I know I have not blogged much about anything Hello! Project related in a while and it is not because I no longer care. It is just that I feel like I have fallen behind and become disconnected with the rest of the fandom and I am currently trying to figure out just where I fit in it as well as catching up.
I know I do still enjoy H!P. Morning Musume, Angerme, Country Girls and Kobushi Factory are all groups that I am definitely going to keep following. And if I have the time I will probably check on the other groups though I think I am pretty set right now with which ones I am going to follow. I went through this with Johnny's and in the end it has worked out for the best when it comes to balancing everything I want to do.
While the PV/MV reaction videos were fun to make to keep myself spoiler-free for them it meant trying to avoid fandom or watching the latest Hello!Ste episode. In doing this it created a gap, where I started to feel like I was no longer enjoying H!P with the rest of the fandom. I felt isolated and it dragged me down, especially when I hit bumps in making those videos and fell behind those releases. It eventually snowballed to the point that I was feeling detached from H!P and was not enjoying it like I had been. Plus getting the videos flagged and some rendered unwatchable since the audio would be muted by youtube was stressing me out and taking much of the fun away from them.
Also I was feeling pressure that I needed to follow all the groups and like all the groups. Something that I tried but I felt that stretch of trying to take on too much and growing a disconnection with the groups that I favored. So the groups mentioned before are going to be my focus. I have nothing against the other groups, they just do not grab my attention like the others do, so I will not be actively seeking them out but will not ignore them if they are in the same programs/concerts as the groups I am going to actively follow.
As I mentioned earlier I have yet to reach the point where I feel as if I have lost my love for H!P, but as I brought up I need to change things to feel connected to it again. For me a big part of becoming a H!P fan was the fandom so the focus for me is to find a way to be a part of it, which means whatever I do it needs to keep me up to date with what is going on and not having to play catch up.
One of the things I have been doing to get back into H!P again is watching all the Hello!Ste episodes I missed. I am currently on #170, so this is going to take some time even with skipping the hair arrangement segments. But it is time that I enjoy. I like the look that these episodes give fans into what the girls are doing as well as getting a sense of personalities with the changing of the hosts with each episode. And catching up with these helps me go over all the changes that have occurred in the past year or so at a speed that is easier to take than trying to simply read about it.
For future plans expect seeing blog posts about H!P start to return on a more regular basis. Without a doubt I want to write a farewell post for Kudo Haruka as she is one of my favorite girls in Morning Musume so this graduation is hitting harder than some of the previous few. I also want to do something with my youtube channel but I have not figured out what exactly, but it is leaning on doing something like the idol news round-ups that I did before. I plan to have made my decision on that by the end of the year and will make an announcement about it then. Until that time I will continue to play catch up and go back to just enjoying H!P as any other fan and let that love and passion for the groups return.
