Eagle-eyed readers will have spotted already that I’m not CJ, so I’ll introduce myself nice and early. This is Kd, formerly of IroIro Aru Sa!, that old chestnut of a J-Pop blog which CJ mentions occasionally. Having recently gotten into a few lengthy discussions about J-Pop with him, I’ve been offered a guest contributor spot here at TGML and I’ve taken it with both hands. As a near complete contrast to CJ – I’m a Brit female in her early 20’s – I hope you’ll find my style and POV to be complementary but not identical. I give you… my first post. Enjoy!
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Upon hearing about the formation of ‘Dream Morning Musume’, my first thought was ‘Not interested whatsoever.’ Bringing back OG Morning Musume members as a ‘dream’ unit and sending them on tour was something I initially saw as a little desperate; an attempt to quickly refill the gap left by the absence of an Elder Club in Hello!Project. As such, I didn’t exactly get my hopes up for this revival being any more than a gimmick. A little bit in the vein of that 10 Nen Kinentai unit a while back, which celebrated a decade of MoMusu, but even they had 2 original singles.
Dream Morning Musume (officially abbreviated to ‘DoriMusu’) consists of: Yuko Nakazawa, Natsumi Abe, Kaori Iida, Kei Yasuda, Mari Yaguchi, Rika Ishikawa, Hitomi Yoshizawa, Miki Fujimoto, Makoto Ogawa, and Koharu Kusumi. Of these 10, there’s only one that I ever really warmed to during her time in MoMusu, and that was Yaguchi. The lineup didn’t excite me, and still doesn’t. There wasn’t a specific member selection involved here as there was with the Kinentai, as DoriMusu is simply ‘everyone who was available and still on the books’. Nozomi Tsuji was originally meant to be a part of the group, but has dropped out to focus on her newborn and family. The absence of other members such as Ai Kago, Maki Goto, and Asami Konno is understandable given their personal circumstances. I’d like to have seen a little more thought go into any kind of MoMusu revival, especially as this group outnumbers current MM. Had it been my decision, I’d have kept the member count lower.
I think that calling this group anything with ‘Dream’ in it is pretty apt, though. The average age of DoriMusu is 27 to MoMusu’s 17-ish. Yuko’s pushing 40, and only Koharu is under 20. 2 are married, one is openly dating. If Nozomi had also taken part as planned, she’d have upped those stats to 3 married women and added 2 kids into the bargain. This HAS to be a dream, right? It’s not April for a while yet… Shortly before the graduation of Eri Kamei, JunJun and LinLin a little over a month ago, MoMusu appeared on TV and proclaimed (yet again) that they’re not allowed to have relationships. Yet here we have a bunch of ex-members of the same group doing essentially the same work, singing the same songs and performing in most of the same venues, and the rules don’t apply any more. 2 of them left MoMusu for having boyfriends at the time. What’s the betting Ai Takahashi (or any other MM girl) doesn’t find any of this funny? Not to mention any feelings of resentment at just how much effort seems to be going into the ‘dream’ group, at a time when the 9th gen of current MM is barely in the front door.
Then, I found out they were releasing an album of covers. Assuming them all to be classic, pre-2003 MM tracks, I still wasn’t bothered too much. Until I saw the 2-disc tracklist and almost had a fit. First of all, 2 discs? That’s more covers than I was expecting. Disc 2 is most of the Golden Era standards, and as such not a surprise… but Disc 1 really caught my eye. Mikan? Aozora ga blah blah long title? Ame no Furanai blah blah long title? Sexy Boy ~long title~? 2 new songs to top it all off? I must be dreaming by now… I expected the cover songs to go all the way back to Morning Coffee, and wasn’t disappointed there, but several of the picks were originally recorded by MoMusu lineups which only include Koharu from the entire ‘dream’ roster. That’s recent works, people. I am much shock, and not the C-ute version. There’s always a lot of fan complaining about older songs being redone by newer members, so to see this happen in reverse is a change I will gladly welcome.
Where am I going with this? I have been sucked in by the dream. I don’t know how it happened, either. From originally not caring about this new group and vowing to just ignore it in the hope of them all going away again, I am now eagerly anticipating the album and tour. This confuses me no end. Did I forget to wake up sometime this week? And does anyone else out there feel the same way?
