I decided to not doing any links for the weekend. I may change my mind on that in the future but I’m not gonna push myself. I can be like the USA Today compared to Intl Wota, if Intl Wota were a real newspaper.

I still have not watched this week’s or last week’s Haromoni or made any progress on the TLS March April Madness. This is the week for that! Well, so long as no H!P scandals pop up (when’s your yearly scandal coming Nacchi??). I’m using this category as a sort of quick State of the Blog or where I’m at in blogging post. I like keeping things in nice categories… and State of the Blog should be for big news!

I only want to talk about one blog today. And that is ★ ☆ yossha yossha YOSSHA! ☆ ★. Yoshimi’s writing rubs some people the wrong way, I’m sure she is aware of that. I’ll even say myself that I don’t like it all. But there is something underlining with Yoshimi, behind all the threats of violence to Risako. When she likes an idol, she REALLY likes an idol.

The whole point of the wota-idol fandom is for this type of fan connection. It doesn’t have to be the level that some of the Japanese wota take it. However, if you can claim that you are dedicated to a particular idol, no matter what happens to that idol or their career, then you are exhibiting the type of connection intended. I think it is clear that, when it comes down to it, Yoshimi has this.

Now, she recently said that she is done posting pictures of JunJUn. I admit, I’m selfish. I’d rather her keep up with JunJun than with who she replaced JunJun with, Maasa Sudou. But I’ll admit that this is a good idea for Yoshimi.

hi, minnasan (JunJun posts) and now chotto matte (Maasa posts) provide a nice contrast to the combative style in some of her other posts. It’s variety within a blog, and I love variety. It almost makes sense for her to promote less popular H!P members as she slags on the more popular ones.

Even if it isn’t for everyone.

There were not many Ai Kago reactions after all.

Buono’s Kiss!Kiss!Kiss! PV was released and can be viewed at some boys blog. I haven’t watched it yet so I don’t have any opinion. I just like that, after 2 previous singles, it’s possible to label this PV as “Typical Buono.”

There are more reviews for Perfume’s GAME. Shanimuni Paradise and boylikesmusicPerfume. It pains me to see that neither of them enjoy “take me take me” as much as I do. I will freely admit that I’m liking this song because it was made for the exact reasons Shanimuni points out:

If there was ever fan service in a song…….

They had an album called Fan Service, they are not above this!

I do enjoy that GAME is getting reactions to Perfume across the blogs. It’ll take some time to win over more fans and there are some who simply won’t pay attention to this group at all. This is slowly changing.

Posted on the Hello!Online tracker was Morning Musume’s appearance on Utaban. I am going to review this for TLS later on today as I have some fun comments for it. But real quick, this is a combination of mainstream Japan’s opinion of Morning Musume (Utaban doesn’t care about Momusu anymore) and an episode of Haromoni (boring rubbish as we watch Momusu watch other people do nothing). I would recommend watching this but it really is no different from the last few years of Morning Musume on these shows.

As for Airi Suzuki’s third photobook (from strawberrie)…

Aika. Kanna. Junjun.

I did not have a Daily Links post yesterday in order to create a schedule for this feature. My first post (on the 22nd) was late in the evening and I’d prefer this to be posted in the morning hours. No specific time - just the morning hours.

I picked a lucky time to start looking around at other blogs. Right at the top of my most recent feeds was Tokyograph reporting that Ai Kago is going to be in a Hong Kong film. I like to joke around about dropping SCOOPS for International Wota - and I outscooped them all today! As for the news, it’s way too early to pass any real judgment. She could have a legit role or just a quick cameo - who knows at this point? I’ll be interested in what everyone else thinks of this though and I’m sure tomorrow’s Daily Links will be filled with Aibon reactions.

Maize of fields and maiZe and berryZ was the first one to tell me, but lots of blogs have information on Berryz Koubou’s 17th single. You can read it up at Just Another H!P Blog, some boys! blog, Strawberrie or Totally Hello! Project - they all have pretty much the same information. I’m pretty happy about this because it’ll mean a final end to Dschinghis Khan videos at the end of H!P programming. This is also big news for Berryz Koubou as it’ll push Berryz Koubou into a tie at 3rd place for sheer amount of singles released under Hello!Project:

Number of Singles Released (5 or over):
Morning Musume: 36
Aya Matsuura: 21 (20 released, 1 announced)
Berryz Koubou: 17 (16 released, 1 announced)
Maki Goto: 17
Melon Kinenbi: 17
Mini Moni: 12
Yuko Nakazawa: 12
Country Musume: 11
Natsumi Abe: 10
v-u-den: 10
Taiyou to Ciscomoon/T&C Bomber: 8
Tanpopo: 8
Yuki Maeda: 8
W: 7
Miki Fujimoto: 6
C-ute: 5 (4 minor)
Coconuts Musume: 5

While it is conceivable that Melon Kinenbi will get another release, Berryz Koubou will most likely take sole possession of 3rd place by the end of the year. Aya Matsuura’s releases have slowed down considerably - 4 in the last 3 years - so it should only be a matter of time until Berryz passes her. As for one day taking the #1 spot, I would imagine that BK would break up before that point.

Looking the list over, can you believe that Yuko Nakazawa has 12 singles or that Yuki Maeda has 8?

To finish things up today, everyone visit wotachat! It is pengie’s (of unchained) hosted chatroom. She wants to populate it even more so I’m passing along the word of my own will and volition (read: forced). I’m usually there at some point every day and many IW bloggers/contributors make a daily visit at some point. It’s pretty fun - although the conversation always starts getting bizzare when a certain resident of Hawaii shows up.

As this is the first entry of this style, I want to catch up on a week of entries instead of just the most recent. I’ll be focusing on the last few days if I can. Furthermore, I have a lot of blog reading to catch up on. I’ve been working on the new theme today so I’m pretty far behind.

There is a new wave of podcasting in our International Wota community. My Pleasant Vista, Pink Wota, Stuck in a Pagoda with Motoko Aoyama, The H!P Opinions of a Metalhead and Raid My Minibar all have new podcasts within the last few days. It is a much more personable style that lots of IW bloggers have taken to. I really am interested to see not only who keeps at it but who else decides to try their hand at podcasting.

As for the current podcasts, I have to admit that I’ve skipped over the music that is played. I either know the song already or would rather listen to the suggested music at my own leisure. I wouldn’t suggest to anyone that is going to be podcasting to completely drop the idea of playing music. It depends on what type of audience you want. Personally, I love talk radio. Therefore, I am going to enjoy the parts where the host is talking more so than the music the host plays.

The big news today that I want to share comes from wiki.theppn.org, which has the sales charts for Oricon Week 17. What’s important to me is Perfume and Morning Musume.

Morning Musume clocks in at 3rd with 48k sales. Is this good? I think lots of fans will definitely be happy. I wouldn’t call it a resurgence yet though. It’s an improvement in sales but that’s only because Mikan sold so horribly on the Oricon chats. It’ll be interesting to see where RB goes from here and what style Morning Musume uses for their next single. With Kanashimi Twilight and now Resonant Blue being reasonable successes (at least compared to other recent MM singles), it wouldn’t make sense to switch things up again.

Perfume’s GAME sold 154k and is #1 for the week and I am so happy about this. When I first became a fan of Perfume, I never expected such things. I am under no illusions that they got #1 because of a relatively weak competition in albums this week. However, 6 figures is still 6 figures. Perfume’s popularity can be maintained if handled properly. Releases from the group have been spread apart, so overexposure doesn’t scare me at this point. I do know that the higher they climb, the harder they will fall.