this is Risa. She thinks she can moonwalk.....



Oh Risa I love you and your spazzy ways <3

Tomorrow [March 17th], Morning Musume will release their 10th Album, 10 My Me. Wow, their 10th album, thats pretty impressive, lets just hope that the music inside is as impressive as the achievement.

Before I go onto the music let mw just say a word or two on the cover. The cover above is the Limited edition and better of the 2 covers. Its a nice simple cover with the girls sitting, kneeling and standing together. The girls looks in the cover are hit and miss. e.g HIT = LinLin. Maaan she is totally hot right now, great outfit. MISS = Risa. Yes I have to admit it, Risa's outfit and hairstle are.....not good lets just say. She had good hair on utaban, and at that modelling thing where she had the hat but here it looks crap, sorry hunny bun. The way she is styled too makes her look a bit like a granny and thats not how I want my Risa, or any of my idols to look like..............

Anyone remember this girl?? No! Well let me tell you about her.

Her name is Jang Da Yeon and last year this 15 year old girl won the Hello! Project Koea audition. Oh yeah, remmeber her now?

Well its nearly a year since she was announced the winner of the auditions, but since then not a word has been said about her....

well before we delve any further, lets look at some facts.

- The winner of the audition [there was to be only 1 winner] would go on to become a member of Hello! Project, specifically, NOT a member of Morning Musume.
- She'll go to training in Japan, and her training will be "Japanese style", taking all the steps that a Japanese entertainer would take for debut.

Now I may be looking WAY too much into this, but I have been increasingly interested in K-pop and so the future of this girl interests me. And so I get frustrated when I see that almost a year later we have heard nothing since she departed from Japan, except for her appearance at the champloo concert in which she came on briefly as a special guest.

Also if you check both the Hello! Project and UFA sites, you will see that she is not listed as an act under them.

UFA artist index
Hello! Project artist index

Maybe I am just being paranoid though as it seems only debuted artists or soloists are shown. But surely the UFA ite would have here there. Now this could also be just an over sight as there are some groups there that are no longer active such as SHIPS and MilkyWay.

This scares me a little as she just seems to have been forgotten about. No one ever talk about her, where is she, whats she at. She just doesn't exist. But It may very well be that she is still training very hard for her debut. I know that in Korean, people can train for years before they debut, this could be no different. I suppose its not unreasonable for her to take this long to learn Japanese to a certain level of quality, and learning to dance could take a long while too, I dunno I can't dance. Vocal training too is important, so all these factors could explain her long absesne. But I dont recall Ice-CreaMusume taking this long to train before their debut. But look at how crap and easy their dance was. Maybe UFA are putting a lot more effort into Jang.

They may also be deciding what to do with her. Will she debut in Japan alone or also in Korea. What style of songs will she be putting out, techno, RnB, pop. What will her style be, cute, hot, indifferent, cool. Will she be a soloist or will she be put as part of a new unit, made up of other girls from H!P or UFA.

This point brings me to the end of my thinkings as I say what I would like to become of her.

As you may or may not know, I have began to listen to a lot of K-pop lately and so have grown a fondness for both japanese and Korean pop music. That said, I would not mind if she became a soloist. If her music was up to the standars of Girls' Generation then I will more than gladly follow and support her.
But what I really want, if it would be a good or bad thing I dont know, but I would love for UFA to put her into a unit as part of a Duo or Group.
Together with some select eggs they could make a great group. I would love to see Saho Akari, Sengoku Minami as well as possibly Kitahara Sayaka and Kikkawa Yuu. As we have seen in Aa, Akari would be great in a pop group that may have RnB type influences, the 2 girls from MilkyWay would be more suited to a more pure pop type but I think the group would be quite interesting to watch develop.
As for being in a duo, you have to have guessed who I would pair Jang up with. Yes of course Risa. I think it would be awesome for Jang and Risa, to debut as a Duo in both Japan and Korean, releasing both Japanese and Korean music. I can just imagine it, and it makes me a happy man.

ok so thats my kind of rant on this mysterious korean girl. Let me know what you think, I would love some feedback.

ok so this seems to becomming some what of a pattern.

I blog, then a long gap, then I blog again.

Well loyal followers and readers alike. After getting requests from some people to start blogging again, I have decided to MAKE time out of my stupidly bust University life to make time for some blogging. At the start this may be done only at weekends but you never know. Also, I will be keeping the name and banners and everything but since I was away I broadened my musical horizons A LOT, and so I will talk both inside and out of H!P and Jpop itself.

But of course anything to do with H!P will be Gaki biased.

WATCH THIS SPACE PEOPLE. and sorry for the wait.

Liam xxx

Japans idol industry is a huge money making business that started in arounf the 60's. And since then there have been a multitude of idol types to choose from, singers, actors, entertainers but the main deciding point is to wether, follow male or female idols. To somepeople who might be new to the whole idol world, they might think that an idol is an idol and that being a man or woman shouldn't make a difference. To some who have followed idols for a few years will see very distinct differences in male and female idols.

Female idols as a general rule tend to be aimed at men. Female idols can begin their career from as young as 5 years old and can remain one up to their 30's. It is believed that the peak of an idols career is usually between the ages of 16 and 20, this obviously varies from idol to idol, for example, Morning Musume, when new girls arrived after winning auditions they were roughly 12-14 years old. These girls would enjoy approximately 5 years of being a top idol, they would then be graduated from the group in their early twenties to join H!P as a soloist, for the bulk of the soloists this lead to a career into obscurity.

The appeal of female idols varies slightly from company to company but they are all based on roughly the same recepe of portraying an image of an entertaining, loveable, cute and innocent girl. This image is easily mantained by most in their teens and early twenties, but as idols get older they would naturally want to experience life which might not fit the idol and may cause a scandal. So after a certain age most are graduated from whatever group they are in or are just graduated from idol status, this ensures that if the girl did something risque it would not tarnigh the companies reputation ensuring that legions of more idol worshipers would continue to support idols coming from that company.

The main audience that female idols are aimed at are male fans ranging in age from teens to as old as you can get. Of course there is also a following of female fans, but the companies managing female idols market them to appeal to men. This is all fine and dandy, but there are 2 types of male fans of japanese female idols. One is the everyday joe soap listener who likes them, knows them, supports them by buying their merchandise. And the second is a group of avid fans of the idols called Wota [a name given to a class of otaku that are said to be obsessed with idols]. These fans not only buy the merchandise [some do so in bulk to support their idols even more], but at concerts they perform dances and chants at the concerts. To most fans of japanese idols, these wota are understood as just big fans of the idols. To people who may be ignorant of the whole idol/wota thing, this can be seen as creepy and sometimes perverted as wota may be up to 60+ in age. This then places a stigma on males who follow female idols wether they be young, old, innocnt or perverted [never really the case]. A fan is a fan and should not be judged as a group based on a mere impression given off. I have never heard of females being thought of weirdly for being a female idol fan.