It’s basically a troop of female Japanese recording artists totaling over 50 members. It started out back in 1998, much like our American Idol. But what happened was, the 5 runners up ended up forming a group called Morning Musume and eventually became much more popular than the girl that won the contest. From then on, the group’s manager, Tsunku has held auditions every year to find new girls to put into the group.
The fun thing about it is that now that there are over 50 girls in it, there are tons of groups. And most of the time, they shuffle the groups’ members around. So you have to follow your favorite girls to whatever group they go to. It’s set up for fans to get obsessive about it (me.)
I’ve been following these girls for almost 10 years now. The girls range in age from 8 to 30. My favorite members are Kei Yasuda, Ai Takahashi, Risa Niigaki, Aya Matsuura, and Miyabi Natsuyaki.
As they have made my favorite genre of music J-POP, I’m sharing with you some of my favorite videos from Hello!Project. I’m really fighting the urge to go on and on and talk about them forever. Gotta reign it in, JC.