... and the sugar turned bitter.

KOKORO&KARADA is one heck of a song to debut on. It's an ambitious song, a song that feels at first like it could have been intended for Kikkawa You, but, at the same time, it shows a certain ambition on behalf of the group, a dedication to the dance music stylings that have characterised Morning Musume since the release of One・Two・Three and the group's big, noisy, danceable return. 2019 was, however, a long way from 2012, and for older fans, the honeymoon was maybe partially over by this point. The release of KOKORO&KARADA was a bloated "tripe A side," a feeling that no one could decide which song was supposed to be the lead. Yet, it was also the debut of the fifteenth generation, amongst whom, was Kitagawa Rio.



It's hard not to be aware at the time of writing this that Rio is graduating on 31st December. The situation surrounding this is not pleasant, and whilst Rio has resumed duties and wants to leave seemingly with her head held high, it feels like this overshadows everything—it reminds me of NECRONOMIDOL. I was going to be specific in relation to the members who later went on to form MANACLE, but I realise I could be talking about the exits of any member of any generation of NECRONOMIDOL. I don't think it's unnatural to complain about work, to complain about those you work with, but I think it also highlights the difficulty of trying to be in a group like Morning Musume whilst also trying to go to university, trying to live a normal life, to prepare for what comes after being an idol. Before that, however, in 2019 were the auditions, attempted not just by Rio but by fellow future fifteenth generation members Okamura Homare and Yamazaki Mei, as well as future Juice=Juice member Kawashima Mifu, and members who later joined ANGERME and OCHA NORMA, each of them passed with flying colours. Rio had spoken a lot when younger about wanting to join the entertainment industry, developing a fondness for Girls' Generation whilst still in the fifth grade. I wonder now if she would have any advice for her younger self; I wonder if achieving that ambition of becoming an idol made it mundane or if, in some way, it was so precious to her that she felt the need to downplay to others in order better to fit in? It's not the kind of question that can be asked, and, as such it's the kind of thing that will have to remain unanswered.

After only half a year or so in the group following her debut, Rio's experiences of being an idol were already informed by circumstances unlike any prior generation experienced. Her birthday shows in March 2020 were cancelled due to the onset of the plague, and yet amidst that, her first photobook was released, its only promotion being online. I don't know if this experience made her more dedicated than she would have been usually to this kind of thing, but since that first book during the height of covid, Rio has continually put out a new book each year—well, at least until this year. With the following year, however, and her fanclub established, Rio got to set tradition with annual birthday solo concerts, and despite joint injuries and covid, she carved out a place for herself within the structure of Morning Musume, a popularity that granted her the opportunity to go on tour with Okamura and Yamazaki alone just as the fifteenth generation. It is frustrating then that her suspension in April overshadows this success.

There are only a handful of days left with Kitagawa Rio, and without being in Japan for handshake events, I feel that many will miss out making peace with this moment. This, perhaps, is the real experience of the overseas fan. It's such a shame to end things this way. I really hope that Rio manages to find her place outside of Morning Musume.

Title: Even if I can’t fly, I can still walk
Universe: AKB48
Prompt: Power Rangers Dino Fury: S28E03 - Lost Signal
Character(s): Kashiwagi Yuki/Mukaichi Mion
Rating: U
Warnings: N/A
Summary: Again, she caught sight of her reflection, the peak of her baseball cap, the N interwoven with the Y. If she were to write fanfiction about Mion, where would she start?
Length: 1094 words
Author's Notes: I sort of made Yukirin a dork. More of a dork, I mean. Many thanks to Misa-chan for translation of the lyrics to Tsubasa wa Iranai. also: external link.



( Even if I can’t fly, I can still walk )

Kudo Haruka is baby. I mean, she’s clearly not, she’s an adult woman now, she’s 25-years-old, and yet, in a sense, whenever I see her in anything, that same instinct is triggered in from when she first debuted in Morning Musume: Kudo Haruka is baby, we must protect Kudo Haruka.



Debuting as a Hello! Project Egg, which is what the kenshuusei were called prior to 2012, she served as a backup dancer for various groups for a year from 2010, initially appearing at the winter Hello! Project festival in Yokohama, until it was announced that she would be promoted to Morning Musume.

Despite being present and on various stages for a full year before her promotion, it was only the most hardcore of Western fans who kept track of the kenshuusei, partly because there were so many channels through which you could join H!P, not just as an Egg. The rest of us only really learnt of them when they got the occasional starring role or collaboration—Aa! and the like. At the time Kuduu debuted as a Morning Musume member with the single, Pyocopyoco Ultra, I had friends who were ready to give me her full biography, but I always shied away from following junior idols because, I will admit, I found it a bit creepy. The further you get from the age of members in groups though, the more forgiving you are of it, I think. It’s already weird to be an adult supporting idol groups, everyone’s younger than you anyway, and the situation is no longer akin to where you are roughly the same age as first-generation members of a group.

All of that aside, everyone fell instantly in love with the cuteness of Kuduu. Even with Pyocopyoco Ultra, which... I certainly felt was a disappointment as a single, even with Ren'ai Hunter, which similarly failed to land for me, there was a sense that we were one step away from greatness, and that Kuduu’s presence in the line-up was a sign of that.

Surprising no one, we were one step away from greatness. One・Two・Three was released in 2012 and everyone went crazy. This was the new Morning Musume we had been waiting for! Listening to these releases now, it’s clear that Ren'ai Hunter was a necessary step towards One・Two・Three in terms not only of music and production but in the group’s faith in Kuduu, yet it is this song and this video specifically where she comes into her own. With the following year’s Wakuteka Take a chance, these feelings were cemented. We were so back, as we might say now to describe the situation.

Help me!! followed in early 2013, introducing Oda Sakura, and both her and Kuduu became like the twin towers of cuteness, we could never imagine them falling. Despite that, at the time, I was quite harsh in my review of the single. ‘Help me!! is something of a Return of the Jedi for the recent trilogy of electropop-tinged Morning Musume releases,’ I wrote, proving that I have no chill whatsoever.

Although the last of the old guard graduated during this era, I genuinely feel it was members such as Kuduu who held Morning Musume together, who pushed the group forward. Her time in the group was the era that gave us LILIUM, a performance in Suemitsu Kenichi’s TRUMP series, which is... gosh, friends if you haven’t seen that play, if you’re not yet invested in these setting, then to-day is the day to start, for sure. Almost immediately after graduation, she appeared in a central role in Kaitou Sentai Lupinranger VS Keisatsu Sentai Patranger and his continued to build upon her talent and skill as an actor and an idol.

I love Kudo Haruka, just in case that wasn’t clear enough from this entry. I think the world of her, and I’m so happy she’s continuing to do well even if she is no longer a member of Morning Musume.

I always think it’s sad when someone is a fan of a group but has a particular dislike of one member. I think it’s sad, but I know that, in the past, I was really impatient with Yasuda Kei, and I feel awful about that now, as an adult, but Kei-chan was such an important part of what made Morning Musume work as a group.



Born on 6th December in 1980, Kei-chan’s childhood is instantly recognisable to me as it was all of our childhoods during those years. She was born in Futtsu, Chiba, she was enthusiastic about music from a young age, writing songs when she was still very young, joining band club in junior high, going through a rebellious period when older, hanging around Kisarazu—which, following early exposure to Kisarazu Cat’s Eye, is a place I keep threatening to take the highway bus out to—and eventually finding herself in part-time jobs at department stores and in McDonald’s, not really know what she wanted to do with her life.

That changed in 1998 when she was picked to be a part of Morning Musume’s second generation alongside Yaguchi Mari and Ichii Sayaka. I would kill to read fic about Kei-chan and Mari hanging out before properly joining the group because they always had such a cute dynamic between them and the idea of exploring that in the context of these moments before fame fills my head with possibilities. Possibly keeping up rumours of her rebellious phase, Kei-chan obtained her moped license shortly after joining the group so I can only hope someone will read what I am writing here and gift me Kei and Mari taking illegal bike rides on a moped fic. Perhaps I’m looking in the wrong place as it was always Kei-chan and Ichii Sayaka who were often grouped together, especially once third generation member, Goto Maki arrived and the three of them got a solo project together, Petitmoni, the dynamic between members evoked several years later when AKB48 first announced no3b.

These moments in which the second generation had just joined the group where the things that filtered down to us, and Kei-chan was a big part of that. From her back-and-forth with the hosts on Utaban to her appearance in the movie, Pinch Runner, little clips of these moments began to appear on the internet, people began uploading transcripts of interactions between members on variety shows, they began uploading fanfic to livejournal, and this was how I became a Morning Musume fan, this was how I ended up several floors up in a building on the cusp of Akihabara buying photographs of members on a regular basis.

I like the fact that Kei-chan carried on writing songs, that she co-wrote songs with other members, and I find it frustrating that despite everyone wanting to see their release, Hello! Project just kind of sat on them instead. I get that this is partly because it wants to preserve the image of its producer shaping them, but I think it’s evident they got a lot more than they expected when members like Kei-chan signed.

Since those early days, Yasuda Kei has always been associated with the group, coming back for reunions, for tours, for talk shows, for Dream Morning Musume, reminding me how mean I was to be dismissive of her in those early days, reminding us all of what an important member of the group she always was.

Title: Renai Revolution ‘21
Universe: D4DJ Groovy Mix
Prompt: Renai Revolution ‘21
Character(s): Yamate Kyoko/Izumo Saki
Rating: 15
Warnings: N/A
Summary: She had been there, Happy Around!’s most recent live performance, not amongst the crowd, but stage right, arms folded, knowing smirk on her face, assessing Rinku’s talent, her growth. Saki had apparently been there too, though Kyoko had not seen her backstage, but somewhere, the girl with lavender hair and the inexpressive face, Photon Maiden’s resident DJ, had been doing just the same as her: spying on the competition.
Length: 699 words
Author's Notes: Merry Christmas in July! #1. also: external link.



( Renai Revolution ‘21 )

When I first dropped over the cliff into idol fandom, the delineation between what was real and what was not wasn’t so clear. A lot of the information I gleaned about Morning Musume in those early days actually came from livejournal fanfiction. This was how I learnt everyone’s names, this was how I learnt about their friendships and foibles, and, needless to say, this is how I also became convinced of imaginary relationships, but that’s maybe not relevant right now. I digress. When I first heard Honto wa ne., I had no context for what was fiction and what was real, and not understanding that the song was from a movie, all I saw was Sonim, singing words written by someone else, interpreting the context of those moments as real and believing these words to be written by a girl diagnosed with terminal cancer. I cried every time I heard it.

Good news, everyone! Yorico, the song’s original author, is not dead. As a child, she was diagnosed with throat cancer at the age of 13, yet still survived, the cancer going into remission. In 2002, the film, Tenshi no Utagoe 〜 Shoni Byoto no Kiseki 〜 was released, staring Matsuura Aya in the role of Yorico herself, the movie’s release following the publication of her autobiography and the introduction of Yorico, then 16-years-old, to Morning Musume’s then manager, Wada Kaoru, by Fukuda Asuka. The song was so popular following Ayaya’s cover of it during the movie that it was again later covered by Okumura Hatsune, who is still presently signed to avex, as far as I know, and in 2009 even released a duet with Ken the 390, whom some of you might know from his storied career as an artist, and whom others might know as a coach on Produce 101 Japan The Girls.

Originally released on the indie label, Harmony Records, Honto wa ne. exploded in popularity following the Ayaya movie, Yorico’s debut album, Aizenaha, shifting 80,000 copies. Several years later, Sonim, also on Harmony, released a cover of the song, which was the first time I heard it, a TV performance of her standing in the snow with Yorico on a keyboard behind her, playing her heart out, trying her best to convey the emotion of those words. Having no understanding of Japanese at the time, I felt the emotion but could not understand the nuance until the very end when the final verse is delivered in English, which I will now quote verbatim:

“I wanted to tell you something at the graduation ceremony but I was overcome with the emotion, so I did not have a chance. Good-bye, I loved you.”

I wasn’t going to write about Yorico for this entry, I wanted to talk to you about how much I love Sonim, how much I loved her even when she was in EE Jump with genuine bad boy, Goto Yuki, brother of Morning Musume’s Goto Maki. I don’t actually think I’m the right person to be talking about Yorico, I own none of her records, but at the same time, I can’t talk about Sonim without talking about Honto wa ne., and I can’t talk about Honto wa ne. without talking about the song’s author. At 22, Yorico suffered from a second scare, an ovarian tumour that was eventually removed, during which time, she re-evaluated her life, writing on her website, "I have been singing for myself until to-day, but from now on, I will sing for others."

Yorico’s words had a tremendous impact on me. Even when I did not know her, even when all I had were little bits of story and fact and the feeling of that one song, the image of Sonim in the snow. Takano Yoriko, known to us as Yorico, was never a member of Morning Musume, never even a member of Hello!Project, and yet despite all this it is her words and music, her story, shaped what the group would be in the early ’00s.

Yorico’s website is still live, complete with RealPlayer clips of some of her songs, and her blog is still being updated, and I absolutely encourage you to visit, to familiarise yourself with her work. Like CHARA, like Onitsuka Chihiro, I genuinely believe her to be one of the most important voices of her generation, of our generation. If you haven’t listened to her music before, I really want to encourage you to do so. Time and time again, against all odds, her words have been a comfort to me. I hope you too can find some comfort in them also.

It’s December! Whilst we don’t really have any big Morning Musume related event to celebrate this year, I still just... kind of want to talk about the group, about my memories of the group, because now this already feels like a festive tradition for me having done it last year. There is a dearth of Christmas songs, events, concerts, photobooks from Hello!Project, and in many ways, the idol industry thrives on a mix of borrowed nostalgia and romantic home-grown traditions about the season, but rather than talk about any of that right off the bat, I’m going to begin this year’s entries by introducing you all to Nakazawa Yuko.



When I was younger, when I first became far too emotionally invested in idols, I felt there was a great distance in-between my own age and experiences and those of the members I was supporting. The idol industry makes everyone seem young, it is in their best interests to do so, the promise of youth sells, and yet yesterday, as of the time of writing, when watching a Kojima Haruna video, I realised that the difference in our ages is pretty insignificant. I always worried about the appropriateness of following idols, but the age gap between me and NyanNyan is nothing. I guess, what I’m trying to say is, call me, Kojima Haruna, I’m available. Similarly, Yuu-chan is actually older than me, and was already possessed of greater determination that I when, in 1997, she saw adverts for Sharam Q’s female vocalist auditions in Osaka, and went for it, becoming one of ten finalists. Had she won, we would be living in a very different world. Preparing to return home, along with fellow contestants, Iida Kaori, Fukuda Asuka, Ishiguro Aya, and Abe Natsumi, she was instead presented with a counter offer: Morning Musume.

You do not need me to tell you how important Morning Musume were to both pop culture and the idol industry at the height of their fame. Several months after the debut of the group and the release of Morning Coffee in 1998, her agency began pushing her towards a solo career in enka, which Yuu-chan initially resisted before deciding to take up the challenge. This little detail is kind of important to me as it suggests that despite entering auditions alone, Morning Musume had already become a group, each member supporting the other to such a degree that Yuu-chan may have felt that her being offered a chance to be an enka singer might jeopardise that. Instead, the popularity of those recordings, and their fierce promotion brought in an older audience to Morning Musume, and thus their popularity exploded.

Right off the bat, Yuu-chan was touring as a soloist alongside the work she was doing as a member of the group, building up an enviable body of work. By 2001, with Ishiguro and Fukuda having graduated, the landscape had changed considerably; not only was Morning Musume a big deal, but her enka career was pretty huge as well. Possibly struggling to maintain a balance between these two, her graduation was announced in Mach of that year as taking place at the end of the following month—a turnaround so swift by today’s standards that we only usually see this kind of quick exit when there’s a scandal of some kind. Passing on leadership to Iida Kaori, Yuu-chan became a fully fledged solo artist within Hello!Project, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Matsuura Aya and Fujimoto Miki, and remaining so until 2008, when UP-FRONT AGENCY announced the graduation of all older members, the “Elders Club,” from Hello!Project. Still, Yuu-chan continued to perform live, riding out the attempts of her former agency to start anew long enough for a wave of nostalgia to break and for the announcement of Dream Morning Musume—a gathering of formerly graduated members performing and recording new material—to become a reality.

I was super, super excited for DMM, and whilst I don’t think songs like Shining Butterfly really lived up to the quality and vigour of earlier material, I was still over the moon to see Yuu-chan and the other members on stage again. The candle burnt brightly but briefly, however, with DMM never really intended as a long-term endeavour for older and former members as SDN48 had been for AKB, after which Yuu-chan got married and the group disbanded.

Now a mother of two, Nakazawa Yuko is still working in the entertainment industry, and I swear, every time there’s a Morning Musume anniversary, she’s there with them on stage, which makes me tremendously happy. I’m a huge fan of Yuko. Because she’s older than me, I can say that I look up to her without it sounding weird. Everything is so immediate and streamlined now, even in the idol industry, but I still want to talk to you about these moments when I first fell in love with Morning Musume, about the impact that songs like Morning Coffee and movies like Pinch Runner made on me; I still want to talk to you about how much I love Nakazawa Yuko, and, even though we’re both far older than we were in 1997, how I’m still supporting her.

We did not appreciate Niigaki Risa enough when she was a member of Morning Musume. Looking back on her time in the group, she was always a presence in the background but no one's oshi. Even when she became leader of the group following Takitty's graduation, it was like everyone looked away, waiting instead for the next era of Morning Musume to start rather than giving her the credit she was due.

Gaki joined the group as part of the fifth generation in 2001—the one that Tanaka Reina snuck into before being discovered. Debuting as part of the line-up for Mr. Moonlight ～Ai no Big Band～—an absolute classic that recent single, Swing Swing Paradise shares more than a little DNA with—it instantly felt as if Gaki had always been a part of the group, her youthfulness a perfect foil to the now older remaining members of the first generation. Her final single with the group was Renai Hunter in 2012, which, ah, I'm not a fan of, but is worthy of note as the prelude to the new era that would begin with Reinya's reign and One・Two・Three a few months later. Watching this video, there really is a sense that Gaki had outgrown it, that she had outgrown Morning Musume by this point, and this makes me feel bad because, again, it genuinely feels as if she waited so, so long for her time to shine, and when it arrived it was too late, and she was already being ushered off the stage.

When the cast for Cinderella the Musical was announced, I genuinely thought there had been some mistake with the roles. It seemed to make no sense to me that Gaki would be playing Prince Christopher, whilst Takitty was positioned in the lead role of Cinderella herself. Considering the dynamic between the two of them, Takitty's boyishness and the persistent idea of Gaki as the cute younger sister sort of member, I really didn't know what to make of it, and not having access to the complete version of the play, or one that had been translated, I found myself frowning about the whole thing until the very moment that nightless_castle subbed it, and then it clicked, then I understood.

In the role of the Prince, Gaki is astounding. She plays a man so caring, so gentle, that it is impossible not to fall in love with him, with his grace and poise. I was genuinely taken aback by the qualities Gaki managed to bring out in the Prince, how she transformed him from a character who had more or less been simply a plot device for me in all other iterations of the fairy tale, and turned him into someone with such compassion, such concern, that I started crying during the finale. It takes a special sort of talent to bring such a nuanced portrayal to the stage when adapting a story so widely known, and yet Gaki does it with aplomb, making the whole situation surrounding her all the more frustrating; like Cinderella, it feels as if everyone else had their moment to shine before anyone considered Gaki, and, also like Cinderella, once revealed, we all felt dumbstruck that her talent had gone unnoticed for so long.

Don't quote me on this, but I think Gaki is Morning Musume's longest serving member, having been with the group for over ten years. This is a bittersweet revelation when all of the above is considered. Without Gaki, Morning Musume certainly would not have been so colourful, so vibrant, and with her talent, she also brought charm to subunits like ZYX, Tanpopo, and Morning Musume Sakura Gumi—although, again, it's kind of sad, as with the first two, she was only brought in after they had peaked and were either in decline or as part of a reboot. Undeterred though, Gaki is still singing, and is still involved in the entertainment industry, her first solo album having debuted in September of this year, with, hopefully, a nationwide tour is coming next year.

We didn't appreciate Gaki enough when she was a member of Morning Musume, so let's all make sure we do so now!

What can I say about Tanaka Reina that has not been said before? During this particular era of Morning Musume history—the Platinum Era, as we call it, running from 2007-2010—it is only really Takitty who might contest the claim that Reinya was the group's most important member. One of my favourite things about Reinya is that she actually passed the fifth generation auditions in 2001, two years before actually joining the group because she lied about her age. Once the deceit was uncovered, she was disqualified, of course, but I think it says everything you need to know about her right there; a world where Reinya joined at the same time as Takahashi Ai might have been very different, and you could be forgiven for thinking that the two year lead Takitty had on her would have made a big difference, but once she passed the sixth audition for the group, she pretty much took over on Shabondama, taking on the role of main vocalist for her first release as a member of Morning Musume.

It must have been difficult to keep up with Reinya. Whilst we've always had tomboy idols, she cultivated an image as something of a delinquent. There's no doubt that she was absolutely a sheep in wolf's clothing rather than the opposite, but she carved out her niche as the tough girl of the group, whilst also not at all ashamed of taking on traditional idol roles. Within moments of her debut, she had already been announced as the leader of a new H!P subunit, Aa!, alongside future ℃-ute member, Suzuki Airi, and future Berryz Koubou member, Natsuyaki Miyabi—she basically was put alongside two of the future cornerstones of Hello! Project's expansion, and still held everyone's attention as the centre of the trio.

By the time that Cinderella the Musical debuted, Reinya was poised to become the biggest name in the group, patiently waiting her chance for elder members, Takitty and Gaki, to depart. I don't think she ever actively pushed for a leadership role, but she also never backed down, and it's clear that producer, Tsunku, and H!P management as a whole had a ton of faith in her. It is testament to both her staying power and her selling power that when she was made leader, the group were kind of in a bad place in terms of recognition, and yet with the new direction of One・Two・Three and Reinya at the centre, they mounted the group's most successful comeback ever. I remember watching the video for that first single in my living room on a crappy HP laptop—no pun intended—and just being so, so excited about it. It really felt like Reinya had given us back Morning Musume, and it was the force of her personality that really got shit done in the next few years, especially when it was announced that she was also forming her own band, LoVendoЯ.

As an aside, you should go and watch the musical right now. I'm not being paid to say this, but nightless_castle has done a peerless job providing subs for it, and I'm totally going to bring this up in each of these entries.

It is an indisputable fact that Morning Musume would not have survived if not for Reinya. I keep coming back to this, but Reinya really is the most important person in the modern history of the group. Mikitty was always known for her solo career, and I think Takitty was the last of the big guns of the previous era, but Reinya really, really represented what the group could be and what it could become. LoVendoЯ aren't really active nowadays, but you should definitely watch out for her presence, be it on stage, on TV, or on record, as she really is a force to be reckoned with.

Title: Legendary Female Idol Otaku
Universe: AKB48
Character(s): Sashihara Rino, Kashiwagi Yuki
Rating: U
Warnings: N/A
Summary: She looked down at the screen of her phone, one unread message, a string of emoji and words, the sender marked as ‘Legendary Female Idol Otaku of Kagoshima Prefecture.’
Length: 736 words
Author's Notes: HAPPY BIRTHDAY SASHIHARA RINO!! YOU ARE THE BEST!! 🎉💖🍰🎊🎂 AKC Courtneyyyyyy Culture Festival #27: Sashihara Rino | Sashihara adjacent patreon fic.



( Legendary Female Idol Otaku  )