Quote:
Originally Posted by Halla
honestly, YES! 
The thing I dislike about the the whole japanese entertainment scene are the pre-teen girls pandering to old pervs, and how acceptable in J-pop/entertainment it is 
I'm not denying that Tsunku isn't a talented pop-producers, I've liked some of his work with non-H!P artists and two H!P songs ("Sugisugite Baka Mitai" & "Some Boys! Touch"), but the whole H!P is exploiting the poor girls. the girls don't make that much money & are subjected to all sorts of rules.
H!P girls themselves have questionable talent (only a few of them I could call talented) and the whole stylistic direction of the whole H!P is really fug. with their gaudy & ridicilous costumes they look like they're stuck in the 90s.
tho fortunately I don't think H!P has that much of a effect on anything these days, seems like they're slipping further away from the mainstream each passing year. finally  |
I'm not really disagreeing with your points, but this applies to ALL teen idols, not just musume, so I don't think they are in particular responsible for this so called bad image. IMO there's a reason why japanorama choose to show AKB48 when showing otaku feeding girls and not morning musume. Morning Musume probably is one of the cleanest of its kind.
As I see it, it's not really exploiting girls either. THey girls get to sing and dance in front of an audience, and only by looking at them you can tell most of them enjoy performing. Yes it's true that some families rely on these girls for extra financial support, but Japan is not a third world country and it's not like poor thai families selling their 12 year olds to a brothel for a sack of rice.
Finally, a biger portion of H!P is actually catered towards kids than you might imagine. The kirari anime and mini moni are great examples. THe problem is that no matter which demogaphic the merchandise is catered at, whoever can buy the goods including old salary men.