuu ~Waratte! Chopin Senpai~,” blew me away, but it was a slow gathering wind. The radio rip left me feeling that Hoshibe and co. were maybe being a little too clever by half, but after a few listens to the full recording, it was apparent that they’re just really goddamn clever, period. Like C-ute’s intense magnum opus “Mugan Climax,” “Chopin Senpai” seamlessly melds multiple pieces of Classical music into an impressive modern pop masterpiece, but “Chopin Senpai” might be even more impressive due to the fact that it succeeds as a conventional idol arrangement. Honoka Kobayashi is the star of this show, as one would expect Biyo’s resident concert pianist to be. The coupling song, “Hamkatsu Mokushiroku,” speaks of the joys of deep-fried ham cutlets to a modern Indian-tinged soundtrack. Both videos are pure Beyooooonds, which is to say, incredibly fun. If you buy the Limited Edition SP1, you’ll also get the outstanding “Furefure Everyday” from last year’s Kagome ad campaign, which would give you Biyo’s best single to date in my estimation.

On St. Patty’s Day, Morning Musume ’22 dropped a 50 mega-ton nostalgia bomb in the form of a faithful remake of “I Wish” to the original arrangement. The recording is fine, and each girl sounds as good as you would expect. The nostalgia is in the video. If you don’t at least get choked-up watching this, then you probably haven’t been a fan of MM for any significant amount of time over the past ten years or so. It starts off simply enough with a single-shot of each girl singing a solo line, and when they put on the varsity jackets for the chorus, OG fans smile and say “that’s a nice touch.” But understand, they’re softening you up, bro, and there’s nothing you can do to stop what’s about to happen. When the second verse cuts to footage of each current generation’s debut, you know it’s coming, and if you don’t lose it then, it’s just a matter of time. The chorus and bridge cuts back to the current group dancing and horsing around, letting you catch your breath and compose yourself, but only so much, because it’s basically the original choreo. The last four bars leading into the final B-melody opens with recent happy footage for three bars. Then it happens. The fourth bar — the soaring climax of the bridge — cuts to a tear-drenched Morning Musume rushing on stage to hug Maa-chan following her graduation concert solo. If you managed to hold it together for this long, fuhgettaboutit. Ya’ done. It’s almost an unfair move, dirty even. And it’s beautifully powerful.

It says something that the most powerful and most universally well received MM video in years is a remake of a 22 year old song. I’m not sure what that is — it could just be that “I Wish” is a damned good song that has stood the test of time across several generations of fans. Or that the members of MM’s Fukumura Era are as beloved as those of the Golden Era who originally recorded the song. Whatever it is, I can’t shake the feeling that this video feels like an End Of An Era moment, and that it’s intended to be one. Toward that end, on to Chapter 2…

Chapter 2: THE SAD

A pair of long-serving members announced their intentions to graduate from the Hello! Project, starting with Morning Musume’s Chisaki Morito. Technically, she announced it on February 28th, but I’ve got a theme going here, so it’s close enough. Chii-chan’s last concert will be MM’s June 20th Spring Tour closer at Budokan. I was never a big fan of Chii (nor did I dislike her) but her addition to MM always seemed like the most forced fit of the ex-Country Girls to me, and she seemed to take a couple of years to really find her place. What she lacked in vocal talent she more than made up for as a dancer, though, and her cute, easy-going disposition made her a natural idol. The reason I didn’t dislike her is because she is impossible to dislike, and the universal reverence for Chii-chan throughout the H!P membership feels unique even to an outsider on the other side of the world. Gonna be a soggy grad concert in June.

20 days after Chii’s announcement, the other remaining former Country Girl, Manaka Inaba, announced that she would graduate Juice=Juice and H!P following J=J’s May 30th tour closer at Budokan. This one hits me a little harder despite the fact that, at 24, Manakan leaving isn’t exactly shocking. When Manakan was added to J=J, I was initially skeptical that she could keep up with H!P’s vocal juggernaut, but she not only kept up, she made them even stronger. Her voice, always reliable and pleasant, developed into a strong and unique instrument over her four years with J=J, and her departure is a blow to a group that had already lost three of its defining voices over the preceding year-and-a-half.

Manakan’s and Chii’s graduations will bring to a close one of the more strange and contentious chapters in the history of H!P. A lot of fans still carry resentment over the dissolution of Country Girls, and it’s hard to judge them for that. CG stood out in the H!P pack with a sound and look that was closer to the classic cute J-idol standard than any other at the time (having taken over that role from S/mileage, whose radical overhaul into the power-idol Angerme occurred just months prior to CG’s debut.) From the perspective of a guy who wasn’t a huge CG fan, I think the loss of Manaka to health issues and Momoko to retirement, combined with relatively low sales and the recent addition of the Factories made running CG as a full-time group untenable from the agency’s point of view. I’d love to hear what the actual thinking behind the decision was from someone in the know.

The most important H!P departure by far, though, will happen on March 31st when composer Takui Nakajima leaves J.P. Room and Up-Front Group to form his own independent production company. Since Tsunku stepped down as H!P producer, Nakajima and Hoshibe Sho have been the musical backbone of the agency, and the list of straight heaters he leaves behind is impressive. I expect H!P groups will still get the odd Takui composition here and there, but he will be missed big time. It’ll be interesting to see if UF brings in a full-time replacement or if they just spread the work among outside composers. With six full-time groups now active, there should be a lot of work to go around, which brings us to Chapter 3…

Chapter 3: THE UPCOMING

H!P made three official release announcements this month, and telegraphed a fourth. Even better, it looks like the agency might finally be adopting the model of spreading releases out over several months rather than packing them all into a two month window followed by five or six months of nothing, which I’ve been advocating for years now. H!P fans can expect new content each month into July, save for June (which would mark seven months from TF’s last single, you know, in case anyone from Up-Front is reading this).

Juice=Juice’s third long-player, terzo — which I’m sure will be dope and carry J=J to highs never before experienced — drops on April 20. I’ll have to wait for a future post to get deep in the weeds on this album, as the track listing is still unknown, but surely J=J will want to show that the grass will be every bit as green moving forward without four legendary members from their previous album. To put it bluntly, I expect a smoking release.

May 11 will finally bring an end to Angerme’s eleven month dry spell with the release of their 30th major single. This will feature the debut of 10th gen member Yuki Hirayama and will be the group’s first following the graduation of Momona Kasahara. We have the deets for this triple-A sider, and the first thing to get your Juices flowing is the team behind the lead track “Ai Mashou”: Himi Izutsu, Eric Fukusaki and arranger Karou Okubou. If that doesn’t move the needle for you, what if I told you they are the team responsible for Juice=Juice’s “Fiesta! Fiesta!”? Yup, and “Ai Mashou” is said to be another fiery Latin number. The second track, “Hade ni Yacchai na!” is from Aoi Yamazaki (Aisare Route A or B, Urahah=Lover) and arranger Nao Tanaka, who was fairly active with H!P in the post Golden Era through the Platinum Era. The final song, “Aisubeki Beki Human Life,” comes from songwriter Kohei Dojima, who I know little about, but many in H!P Twitter seem to hold him in pretty high regard, and Shunsuke Suzuki is arranging, which is always good. I have pretty high expectations for this one.

Edit: It seems that a preview of “Ai Mashou” has been tweeted out by the indispensable @ree_tick.

愛・魔性 pic.twitter.com/vC3HWD2WAr

— R_T (@ree_tick) March 20, 2022

Morning Musume is next on the schedule (probably) with their 71st single. Verry little is known about this release beyond the song titles: “Chu Chu Chu Bokura no Mirai” and “Dai ・ Jinsei Never Been Better!” It hasn’t even been officially announced, but based on Chisaki Morito’s May 20th graduation, it’s reasonable to assume it will drop before then. Tsunku himself took to Twitter to crow about how good one of these tracks is. “Too good” was his exact phrase. Okay, buddy, way to build up our expectations. I hope he delivers on it!

The last official release announcement is the big one, and it’s also the one we know the least about: OCHA NORMA will make their major debut on July 17 with the release of their first single. That’s it. That’s the announcement. And that’s fine by me. New group debuts are exciting in and of themselves, and Up-Front is pretty serious about not debuting a new group until they’re sure they’re ready for it, and doing so with great songs. I still remember thinking UF were out of their minds when they announced Tsubaki Factory’s debut, and all TF has done is deliver one of the most consistently good catalogs in the Hello! Project oeuvre, so I’m pretty jacked for the launch of OCHA NORMA.

And that puts a bow on the most eventful month of H!P activity I can remember in over a decade. Or does it? A lot can happen in a week-and-a-half.