About the New Girl In Town And the Future of Morning Musume...

Hello! Project has issued an announcement echoing what we all being buzzing about - Sugiura Taiyou & Nozomi's newborn baby girl Sugiura Noa. Many bloggers are absolutely pleased to know about it and here are their reactions.

Now in previous interviews, Sugiura revealed that their daughter's name will be a combination of the parents name. Funny, the name "Noa" (希空) only have half of Nono's name, Nozomi (希美) and none of the father's name Taiyou (太陽). So I thought further, and with reference to Sugiura's fame due to his role as Ultraman Cosmos, a quick search produced this -->

ULTRAMAN NOA

Image taken from this site and information in English can be found here.

So now I understand~~~~~~~!
Well.... at least I think it's like that. (^_^)v

And here's a clip of the Ultraman Noa, the last mode of Ultraman Nexus, in action.


I called Noa-chan Hello!Project's first Morning Magomusume モーニング孫娘 (Morning Granddaughter) in my previous post. Some comments from my previous post questioned that, because NOno is not the only and not the first ex-Morning Musume to have a child. As noted by Sponichi, there was 1st gen member Ishiguro Aya, 2nd gen member Ichii Sayaka, and finally 1st gen member Iida Kaori (who got married the same day as me! ^_^) who is expecting her child in January 2008. To be clear, I said that this is the first Magomusume because Nono is the first person (soon to be followed by Kaorin) to remain under the Hello!Project stable even after the birth of the child. To me, this is certainly something significant, because they are supposed to be idols. Unless they are not considered as idols after leaving Morning Musume of course...

In any case, Tsunku seems to agree, and revealed his feelings in his blog.

In his blog, he mentioned that he was very happy for Tsuji, felt as if his own granddaughter was born, and expressed his joy to see a small-sized Tsuji being a mother. (I think he still find that hard to believe, as many of us do~~ ^_^)
He said that the newborn girl is a reserve candidate for Morning Musume!

Finally, he remarked that Tsuji is a "producer" now, and hopes that she will be a reliable, perfect, kakoii and kawaii mother for the kid.

Oh... he also said he wanted to meet the baby and give it a hug. ^_^



There has been concerns and talks about the future of Morning Musume, due to the disappointing sales of their latest single "Mikan" and that Momusu's time is running out.... because Buono,C-ute and Kirari have outsold Momusu.

Current sales report

Hello! Project Artist	Single	Total Sales to Date
℃-ute	Tokaikko Junjou	38,085
Buono!	Honto no Jibun	35,281
Tsukishima Kirari	Chance	31,766
Morning Musume	Mikan	28,082

I don't know about you guys, but I felt that from Tsunku's statement in his blog that the baby is a upcoming candidate for Momusu, deep inside he wants Morning Musume to continue on. (at least until the kid is old enough to audition, of course). I think Momusu's time is NOT over.

But this should not be the only reason. Please stay tuned for an upcoming post.




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HNPH, Lost Months - Prologue and H!P Incidents Flashback

Here's to catch up on old(er) news while I was on a break, I do feel that I need to comment on some of the happenings. Not all of them of course, life goes on, and I'm sure there are more incidents to come.



Commenter anna provided a list for me to look into. Some I know, some I didn't. These I do not know ...

- forming of duet Kira☆Pika, Kusumi Koharu and Hagiwara Mai
(^_^)b~~ Yay! Maimai!!

- Aibon's MOM going nude
(o_o;) Good Lord... please have mercy on me eyes...

- Athena & Robikerottsu, formed with Gaki-san, Mittsi, Sato and Saki
(^o^)/~~~ YAY!! Gaki-san!

- Formation of group 'Buono!', formed with Momoko, Miyabi and Airi
(^_^)/ That's great! Though it seemed like 2nd 'Aa!' with Momoko replacing Reina...

-Berryz and C-ute's recent success
(^_^)? Nice!!... but what is it? Sales? Concert attendance record?

- Melon Kinenbi's infamous PV
(o_o)? What happened...? Did they strip off their clothes?

- Tsunku Jr./NG Project
(O_O;)! WHAT?! So it was true?!

- THE Possible graduated from H!P Eggs
(^_^) Aww.... I was gettin' ready to warm up to them. Wait... they'll still be around, right?



On the negative note, the word "scandal" takes on a wider scope by now, so it will called 'Incidents' from now on. Look at what incidents we have so far ->

- Yoshizawa Hitomi's brother died in vehicular accident.
- Kago Ai discovered working intern, caught smoking again, spent the night in onsen trip with old guy... and subsequently fired.
- Hello Morning has transformed to HaroMoni, changes in concept and style.
- 2 Chinese girls accepted to Morning Musume as "exchange students"
- Tsuji Nozomi got sick and dropped out from theater, later discovered that she was actually pregnant, got married with the father of the baby. Currently on a break till baby is born. It was said that the two were introduced to each other through Yaguchi Mari, though they denied of this.
- Shortly after being appointed as Momusu leader, Fujimoto Miki discovered to be in a relationship with a comedian, and subsequently fir-... err I mean, resigned from Morning Musume. Later, rumours surfaced that Fujimoto and her guy were introduced to each other by Konno Asami in her birthday party.
- Konno Asami returns to Hello! Project to join Gatas futsal and musical group

The above stuff that ones I covered, here are some things what happened during my break.

- Iida Kaori got pregnant and married the baby's father - an acquaintance of Tsunku.
- Abe Natsumi got driver license, promoted traffic safety. but soon after ran down a motorcycle in an accident.

And of course the latest news about Goto Maki ->
- Goto Maki got sick and dropped off from concert tour and afterwards rumoured to be pregnant (after Tsuji's case, 'acute-gastroenteritis' is another word for pregnancy ^_^ ). Then her brother got caught committing crime stealing cables, then Gomaki subsequently announced her resignation. [Edited 12:11 p.m.]


Then, found more stuff from the ever-resourceful WHG. Things like:

- Ex-member of Momusu, Ishiguro Aya divorced, husband Shinya wanted to reform LUNA SEA.
- Low attendance in H!P summer concert in Saitama Super Arena
- The A-Team (Morning Musume 10th Anniversary Team), was jeered in live promos. In Oricon chart, A-Team's 2nd single lost to AKB48 by double sales.
- Gatas music group lost to PERFUME in Oricon chart.

I have no way of confirming these sightings and stats, though. Sales figures prolly retrieved from Oricon which is, of course, not really accurate.

Welp... *stretching arms and cracking knuckles*
... time to go to work!

*Commencing search-and-blog mode* (^_^)v


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