Morning Musume Redux: Takittied and Feathered

Since it’s been said that the truth will set you free, I’d like to get it out of the way right now: I am a 25-year old man who enjoys the music of Morning Musume.  Let me pause for a second while freedom sets in.

Hmm.  Maybe it takes a while.  Well, uh, in the meantime, let me elaborate a bit and say that this is a very recent musical interest.  I’ve known of MoMusu and the vast sea of cuteness that is Hello!Project for years now, but had never really paid it too much attention in the past.  In fact, if you’d asked me a year ago, I probably wouldn’t have been able to name any current or former members of the group.  Exceptions are Ai Kago, who distinctly annoyed the shit out of me (in retrospect this most likely goes for Nozomi Tsuji too, except that I probably couldn’t have told them apart then); conversely, Hitomi Yoshizawa left a positive impression on me because of her tomboy character and distinctive voice; she’s stood out from the group as a result, enough that I regretted her recent graduation. 

Around when Yossie left is when I finally heard a full MoMusu album - their sixth, ai no dai 6kan - and to my surprise, I took to it.  Then I started to really take to it.  It was a slow process, but eventually I started to hum “LEMON-iro to MILK TEA” to myself at random points during the day, and since the proceedings don't get much more saccharine than a song like that, clearly I'd reached the point of no return.  Okay, so it’s the present day and I’m officially ready to open myself to more of this group’s music.  But with Yossie gone, who will be my idol among idols?  Who am I going to latch onto and develop a big gay crush on now?

Well, the group’s newest single “onna ni sachi are,” released on July 25th, not only kicks down the door to my cerebellum and bellows “I’m comin’ in, bitch!”; it also answers that last question very, very securely.

Ai Takahashi.  Oh man, where do I start?  I previously recognized her name purely because she’s been in the group for so long, but otherwise I never took much notice of her… if I’d known what she sounded like, maybe that would have been different, but oh well.  Now she leads the group, and in this song and PV she seizes the role.  From what various other message board denizens say, this is sort of a dramatic character shift for Takahashi, who is normally quiet and reserved.  Maybe some of her “normal” persona is still evident, since she’s really not vamping it up to the extreme that the costumes/headdresses/etc. of the video might allow for.  Instead, Ai is merely content to take the lion’s share of the vocals (coincidentally, she sings beautifully), dance her ass off, and direct a smolderingly reproachful gaze toward the camera in her close-ups.  Works for me, since she does all of the above so very well…

Vocally, “onna ni sachi are” is a little like "Ai Takahashi plus eight girls that happened to be in the studio that day" rather than an evenly-split group, but in fairness those remaining eight do make a very nice showing, audibly and visually.  My preferences led me to especially note Koharu Kusumi, who is managing to look more and more stunning every time I see her (not a small feat for a 15-year-old).  She’s got a fair share of solo lines in this song, and while her voice isn’t the best, I enjoy it nonetheless - especially the way she hits the "asahi yo noboreeee" part at the end of the first chorus.  Close runners-up are Eri Kamei and second-newest member Aika Mitsui: the former gets mention purely because of her solo line near the end of the song, which she really hits out of the park (I love the multiple shots of her hands while she performs it), while the latter delivers a simple but surprisingly deliberate performance in her dancing and in her pair of solo lines, enough to intrigue me as to her untapped potential.

“Onna ni Sachi Are” is also the debut single for Morning Musume’s two new Chinese members, Li Chun (a.k.a. JunJun, who incidentally looks like she wants to kill someone in the below still) and Qian Lin (a.k.a. LinLin).  The pair don’t make the biggest splash here, but they fit in well, hold their own on the singing front, and as brand new talent make me excited to hear more in the future.

The song itself is uptempo with a hard beat, a canvas that plays an interesting foil to the surprisingly bitter lyrics (which you can find here).  The video is very simple and, uh, yellow and feathery (in case you didn't notice), alternating between dance sequences, closeups during solo lines, and brief shots of all the girls mouthing “baka!” at the camera with a gamut of emotions running from pouty to enraged to dominatrix-lite (that’d be Takahashi).  Yeah, it’s a little on the cheap side, but it’s simple, surprisingly addictive, and does what it has to do to burn these girls into my brain, which is obviously the whole point.

I’ve had this song on my hard drive for about a month now, and have been listening to it very frequently over that month, only now finding the time to sit down and write about it.  This isn’t a proper single review, as I neither own the single nor have heard its b-side, but the reason I’m writing about this one song anyway is because this is the first Morning Musume song that’s stuck to me so persistently and over such a long period.  It single-handedly has vitalized my interest in this group to the point where I’m greatly anticipating their next single, and maybe an album in the not-too-distant future.  It also has me looking to the past, since I’ve heard so many reminisce about MoMusu’s golden age and former star members; logically, if I like this song so much, there’s gotta be more where that came from, and I’m very excited about what I might discover.