Friday, November 23, 2018

Angerme adding two from the North

The new members joining Angerme have been announced! Both are from Hokkaido with one being a familiar face for those who follow the Hello!Project Trainees in Hokkaido. The Hokkaido Trainee and now Angerme member is Ota Haruka. The other girl that has now joined the group is named Ise Reira and from concert reports she is from the latest audition H!P held, the ONLY YOU auditions earlier this year. Both will start full group activities with the 2019 winter concerts.

Ota Haruka's addition to a group is the first time any of the Hokkaido Trainees have debuted with a H!P group.

I honestly look forward to learning about these girls in the future. I have liked all the members picked for Angerme so far and I doubt these girls will be an exception. I just hope H!P makes sure they release a single for them to have as their first single before the single that will be Wada Ayaka's final single. I know H!P likes to be slow with releases but I hope they make an exception for this as I would hate for the new members to be completely overshadowed by Ayaka for their first single. Yet I can see that happening with H!P.

It is nice to see H!P at least is willing to invest in the Hokkaido Trainees. I recall they used to have Kansai Trainees but I do not recall much happening with those, except Yamada Nana (who was using her real name Nakayama Nana with H!P) quitting to audition for NMB48. So the attention H!P is giving the girls in Hokkaido is a nice change and hopefully bodes quite well for those idol hopefuls.

Monday, November 19, 2018

New Angerme members announced for this Friday?!

Gotta love Japanese idol agencies and their love to surprise fans. It has been just announced that on Friday, November 23rd, 2018 there will be an announcement on a new members to join Angerme. It actually has not been announced how many members will be added to the group, but for the sake of ease of writing this out I am going to use the plural.

I can see why they would want to do this before Wada Ayaka's graduation in the Spring. This does tend to happen with Morning Musume, where shortly before a big graduation to add new members to the group. So honestly this announcement probably should not be that much of a surprise that it happened, just the timing of it as the Spring is still a few months away.

I have always assumed to try to deter backlash from fans who may see them as "replacements" for whoever graduated and left the group by bringing in the new members right before. And I see that in play with this, as well as not only will the new members be coming before Ayaka's graduation but they will actually have some time with her in the group. So at least it will not be nearly as awkward at her graduation when they have to say a few words to her for a public farewell unlike new members that joined a group a few days before a graduation. In fact there just might be a chance they could even be in the single that will be Ayaka's graduation single. That of course all depends on when H!P plans on releasing that.

As for trying to guess who will be joining, I honestly have no clue. I do not follow Hello! Project closely enough to know much about the kenshusei to have anyone in mind. Also there are the girls that passed an earlier audition that H!P held this year that could be selected to join the group as well. Either way I look forward to seeing the video of the members of Angerme welcoming their new group mates with the same excitement and open arms that newer Angerme generations have enjoyed.

Wednesday, November 7, 2018

On a SixTONES high

SixTONES is easily my favorite Johnny's Jr group and the one that I have been hoping for debut before they were even given their group name and simply known as Bakaleya6. Watching them grow over the years has given me much joy as a fan and I have been hoping for a debut for them from the start. And while there is still no debut announcement this is still proving to be a great time to be a fan of the group.

It was announced that the group had been selected for Youtube's Rising Stars promotion, where they select an artist from around the world and give them a push via advertisements and promotions of videos created for the campaign. Last week fans learned of this when massive posters of the group began to appear in train stations in Tokyo.


The group had a music video made for one of their original songs, Japanica Style, which was produced by Takizawa Hideaki. It easily takes the title of being the video to reach 1 million views on the Johnny's Junior channel.


There is also a short video that can serve as an introduction to the group that was uploaded shortly after.

Even though debut is still not something that can be considered set for the group yet this looks to be setting them in a good position for one if the momentum for the group continues. I have a lot of thoughts about SixTONES debut so I will save that for another post.

As an international fan this has had an extra layer of excitement, as unlike most times this is not something exclusive to fans in Japan. While there are no posters outside of Tokyo the videos are up for the world to see, and thanks to dedicated fans there are subs in several different languages for the videos so even the language barrier is not getting into the way. So this fan is going to enjoy the hell out of these videos and hope that this will only be the beginning for things to come for the group.

Friday, November 2, 2018

Fiction of a Fan

This blog post is just to announce that I've decided to link my fanfiction to this blog. As I like the idea of having a hub for all the things connected to me and don't have the time to learn all the coding I would need to get my own website up and running. Plus unlike Google+, Blogger is not dead yet so I will be here most likely to the end. Much like the Geocities webpages I had in my youth.

Unlike my Geocities pages though I am finding ways to keep this blog alive with content. As I am trying to focus on writing again I have begun to work on fanfiction. It was with fanfic that I started to write complete pieces, even if on the short side, and I do enjoy writing something I can instantly share with others once I am done with it.

If you want to check out my fanfiction so far I post it up on Archive of Our Own (AO3) here. I do have a fanfiction.net account (under the name Seca) but have not updated it in years. I am also uploading all my old fanfiction to AO3 so eventually everything found there will be able to be found under my current AO3 account.

All new pieces from now on will be cross-posted here. I tend to write slowly so it will not be often.