Tuesday 8 January 2013

Just a little prediction I have for H!P!

Hey guys!
And welcome to 2013! I hope everyone is having a fantastic 2013 and continues to have a wonderful 2013! It's only been a few days since New Years but I have been enjoying the holidays and getting back into the swing of things with university work, learning Japanese, dubbing, singing and also updating this blog!

In this post I want to do a few predictions of what I think/would like to happen for Hello!Project this year!

Reina Tanaka's graduation!
Now I know Reina's graduation isn't happening for a few months yet but I definitely think that when she graduates it will shake up Hello!Project a lot for the months to come aftewards. I know when the graduation was announced there was a wide divide of opinions about the news. Of course, with Reina being a very popular member of Morning Musume in her duration, it wasn't surprising to see that her fanbase and wotas were heartbroken at the news. Then there were also fans who were sad to see her go, but think it would shake it up for the group. Reina has been a vocal dominance in MoMusu since her debut, and even though she does have a beautiful voice, I think it will be interesting to see how MoMusu continues when Reina is absent from the group.

Berryz Kobou's image
This is more of something I think is slowly happening. From the dark costumes of WANT! to the images of Berryz Kobou for their latest album cover, and the preview of their 31st single Asian Celebration, they are starting to remind of the Platinum Era of Morning Musume. And I might be thinking too much into this but Morning Musume definitely had a very mature look and music style when they were promoting themselves in China. And now Berryz are doing promotions in Thailand, I think UFP are using the same promotion techniques with giving Berryz a much more mature image and sound. I don't want to get too much into it, just in case I am wrong, but I am very curious as to what happens for Berryz this year.

C-ute's image
2012 has been a very successful year for C-ute this year! With Kimi wa Jitensha... and AAAN getting very good singles sales and outselling a lot of their earlier singles, C-ute's popularity is starting to slowly rise. Even at promotional events they have also attracted a lot of female fans so I do think that C-ute will be promoted, not just as an idol group, but as a proper girl group so it caters not just to wotas, but also to female fans. And with Airi being the face of H!P that is just an added bonus to C-ute's popularity. I do hope that this same success continues into 2013 and I do hope they get a 50k single!

Morning Musume promotions/success
Slowly, but surely this year has been very successful for Morning Musume! The sales of One Two Three and Wakuteka Take a Chance surpassed a lot of older single sales, and with UFP taking notice of this, they have slowly upped their game when it comes to PVs and promotions. It started off badly with the music video of One Two Three, it was the 50th single, yet we were only given a simple set and sparkly effects. To kind of make up for it though they did a lot of promotion for the single for them to earn 100,000 sales which is an amazing 2012 feature of Morning Musume. Wakuteka Take a Chance then picked up the pace with constant promotions and the use of effects and green screen in the music video were a little better than One Two Three. And now with Morning Musume having promotions in all 47 prefectures of Japan, I am very excited that a larger majority of Japan will take notice of Morning Musume and allow them get a lot more popularity. And for the music video for HELP ME!, even though it still has the same solo shot/dance shot combo, the green screen is much more professional looking which makes me think that UFP are not being tight anymore and are spending a little more money into Morning Musume. One thing I do wish for this year is for Morning Musume not to continue with green screen music videos. I think it would add more variety if they did different locations in their PVs, outside and inside.