AKB48 and Morning Musume (and S/Mileage) Together At Last~

Today, a surprising amount of news popped up, but one of my little idol dreams came true today.



AKB48 and Morning Musume (with S/Mileage who I kind of forget are there sometimes ^^;;) performed two things together; a Ghibli medley that I'll post in just a minute and the B-side to The Peace (and MM's inspirational song for all time) "Dekkai Uchuu ni Ai ga Aru."

Now, in the comments to Dekkai and other places I've seen MM fans criticize AKB48 in this performance by saying they have too little energy, but all I see is that AKB looks terribly unpracticed. A couple of them (including Maeda Atsuko notably) just looked a bit confused and hesitant, as if they weren't 100% sure what was coming up next. While I did enjoy the professionalism of some of them (Oshima Yuko and Kasai Tomomi really stood out to me, here), I honestly can't blame the AKB girls; they're incredibly busy, and from the way they're dancing it looks like they went over the bare basics of it and the management "OK, good enough, let's go do all the other stuff we need to do.



Despite that, though, I REALLY enjoyed seeing this. There's a moment where Takahashi Ai and Oshima Yuko looked at each other and smiled and it just warmed my heart. I'm a fan of both Morning Musume/Hello!Project AND AKB48. I love the idol world, idol groups, and most female JPop idols. Even though I liked Morning Musume first, I don't feel any resentment towards AKB48 for being more popular; it has to be good for the idol industry, which just makes me happy. I've also seen a lot of stuff online and heard about a LOT of AKB/MM fan rivalries, and I've seen a lot of people go "OH, well, my group's superior because of THIS" and that just bugs me. The groups are both female idol groups, but they're both very different, and when one succeeds the other doesn't necessarily fail because of it.

I don't expect that this will change the minds of anyone who's staunchly against Morning Musume or AKB48, and many people will go "OH, well, this group sucks because of THIS"; however, to me it seems like a sign that the girls themselves aren't resentful towards each other and that the management of both groups aren't resentful enough to pull one of the groups from the TV show. One of my little fantasies is that either Morning Musume and AKB48 or Momoiro Clover, S/Mileage and Watarirouka Hashiritai would do a TV show together doing all their fun idol things and promoting both groups. This is a HUGE long shot, but I think this dream of mine has never been closer.