As promised, the seperate (because Morning Musume are totally seperate from the Kids, and we need to keep it that way, yes, yes) ranking of H!P's flagship group~
1. Ai
Anyone who knows me knows this is a foregone conclusion. My first exposure to Morning Musume was Love Machine, and then Aruiteru, the then current single. And as soon as the opening screen of that MV appeared, I wondered "Who is that phenomenally pretty girl, why wasn't she in Love Machine, and how awesome is her voice?" Yes, among all of Morning Musume, from the moment I saw her, Tettekette was my instant favourite and has remained there for a year and a half now. This girl is gorgeous, like, make me a lesbian gorgeous. Not that I would. Obviously.
Her voice is incredibly beautiful. Some criticise it as too commercial, and that Miki is the real top vocal talent. Bullshit, anyone who has heard "Yume Kara Samete" knows Ai's voice can completely convert to something emotive and amazing. That's my favourite ballad in forever, bar none, and best yet, it wasn't written by Tsunku! Does this mean Ai-chan, whenever she does graduate, could go down the original Country Musume/V-u-den path and have her debut written by someone other than the T man? Could this mean that, unlike V-uden, her sales may not be killed by a man who seems incapable of keeping his sales constant for groups, and clearly has no clue what to even do with soloists?
But now I'm wandering into serious debate area here. Back to spazz~She's a pretty solid dancer. I mean, okay, she's not one of the Second Gen., she's no Ogawa or Eri, but she pretty much brings it live, plus she has all that ballet practice. And despite all that crap about her not being "leader material", she's really proving herself to be efficient in the role. She's a different kind of leader, but she has stepped up, and though she's no Yuko, she's already showing herself to be at least as adept as Yossie, and maybe even better than Kaori? (BLASPHEMY! I know)
But any discussion of Ai-chan just wouldn't be complete unless we wandered into personality territory. Okay, fair enough, she's never been, nor never will be, Mari or Kei or Kaori. (even with Mini Moni grooming) She's not that great of a talker, and she admits that. But a lot of the detractors like to forget; she is amusing in her own little weird way. The 500 Yen coin collection? Sure, it was a dead end conversation topic, but it was hilarious in it's own way. Her inability to communicate on Utaban with her accent? Priceless. And lest we forget, the truly memorable, Hoppi de Hoppu, one of Utaban's best moments for my money. Not bad for a girl with no personality, hmm?
Wow I wrote a lot. But then, I really do adore the Takitty~ Don't worry, the others shouldn't be this mammoth @_@ (But they will be longer than the kids ones! Because Morning Musume should not be put on the same level as the kids! XD )
2. Eri
Love the girl~ As is evident from a few of my Berryz and C-ute choices, I keep a pretty good balance in my favourites between partial center girls and the background ones. It's been Eri's unfortunate (very unfortunate!) fate thusfar to remain in the background. Fair enough, she was placed in a generation with Reina and Miki, so being star of 6th gen was never going to be easy. But the way she's been ignored thusfar has been, frankly, disgusting.
She's got a nice vocal range, perhaps better and less irritating than Reina's to my ear, but that's just me. Everytime she contributes to a song (usually, you know, one line) she brings something special. An obvious example being the majorly popular "dakedo ne ne dakedo"'s and "daraka ne ne daraka"'s of the recent "Resonant Blue". Another nice pick is "Oh nai nai nai~" is "Kotatsu no uta ~Jyuken Story~". She just has one of those voices, perfectly suited for hooks. Unfortunately, the only time I've ever noticed her take anything near lead was on "Go Girl! ~Koi no Victory~" b-side "Koi ING" (Not that is a bad thing, it's one of Momusu's best mid-tempo songs dontcha know)
But her real talent, it has to be said, is her dancing. Eri pwns dancing. And anyone who has seen her dance to "Shabdondama" at "Odore! Morning Curry" knows what I'm talking about.
3. Aika
I'm happy to admit; Aika isn't the best singer; far from it, she's one of the weakest links in the Morning Musume chain. She's not that strong a dancer, sure. She's not even that utterly amusing to watch. So why then do I like Aika? Well, she was the first member to be added while I was a fan. I felt like, in many ways, with her debuting on "Egao YES Nude" the first single I bought, not only was she starting out on her Momusu journey, but we were starting out on it, together. Like 8th Gen. was, to some kind of extent, my generation. Sure I'd seen what all the other gen's used to be like and how they developed, but I wasn't there for that. Aika, I've been with since the beginning and I feel some kind of connection, a respect, a familiarity, an empathy as a result of that. Is that a common occurence for people with their first new generation, or am I just being weird?
Anyways, i'm wandering into proper dicussion territory once again. Aika has a lot of charm; she's pretty cutesy pie-ish, her old grandmother voice is amusing to a point. I just like the girl, what can I say?
4. JunJun
Well, my 8th Gen. connection comes into play here again. I have a natural affinity from that alone to the Panda, if nothing else. But hell, I like JunJun. She seems to have a voice that, while nothing spectacular, is pretty solid, and with the number of reliable singer slowly dwindling, you have to give her some props for that. I really love her crazy eyes in "Onna ni Sachi Are"; I think maybe that's what gave her a place over LinLin for me.
She's just doing her own thing, carving her own little niche, and I like that. She loves them bananas. XD It's nice to have a member with such a clear attachment to a physical thing again, whether positive or negative; like Rika and the chickens, or Nacchi and..... anything basically. (I mean, did anything not make her scream or whine in her time in Morning Musume?) Hopefully Tsunku will see the tall one spotential and start bringing her forward soon.
5. LinLin
Again, the 8th Gen. connection is helping her out here, but honestly, I can't really fault LinLin on anything as of yet. She seems to have charm, she's capable with the Japanese language, or at least moreso than JunJun. Her voice shows so much potential if she would stop applying that crappy whine cutesy thing that has ruined Reina's singing for years! DX Honestly, what happened to her "Thanks!" voice in that vocal training session, and will they please bring it back? If I have one qualm with her, it's that.
6. Risa
This is the point where we leave liking territory behind in a similar way to Risako in Berryz. (Risa and Risako! What an interesting coincidence! Maybe I have something against names involving r, i, s and a. ) Risa only serves to annoy me most of the time. She's loud and crass and brash and slightly annoying. Her forehead is probably her biggest attribute. Literally. But there's just nothing interesting about her to me.
7. Reina
(Look, r, i and a. Maybe I really do have a subconscious thing going on o.o ) To me Reina... I could like her. Potentially. I used to, when she was nearer the background. I have liked songs she led in the past, the likes of "Shabondama" and "First Kiss". But that was all early, yankii Reina, with the pouty attitude. Since then, Reina sold her soul to UFA, and Tsunku (cause ya know the guy probably is the devil) and allowed herself to be idolized, removing so much of her unique charm for stupid winks and obvious attempts at being cute that only serve to make her fake and annoying in my book. Her voice is fair, but as mentioned in LinLin's section, she's applied this method of singing to it that just irritates me. I'd far prefer Eri's similarly high, but real tones to Reina's falsely affected cutesy ones.
8. + 9. Those other two
Oh yes. The Pinku twins. A.K.A the most irritating thing to happen in H!P history ever. Ever. Really, they're listed as one person in my book, rather than two, so there's no real distinction between 8 and 9, except maybe for the fact that Koharu may yet learn to sing, while with Sayumi, really, that ship has long since sailed even if she had had some kind of natural aptitude for it. Sayumi is cute, but she's too aware of this, and she's pretty self absorbed. Ditto Koharu. Minus being cute. She just thinks she is.
But for Koharu, I suppose, there could be the potential there for me to like her. I don't despise "Balalaika" or "Happy" despite who sings them. I admire her ability to sell, even if I don't like her personally. I think it's cool she's always dreamed of being an idol and the reason she's so perma-happy is that she's living her dream. She's an ultra spazz, so that could almost be plus points.
But then we come back to this Miracle member thing. If anyone, ever, was a Miracle member, it happened back in 5th gen., with Ai, or hell, to be fair and honest, 3rd Gen., with Goto Maki. Not some, can barely sing, can barely dance, kind of ugly no hoper from the 7th Gen. I'm getting really tired of having her shoved into our faces in every single and in more and more units. Charmy had the same happen to her, but thats because she was popular to start out with. For Koharu, it's management favouritism, trying to build up her popularity to match this idiotic idea of a Miracle, and the sad thing is, I think it might be working for a lot of people. Tell a lie often enough, and people will believe it.
I could like her if she wasn't being over promoted. But she is. To an extreme.
Well there's that labour of love done ^^; And just one little Suju Factoid to round off and take the edge off the hatering above. Shiwon of Super Junior recently listed the highlight of hsi life as singing YMCA. So I think it's fair to assume he really is gay now~ 8D
