ORICON ROUNDUP

CHARTS:

Singles:

01 Yowamushi SANTA Shuuchishin 152,260
02 Koyoi, Tsuki ga Miezutomo Porno Graffitti 81,907
03 White Xmas KAT-TUN 19,962
04 Aino Mamade... Akimoto Junko 17,550
05 Heart of Winter Yamazaki Masayoshi 14,206
06 Eien no Ashita DEEN 13,898
07 Tobira GReeeeN 13,235
08 CROSS GAME alice nine. 12,703
09 Minna no Tamago Shugo Chara Egg! 12,587
10 PAPERMOON Tommy heavenly6 11,838

Albums:

01 SUPERMARKET FANTASY Mr.Children 707,763
02 EXILE BALLAD BEST EXILE 257,760
03 VOICE Nakashima Mika 33,920
04 Enka Meikyoku Collection 9 - Aishu no Mizuumi - Hikawa Kiyoshi 28,765
05 ai no Uta 2 Various Artists 28,125

40 Abe Natsumi Best Selection 15 Shoku no Nigaoe Tachi Abe Natsumi 5,206
66 Pucchi Best 9 Various Artists 3,354
122 MEGA MELON Melon Kinenbi 1,477
132 Hello! Project Special Unit MEGA Best Various Artists 1,349
148 Taiyo to Ciscomoon (T&C BOMBER) MEGA Best T&C Bomber 1,172
164 Hello! Project Shuffle Unit MEGA Best Various Artists 1,102
168 Tanpopo / Pucchimoni MEGA Best Tanpopo / Pucchimoni 1,084
171 Country Musume MEGA Best Country Musume 1,073
182 Legend Nakazawa Yuko 1,020

NEWS: Shocking news this afternoon as the official Hello!Project website announced the mass graduation of every Elder Club member on the 31st of March, 2009.

Graduating Members


Nakazawa Yuko, Iida Kaori, Abe Natsumi, Yasuda Kei, Yaguchi Mari


Ishikawa Rika, Yoshizawa Hitomi, Tsuji Nozomi, Konno Asami, Ogawa Makoto


Fujimoto Miki, Satoda Mai, Inaba Atsuko, Maeda Yuki


Melon Kinenbi
Saito Hitomi, Murata Megumi, Ohtani Masae, Shibata Ayumi


Miyoshi Erika, Matsuura Aya, Okada Yui


Ongaku Gatas' Eggs
Korenaga Miki, Noto Arisa, Sengoku Minami, Sawada Yuri

While the girls are graduating from Hello!Project, they will apparently still remain part of UFA and continue as artists without being idols. Whether this refers to all members is unclear at this point. The Eggs will likely remain within the Hello! Pro Eggs, other than Korenaga who graduated as an Egg since joining Ongaku Gatas.

I gotta say... This is just horrible news. To me many of these artists are who I think of when I think of H!P. How can you have H!P without Yuko or Nacchi? Mari or Kei? Crazy Johnson? The incredible 4th gen? All the soloists? Ahh, it's gonna take a bit to get my head around this. Just the other day I was ranking my fav members in H!P with a friend and they were surprised I had so many of these Elder Club members so high. I really do respect and adore these girls. They will be missed.

NEWS: I know I have been really slacking off on the news portion of this blog lately so first up I'm going to be going through all the latest news (that I know of)... so here we go:

Morning Musume's new single has been announced and will be released on the 24th of September which isn't TOO far off, I guess. The title hasn't been announced but there has been some speculation that it may be the beautiful ballad (Ame no furanai hoshi de wa aisenai darou) that was the closing song of the current H!P Wonderful Hearts concert. I personally would prefer a brand new song, along the same lines of Resonant Blue, purely because I want a new fresh song. The ballad would be great as a high class B-side imo.

Buono!'s Gachinko de Ikou! is released soon (20th Aug) and a commercial has begun airing giving us a sneak peek at the PV.

The white background is very pure and refreshing and helps us focus on the girls in the dancing shots of the girls, while it is contrasted with the crazy band shots which are much more hectic. Not too much to say from that tiny 15sec clip but it does seem like it could end up being a great PV.

C-ute was on Yahoo! Live Talk on Thursday, which I watched live, and they were really good. Kanna was present which was fantastic but she was a bit quiet at the beginning (though she seemed to loosen up after she was asked some questions). The best portions of the talk were when the girls each got up and showed off their outfits and described them, also when they showed off their talents. Download it at the Hello! Online Tracker.

Maimi & Erika also appeared on Tombori Station to promote their new single Edo no Temari Uta II. You can watch it on the Tombori website.

The Aku Yuu Monogatari TV drama aired yesterday evening and you can watch Takahashi Ai & Niigaki Risa as Pink Lady below:

The performance isn't very long but I love how Ai & Gaki's voices blend together, they harmonize very well. They seemed to get into the dance and performance well. I believe they performed more than just the one track, but this is all I could find atm.

Suzuki Airi also performed but I haven't seen a video of that pop up yet.

Berryz Koubou performed at the Osaka King Festival about a week ago but I forgot to post about it *sorry* I'm not sure if a video of the performance popped up, I didn't see one but if someone did feel free to let me know.

The girls were also on MBS Radio Sound Kingdom wearing the same outfits they wore at the Osaka King Festival performance.

Concert Time: A whole bunch of info on upcoming concerts and events were announced recently.

Ongaku Gatas will have a new tour in December this year. It is currently untitled. Miyoshi Erika will appear in a stage play while she will join Okada Yui for a FC Bus Tour in October.
Sharan Q will have a 20th Anniversary concert which will feature H!P performers as guests. At the moment Abe Natsumi, Nakazawa Yuko, Morning Musume, Berryz Koubou, C-ute and Matsuura Aya are known to be participating. Berryz Koubou will have another Gekiharo Gekidan stage play coming up and Matsuura Aya will have an Xmas Dinner show.

Random Ramblings

So I began my blog 3 weeks ago today and I originally wanted it to be a blog which posted every bit of news, was heaps up to date, all that wonderful stuff. I did start out like that I think but it is very difficult trying to keep up with everything as you can see from all this news I had missed in the past few days. I definitely will still be a H!P news blog, posting the most interesting tid-bits but I believe I will probably phase out the less news-worthy stuff unless it truly interests me and focus more on my reviews and random, interesting stuff I've found.

Big thanks to Int Wota who have written about me I think 4 times since I began and it has really helped. I recently began monitoring my hits to the site and it was much better than I expected and then after Int Wota wrote a story about me it just shot up. It's nice to know there are some folks who seem to be constantly coming and checking out this blog. I'll do my best to keep it up to date for all you. Ganbarre masu!

I added the media center to the top of the blog a few days ago so that I could add songs that I reviewed and such. The tracks are only 64kbps so they should load very quickly and I hope it doesn't stuff anyone's viewing of the page up. They aren't download-able atm, but I can check that option. I'm not sure why people would want the low quality tracks though and I don't want to get in trouble and the blog to get shut down so I think I'll leave them as just listen-able.
I know (think) the site has troubles in IE. For me at least it sort of freezes while it loads, I can't seem to figure out why and I'm not tech savvy enough to fix it so I apologise and hope it isn't a huge issue.

One last thing. Please check out my Canaria Club DVD review *shameless plug* If you haven't already. I really think it's a good look at a backstage view of an idol concert + it took me literally hours and hours to screen cap all of that and write on it and nobody commented yet *sad*

In the upcoming week I hope to be doing reviews of THE Possible's backstage DVD as well as their new single, C-ute's new single and Canaria Club's latest single. I'm sure I'll get the time so just keep an eye out for them.

Thanks again,
Mars.