Solo Debut for Kikkawa Yuu!

Finally!  This excites me beyond all belief.  Seriously, I may not have followed Kikka very closely in the beginning but I know now that this girl would’ve been wasted in Morning Musume if she’d gotten in.  She’s got the biggest fanbase of all the eggs and finally let her personality out to shine!  I also sincerely believe that Kikka is going to go so much farther than Mano Erina.  There’s so much more charisma in Kikka than in Mano to me.  Mano is cute and everything but Kikka’s got SPUNK.  I like spunk.

At any rate, it’s been announced finally that former Hello!Pro Egg Kikkawa Yuu will have her solo debut in March.  This crazy talented girl’s debut single is called Kikkake wa YOU and will have four different versions.  Like S/mileage’s fourth single Shortcut, each version will have a different b-side to go along with it.  The b-sides for all of the singles will be the songs that she performed as the opening act for the Hello!Project winter 2011 concerts.  These songs include Sayonara Namida, Candy PoP and Fuyuzora Hanabi.

In a rare move for any Hello!Project member, Kikka has been signed to Universal Music Japan.  I’m sure that Tsunku will likely be writing her solo material but the fact that she isn’t with a label affiliated to Zetima will probably mean so much more promotion for her than any of the other artists under H!P.  She’s also slated to perform alongside BEAST and SDN48 at the UNIVERSAL DREAM LIVE 2011 event at Osaka and Universal Studios Japan on March 19th. Kikka also has over 10,000 subscribers to her mobile site already.

So who’s going to be the next H!P Egg to debut? Mori Saki also recently completed her Egg training so there’s no knowing what’s going to happen next.  Actually, there’s a lot of exciting coming out of H!P lately.  Buono are back in action, Berryz Koubou’s got a new album coming out this year, C-ute are releasing good songs again and Morning Musume’s set for what seems to be quite the comeback.

Expect a H!P news roundup in the next couple of days!

A New Generation for Hello! Project

Morning Musume (2011)

Today is the first day of Hello! Project’s winter tour and most certainly everyone was thinking about one thing, the announcement of Morning Musume’s 9th generation.

Kikkawa Yuu (2011)

Before I get on to that, there was some speculation, as I mentioned earlier, as to former Hello! Pro Egg members Kikkawa Yuu and Sengoku Minami joining the 9th generation, as they graduated from Hello! Pro Egg very recently. Sengoku made no appearance while Kikkawa Yuu actually opened the concert with an original song called Sayonara Namida, a “support website” also opened for her, it seems she is likely to become Hello! Project’s newest soloist, or perhaps just a soloist with Up-Front? I hope Hello! Project though, she is 100,000 times better a singer than Mano Erina.

As for the ninth generation winners, the following hopefuls made it into the group;

• 生田 衣梨奈 (Ikuta Erina) 13 years old
• 鞘師 里保 (Sayashi Riho) 13 years old
• 鈴木 香音 (Suzuki Kanon) 12 years old
  

  L - R: Suzuki Kanon, Ikuta Erina, Sayashi Riho

And coming as somewhat of a surprise, from Hello! Pro Egg;

• 譜久村 聖 (Fukumura Mizuki) 14 years old

Fukumura Mizuki

Fukumura had been a member of Hello! Pro Egg since 2008 and was a second generation member of Shugo-Chara Egg.