The H!P Musings/Rants Thread

[Starra]

I've run into a bit of a problem with my database: I can't figure out how to actually display the data for public consumption. I want it to be a searchable database website, but I have no idea how to make that happen. I've tried several resources but none of them are exactly what I want, and many are way too expensive for me in the first place (since they're designed for businesses rather than what I'm doing).

I'm still far from finished (I just got done filling out 2006 releases today), but... would anyone be willing to help me build a front-end for the database? It has a lot of data (currently at 19,000+ records) and I have a limited budget but I'd be willing to cover the costs of whatever services/servers needed. I have a URL purchased, too, in case that's required. I can help with designing the site, I just need someone smarter than me to code it.

FWIW, the database is built with Airtable, since I've found that much easier to use than other things I've tried. From what I've looked into, Airtable does integrate with many services and if it doesn't directly link up to something, external tools like Zapier can make that happen (I think).

Eventually I would maybe like to have a user system so people can keep track of things they like or are interested in, but I want to focus on the database itself first.

If Airtable would make the interface designer better and have it possible to be shared publicly that'd be wonderful, but currently that's not an option. It is only in beta, however, so eh.

At least it looks pretty within the database itself I guess.



(FWIW, each release has 49 different fields/cells. Some of these are technical, like sorting orders (for when there are multiple releases on the same date -- this is mostly so different formats of the same thing can be next to each other, ie singles and single Vs) and URL slugs, but uh. Oops.)

[Amped]

Nice voice and Narrator for Hello Dream, Sakurai Takahiro (櫻井孝宏), was caught by tabloids on finding out he was having an affair with another woman for 10 years. He was already married to someone. His radio show was cancelled because of it. The tabloids rushed him after work and he told them the affair reports were accurate. The affair was already over. He later felt great remorse.
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2 ... ir/.191262

No word yet if TV Tokyo is going to replace him or let him continue narrating Harodori. It will be hard to replace his current anime roles already recorded.

[Starra]

Uuuuuuugh I hate things sometimes.

I've found out about MaxMuse, which is a long defunct digital streaming service that UFW tried out all the way back in 2005. It had exclusive content on it, mostly in the form of member comments that you got when you downloaded a new release, but it also had a couple of actual songs not properly released elsewhere. From what I've found, there's a live recording of THE Manpower!!!, an audio version of Rika's solo Morning Coffee take from Best Shot Vol. 1 and an audio version of the studio live arrangement of Suna wo Kamu You ni・・・ NAMIDA, as well as several compilation albums.

The most frustrating thing is that while I can at least find tracklists for most releases, I can't for a specific one: Berryz Koubou's Sppecial Sellection (yes, that's how it's written, it's スッペシャルセッレクション and not スペシャルセレクション because Tsunku likes being quirky). For whatever dumbass reason, the tracklist was encoded as separate images on MaxMuse's website. It contained 8 songs, with each member getting to choose a specific song and giving a comment either before or after the song in the audio file. The site only has an indication over who made what comment, which you can work out anyway since it's just in seniority order.

But the songs themselves? Nope. Nothing. I can't even find them mentioned individually on old fanblogs (at least not surviving ones) and since it was released at the start of MaxMuse's very short lifespan (it closed down in 2007 lmao), there are no individual press releases about it and it's just lumped in with the starting stuff.

I'm about to become the Joker.

Thankfully, they were nice enough to include a text discography, which at least narrows down the options, so we know there are only a grand total of 21 possible songs that could be included. Most are probably a-sides, but I know Koishiteru Toki wa Itsumo・・・, Koi wa Hipparidako, Semi, TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY and Bye Bye Mata ne are also possibilities (and maybe Anshinkan, since Yurina could've picked that I suppose).

Does anyone have any crumbs of info about the tracklist they could give me? I'm desperate. Even dead Japanese fansites/blogs to point me towards to would be helpful.

All this lost H!P media... I want to cry... (Don't even get me started on Dohhh up!, Gyao, Flet's and all the rest of those dead video services, man)

[Zunu]

Not really telling you anything you don't already know but unfortunately as sprawling as the internet is, most information has never been put online, and this sounds like one of those things. You would probably have to contact people for their offline records or personal recollections. For example, if that one person miyabism who bought the whole set for the comments was somehow still reachable. It seems at one point they owned the defunct domain natsuyakimiyabi.net, so I guess it might be possible to look through old registration records for their contact info. More plausibly, did you consider writing Tsunku? Tell him you're a researcher documenting the entire H!P archive. Perhaps he would be happy to answer some of your questions, although tbh I kinda doubt even he would remember the details of such a minor business venture. Although who knows, he might be a meticulous record-keeper.

[Starra]

Not really telling you anything you don't already know but unfortunately as sprawling as the internet is, most information has never been put online, and this sounds like one of those things. You would probably have to contact people for their offline records or personal recollections. For example, if that one person miyabism who bought the whole set for the comments was somehow still reachable. It seems at one point they owned the defunct domain natsuyakimiyabi.net, so I guess it might be possible to look through old registration records for their contact info. More plausibly, did you consider writing Tsunku? Tell him you're a researcher documenting the entire H!P archive. Perhaps he would be happy to answer some of your questions, although tbh I kinda doubt even he would remember the details of such a minor business venture. Although who knows, he might be a meticulous record-keeper.

Yeah I did a bit of looking into it last night via Wayback Machine and even then, most blog posts are just a link to the download.

The thing is, I don't really want to bother Tsunku directly about it since it seems to be more of an UP-FRONT WORKS thing than H!P directly, so I don't know if he would've been that involved. Also, in this instance the members picked the songs (allegedly, they obviously could've been told what to choose lol), so it's even less likely he'd have anything to do with it since it would've been that they probably submitted the song choices to their manager, who then sent them to the website people (maybe it went manager -> UFW -> MaxMuse, but eh).

The other issue with MaxMuse is that the service was pretty primitive. You got to download the songs, but the idea was that you burnt them to a CD-R or mini disc, so they came with DRM. I think you could only burn each track once and listen to them via the online audio player three times before you had to buy them again. Granted, they were under 200 yen a track, but still. I imagine there would've been a way to remove the DRM, but it was 2005.

It's not a massive issue since it's the sort of release nobody cares about, I'm just being really nitpicky lol. Maybe I'll bother Japanese fans about it eventually.

[Zunu]

Nitpicky? Let's call it thorough.

Also you're probably right that he wasn't even involved, but I don't think he'd be bothered if you wrote him. I've written a couple of times to public people and received lengthy personal responses. I think celebs are often happy to correspond with their (sane) fans. At least, the type of celebs you'd care to write to.

[Starra]

I think I'll leave it for now but will try contacting people later. Once the database/website are eventually up, I plan on encouraging people to contact me about missing info they have and having some kind of email form -- also for corrections (I make several mistakes!).

Also, nobody really cares except for me, but a progress update: I just finished release #1400, Berryz Koubou DVD MAGAZINE VOL.8, which was released on 2007-04-01. I have 4,940 (at least) releases left.



By the way, Uta Doki! is very very annoying to fill out, but at least I have information for those lol

[erilaz]

The most frustrating thing is that while I can at least find tracklists for most releases, I can't for a specific one: Berryz Koubou's Sppecial Sellection (yes, that's how it's written, it's スッペシャルセッレクション and not スペシャルセレクション because Tsunku likes being quirky).

Yeah, スッペシャル is a very Berryz thing, starting with their sixth single and continuing into the titles of their Best compilations.

I checked the Hello! Project Complete Album Book (2015) to see if it had any information about this, but I couldn't find anything. It lists Kamei Eri's download-only Hello Cover (ハロカバ) album, and the Hello! Project Complete Single Book 20th Anniversary Edition (2018) has a list of download-only singles, but the only things listed there from 2005 to 2007 are Takahashi Ai's "Yume kara Samete" (2006.7.2) and Morning Musume｡/DEF.DIVA/Berryz Kōbō's "Ready Go!" (2006.10.31).

[Starra]

Yeah, スッペシャル is a very Berryz thing, starting with their sixth single and continuing into the titles of their Best compilations.

I checked the Hello! Project Complete Album Book (2015) to see if it had any information about this, but I couldn't find anything. It lists Kamei Eri's download-only Hello Cover (ハロカバ) album, and the Hello! Project Complete Single Book 20th Anniversary Edition (2018) has a list of download-only singles, but the only things listed there from 2005 to 2007 are Takahashi Ai's "Yume kara Samete" (2006.7.2) and Morning Musume｡/DEF.DIVA/Berryz Kōbō's "Ready Go!" (2006.10.31).

Tsunku himself is sppecial, I guess! It annoys me that these things haven't really made their way over to the English speaking fandom since they do add an extra bit of flavour. Same with Tsunku liking to sometimes use ～ instead of ー (See スッペシャル ジェネレ～ション and ザ☆ピ～ス！).

Also yeah, I own that book too, but it definitely doesn't list everything digital. Which is a shame but it only had things that were still available in 2018, so I get it. I imagine even if they had included unavailable releases, they would've either forgotten about MaxMuse or, since the company doesn't exist anymore, wouldn't have known if they could list them without getting in legal trouble.

They also don't have H!P Eggs's Sora ga Aru from what I remember either. Initially I wondered if they just weren't counting it because it's not a Hello! Project or UP-FRONT release, but they have Palette's Sekai wa Bokura ga Matteiru, which was released under a different label and isn't H!P-related -- it just features Maeda Yuuka on one of the songs. Sora ga Aru was released in extremely limited quantities as a CD at Nissen Hikousen charity events, so it's also not a case of it being exclusively digital. (It's my dream to own this CD one day by the way, I think it's my holy grail of H!P merch. It'll have better quality versions of Sora ga Aru than the 128k .mp3 files from the website, and also contains instrumental versions not found elsewhere. The completionist in me laments never being able to have a fully complete collection of H!P's discography (at least in terms of songs, I'm not even going to bother with MaxMuse comments lol) because of it.)

This sort of scenario is one of the exact reasons why I'm creating the database, though. Just so there's some kind of documentation of these digital-only releases.

[Amped]

It's Fall Festival season for many Universities in Japan.

Chuo University (Tokyo) Hello Pro Research Club Dance cover '22 @ Chuo Hakumon Fes. 11.3.22

Finally back in person this year after being online for 2 years.



Setlist :
00:20 Wagamama Ki no Mama Ai no Joke
03:16 Suki yo, Junjou Hankouki.
06:24 Romance no Tochuu
09:53 Adrenaline Dame
13:50 Dance de Bakoon!

~~~~~~~

Waseda University Morning Musume. Research Club @ Waseda University Bakuon 2022 Science and Technology Exhibition Stage 11.5.22

Setlist :
1. Seishun Domannaka
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY6QGbaZxK0

2. Koi no Crouching Start
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbKf_zVpvpU

3. Fure Fure Everyday
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJSffnLGn24

4. Tachiagirl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC39p8WIZ38

5. Pittari Shitai X'mas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgbBk4pn-zE

6. Anime Medley
~ Maji Bomber!! / Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! / Anataboshi / Ooki na Ai de Motenashite / Gag 100kaibun Aishite Kudasai / MC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUeyhNwnl6g

7. SEXY BOY ~Soyokaze ni Yorisotte
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQERHGpwRuA

8. Romantic Ukare Mode
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKOLvszbkBM

Hello Pro is alive and well.