Hello! Project

I'm sometimes asked why I haven't reviewed [insert band name here], or am told that a profile isn't quite in-depth enough for [crazy fan of insert band name here.] This is usually the case for the really popular bands. I can certainly understand how the hardcore fans will always want to see their favorites in the spotlight (see any of my entries on Polysics for an example of this in action,) and I'm always happy to see such pure enthusiasm for any Japanese band.

The truth is that, in these cases, I feel it's much better for people to just Google or Wiki the band's name and gather the info themselves from the unlimited number of fan-sites that are out there. Together they can all do a much better job at covering the details than I can. That amount of depth and obsession isn't exactly what ZB's A-Z is about.

All of this is a long-winded way for me to explain why I don't always cover the major label/studio conceived pop bands. It's certainly not because I don't enjoy listening to them. In fact, one of the first Japanese pop groups I became a fan of was Morning Musume. Of course this was most likely because they are everywhere. It's tough to open any mainstream Japanese music magazine or watch any popular count-down music show and not see them pop up, sometimes more than once. Plus the sheer strangeness of Hello! Project to the first-time viewer is enough to force interest.

In a very small nutshell, Hello! Project (or H!P) is the product of the Up Front Agency. H!P is a collection of a huge number of young girl singers/idols. These girls form many smaller groups or solo acts, sometimes shuffling (hence the term Shuffle Group) in and out of other groups. Morning Musume is the largest collection of girls, hovering around a dozen or so at any one time. Much like Latino boy-band Menudo, the girls are "graduated" out of the group when they reach a certain age.

The H!P sound is pure, cold filtered, beech-wood aged pop. While the style of each group (somewhere around 50 I think, including solo acts) may differ slightly in both look (from the size of the girls (literally!,) to their ages, to their costumes) and sound (from traditional folk, to "reggae," to pop), it's all essentially the same vein of pop. This is possibly a result of almost all the music bring written by a single person, Mitsuo Terada.

From here, I leave it to the fans. I highly recommend the excellent blog-collecting-blog International Wota. There you can find any number of links to fan sites and blogs covering the entire spectrum of Hello! Project news, as well as other pop groups, including news, reviews, blue-sky speculation and latent fan-boy/girl-ism. Of course there is also Wiki and ThePPN.

Happy hunting.

H!P All-Stars - All for One & One For All



Mini Moni - Aiin


I still love Mini Moni.

W (Double You) - South Paw (Pink Lady cover)


Yeah, they my look innocent...