Mass Graduations

I don't know how accurate this is, but I found it interesting (found it at helloproject.wikia). It tells of harumageddon, events in H!P history that has caused fans to abandon the project. I never heard of it; does anyone know more?:

"On July 31 2002, a major reform of all of the groups within Hello! Project began, which was referred to as "Haromageddon" (ハローマゲドン) (a pun on Hello (ハロー, Harō) and Armageddon (ハルマゲドン, "Harumagedon")) and "the 7/31 incident" by fans.

Beginning in 2006, with the graduation of more and more Hello! Project members, an increasing number of fans began to lose interest in the groups and abandon them, cancelling their fanclub memberships and refusing to buy merchandise.

During the concert (the 2009 graduation of the elder club), fHello! Project leader Nakazawa Yuuko passed her leadership position to Morning Musume leader Takahashi Ai. This mass-graduation caused another large surge of fan backlash, resulting in even more fanclub cancellations and merchandise boycotts, and is considered the "third coming of Haromageddon". Later in 2009, several of the old, dormant units were revived. Tanpopo, Minimoni, Petitmoni, ZYX, Aa! and v-u-den all returned with new line-ups, and High-King returned from hiatus with its original members. These groups became a new concert unit, "Champloo"."

I like old school H!P.
The girls were never trained to fit a certain image. They're real and genuine.

H!P is also extremely repetative these days:

-Did you think GAM was the first girl on girl action in H!P?
-Atsuko Inaba and Miwa Kominato kisses each other in this video.

-Did you think it was confusing knowing which romanization system to use for biyuuden / v-u-den / viyuden?
-Is it taiyo & ciscomoon, Sun & Ciscomoon, Taiyou to ciscomoon,
Taiyo to ciscomoon, taiyou and ciscomoon etc
Nah, let's just go with T&C Bomber xD

-Did you think Cute were the first one to go on a single spree?
-Taiyou to Ciscomoon went on a release spree releasing one single a month for five months.

Kominato's baby is also in the video for tsuki to taiyou. Probably the only thing H!P hasn't re-used xD

Smileage is kinda the exception. There seems to be put some effort into the pv's (all though extremely plain) and the cd covers.

A nice interview with Michiyo (in Japanese):
http://mora.jp/special/michiyo/

Anyone up for translating it?

Top 10 albums

Ten albums by Japanese artists I find really good (random order)!
I really wanted to include Tommy february6's first album ("Tommy february6") and Ayumi Hamasaki's "A Song for XX", and now I kinda did xD

Morning Musume - First Time
Ayumi Hamasaki - Nothing from nothing
Tommy february6 - Tommy airline
U-ka Saegusa in DB - U-ka Saegisa in DB 1st
Yuki maeda - Zenkyokushu -Kenchana-
Yuko Nakazawa - Dai Isshou
Namie Amuro - Sweet 19 blues
Morning Musume - Second morning
Utada Hikaru - Exodus
Ayumi Hamasaki - Loveppears