I am so not try to start something.

So I was just doing my homework (I should be doing it now instead of blogging!) and I noticed something I wrote a few months ago for my English class. My teacher gives us brief prompts that we have to respond to, and one of her prompts was about describing a rivalry (in our personal experience). Of course, I wrote about the Morning Musume/AKB48 rivalry because I totally talk about JPop all the time in my English homework. But not in a weeaboo way, like oh my gawd Japan is so uber kakkoii~, just in my journal entries (where we can write about anything we think about). But I’m getting off topic. I’m rewriting that entry because it wasn’t really developed enough and I started it off by explaining why each side of the rivalry disliked the other side.

For Morning Musume, I wrote that the fans didn’t like that AKB48’s popularity was rising while MM’s was declining. I mean I’d feel pretty defensive if “my” group’s sales were declining to embarrassing low numbers while some other group was actually topping charts and breaking (their own) records. Which is pretty much what’s happening. And then there’s the whole “AKB48 members are sluts” thing which I don’t really want to elaborate on because I don’t personally believe it.

Well why do AKB48 fans dislike MM (or H!P as a whole) anyways? I haven’t seen many diehard AKB48 fans who bash H!P but there are some, right? What’s the reasoning behind that? I really can’t think of anything to write down besides “WELL MM STARTED IT!!” so this homework entry looks kind of one sided.

By the way, completely not an invitation to start a debate in the comments and I will close the comments if it turns into that.

H!P Poll 2009 Results!

Ah, it’s great not having to count results myself. Seriously why did I count by hand in 2008? Oh, right, because I wanted bloggers to post their results in their blogs. Well you guys can still do that, you know. Sorta too late now, but whatever. Anyways, here are the results! I am far too lazy to post the numbers for every single choice in each category, so I’m only posting first place, second place, and some other information I thought was relevant to the category. If you want to know the specifics for a category, just ask and I’ll tell you more about the exact results of that category. Hell, if you want the results for everything (augh) I think I could screencap all the numbers. Anyway, here is the short list of winners only, I’m putting the numbers and details under the cut (because my blog must be pretty, you know?):

  • Best Single: Nanchatte Renai – Morning Musume
  • Best Album: Platinum 9 DISC – Morning Musume
  • Best PV: MY BOY – Buono!
  • Best Overall Artist: Morning Musume
  • Best Photobook: Watashi – Takahashi Ai
  • Hottest Idol: Takahashi Ai (Morning Musume)
  • DNW-est Idol: Mano Erina
  • Worst Single: SHOCK! – C-ute
  • Worst Album: Friends – Mano Erina
  • Worst PV: SHOCK! – C-ute

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Amy’s Top 10 Love Songs OF ALL TIME. (Part 2)

Typical of a blogger to promise a post in a few days and then actually post it over two weeks later, right? Well, a lot of things came up etc etc, but I doubt anyone was waiting on the edge of their seats for my top five love songs anyways! Before I start, I also wanted to mention that due to the overwhelming response to my poll (don’t worry, counting is automated!) I decided that I would close the poll today instead of next Friday! I think everyone who was interested should have voted by now, so expect the results in a few days (please trust me this time >_>) Thanks to anyone who advertised my poll, you all helped me get over a hundred votes on each category! But enough about the poll, what songs could reduce Amy to tears on a bad day?
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The Return of the MGR End of the Year H!P Poll!

A while after I ended my blog, I thought, “Oh no now I can’t do another poll for the end of the year!” Well luckily I brought it back in time!! Hooray :D So this would be considered the second annual Hello!Project end of the year poll from my blog. I wonder if I’ll be able to stick around for a third one ._. It’s hard to believe I’ll be applying for college next year… but that’s not relevant. At the top right you’ll see a page with all the polls (thank you PollDaddy!) and as I said there, voting ends January 15, 2009. It took a long time to get this poll started (I had to create the list of singles four times ._. bahh.) so please answer! I also used j-ongaku.org for the discography information, so be sure to check them out! TLDR:

VOTE. (for Airi)

I don’t get it.

I am completely understanding of people who get interested in music outside of Hello!Project (AKB48, KPop, technopop, etc.), but I have to ask. Why do these people have to bash H!P so much? I also moved away from being completely obsessed with H!P (to being only mildly obsessed), but I still love H!P. I don’t know why there’s a need to antagonize current H!P fans with lines like, “H!P sucks so much right now” or “I am SO past H!P, it is so lame!”. That’s just really rude to other fans. They still like it, so why are you bashing something they enjoy? If you’re going to move fandoms, you might as well completely ditch and find new AKB48/KPop-loving fans to share your love with. Don’t bitch to your old crowd about how much better your new interest is. It’s just rude and in bad form.

And while we’re on the topic, there is nothing better about Korea. No, this is not an invitation for you to respond with reasons why Korea is better, I don’t give a fuck. Yes, I love KPop, but I don’t think it’s VASTLY SUPERIOR to H!P. People who say that Korean music is so ~fresh~ and original compared to Japanese idol music? Oh come on it’s just wannabe American music, don’t fool yourselves. People who say that they are so tired of JPop and how lame it is? Yeah, you’re just bringing yourself into breakups, drama, and really psychotic fangirls. (sidenote: WHAT THE FUCK HANKYUNG, WHY?) I enjoy KPop and I have a lot of fun listening to it, but I just don’t think it’s very fair of any fan to completely denounce their history. You used to like this stuff for a reason. Don’t pretend you’re so above it now, you liked little Japanese girls at one point and you still probably do. I’m not going to mention AKB48 because I don’t know anything that’s going on in that fandom, but I’m sure there are problems there that any fan faces.

I’m sorry, I just had to rant. It seems that everyone, including myself, has decided to go for new artists/fandoms, but nobody is respecting their old ones. What gives?

Also, the next part of my love songs post will be coming up tomorrow or possibly the day after, depending!

Amy’s Top 10 Love Songs OF ALL TIME. (Part 1)

Ah, love. No matter how many songs are written about love, there are never too many! There’s the happiness of falling in love, the bitterness of betrayal, the sorrow of saying goodbye; when it comes to music, all you need is love. So I’ve decided to list my top ten songs that are pretty much the definition of love. And none of this C-ute LOVE ME LOVE ME LOVE ME LOVE ME junk either, I mean rip-your-heart-out LOVE.

This is actually a partial response to a post Noah at stylejapan wrote a while back about songs that meant love to him. I think the ultimate love song is different for everyone though, so I wanted to share my own! I might be setting myself up for embarrassment here–because I always wince when someone tells me they hate a song that is my personal favorite–but love is about showing your emotions without embarrassment or shame. So I’ll share my favorite love songs without shame even if I might be the only one who feels this strongly about them!

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Why I Write

This post was actually supposed to come before my previous post, but what can you do when you feel inspired to write one thing? You write it first! Anyway, I think the reasons behind why I love writing are worth talking about, just to explain why MGR died and what’s changed since then.

When I first started MGR (under the name Absol-ute C-ute, which I kind of hate now!), it was because a friend told me to. I wasn’t planning to blog at all until I first signed onto #wotachat; everyone on there told me to start a blog and I ended up starting it that day! At first, I was only interested in C-ute (as you can see by the name) and they’re all I wanted to talk about! But…what was there to say? After a while, I realized that I really don’t have much to say about anything, really. I mean, I do have an opinion on a lot of Hello!Project, but I think my problem was that I didn’t have anything unique to say.
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Is Korea ever going to grow out of the boy band/girl group phase?

Before I begin this post, I just want to say that if I say anything that is incorrect, I apologize in advance! I feel awkward writing about Korean music when I’ve only been interested for about half a year. I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff I don’t know, but this is my opinion based on what I do know. I’m not trying to troll anybody, so don’t take it that way and don’t be an asshole if you decide to correct me. That said, I don’t think I’ve said anything that isn’t factual in this post, so this disclaimer should hopefully be unnecessary!

Korea does not have a very diverse selection of music at all. Sure, there’s some indie rock around there somwhere, but the chart topping groups all generally fall in the boy band/girl group pop category. The main companies all promote attractive teen to early twenties (Brown Eyed Girls aside) boys and girls with unique cookie cutter personalities. Sometimes a group like Cherry Filter will come around and promote on one of the weekly shows (and then I get all excited about it), but if you look at the setlist for a weekly show, it is packed with groups. Korea has evidently not grown out of this phase; I’m happy for this most of the time because I do miss ‘N Sync and the Backstreet Boys, but sometimes I just wish there was more variety.

fuck yeah Cherry Filter

fuck yeah Cherry Filter

America’s age of boy bands and girl groups has already came and gone; Justin Timberlake has now gone solo (similar to Kangta?) and God knows what Britney Spears is up to today, I really don’t keep up with her. But why did our phase end while Korea’s continued? What happened to America? What didn’t happen to Korea? Sex.

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The McRib is Back!

While the McRib is indeed back (yum!), I really meant to say that I’m back. For a long time, I hope. I ended Merry Go Round a few months ago because I realized that I had lost interest in blogging. I couldn’t think of anything interesting to write about, and it was really frustrating to me. Recently, though, I found that I did want to have a place to write. I started to miss having a blog! So, Merry Go Round is back IN POG FORM!. I won’t be writing only about Hello!Project anymore, though! While I still love H!P dearly, I’ve also been distracted by tons of other artists. I’ve spent a lot of time listening to kpop recently, so it will make up the bulk of my posts. I also want to learn more about AKB48 (peer pressure!), so I think I might want to blog about my experiences with that. In short, this is no longer an H!P blog, but an Asian music blog! I hope to show a more mature style of writing and bring something new to our community!

Now, about the blog itself: I was planning to change the title Merry Go Round to something else because I was getting a bit tired of it. However, I realized during my hiatus that Merry Go Round is a perfect name because it represents a lot of different jpop songs. I could name five songs by five different artists that are all titled Merry Go Round (or some variant of it), and I’m sure I’d forget some. So Merry Go Round is no longer named after Hoshimura Mai’s Merry Go Round (which was what I was first using), but it is named for all Merry Go Rounds!