I’m something of a binge-and-purge collector. Sometimes I just need to buy buy buy, it’s like I can’t get enough. Other times I look around, wonder what I’m doing with all the stuff I’ve acquired, and proceed to get rid of it. I think this is a good thing for me, a way to keep my pack-rat instincts in check. After all, if I kept every comic book I ever owned, I’d have well over 30,000 - and that’s a lowball estimate not counting trade paperbacks and such. I don’t know about you, but that many comics and that much space being taken up is just much more than I need to consider. I also have friends whose homes are nothing but bookshelves - and while such a collection is impressive and even necessary if you’re an academic, that feels way too much like a burden to me.

For the past few months, I’ve been feeling the same about the idol stuff I’ve bought. Cui bono? I ask, as I tend to in most cases. Who benefits? Do I benefit from keeping all my UFA cards in a shoebox and never looking at them? That’s no way to treat them, they should be treasured and given a good home in a scrapbook or on a wall or something. Or how about my photobooks? While some get looked at pretty often - I often carry a Momoko or Shihono Ryo with me when I go to a coffee shop - a good many simply sit there and just languish. What’s the point in that? The CDs are the worse, since I don’t so much listen to Japanese idol music as watch it. But even then, there are concerts I maybe watch a couple times and then just shelve for good. And of course, there’s stuff which makes me stop and think, Why did I buy this in the first place?

And so, it’s time to say goodbye to much of this. If I was a saint, I’d give it all away for free and hope the karma benefits me. Instead, in true capitalist fashion, I try to make a quick buck because I never know when I wanna buy more stuff. I know the cycle, I know the urges will return soon enough.

Now, some people may wonder, If you’re going to buy stuff just to get rid of it later, why buy it in the first place? To which I say: “Commie! Commie! Not even the Russians and Chinese think like that anymore!” Seriously, though, one of the ways that overseas wota can do to feel more connected to their favorite idols is to buy their stuff. That’s the whole point of idols and the way they’re marketed - to sell bunches of  CDs and photobooks and knick knacks, and to make you feel good about it. Consumerism as worship is one of the hallmarks of the J-idol world, and I’m happy to take part of it. It’s just the length of the relationship with these goods that is called into question.

Some people have wonderful collections that provide fulfillment and enjoyment, but they actually take loving care of what they acquire. In contrast I am, by nature, a consumerist whore. I’ll love you the moment you come home with me and treasure you for a few days, and then ignore you after I’ve had my way with you. I am fickle and callous - I don’t keep obi strips, nor do I bag and board my comics. I do it for the thrill of the chase and the flexing of the wallet, but don’t always like keeping my trophies in plain view as shameful reminders of past conquests.

The sad part for me right now is I keep looking at the stuff still on my shelves and thinking, I can get rid of more. This is still too much. How much do I still hold onto out of pure sentiment? (The SweetS CDs and DVDs, which I will never get rid of.) How much will I probably outgrow? (Some of the U15 stuff… but not all of it.) How much am I holding onto out of some personal principle that I like this music, even if I don’t listen to it often enough? (Tommy and Bennie K.) But of course, pure sentiment and immediate gratification and personal principles are what help keep a collection cohesive and meaningful, isn’t it? (My most treasured comic book - the only one I’ve bagged and boarded - is the issue of Lois Lane where she turns herself into a black woman. That’s sentiment, immediate gratification, and personal principles all wrapped up in one!)

So in a powerfully cathartic way, this wota garage sale helps me feel more dedicated to the idols I most treasure (at the moment), allowing me to better focus on that which make me happiest. It clears my head and makes me feel more focused about the writing projects I have planned and - Hey! Does the new Wonder Girl single have a CD-DVD version I can buy? And look! Amuro Namie has a new Best Of collection coming out soon!

The big thing for me is a decision in the past couple days to commit myself more firmly to long-term projects that have languished due to immediate day-to-day blogging concerns. What brought this to mind was a combination of two things: reading through all the TLS Survey responses as they came out, and seeing a serious dip in Intl Wota readership in the past month. (Actually, a third thing also figures into all that follows: Rilke’s famous admonition that “You must change your life.” But I won’t go into that here.)

As far as the surveys go, the main questions that concerned me were about Intl Wota and whether or not bloggers considered themselves writers. The latter question intrigued me more, mostly because I believe that those who consider themselves serious writers and are willing to stand by that designation will be the likeliest ones to take writing about Japanese music to another level sometime in the future.

Switching gears somewhat, I was looking over the recent Sitemeter results for Intl Wota and the drop daily visits became glaringly obvious. There are a couple of good explanations for this drop, but what I found most interesting was that it didn’t concern me too much. Intl Wota has become a center for bloggers and by bloggers, so as long as the core community is present and we remain cheerfully open to all newcomers, I’m fine with being in the 400-500 daily visits range or even lower. (We’re between 600-700 daily this month, and our best was in the 800 or so region in March.)

The question that came to my mind was first, “What can we do to boost visits to the site?” Then it was, “Do I care about boosting visits?” And the answer to that was No. Then I asked myself, “Why not?” And the answer was, Because I’d rather spend my time working with the serious writers and finally get Intl Wota Press off the ground. Maybe that’ll boost the daily visits, maybe not - but it’s the direction I personally want to take Intl Wota.

Quite frankly, I simply haven’t had the time or focus to devote to Intl Wota Press or Intl Wota Samizdat, and I’m thinking the Samizdat will need to wait at least a few more months if not next year. I’ve talked to several people about projects for Intl Wota Press but there’s been no formal submissions of writing samples or outlines, and so nothing to take through the committee for approval or dismissal just yet.

I want to change that, and I think the best thing to do is actually force some groupthink into the situation. So, here’s an open call to bloggers in our community: if you’re ready to do an article or essay or story of 6,000 to 12,000 words over the summer and get a little money for it (thirty bucks on publication), contact me. I’ll choose the ones I like, four or five maximum (assuming I get that many proposals), and we’ll start an online writing workshop with specific goals in mind: an eBook of your article followed by its inclusion in a POD book. We’ll share portions of what we’ve written, critique each other, and encourage each other along the way. Considering that I’ve taught college-level writing, been an editor, won some minor awards for my own writing, and continue to freelance to this day, I think I have the know-how to make a serious go of it. The workshop will be serious, but I’ll make sure it doesn’t eat up anyone’s time unreasonably.

I know the talent’s out there - I read too many blogs not to see it. The question is the faith you have in your own abilities, and the TLS surveys made clear there’s a good deal of that as well. So if you have an idea but aren’t sure you can deliver the word count, talk to me and we’ll figure it out. If you’re not sure if you’re a good enough writer, talk to me and we’ll see if your strengths outweigh your flaws. If you want to get involved just to build up your writing chops but don’t have a topic in mind, talk to me and we’ll see what interests you. All proposals or questions should be sent to ray@mescallado.com - and please put IW PRESS in the Subject Heading, so it won’t get lost with the spam.

Look at it this way: If I’m putting up some of my money to get you to write, I’m certainly taking this seriously and have a great deal of faith in you as a writer if you’re chosen. In a weird way, this seems like the natural end-result of when I first started the Sunday Blog Roundups almost three years ago: I did the SBRs because I wanted to encourage quality writing on Japanese music, and this is just taking it to the next, logical level.

On a related note, I’ve also been thinking about my own long-term goals. Again. I’ve been wanting to write a book-length work on Japanese pop music since my first year of blogging, but kept getting distracted by other things. It’s easy to have a big master plan in mind, and even easier to let it slide through your fingers when it’s low on your actual day-to-day priorities. This past month’s freelance writing projects reminded me that I can deliver the goods if I set my mind to it and if there’s some kind of accountability involved, so Ame Wota will see a more definite commitment in that direction as well. I’m hoping the first American Wota book - a vaguely postmodern appreciation of Jpop - will finally see print by the end of June or by early July.

If you’re not seeing sections of this book being serialized by this first week of June, then it’s slid through my fingers yet again. Which doesn’t mean I give up, by any means. It just means I keep moving forward and keep reminding myself that it matters.

The concerns raised by all this Big Picture talk is whether or not the smaller day-to-day priorities suffer. (Real life won’t suffer, but let’s pretend it won’t intrude too heavily on my late-at-night-writing time.) Will my posts on Intl Wota become even more erratic? Will I give up on the Berikyuu Watch for good? What about all the other categories in Ame Wota, will they just be set aside in favor of serialized book excerpts and this Intl Wota Press workshop? I’m hoping not. Intl Wota now has a plugin which makes write-ups ridiculously easy to set up, so that shouldn’t suffer. As for Ame Wota, I think once I get the ball rolling with both Intl Wota Press and the Ame Wota book, the other aspects of Ame Wota - including Berikyuu Watch - will be able to get my needed attention. As always, I start the new month out as an optimist.

Let’s see how this goes. And keep your fingers crossed.

Oddly enough, watching this episode and the next one has sapped me of any desire to be snarky or gratuitously Sadean in my write-up. It isn’t that I’ve seen the error in my ways or have run out of material.

Rather, these episodes deal with the making of the new C-ute PV, and I guess I take idol promotional videos quite seriously. For me, at least, they’re the make-or-break aspect of an idol act for a couple of reasons. Idols - even pop idols - depend on the visual experience they present; so idol music on its own is only a partial representation of the main product being sold.

The visuals of an idol group is not the icing on a cake of “pure” music. It’s a key ingredient. The music is the eggs and the visual presentation is the flour and the idols themselves are the sugar. This inability to separate the image and marketing of said image often earns pop music disdain from people who like “real” music, on the assumption that “real” music should not only be allowed to stand on its own but must be forced to stand on its own, lest the commercial trappings of a certain look or style unduly taint the purity of the creative process. Music is about creative expression and the commercial aspects are a necessary evil.

Except I don’t buy that bill of goods, either. Yes, there is music created with little regard to commercial demands; I enjoy some of that. But more often than not, music for a mass audience is made with some respect to commercial interests and tastes - if not in the writing of the songs, then in selecting what gets made into a single, what makes it onto an album and what is left off, in deciding on a music video, and everything else. Editing and selection can be as as much a commercial as a creative interest; to always assume otherwise would be to label everyone from the musicians to the producers to the radio execs as ridiculously inept businessmen. (Which may actually be true in some cases, but I’m not speaking in absolutes here.)

What I love about Japanese idol music is exactly what purists hate about it: that it is so brazen in its attitude towards marketing and commercialization, that the quality of music can be an afterthought. It isn’t always an afterthought by any means, and most of the best idol groups care a great deal. But that’s a luxury they afford themselves and not a necessity of their business.

Idol music is all about combining the perfect package of idol and music and visual cues, and the balance is precarious even in the best situations. Getting the perfect combination of all three is near-impossible, I think, though arguments can be made. Personally, I’d include SPEED throughout their heyday, Golden Era Morning Musume (which is astounding if you consider that part of the appeal was the constant shifting of all three aspects), second gen Tanpopo, Bounceback-era SweetS, 3-nin dream… well, I’m clearly biased, but I clearly think the balance can be struck, and it can be a magnificent thing, for as long as it lasts. Just don’t expect it to last long.1

And so, we reach the promotional video as the purest expression of the pop idol group. Why? Because it’s got all the necessary facets of a pop idol product, unlike music. The full army of resources - wardrobe, hair, camera crew, producers - all come into play in a controlled setting. And that control is the other crucial element to PVs, the edge it has over TV appearances and even concerts. In those other settings, the visual cues aren’t as strictly defined, the balance is lopsided and favors the idol in and of herself over the other two elements. The product isn’t as well-honed, there are possible flaws in presenting the overall package when spontaneity enters the picture - this benefits the idol if she is charismatic (and she should be, that’s her job), but as an act of grace-ridden marketing it isn’t as powerful.

And so we come to the H!P Kids. Berryz and especially C-ute are interesting to me because they’ve been trained to be top-of-the-line idols. Even as the Hello! Project empire becomes a shadow of its former self, these girls were being bred into the next generation of idol stars. The patrimony waiting for them was not as bountiful as say, what fourth gen Morning Musume walked onto… but that doesn’t diminish its significance, by any means.

The interesting thing for me is how much Berryz and C-ute both seem like they’re still in the apprentice phase of their idol careers. They’re still very much workshops, even as their sales climb and they build their own fan bases. Berryz has now been around for almost as long as SPEED before they disbanded, but SPEED came into their own almost immediately while Berryz and C-ute still come across as kohai to the senpai of Morning Musume.

As a result, they’re still messing around with the formula for both units, trying to find what works best for each, and the PVs perfectly reflect that. If a pop idol group is about finding the perfect balance, there’s a certain mad scientist mixing-and-matching going on throughout the oeuvre of both Berryz and C-ute. There are PVs of sheer brilliance, that make you believe they’ve hit on that idol golden mean. For me, that’d include Berryz’s “Piriri to Yukou” and “Special Generation” and especially “Waracchaou yo Boyfriend” and “Kokuhaku no Funsui Hiroba”, while C-ute’s got “Massara Blue Jeans” and “Sakura Chirarin” and “Tokkaiko Junjou”.

But what makes this unevenness fascinating isn’t that it’s because of misfires in a set formula, that the balance was tipped off just a little. It’s that the experimentation has been so aggressively extreme in how it carries each group: looking at the PVs, there is a sense of ricocheting agendas from single to single, from video to video. This isn’t some grand experiment in postmodernist excess like Morning Musume during their Golden Age. This is trying something, being unsure if it works, then completely changing the formula to see how that goes.

Perhaps that’s what the Junior Varsity is good for, right? To give players a chance to try out different moves and strategies before getting their game down to a science when they move up to the Varsity team? Except C-ute and Berryz aren’t the JV teams anymore, they’re as important to the Hello! Project collective as Morning Musume currently is.

Is it me, or are there moments when it seems that Airi’s outfit for this PV seems to sap her of I.Q. points? Like there’s a brain leech stuck to the collar or something?

(MaiMai - so fucking adorable! And so adorably… no, no, I won’t say it.)

I now see that the possible argument that this image and musical schizophrenia comes from their being teenage girls - no longer a child, not yet a woman - is utter bullshit. SweetS, Hinoi Team, Folder 5, and Zone had no problems creating more unified images for themselves when they were at a similar age or even younger. A teen idol does not have to show the duality of adolescence by being hyper-childish one moment and precociously mature the next. If anything, this caricaturing of the idol caters directly to the wota’s own schizoid impulses, swaying between an ideal of purity and innocence while also contending with the base sexual impulses your typical wota can’t help but feel for these girls.

And so we come to “Namida no Iro”, which is a solid effort on the part of C-ute and is seen as a successor to “Tokkaiko Junjou”… but there was “La La La Shiawase no Uta” between the two of them, a fluffy childish single and PV that presented a wholly different C-ute. The idols remain the same, of course, but one could just as easily imagine “La La La” and “Tokkaiko Junjou” were intended for two very different groups. Further, this isn’t a sudden whimsical to try something different - it’s a pattern of constant changes, seemingly for the sake of change. And this does not mean one mode is better than another - I love “Sakura Chirari” because it’s less mature in its presentation and even a bit too cutesy for its own good, while “Tokkaiko Junjou” grabs me for being much more mature, much sexier and aggressive.

(Is it me, or does Kanna look just a little like an addict working through her twelve steps here?)

If you’re a casual fan, this is all very inside-baseball and beside the point. You like one single, don’t like another, it makes no difference. But for more dedicated fans, it’s something of a dilemma: do you stick with a group through their failures as well as their successes, if you don’t have any reliable measure beyond the girls themselves? I don’t know what the next C-ute single will be like, and based on past patterns - or lack thereof - that makes me uneasy. Do you give up when there are too many crap singles and PVs, or at the very least mentally check out on the group during their low points? (Which is what I realized I did for Berryz during their less successful singles.)

The glue that holds all this together is the strength of the idols in themselves, their skills as performers and their charisma. And indeed that is always ultimately the case in idol music - mostly because the idol persona and whatever X factor involved in a specific idol is the most difficult thing to locate, and can’t be reproduced the way a certain sound or musical style or fashion trend can be. However, there’s still a risk for idols when their image and sound is tossed around the way Berryz and C-ute are: they are impeded somewhat by making as strong an impression as they could otherwise, there’s an amorphousness where there should be something sharply defined and easily recognizable. The stars in the group can overcome it by simply being the stars and getting the spotlight, but they also have photobooks and other side projects that better define who they are. The rest, though, are at an even greater risk of becoming idol ciphers in the public eye: even less than a cute girl with an okay voice, they’re simply the support for the cute girl with an okay voice.

What is most striking to me about this Berikyuu! episode is just how serious the girls are when filming this PV. There’s fun and games around the edges, but the sound stage is very much a workplace for them. They need to work as a team in their moves, they need to be aware of how the cameras move around them, and they each need to somehow convey that X factor which is what every idol needs to project to be at all memorable. This is hard work, they take it seriously, and there’s something… stirring about this, I guess. They know what’s at stake, and I daresay that getting this PV right may be a significant turning point, a chance for them to solidify their identity as C-ute in a way they hadn’t been allowed before.

Watching the girls watch themselves on a monitor is fascinating because they’re being asked to be critical of themselves and their abilities in a way that would make many adults cringe - and yet this is part of the job, this is what they’re trained to do, and they realize the importance of being honest with themselves about how they look in front of the camera.

And I have to say, this is probably the sexiest shot of Chisato I’ve ever seen. Maybe because here we’re seeing the hardened young woman, the consummate professional, that lies beneath the goofy tomboy exterior.

Even fun and games is part of these girls’ work, of course, but there is a sense that the stakes here are high enough that they need to focus, to concentrate and do their very best. I’m not sure if they believe that the Promotional Video is the most important tool they possess as entertainers - I kind of doubt it, I would guess they place the most stock on their concert performances - but certainly, there is a refreshing gravity here.

The final results of the PV itself… Well, I’ll leave that to next time.

And as for why I had the urge to discuss “Namida no Iro” in this manner while I turned “Resonant Blue” into a freakwhoreshow - well, I care about C-ute and Berryz. Right now I can’t say as much for Morning Musume.

I’m pretty sure that most people who discover Ame Wota through the Distractions don’t care about the actual blog posts I write. Right now I have no real desire to change that, to figure out some way to convert the distracted to a regular readership. Instead, I’d just like to provide as wide a range of amusements as possible, as many different kinds of distractions as I can muster. So there’s a few more surprises waiting, some of which should amuse a few of you.

The October 17, 2006 entry was called “Chinami, You Minx!”, and it’s clear I’ve been enjoying the Chibakanaminishi rumors from the very beginning. But what truly struck me as I read the SBR in its entirety was how much more manageable it was to cover the blogs I knew about back then. A rough count shows about fifty posts being covered for the week… and several blogs had more than one post. So let’s say there’s maybe thirty-five to forty blogs being covered in those fifty posts. For the entire week.

With Intl Wota, we’re covering somewhere in the region of 120 to 150 active blogs, I think. (Playing very fast-and-loose with the definition of “active”.) Most - but not all - have sprung up in the year and a half since that SBR post. And because I decided to take off a couple days due to some outside concerns, I have a backlog of sixty-plus posts from the past two or three days that I need to handle. And this is with other Intl Wota folks doing their own coverage, otherwise I’d be looking at eighty or so posts.

Of course, if we go all the way back to the first SBR from July 24, 2005, there is an even starker difference, with all of six blogs being covered. Of those six, only one - the gaming one - is active and at the same URL. Everyone else has either been inactive or moved in the past three years, just as I had when I jumped from Cult of Pop to Ame Wota.

I’m not really going for a specific point here. It’s just always odd to realize how much time has passed - and to know that in the grand scheme of things it isn’t a lot of time, though on the interwebs it may seem like an eternity. And in parenting terms, too - Haruna was barely born when the Bakachinanishiami thing happened, and now she’s a feisty little girl who runs and screams and causes trouble. (I’m having a “Cat’s in the Cradle” moment… hold on… okay, that’s it.) So three years marks a lot of progress, which isn’t a surprise - but even half that time, a mere eighteen months, has seen a leap forward that’s a little difficult to fathom.

I’m not the blogger who’s been around longest, by any means - Go of jrocknyc has been around considerably longer (I once called him the “alpha male” of our community and continue to stand by that assessment), and I’m sure there were several who kept LiveJournals before going public with their J-blogs. But it does make me feel a bit ancient, and actually kind of tired to think of how much things changed, how much more work it’s taking to keep track of the community, and how frames of reference have shifted over time. (It doesn’t help that much of my best blogging happened back during Cult of Pop 2.0 and that I’m still trying to get back to that level of activity and enthusiasm.) There’s a sense of satisfaction, of course, but the fatigue can hit just as hard for knowing what’s gone into it.

I’ve written most of this before, on my Intl Wota anniversary post. I risk becoming the old man in a rocking chair on his porch, repeating himself time and again on “the good old days”. I don’t know if it can be helped, though - part of moving forward is always looking back. Lord knows, every time I look at baby pictures of Haruna, I’m even more astounded at how much she’s grown and changed. I shouldn’t be, I was there all along and marked each step forward, every new milestone, with pride.

I don’t regret all the time I spent both blogging and community-building - though 20/20 hindsight means I certainly wish I could have been more efficient and made some wiser moves. I’ll be covering some of the why’s and how’s later, when I finish broomhead’s TLS Survey. For now, though, I’m just taking another walk down memory lane, remembering breadready and undoing the mercator projection and not knowing who Shihono Ryo was and running the Pedolicious blog and the reaction to the first Momoko poem and all the other neat moments from my past three and a half years as a J-blogger. And when I’m ready, I’ll steel myself for what’s coming next and charge forward.

So enough of Morning fucking Musume and let’s go back to some quality idols from the H!P stable.

I wonder how Manoeri’s training has been going lately? Her solo debut should be announced pretty soon, right? And if they’re smart, they’ll give her the full blitz of photobooks and TV show appearances and all that other neat stuff.

Anyway, this episode shifts gears to focus on the making of C-ute’s “Namida no Iro”, starting with the photoshoot. Here are the stars of the show - Airi and Maimi’s thighs, with a guest appearance by Kanna’s legs!

I can’t place why, but the whole look and mood for this PV screams “Skank!” at me in a very good way. And I haven’t had anyone or anything yell “skank!” at me in a long time, which I’m beginning to miss now that I think of it. The whole idea was to make them look sexy, but they did more than that - in the case of several of these girls, they also looked… readily available? But again, in a good way.

It’s a fair progression from “Tokaikko Junjou”, whose PV had the first semi-believable girl gang vibe in a long while. The single and PV between that was, what? An unfortunate error? An attempt to make the girls seem schizoid by going from tough to fluffy to tough again? And does this mean the next single and PV will be even fluffier and more frivolous? And then the PV after that will be… well, the hot girl-on-girl action we’ve been clamoring for since the girls first strutted their stuff in “Ganbacchae”?

“We finally got rid of those fugly costumes from our last PV! Thumbs up on no longer looking like a day glo ostrich!”

“No, Airi, we don’t want you to look cutesy! We want something edgier, something more naughty… I got it! Think about how puberty first set in and you began wondering if your Dad’s golf clubs could be used for other kinds of games…”

“That’s it! That’s the look we want!”

Now, I’m pretty sure that this isn’t the most skin Airi has shown for a PV, and certainly not for a concert. Perhaps it’s the purposeful imbalance of above-the-waist being heavily clothed that makes the below-the-waist look more nude, somehow. Perhaps it’s the way she wears her jacket, creating the illusion of cleavage with the popper collars and unbuttoned front.

Or perhaps it’s the look Airi’s giving that makes you think you can get a half-and-half at a rather reasonable price.

MaiMai is looking… well, she’s definitely still in that transitional phase, where she’s on the edge of sheer pedoliciousness but keeps veering back to U12 bland. (Well, to me. I know there are those who like U12, but it doesn’t do much for me.)

Here, though, wow! What a great smile on her! Her pituitary glands deserve their own tribute, at this rate. And I love her outfit - maybe it’s her figure, but she seems both youthful and elegant in this outfit, and the warpaint helps give her a slightly older edge to really sell the look.

Chisato, whose outfit actually doesn’t seem to match her as well as the others. It seems to be forcing her to look more mature and it doesn’t quite work. Part of it may be because I like her best as a spunky tomboy type still - she’s got no pedoliciousness going on, but she’s got a kind of blindsided, clueless charm that makes her fun to watch much of the time.

She has her legs shown off in this video, too, but you know - who cares. I’d rather look at Yamada Ryo’s legs, truth be known.

The girls play foosball while passing the time. Loser gets sprawled over the table and… um… pleasured into submission by Kanna.

Airi takes the time to mug for the camera - certainly, she has her priorities as an idol in place. Kanna scores twice off Airi… after the foosball game, that is.

What the FUCK is up with NakkySaki. I look at her and all I can think of is Chilly Willy the Penguin. I mean, she can skanks up real nice, especially when her looks are given a kind of Keri Sable-esque twist. It takes a thick layer of warpaint, but she can do it. Here, though, she had a chance to look as smexy as possible and the powers that be decided she had to look more… what? Urban or street? It’s a real disappointment.

Kanna demonstrates how she’d make a great Kubrick anti-hero…

“These are my gams. There are many gams like it, but this one is mine. My gams are my best friend. They are my life. I must master it as I must master my life.”

After the solo shoot, she decides to be blunt with the other girls: “I wanna tie both of you up and make you lap at my genitalia like men dying of thirst approaching an oasis of crystal pure water.”

Airi and MaiMai are shocked at this.

“Just kidding! I just wanna work each of you over with a strap-on! Let’s go play foosball!”

Well, that makes it better. MaiMai’s thinking, “I’m just gonna hit Airi over the head and have Kanna have with way with her. Then the solo lines will be mine! Mine!”

Back at another group shoot. Apparently, they didn’t get enough close-ups of Maimi and Airi’s fallopian tubes, so they’re trying a different lens.

Kanna and Erika wave goodbye as they prepare to go trolling for men three times their age. Erika, by the way, didn’t look bad this time around. There’s something of a Yossie pimp flavor in the hat and scarf, which is good, but… I dunno. I think I’d need to see her slapping around some ho’s before I can decide.

I like the look on both their faces. Airi is looking all sweet and child-like, while NakkySaki is thinking, “I was just talking to the camera and she had to step up and steal the spotlight from me again! I’d really like to smack her around some.”

And that’s it for now. More to come, of course!

Here we go with another episode of Morikyuu! - wait, Berikyuu!. If it was called Morikyuu! then maybe it’d make sense that Morning Musume had taken over this show. Well, when stuck with lemon…

“Today I want to explain to you the hidden meaning of the new Morning Musume PV. As profits diminished and their fan base focused on dirty old men with very filthy thoughts, it was only a matter of time before UFA decided to give the fans what they really want - and charge a good deal of money for it.”

“So remember, Morning Musume now accept Visa and Mastercard - but they don’t take Discover!”

Koharu meets her date - or should we say “date” - at a nice coffee shop. He asks her if she’s that semi-retarded girl who does ethnic dances while squeaking like a helium-filled hamster being shoved up a tight rectum. She smiles and wonders how long it’ll take before the drugs she took kick in and she does that weird chanting sing-song thing from “Konnichi Pa” as a prelude to some vigorous horizontal mattress-shaking.

Takitty is worried. Sure, she’ll still take special requests from her old customers and do some bareback for a bag full of five yen coins. And of course, her ballet skills help a great deal with some customers demanding a more “acrobatic” night of Hot Musume Action. But for the most part, she’s become the de facto pimp of this ring: Makoto and Yagu taught her how to beat that extra dollar out of her girls, and to make sure each of them are prepared for every “special date” they attend, and was reminded of how disposable they all are since they’re idols.

Still, it’s a heavy burden she didn’t expect. Yossie had the advantage of charisma and a personality - two things little Ai lacked. And Mikitty had previously trained a couple of H!P Kids in her own house of ill repute and so was well-poised to take over the Morning Musume leadership. Takitty had been happy just doing all the grunt-work - actually, grunt-and-moan-work - but when the responsibility was thrust upon her like a huge John Holmes wang, she was a real trouper, swallowed her pride, swallowed something else that was stickier, and took on the job.

Sayumi has taken well to the life, but she wishes she had more of an audience for the fine work she does.

“The only difference between being a pop idol and an AV idol is whether or not I fuck people in front of the camera! And really, that’s like almost no difference at all, right? And no one’s going to bitch if my singing sucks, right? That’s a plus, right?”

Meanwhile, Reina is leaving the zoo, disgusted with the acts of bestiality she was just forced to commit. Up to now she thought “hung like a horse” was the alternative to shooting a lame thoroughbred… Alas, there is no saying along the lines of “nimble like a feces-throwing baboon with a hard-on like a Crayola marker”, but she learned about that tonight, too.

And seriously, if those B’s don’t scream FM, I don’t know what does.

Sayumi and Eri are relaxing after jointly handling a trailer full of horny carnies, some of whom hadn’t showered since Speed was the reigning girl group of Japan. Eri found herself drifting off during some of this Last Exit to Brooklyn styled encounter, wishing she opened up a coffee shop or some such nonsense. However, Sayumi’s talk about being a different kind of idol makes her excited all over again.

“I have this connection at a studio called Attackers!, and with a name like that you know they must be classy!”

Reina is sad about how her life has gone. She remembers cosplaying as Minimoni as a child - now she cosplays as Minimoni for the truly sick fucks who like to combine their jankenpyon with hardcore fisting.

Meanwhile, Gaki is checking her keitai to make sure she gets the address for her next stop correct. After her Alo-Hello, she became the favorite of strange old foreign men with weird accents and very sharp memories of swinging in the 1960s and 1970s. She doesn’t know what a key party is, but assumes it involves singing a note properly before having a half-dozen old Eurotrash bastards jump her bones. At least, that’s what she’s been getting used to, as of late.

Koharu accepts the terms of her latest customer: she is expected to CRY CRY as she’s suspended upside-down and flogged with stringy bits of mozzarella.

Aika’s coming home from a late night appointment. She worries that if Takitty finds out she’s holding back on tips, she’ll whack Aika around with a baseball bat across her midsection - which was the true source of her “appendicitis” hospital stay.

She had overheard Takitty talking about ninth-gen auditions and how the H!P Asian Expansion is just a way to bring in some seasoned Thai hookers into the group to better see to the needs of the clientele. She also overheard about the next “graduation”, unexpected and sudden as it will be…

The Pandas had the night off tonight, mostly because LinLin complained about the sores not healing as quickly as Takitty said they would. And then there was that other incident a few weeks earlier…

“I don’t care if it hurts when you pee!” Takitty had yelled over the phone. “You just keep chugging down that Gatorade and urinate on that customer until he’s had his fill and pays his money! I don’t care if he dresses up like cabbage and demands to be watered with love, his credit is good with us!”

JunJun had already gone to the bathroom and taken the pistol Clemenza - I mean, Tettekette - had taped there for her. She’s waiting for her moment… waiting…

“What’s the matter JunJun?” LinLin asks. “I’m finally leaving this horrible circle of vice and depravity, and you don’t seem at all happy for me!”

“Oh dear God, may lightning strike down all those other bitches I work with. And please God, let me be the head pimp of Morning Musume so that I can slap down these idol ho’s and make them cry every fucking day.” Amen to that, Aika!

… And here we are. The point where Berikyuu! briefly stopped making any sense whatsoever.

Ah, Manoeri, looking so brave in the face of despairing times!

“Hi, I’m here to completely fuck up this episode! Don’t worry, we’re the flagship unit so that means you have to love us!”

Takahashi is a dedicated leader, making sure to train herself to be as boring as possible and not just let her natural skill at being boring let her cruise by.

I didn’t realize how much I dislike the current Morning Musume until they took over this episode of Berikyuu! and I felt myself ripped off of my expected dosage of H!P Kids eyecandy. I still hold some fondness for three of the current Musumes - Aika, of course, and Koharu and Sayumi - but until they get rid of the rest of the members, I just don’t care about the unit as a whole. The sum is much more annoying than the individual parts, there is a synergy of suckitude that happens when you place all nine girls in a room and the ones I like just get overwhelmed by it.

Now that I think about it, I can’t even say I strongly dislike - and by no means do I hate - any of the six other girls. JunJun sometimes amuses me, and I appreciate how her tears can brighten up my day. But for the most part, they just don’t fit into what I want and expect from my idols. In the imaginative space of my private wota universe, they’re non-entities and I feel some resentment - a sense of my time being wasted - by having to deal with them in any significant manner. I think it’s the same feelings that some Morning Musume fans feel about the H!P Kids units, that Berryz and C-ute are really beside the point, that the main show is the flagship. Well, for me the main show are Berryz and C-ute (and now Milky Way), and Morning Musume are beside the point.

Would I feel different if Mikitty were still around? Probably. She would change the dynamic of the group considerably. But I think I just wanna fast-forward to the point where Takitty and Reina and Eri and Gaki are all graduated, Sayumi becomes the leader with Koha as subleader, and a bunch of fresh new Morning Jailbait has been added to the mix.

Anyway, back to our little drama: those last tabs of E seems to be fucking up Eri and Sayumi pretty badly…

Eri is so happy! “Man, those wota were real nice to buy us these snacks! But is it me, or does the special sauce smell like Monbu Ran after she’s made one of her Ayaya tribute movies?”

You know, Sayumi does look a lot like Maria Ozawa, if you squint enough and imagine a bunch of random penises being aimed at her direction. Which, if you think about it, is what a Morning Musume concert is, really, except the penises are mostly being kept under wraps even as they point Shige-wards.

“Truth be known, there are times when I wonder if Maria Ozawa had made wiser career choices than me!”

And here we catch Reina with her latest image upgrade: she’s decided that winking so fucking much is ridiculous, so she’ll just close her eyes for a minute then open her eyes for a minute, and so on and so on. It’s like winking, but less stressful on the wota who’d enter seizures from all that rapid movement.

“Okay, Reina, for this shot you’ll need to both walk and chew gum at the same time. And you can’t use your winking to time left-foot-right-foot like you do during concerts!”

“Is it true I come out looking like a whore for this video? I hope so, because whores don’t have to wink, they just have to roll their eyes up to the back of their heads when faking orgasms. At least, the ones who trained me did.”

“You know, you’d all be nicer to me if I was a miracle girl like Koharu!”

Speaking of which, here is the Miracle Girl… um… well, I don’t have anything bad to say about her, actually.

She looks quite lovely in this shot, doesn’t she? Mature - demure, even, and I really like her hair here. She seems so normal, so clearly a young woman who is making her way in the world.

Of course, the only conclusion one can make is that when it’s time for her to play Kirarin, they reach into her skull and pull out the left hemisphere of her brain. She is a medical miracle, able to function with half a brain and thus able to portray mentally damaged anime characters to perfection when it’s called upon. When it’s time to sing “Konnichi Pa”, they yank out her medulla oblangata as well.

Here are the pandas - ironically enough, they’ve actually ordered Cream Of Some Young Panda with a side of Chow Mein and some Diced Koharu Brains In Garlic Sauce. There was some Filipino balut on the menu, but LinLin said, “Man, that shit’s nasty!” and they passed on it. Mmmm… balut…

Ah, here is the one bright light in the midst of all this Morning Crapitude! And hey, Aika is looking quite hot here!

Sometimes I like to imagine what Aika’d be like in Morning Musume after three or four more years. Sure, she’ll have the bodies of Takitty and Gaki and especially that bitch JunJun buried in her backyard somewhere, but she may also emerge as a kind of fearsome creature of nasty temperament and cutting wit. Perhaps, given time and infinite impatience with those around her, she may even emerge as the Second Coming Of Nakazawa that so many of us wish would happen. Okay, just me. But still.

“If I make these other bitches cry, will you love me more?” she asks. Of course, when she asks that, she is speaking directly to me and me alone, because that’s the kind of relationship I want with my idols. And of course, the answer is YES YES YES!!! MAKE THEM CRY!!! MAKE THEM WEEP!!! MAKE THEM CHOKE ON THEIR TEARS FOR WASTING MY TIME!!!

And Aika says, “Okey-dokey, smokey.” To me and me alone.

And because we don’t want to end on an upbeat note or anything, here is Gaki-san. Apparently, she is preparing for her future as a homeless person, wandering the streets of Tokyo going, “I used to be a pop idol. People used to love me. Now I keep stray cats in my capacious pockets and shampoo my hair with Crisco. Do you have any spare change? How about five yen coins? I have a fellow homeless former idol who collects them.”

Anyway, enough of this fucking atrocity. Hopefully, this is all just a horrible fluke and we’ll be back with the H!P Kids in the next episode, right? Right?