Seeing Red
Kaede Kaga Announces Her Graduation From Morning Musume.
Morning Musume 13th generation member Kaede Kaga has announced her decision to graduate upon the completion of the group’s fall tour this November. While it seems to be out of left field at first glance, it’s really not when you consider her position in current day Morning Musume, as well as the group’s near-term future.
Kaedy will turn 23 in November, which usually signals the solidly-down-the-hill section of an H!P idol’s group tenure, and she’s stuck behind not only the three remaining 12th generation members, but more importantly the sole 11th and 10th gen members and two members of the ninth gen — ninth! — none of whom seem to have any intention of ever leaving. Kaedy is absolutely blocked in a group that is in part defined by strict adherence to seniority, with no path to a role that is greater than the one she has served the past three years or so.
Still shocked that one of the strongest all-around members of Morning Musume ’22 has decided to graduate with the goal of “[relearning] dancing from the very basics” at age 23? I’m not. Kaedy has no room to grow in a group where the front-line members have been around for going on 10-12 years now, and who’ve not signaled the intent to leave any time soon. In Morning Musume ’22 — and soon, Morning Musume ’23 — nearly everyone outside of the four senior members is a back-liner with limited exposure, permanent kohais in a hierarchy that displays absolute fealty to seniority. In that group, Kaedy has no future. That she will have made it nearly six years is frankly incredible.
This one annoys me more than most, because Kaedy was one of the top dancers, better singers, and more enjoyable personalities in the group. She had “Leader” written all over her, and I was excited to see the next version of MM featuring her in an expanded role, but the current old-guard is apparently keen to remain current regardless of the atrophying effect their continued presence has on the overall group. Among the harowota, some combination of sadness, nostalgia and anger accompanies every graduation, but Kaedy’s exit should make it clear that graduations are necessary. They are the lifeblood of generational groups, allowing new generations to put their imprint on the group, for better or worse. That the 12th generation — nearly eight years in — are still four generations down in the pecking order is preposterous, and it goes a long way towards explaining why so many harowota have found their interest in MM waning the last few years. In 16-months, the first of the 15th generation will turn 20, and as I sit here in September of 2022, I’m not confident that any of the 9th-11th members will have left by then.
Fukumura, Ikuta, and Ishida are holding MM back at this point, and if you want to add Oda to that list, I’m not gonna argue. They represent a bygone era of the group, one that, ironically, was itself a rebirth following a similar period of stagnation. I’ve felt this way for a couple of years now, and while I’ve managed to not hold it against the remaining seniors, Kaedy’s decision is making that difficult. Resentment is creeping in, and I hate that. All four of them — Fuku, Eri-pon, Daishi, Oda-chan — have had legendary careers and each has represented MM and H!P admirably, but for the future of the group and their juniors, it’s time for them to move on.
Keady should’ve been a featured member of MM by now, along with Miki and Maria, and with Mei and Rio hot on their heels. Instead, she’s graduating to relearn dancing? Are you fucking kidding me?
Fukumura and her cahoots are doing everything they possibly can to prolong their idoling careers. There’s a certain amount of hesitancy about what happens after, methinks – they’re stuck in a comfortable rutt and ain’t going to move out of there.
Thing is, whilst Fukumura and Oda and Co. are competent at the Hello-Pro village level. It’s a whole different ball game on the outside, with many younger, skilful, charasmatic players to boot, especially now. And the K-idols (NiziU) are not the only game in town – Stardust has Miss Mercy, LDH has iScream. Both groups have MASSIVE potential. Globally there’s Atarashi Gakko which seems to be following in Babymetal’s footsteps – all these are younger than Fukumura and Oda and have more skill.
At the subconscious level I think the older members of Morning Musume realise this. Oda’s blog about idols last year kind of hinted at things whilst trying to convince herself that HP was using music as a weapon – even though, in actuality, that’s not necessarily totally true.
Some of them really need to bite the bullet, graduate and the more talented ones should form a small group or two outside of HP (but not outside of Up-Front) and see if that works. Perhaps HP ought to place a graduation age limit on Morning Musume similar to the one Sakura Gakuin had.
Well! Fukumura is graduating, but only at the END of this year – LOL!