Just catching up, because my internet connection was down:
1. NO MORE "ACES" PLZ! 1-nin gens are bogus, and pitching any member of any idol group anywhere as an "ace" is ultra-bogus. They're
Jpop idols -- if one of them can carry a tune and has a nice singing voice, that's good, but it doesn't make her anything more that a first-rate deuce.
The whole "ace" thing was just Tsunku/UFA's way of covering for the fact that they had only found one girl they felt confident about adding -- and after the original Unlucky 7 audition, they were seriously gun-shy about adding
anyone. I'm pretty sure that that event -- the Unlucky 7 disaster and H!P/UFA's behind-the-scenes reaction to it -- did more to shape the long 7th gen / 8th gen era of MoMusu than anything else.
Their first reaction, with the second 7th gen auditions, was to run too far in the other direction, hand-pick Koharu, and try to package
her as an "ace," rather than just telling the truth: "We micromanaged this audition, and just picked one girl, because we can't afford to have another multi-girl audition blow up in our faces!"
The same thing with the 8th gen -- pick one girl, then bring two others in after non-publicized auditions in China. Keep it under control. It worked, but it was too much control, and in each case, it put too much focus on the single girl who got chosen from the public auditions. (And of course, Koharu and Aika turned out to be rather strange choices, if they were looking for girls who would be manageable
)
So when they chose four girls for 9th gen, I was very happy -- I like big gens, but more than that, it meant that they'd finally gotten over the Unlucky 7 catastrophe, and that they'd gotten their
cojones back.
2. Make it four! I got into Morning Musume during the 15-nin era, and I miss the big, chaotic messiness of their PVs and live performances.
3. IT'S TIME FOR MOGI! Don't ask me why -- she's flawlessly hideous, or hideously flawless -- it doesn't really matter: IT'S TIME TO INFLICT THE TRAGIC MOGI-NESS OF TRAGIC-CHAN UPON THE UNSUSPECTING WORLD!
Besides, she's such an underdog, I have to root for her. She
is the anti-ace that we all must confront in our own hearts -- and on stage.
("Flawless," incidentally, is another word that I consider to be utterly, irredeemably, unspeakably bogus.
Nothing is flawless -- and certainly not anything in the world of Jpop idols.)
[/random rant]
If madness made us strong, we would all be invincible.