Sleep-speaker

When we look back on this year's Wednesday-ish entries, we will think of it as the year we spoke about Juice=Juice. A lot. This is entirely not my fault, no one but luckyzukky could have predicted that the group were going to release a song like More! Mi Amore and that it was going to be such a terrific single. At the same of writing, I would actually put More! Mi Amore in my top ten idol releases this year—this song, in addition to =LOVE's Love Song ni Osowa Reru really brightened up this winter for me, they are both songs explicitly from this moment, and whenever I hear them in future, I am sure I will remember these days. No doubt, I will also be thinking of Kawashima Mifu.



Omifu debuted with Juice=Juice in February with the release of the double A side, Hatsukoi no Bourei/Kon'ya wa Hearty Party, a single which mostly passed me by due to my extreme association of Juice=Juice with Karin, and only Karin. Despite this, I was aware of Omifu, not by name, but by sight, as I vaguely remembered the promotional material following the auditions which saw her win a place with the kenshuusei after having failed three separate prior auditions for a place with Morning Musume and ANGERME, as well as the joint Tsubaki Factory and Juice=Juice auditions. A year later finding her feet, however, she was awarded with a judge's prize during the research students' concert, and a year after that, with another award under her belt, it was announced she was joining Juice=Juice. But wait, you might proclaim, looking at this timeline, if she joined the group in 2023, why was her debut single in 2025? Ah! Alas! From the October following the announcement throughout most of 2024, Omifu was unable to perform due to a sudden loss of hearing that required both surgical intervention and a long, long period of recovery. I cannot begin to imagine how terrifying it must have been to have gone through that, to finally make it to where the start of where you want to be only to have something out of your control happen like that. I was completely unaware of all that Omifu was going through during this point, I wasn't even aware of her having joined Juice=Juice, but I am relieved to report that in April 2024, Omifu began to resume activities, leading us to where we are now, the release of More! Mi Amore sending her popularity skyrocketing.

In the Hello! Project Official Shop in late autumn, it came as no surprise to me that Omifu's photo that month had sold out. I first became aware of her around 2022-ish when she appeared in a video alongside Tanaka Reina, and I was struck by how emotional she was during the performance, mouthing her words as she danced before eventually burst into tears following the performance, but because I am an idiot, I didn't follow her career; in October, I felt more like an idiot for not having followed her as everything about her presence in More! Mi Amore stands out so vividly, from the skill of her dancing, to the delivery of her lines, to her presence amongst her peers. If I had been smarter in 2022, I would have made it my resolution to follow her, rather than arriving late to the party with everyone else. What is important is that I am here now though, just in time for the New Year! My resolution for 2026 will be to support Omifu more!

Working during the Christmas and New Year period is like standing outside a building where everyone inside is partying hard. Whatever job I do next year, I'm going to make sure I quit before the last week of December. In the meantime: girls who are magical. Spoilers for the Kimi to Idol movie follow so please beware.

( Kimi to Idol Precure )

( To Love-ru )

( Happiness Charge Pretty Cure! )

( Smile Precure! )

( Comet-san )

And that pretty much makes up our magical girl quota for the year, friends. Onwards to, ah, 2006!

In 2005, I was terribly invested in pop music, it was the thing that was keeping me afloat. I had first encountered Morning Musume few years earlier, and Toei's hero shows followed shortly after, first Gaoranger, then Ninpuu Sentai Hurricanger featuring Nagasawa Nao in the role of Nono Nanami. Being so far away from Japan, we had no real understanding of idol culture save for how we approximated what we came to know from magazines and websites. Anyway, long story short, I became an idol fan, and I started following both Nagasawa Nao and Yamamoto Azusa from Hurricanger. By the time 2005 had rolled around, we were five singles into Nagasawa's solo career, two on King Records, the rest on avex trax, whom she signed with in early 2004. I can't recommend her music to you, but at the same time, I have a cabinet full of records, and I was sad when, after 2007, the well dried up and the most we got was a "best of" record the year later, something that led to me feeling somewhat shortchanged by avex. Having said that though, it was also a relief as the material the label was giving her was pretty awful. Despite my resentment, avex were very proactive in the mid '00s, having launched the career of Hamasaki Ayumi and having a clear vision of the kind of idols they believed sold best—Hi-NRG songs and gravure photoshoots were the order of the day, and a lot of avex's acts did really well within the parameters of that milieu, dream were especially popular, if I remember rightly, as were PARADISE GO!! GO!!. To use an analogy that might be a little too niche, avex's idols felt like they were all from Ginza, and I think that was an approach that dominated the idol industry until AKB48's "idols you can meet" really blew the lid off everything.

In amidst all those pounding Eurobeat drums, the scent of excessive baby oil used in every gravure shoot, as you were beginning to feel a little lightheaded from all the hairspray used, there was always one thing that avex was good at doing, however, and that was promotion. If you were on avex, you were on billboards.



( ~Yujo ni Ribbon~ )