^It's such a fascinating watch. I've been working for a kindergarten in Japan for about 6 years now, and when I was hired it was still a very traditional place, though it's been going through a lot of changes do to a young staff and a really forward-thinking owner/principal. A lot of the things mentioned feel so much like the old style at my kindergarten. After every event we always had an hour long "hansei" (review? reflection?) of the event where a lot of the focus was not on what was good but what could be fixed, so I think there's a lot of people from the time that the OG were in Morning Musume that thought the same way as that famed manager that would keep them for hours after a variety program and make them review upon their performance and talk about everything they did wrong. Apologizing to every single person even if you are a minute late is also a very traditional company type of thing to do. I don't have to go that far at my school, but I do need to personally go and apologize in person to the principal even if I'd already called ahead and apologized. (Not that I'm actually in trouble, but that's mostly because I show this remorse). They mentioned that they didn't believe any other idol group was as strict as Morning Musume, it's hard to decide if it's a good thing or a bad thing... That kind of discussion came up a lot, though they all agree, it's not good to do things too much (like that infamous manager)
The Senpai/Kouhai structure in Japan has a lot of good things about it, but it can have a lot of really stressful and negative aspects about it as well. The particular hair rule that was talked about here wasn't something I'd caught before. They talked about how when getting ready for concerts (I believe?) the kouhai who would be in the first group to get their hair and make-up taken care of wouldn't know what hairstyle their senpai would have, so the stylist would do something and the girl would decide on something. But if a senpai in a later group came out with a similar hair style, that kouhai would have to go back and restyle their hair.
All the Senpai/Kouhai rules from the passed have stuck because it's really hard to break that cycle. It was interesting watching the OG apologize to Yokoyama and Rio about it, even deciding that one of them should go and advise the current management to consider abolishing such rules.
Yokoyama had a lot of guts during the show I thought. The particular discussion they were having was pretty difficult for the more junior members of a group to navigate and I thought she did a pretty good job, I really hope she's able to make a name in the variety world, she has talent I think. Though I was a bit heart-broken by the bit near the end, because she admitted out loud what I think a lot of fans noticed during the Junjou Evidence Reaction Video (or at least I read it in the comments quite a few times and I personally had suspected). She mentioned that she only had about 2 seconds of screentime and it had really got her down. (If you watch the reaction you can see her getting more and more depressed about it, though she tries put on a smile a few times). The OG were super supportive of her and tried hard to give her a good perspective on it (though they did tease her about maybe being the Yasuda Kei of the group). But man... I find Yokoyama incredibly aesthetically pleasing, so I found it so odd that she had little to no screentime in that MV...
Unrelated to that, but I also found it interesting that Takahashi Ai and Suzuki Airi are the two members that Rio looks up to. It really explains how hard she's working, she's aiming for the top.
On-chan really rolls of the tongue as well. Masaki really did well with that name.
Oh... also Mikitty and the other's talking about the fans calling her Miki-sama and bowing down to her was pretty hilarious "They did this on their own! I wasn't encouraging them!"
