Idol Attraction 2: Do the Rankings! Now

Last week I touched briefly on the fact that I'm stark raving mad.  Er, rather, that I've become drawn into the pastel world of Hello!Project - well, okay, just Morning Musume so far, but I make no promises - at a much faster pace than anticipated.  Yeah, that sounds more professional.  I wrote at the end of my entry that I wanted to delve a bit deeper into what exactly I found attractive about these idols, and I've been thinking about how best to approach it.  Happily, I decided that the best way to go about it was to make more charts.  (I love charts.  Can you tell?)  Using the wonderful Wota Distractions tool (there's that W word again - I'd better get used to it) provided by Ray over at American Wota, I spent a slightly disturbing amount of time ranking the group's members.  I figured that taking a look at my favorites would provide a good starting point for further explorations.  So, without further ado, the overall member rankings!

Member Rankings (click me)

Takahashi Ai in first place surprises no one, I'm sure, and she's there for unique reasons that I'll get into later on, when I wrap this series of entries up.  The rest of my top five, interestingly enough, are all the past leaders of the group.  I suspect they uniformly occupy the highest slots because leading a group of idols, especially one as fluid as Morning Musume, is a job that takes an inordinate amount of charisma and courage, both toward one's fellow performers and to the audience who undoubtedly expects a strong person to fill the role.  Yoshizawa Hitomi and Iida Kaori both fit the bill, and their individual personalities were ones I really enjoyed as well.  Yossie's tough guy girl image was endearing from the moment I first saw her, and her ranking solidified like quick-drying cement once I watched the PV for "Mr. Moonlight."  God damn, can that girl pull off a yellow suit!  Kaorin, meanwhile, opted for the cool, collected image, broken up periodically by weird, space-cadet moments.  It was an odd combination, but she made it work.  Of course, the fact that she was also a stunning beauty didn't hurt either.  However, out of all the top five, I have particular respect for Nakazawa Yuko, whose persona was tough and self-sacrificing as MM's first leader.  I recently watched an old 1999 episode of Utaban featuring the group in its first-and-second-generation incarnation, where she explained flatly and without remorse how marriage was out of the question for her as an idol.  The way she said it - a simple but firm "dame desu" with great eye contact - really stuck with me.  Moreover, she led the group as its oldest member by far: she was 24 at its inception, and watching the early PVs one can see how the group gradually became younger and younger in focus, particularly once the fourth generation came on board.  By "I Wish," she stuck out like a sore thumb - yet there she was, giving it her best.  Tremendous respect.  Finally, Fujimoto Miki... well, she was technically a leader, but she didn't last long enough in that capacity for it to influence me.  She's at number five because of her incredible voice, which I really miss.

Slots six through ten are a little more varied as far as why they were chosen.  Ogawa Makoto cajoled herself all the way up to number six, and I'm not sure I can explain what it is I love about her.  Well, all right, yes I can.  Her upbeat personality shone through in PVs; her voice, while not really capable of much more than belting out the notes, was "honest" for lack of a better word; and did I mention that I love the way she looked in the "Chokkan 2" video with the bleached blond hair?  Seriously, bleach-blond Makoto > regular blond Makoto ("Ambitious," "Sexy Boy") > all other Makoto(s).  Basically, she seemed to make the most out of her talents, and I can appreciate that.
Yasuda Kei at number seven... hey, I've always liked rooting for the underdog, and Kei was definitely treated as such on television appearances and even (I believe, though I could be wrong) when it came to fan reception.  Yet she had a lovely voice, coupled with an unconventional attractiveness that made her stand out to me when I watched her old PVs.  "As for One Day," as much as I love the song, makes me somewhat sad because it's her last single with the group.
Number eight is the original Miracle Girl, Goto Maki.  For someone who continually annoys me when I watch "Love Machine" (Seriously, sweetheart, I know you're the new member and everything, but stop sticking your face in the camera every other shot.  I can't see Yuko behind your big-ass head.) she redeemed herself quite a bit in the singles that followed, and I came to realize that she really was talented enough to deserve her spotlight. This ranking is also helped by her solo career, which sadly I've only recently come to appreciate.  I have faith that she'll be back in some capacity, someday.
Spots nine and ten are taken up by two criminally underused performers in present-day Morning Musume: Kamei Eri and Niigaki Risa.  Both have great, slightly unconventional voices, and neither one gets as many lines as they deserve, although Risa does have her Athena and Robikerottsu side project these days.  Here's hoping they show their faces a bit more on upcoming singles.

I don't have much to say individually about the remainder of the rankings, although I find it amusing that Abe Natsumi is in the exact, neutral center, which I think is fitting.  I used the ranking tool without ever opting for a tie between the pairings it gave me; this forced the list to be clean and sequential, but it also means that some members are "higher" without really having much to quantify the position.  I'll sum up by saying that most of the ten girls in the 11-20 spots are ones that either haven't tapped into their full potential yet (Koharu, Aika, the pandas), or just members I don't tend to favor as much.  I have to admit I've come to like Kago Ai and Tsuji Nozomi much more than I used to.  The bottom five... well, Tanaka Reina's a decent singer, but I find her voice, and particularly her vibrato (which sounds forced much of the time), really annoying after extended listening.  Ishikawa Rika was gorgeous, granted, but for someone who could barely hold a tune, she sure got a lot of screen time in her PVs.  I'm just bitter, don't mind me.  Finally, Ishiguro Aya, Fukuda Asuka, and especially Ichii Sayaka (who I still can't recognize in the PVs!  Seriously, where is she?) were, in my mind, the members that "didn't make it" through the transformation that Morning Musume underwent starting with "Love Machine."  I have no problem with any of them, but they just weren't in the group long enough to leave any impressions on me.

Looking at the chart and all the words I just wrote about it, what overarching conclusions can I draw?  Oh, sure, there's the eye candy factor; I won't deny that.  But overall, I think the idols to whom I am most attracted are the ones that go above and beyond being "just a Morning Musume member."  I guess technically every one of them strives for that, but it's uniformly the leaders who have, in my opinion, seized their roles as all-around entertainers with both hands.  I think it's similar to the reason I was such a big Ayumi Hamasaki fan for years: she controls her image and sound, writes her own lyrics and does a fair amount of composition, and generally gives the impression that she knows exactly what she's doing.  It seems that it would be very easy, as a pop idol, to fall back on the image that your managers, agents, et cetera decide for you.  And I'm not saying that Yossie, or Kaori, or Yuko did anything different - certainly, given the way Hello!Project is run, their creative input was probably limited if it existed at all.  But to me, their long tenures with the group give me the impression that they thrived not only on the "star-maker machinery," but on their own inner strength as well.  Their careers seem to say to me that they enjoy what they do/did for a living; that even though their images are marketed, tested, and altered as necessary, it's their hard work that gets them through.  I find this idea to be very inspiring, and I think that might be the seed of it all.  My own work is as far from idol glitz as it gets, yet if I can increase my confidence and self-worth enough to know what I'm doing and where I want to go... well, if I'm going to throw myself squarely into the wota category, I might as well take some positive life lessons while I'm at it.  "You'll get a chance" indeed.